Category: Simple Tricks

Tsar Wars: Once Upon a Time in a Galaxy Far Far Away

Posted on August 10, 2015by Aggressive Negotiations, Imperial Court Circular

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In case you hadn’t noticed, I have a pretty strong interest in royalty and in politics. My passion is shared by my old friend, Bria LaVorgna. Bria and I have decided to co-write a piece on monarchy in Star Wars, presented alternatingly on the sites we write for: Eleven-ThirtyEight and Tosche Station. We think that the close connection Star Wars has to monarchy is pretty unusual and worth examining in detail. We’ll start out with a brief survey of monarchy in Star Wars, before moving on to an examination of how monarchy works on three prominent Star Wars planets.

(Programming note: I’ll update this intro post with links to each piece on Tosche Station and Eleven-ThirtyEight as they go up this week. Look for a new piece each day from now through Thursday!)

Part II: A New Naboo (Tosche Station)
Part III: The Hapans Strike Back (Eleven-ThirtyEight)

 

 

c6256992fe890afeb7825666927b7f0d[1]Unusually among science fiction franchises, Star Wars has a strong attachment to monarchy. This is partly due to the nature of Star Wars as space opera rather than pure science fiction, but it’s not really a genre issue. Monarchy is part of the DNA of Star Wars and always has been. Initially, Princess Leia served as the princess figure in the fairy tale conception of Star Wars (one of many inspirations for Star Wars, including myth, serial adventures, etc.) and Leia proves in the very first film that she’s not merely a damsel in distress. But fairy tale inspirations only get us part of the way — monarchy is a persistent and pervasive part of Star Wars, reflected in the Naboo of the prequel trilogy, Hapes of the Expanded Universe, and a myriad of monarchies in the Clone Wars. In fact, The Clone Wars made such a use of monarchies that worlds that the EU had established as democracies (Mon Calamari) ended up becoming monarchies. George Lucas had a pretty direct hand in The Clone Wars, and he obviously crafted the story of the saga, so monarchy is just a part of his political conception of Star Wars. But the question is — why? Why does a story about the struggle between light and dark, between democracy and tyranny, feature monarchies so centrally?

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The Pitch – Space Travel is For Suckers

Posted on July 27, 2015by , , , and

coronet

Alongside the now-confirmed Han Solo movie and the still-theoretical Boba Fett movie, one of the most perennially-rumored spinoff films is one (or three!) centering on Obi-Wan Kenobi. While such a movie could conceivably be set during the Clone Wars thanks to Ewan McGregor’s annoying eternal youthfulness, speculation generally assumes the movie would be set during his exile on Tatooine (for the record, Ewan is currently 44, which in Obi years puts him at about six years after Revenge of the Sith). Speculation also tends to assume, at least when I’ve seen it, that the story would involve some sort of dire mission pulling him away from Tatooine for a brief time.

Leaving aside the conceit that anything could be important enough to pull him away from Luke, and leaving aside the fact that rather than twiddling his thumbs, the one thing we know for sure is that Obi-Wan spent that time communing with Qui-Gon and Yoda and learning how to transcend death (which was still a distant second on his list of priorities after safeguarding Luke), it bugs me when people take for granted the idea that an Obi-Wan movie would automatically require him to leave Tatooine, because for all its ostensible overuse in the film saga, Tatooine is really interesting.

Look no further than John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi, a book dealing with that selfsame period that manages to restrict its action not just to the one planet, but to an area small enough to fit on a handy-dandy map. Kenobi, the first novel whose release Eleven-ThirtyEight had the privilege of covering, was a rousing and heartrending adventure story with more shades of the traditional western than A New Hope could’ve, ah, hoped to squeeze into its running time—and not for one second does the reader find themselves wondering “yeah, but what’s going on on Coruscant right now?” Read More

Portrait of a Wookieepedian

Posted on July 13, 2015by

brandonrheaAs I explained in the intro to my last Better Know a Fan interview, sometimes I get to know people online who defy even my hardest-earned assumptions and expectations. While I’m an outspoken contrarian by nature, I’m occasionally even a contrarian against myself, and when I meet someone who brings a very different background and point of view to their Star Wars fandom, but who nonetheless earns my respect, I like to use ETE as a venue to show that I don’t think everyone I disagree with is a bad fan—often they’re just as deserving of a little attention as anyone else.

This time around, I spoke at considerable length with Brandon Rhea, outspoken fan of the open-source encyclopedia format both in an official capacity as an employee of Wikia and unofficially as a regular contributor to Wookieepedia. I’ve had my own mixed feelings about the wook over the years—and we get into that a good bit—but in his recent guest piece, Brandon made a fair case for its continued existence, and for himself as a friendly and level-headed guy who’s always willing to listen, even when the first thing he hears from you is “it’s time to start over“. Read More

Second Look: Lords of the Sith: An Extended Discussion

Posted on July 3, 2015by

palplaugh

I have a sneaking suspicion that I disagree with Alexander Gaultier more than anyone else I’ve brought on board this site. Not in the sense that we actually argue, almost ever, but in the sense that we have very different values and expectations where this franchise is concerned. But despite his utter disinterest in some of my favorite things (like Hoojibs), I like the dude and I respect where he comes from, so when his review of Lords of the Sith came in and differed enormously from my own opinion, I knew he and I could have a nice, substantial conversation about those differences without devolving into, well, a typical internet debate. Which isn’t to say that Alexander held himself back:

“I can understand what you feel when you read the book, at least in theory, but I honestly can’t make the connection between the text that I read and the reaction you’re describing. To me, it’s as if we were reading two entirely different stories.”

Hashing out earnest disagreements is one of my favorite things about fandom, and I consider myself lucky to have Eleven-ThirtyEight as a vehicle for airing debates like this. Maybe someday I’ll get around to asking Alexander why he refuses to watch Star Wars Rebels…or maybe I don’t want to know.

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Second Look: Legends: The Past Has Much to Teach

Posted on July 2, 2015by

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Deep in the bowels of ETE we have—and I’m quoting—a Super Secret Site Schedule/Idea Board, for sorting out upcoming pieces and laying claim to/handing out concepts that aren’t quite ready for the schedule. A long time ago I jotted down “The Legends U as archaeological site – where we left it”, and as time went on, I totally forgot where exactly I wanted to go with that. I offered it up to the others, and Rocky Blonshine agreed to run with it—and run with it she did:

“In short, where did we leave Legends? As one reasonably complete story, to be honest. There are many time gaps still that could easily be filled in by other stories. Some of the earliest works do not make sense in the larger timeline simply because we didn’t have important pieces of the story. Nonetheless, there is a story that flows well together and allows for many new stories to be formed.”

As our token Crucible defender, Rocky also speaks at length about how that book, controversial or otherwise, serves well as a capstone to the entire post-Return of the Jedi EU, finishing on a thematic note that strongly suggests the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. And a new era was certainly what we got.

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