Category: Simple Tricks

The Case Against a Galactic Republic – Continuing Thoughts

Posted on September 16, 2019by , and Not A Committee

Mike: Over the last few years I’ve started to wonder whether the Old Republic’s model of governance, even prior to the rampant corruption on display in the prequel trilogy, was doomed to fail just by dint of the scale of the Galaxy Far, Far Away and the idiosyncrasies of its countless worlds. On Friday I presented my case here, and in response I was pleased to hear a wide variety of other takes on the matter both here and on social media. Two of my fellow Eleven-ThirtyEight staff writers in particular, Nick Adams, and Jay Shah, had some very thoughtful, yet strong, disagreements with my conclusions.

While I suppose we’re going to have to agree to disagree, I felt that the conversation that ensued in the original piece’s comments section was worthy of a spotlight of its own—never let it be said that I don’t encourage a diversity of opinion here at ETE. As such, that conversation has been lightly edited and expanded and is “reprinted” below for your enjoyment.

Nick: Galactic history has already proven that when governance is weak evil rises. Without some central authority and military, what prevents powerful worlds from exploiting weaker ones? In your model, how would the “shining city on a hill” and Rey’s young school of Jedi stop Kuat from building a large navy to impose its will on its neighbors? Or stop the Corporate Sector from establishing control of trade in the Outer Rim?

If the answer is hoping that Chandrila will speak out, Mon Cala will build a navy to counter it, and Ryloth will send pilots, that’s a tad naïve. The galaxy has proven it can rally a few times, but is that really to be counted on? “Every village sending a warrior” isn’t a strategy, its a Pollyanna-like wish. We see this very risk in the sequel trilogy. If the “good worlds” don’t show up, do we just hope things will get better?

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Let Every Village Send a Warrior – The Case Against a Galactic Republic

Posted on September 13, 2019by Feature Articles, Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

My memory doesn’t work like most people’s. I’m bad with hard details—from minor trivia-question stuff like what year the TIE interceptor debuted in-universe all the way to the major plot mechanics of books I read even a handful of years ago. I can tell you that Kenobi is my favorite Star Wars novel, but when writing my recent EU Explains piece I still had to read the plot summary on Wookieepedia to remember what the hell actually happened in it. What does stick in my mind is the big picture, the tone, the flavor of a character, a book, an era. That’s why I’ve always been into the sweeping, historical aspect of Star Wars canon(s); I have a good eye for context, and I enjoy picking out new insights from the tapestry of stories the franchise puts out and how they interact—intentionally or otherwise—even as their particulars are quick to flee my mind.

What’s been especially interesting over the past five years has been the things I notice about the new canon that feel distinctly different from Legends continuity. Foremost among these is the sense that the Galaxy Far, Far Away is bigger now; more anarchic, harder to get around. [1]Even as hyperspace travel seems much faster than it used to be. While the EU tended to portray galactic society as not too different from contemporary Earth—where the relationship between Corellia and Rodia, say, was roughly along the lines of that between Vermont and Colorado, or Greece and Luxembourg—in the new canon there barely is a galactic society. Luke Skywalker is a myth, the Empire was good for employment, and it’s entirely possible to go through life without running into anyone who’d testify otherwise.

While novelist Alexander Freed has played with this provincial take on the galaxy more than most, one particular detail in his recent novel Alphabet Squadron really stood out to me. The central protagonist Yrica Quell isn’t the only Imperial defector in the cast, but as a participant in Operation Cinder, she is by far the most loyal Imperial in the book not currently serving with the Empire. Yet despite her cooperation with the worst the Empire could dish out, we also learn that during Yrica’s youth, her sympathies were with…the Rebel Alliance. Lacking any other way to receive flight training, she enlisted in the Empire with the express intention of learning just enough to ditch them and fight for the other side. Sound familiar?

As much as Yrica’s backstory reads like Luke Skywalker’s worst-case scenario, the commonalities of their two stories—combined with the rest of Alphabet‘s cast of rebels—catalyzed something in me: maybe the galaxy is just plain too big, too ornery, to individualistic, to comprehensively govern. Maybe its natural state is not representative government so much as rebellion itself.

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References
↑1 Even as hyperspace travel seems much faster than it used to be.

