Category: Simple Tricks

Kenobi: Roundtable Reactions

Posted on August 30, 2013by , and Not A Committee

Before we get started, I want to note that there’s been a lot of great Kenobi-related content online this week—both fan-made and official. While it’s the goal of Eleven-ThirtyEight not to get bogged down in reporting every little thing, I do want to quickly shout out two awesome fan reviews—one by Bria at Tosche Station, and one by Megan at Knights’ Archive. Lastly, whether you plan on reading the book or not (though why the hell wouldn’t you?), do yourself a favor and head to EW.com to hear James Arnold Taylor, voice of Obi-Wan in The Clone Wars, read one of the book’s first-person segments in character. It’s magnificent. Anyway, ETE’s own Jay Shah and Lisa Schap received advance copies of Kenobi their own fine selves, so I thought it only appropriate to check in for their thoughts. Enjoy.

Mike: The thing that most stands out to me about Kenobi is that is might be the smallest-scale Star Wars novel ever. Not just in terms of the events of the book, but in terms of the perspectives presented, which are so tightly-focused that you don’t even know the gender of one of the major characters until halfway through. The best decision JJM made perspective-wise was to not actually tell any of the story from Obi-Wan’s point of view, instead only giving the occasional window into his mindset via his first-person attempts to commune with Qui-Gon. As for the plot itself, I feel like the whole thing could be boiled down to the word “parenting”, which is a pretty minor concern for a Star Wars book—no one is trying to take over Tatooine; no one even really cares about the Empire. Even the most outwardly antagonistic character, A’Yark, is also the one with the least power. They may be dangerous, but there is no threat whatsoever that her clan is going to wipe out the Pika Oasis. Thus, the book’s drama comes from how each of these people’s motives clash with the others’—and how even the slightest interference from Obi-Wan can totally alter that dynamic. Discuss.

Jay: The scale is small, but the ideas aren’t — and I think that’s a crucial element that Star Wars has been missing for a while. The post-NJO novels in particular have been stuck in this mindset that seems to think that a big conflict is required to discuss big issues, and that’s clearly not the case. The conflict in Kenobi is about as irrelevant as one gets on a galactic scale: we’re talking moisture farmers on a backwater dustball fighting with a group known pejoratively as either “sand people” or “raiders“. Heck, the farmers are living out in the boonies even by Tatooine standards: places like Bestine and Mos Eisley are referred to the way somebody out in the American west might have referred to glittering New York in the 19th century. Despite the technological advancement of the setting, there’s a clear sense of isolation and distance.

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Forbidden Knowledge: Question Everything Except the Force

Posted on August 23, 2013by Feature Articles

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“There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.” — Jedi Code

But knowledge of what?  The cosmetic difference between Sith and Jedi, and between the Light and Dark sides of the Force, is emotional – are we raging or are we at peace?  Those emotional states are held to be so important because they are said to be conducive to broader goals – namely enforcing one’s will on the Force, or accepting the will of the Force.

The Sith seek power while the Jedi seek serenity, and considering the popularized Buddhist philosophies that influenced Lucas during their creation, it would seem reasonable to wonder if the Jedi focus on knowledge refers to self-knowledge.  Accepting this, however, requires a less than fundamentalist approach to our opening aphorism, and leaves us wondering about the scope of their attitudes to knowledge of other types. Is forbidden knowledge a feature of the Jedi worldview?  Is it troubling if it is?

“Knowledge is power.  Power corrupts.  Study hard.  Be evil.” — Anon.

The Sith seek power at any cost, and have always been portrayed as pursuing it academically as well as physically and spiritually.  Their mysticism is full of ancient texts, rituals, alchemies, biological experimentation and even history and record-keeping.  Contrast this with Jedi training that focuses far more on instinct, on reacting as an extension of the Force and its will, without the need for conscious thought, and the Jedi view of knowledge seems far more focused on transcendental intuition than on any externally verifiable framework.

“You must unlearn what you have learned.” — Yoda

If there is no ignorance because the Force provides all knowledge that is needed, that would indeed account for the large number of Jedi derailed by the dark, corrupting Sith temptations throughout the millennia. But this also makes the element of religious faith in a higher power – albeit one that is not actively sentient in the traditional manner of Gods – much less avoidable.  I don’t think that’s at odds with the notion of the Jedi as a monastic order, or with the way they’re portrayed in most Star Wars media, but I do think it’s something we’re not necessarily honest about.