Aceing It – Vi Moradi and Queer Representation

Posted on September 9, 2019by and Not A Committee

Ben Wahrman: On the day Star Wars – Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire was released, there was a good deal of hullabaloo on Star Wars Twitter about it, including a lot of posts by the author Delilah S. Dawson during a promotional tour through Galaxy’s Edge in Orlando and other nearby locations. But one string of tweets by Elizabeth Schaefer, Del Rey’s lead Star Wars editor, caught a lot of attention and a lot of appreciation. In her short thread, Schaefer notes that it was an idea of Dawson’s that the main character of Black Spire, Vi Moradi, would “come out” as asexual. Schaefer shared her appreciation for that decision and direction for the character, as she herself is asexual and feels the representation is much needed. Considering the traction her tweets gained, she was not alone in that.

https://twitter.com/eschaefer/status/1166358672555085824

After I saw these posts, I knew that my fellow contributor Abigail would have feelings about Vi and who she is. And I wasn’t wrong! I had a lot of thoughts and feelings of my own, so we decided to jointly discuss both of those things and talk about Vi as both a character and as a representative of the asexual community, as well as the wider issue of the representation of asexuality in Star Wars and media at large. We’ll begin by talking about our introductions to Vi before the advent of Black Spire.

When I read Phasma, Vi stood out to me as a character that a lot of work and heart had been poured into. For a book that was ostensibly all about, well, Captain Phasma, the team of Vi Moradi and Captain Cardinal stole it from her almost wholesale, despite them being more of a factor in the framing story than in the main flashback narrative of the book. Vi always struck me as a charming, fun character and I certainly hoped to see more of her after Phasma, but I never would have guessed that she’d wind up with such a large presence now, a featured character at the theme park and with a whole novel to herself.

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Second Look: Rules of the Game: The Malevolent Heart of The Phantom Menace

Posted on July 19, 2019by

Second Look is Eleven-ThirtyEight’s biannual tradition of highlighting some of our most interesting pieces from recent months. Every day this week you’ll find a different older piece back on our front page for another moment in the spotlight. – Mike, EIC

As The Phantom Menace turns twenty it has encouragingly ushered forth open reappraisal, new discussions, and even admiration for much of the creative work that went into one of the most accidentally incendiary films of the modern era. As someone who loved it as an impressionable, Anakin-aged nine-year-old in 1999 this is music to my ears. I have for much of its lifetime found it to be a curiously easy watch, rather than the repellent slugfest many of its loudest critics label it. As I’ve grown older I’ve appreciated more and more some of George Lucas’s flourishes that were imperceptible or just “part of the furniture” to my younger, less-developed critical faculty. I am also more than aware of the film’s many transgressions and faults. I understand completely why the film doesn’t work for so many, and why it was upsetting or frustrating.

In an odd way though, many of The Phantom Menace’s mistakes form part of its appeal now for me as an adult. While on the surface it is a children’s storybook of a film and is (relatively) less mature than what is to come, this belies a story that is steeped in some of the noir traditions that would become more obvious in Attack of the Clones, and as mentioned in Sarah Dempster’s excellent anniversary piece, is the beginning of the end of the galaxy far, far away’s Belle Epoque. Beyond that, with respect to what may be in store for us with The Rise of Skywalker, it is also the best showcase for one of the silver screen’s most diabolical and terrifying villains: Sheev Palpatine.

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Second Look: The March of the First Order – How Star Wars Resistance Reveals a New Form of Evil

Posted on July 18, 2019by

Second Look is Eleven-ThirtyEight’s biannual tradition of highlighting some of our most interesting pieces from recent months. Every day this week you’ll find a different older piece back on our front page for another moment in the spotlight. – Mike, EIC

The First Order invasion of the Star Wars galaxy has been characterized on the big screen as efficient, effective, and merciless. The Force Awakens opens with a brutal First Order attack on a settlement on Jakku. While the movie goes on to depict the destruction of the Galactic Senate on Hosnian Prime by Starkiller Base, the details of the brutal methods utilized by the First Order to exert authority over individual planets are not fully explored on the big screen. The first season of Star Wars Resistance reveals the shocking truth behind the ongoing march of the First Order.

Home, Home on the Colossus

On the edge of Wild Space lies Castilon, the oceanic planet that serves as the setting for the first season of Star Wars Resistance. While the surface of the planet is covered in water, no land is necessary for the Colossus, an old supertanker depot that serves as a final refueling point before the Unknown Regions and also as a hangout for speed-junkie ace pilots. Far from the cosmopolitan Core systems – where planets which serve as the seat of the galaxy’s political and cultural power (like Coruscant and Hosnian Prime) are located – Castilon is, by the admission of Flix the acquisitions clerk, what most people mean when they say “the other side of the galaxy”.

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