Therefore, if I may present an emblematic case study: the Solo twins.
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John Jackson Miller on Iron Man, Kenobi, and Matters of Scale

Posted on August 22, 2013by Interviews

Star Wars is no stranger to “genre” storytelling, and John Jackson Miller’s Kenobi, coming out on August 27, is just the latest example. Originally conceived as a graphic novel, and borne from a friendly challenge to Miller to write an honest-to-goodness Star Wars western, Kenobi tells of Obi-Wan’s earliest days in exile on Tatooine, and crucially, his first interactions with the locals despite his best efforts to remain, well, safely anonymous.

While most familiar to Star Wars fans for his long-running Knights of the Old Republic comic series, Kenobi is only Miller’s second prose novel (third if you count Overdraft: The Orion Offensive, which was serialized at Amazon.com over the summer and is now available as a collection in both print and eBook formats). Recently he was gracious enough to answer a few of our questions on both Kenobi and his earlier exploits.

 

 

Eleven-ThirtyEight: Let’s start at the beginning: your first Star Wars work was a one-shot Darth Vader story in the comic series Star Wars: Empire. While I was vaguely aware that your previous work was a run on Iron Man, I’m ashamed to admit I had never put it together before now that yours was the old “Defense Secretary Tony Stark” story. Can you talk a little about the creative through line from Iron Man to Star Wars? You took some time off from comics between the two; what then prompted you to pursue Star Wars in particular? Any interesting pitches that didn’t make the cut?

John Jackson Miller: Iron Man had come about because of my work on the Crimson Dynamo series for Marvel’s Epic line in 2003, and it really was a marathon — we were biweekly for the last seven issues of the run to bring things to the point where “Avengers Disassembled” began, and it was a test of endurance. And rather than taking time off, I spent the months immediately following that redesigning Comics Buyer’s Guide from a weekly newspaper into a monthly magazine, and that was time-consuming. It was really after San Diego in 2004 that I began pitching again, which led to work on the Simpsons line and the Empire gig.
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Go Figure: Gender Demographics: Common Species

Posted on August 16, 2013by Feature Articles

Introduction

The issue of gender representation in science-fiction generally, and in Star Wars specifically, can be a greatly contentious one, with continued debate ongoing. Such debates tend to focus on specific works, characters, or situations, which is all valuable, but it may prove useful to also look at the picture in a very broad sense. Equally useful is to look at the gender breakdowns of certain species within the Star Wars universe, to see if there are different patterns, or how gender representation may vary across that demographic boundary.

The Big Picture

Wookieepedia identifies individuals by gender, which makes this sort of comparison possible. The Category: Individuals_by_Gender page is therefore the start point for this analysis. A current sample [1]Aug 3, 2013 yields 22486 individuals with gender status. They can be broken down by gender as follows:

Table 1: Individuals by Gender (All-species)

Gender

# of Individuals

Male

16311

Female

4585

Hermaphrodite

202

Unidentified

1388

Total

22486

These results are extremely clear: the Star Wars universe is unequivocally male-dominated, with a male-to-female ratio of roughly 3.5:1 rather than the 1:1 we would expect in nature. The number of hermaphroditic individuals is extremely small compared to the whole and composed almost entirely of Hutts. The number of individuals of unidentified gender is actually rather small. It is considerably less than the proportion of individuals of unidentified species. I hypothesize that the revelatory power of gendered pronouns in non-visual media is likely responsible for that discrepancy.
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References
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Go Figure: Basic Species Demographics

Posted on August 2, 2013by Feature Articles

There are things everybody knows about Star Wars, about what the universe contains, about the make up of that Galaxy Far, Far Away. Or at least, there are things that everyone believes they know.  The actual truth may be buried elsewhere in the fiction, in the mismatch between narrative perception and what actually appears on the page.

Numbers are one way to peer into that chasm. Unambiguous and absolute by nature, numeric values can be manipulated in ways purely qualitative data cannot. What follows is the first of a series of explorations into what the number can, and cannot, tell us about the Star Wars galaxy. The initial subject is alien populations, and the distribution thereof. Particularly, how often do aliens appear in Star Wars media, and which ones show up when they do?

Note: the following discussion relies heavily on information derived from Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki. This is not ideal, as by its very nature wiki data is incomplete and filled with errors. However, it is the best source available on our beloved fictional galaxy. And the only one with the requisite data volume.

In order to look at the demographics of Star Wars, it makes a certain sense to start by taking absolutely everything together – all characters recorded in all works. This fits with the principle of a single continuity that has so far governed the EU. Additionally, this information has already been recorded, in terms of ‘Individuals’ on Wookieepedia.
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