Rebels Revisited: The Imperial Perspective

Posted on February 27, 2017by

rr-kalluslyste

It’s odd to think that, with the wealth of material that has come out recently for Star Wars, how little we’ve had that covers those in the Empire. Parts of Lost Stars, parts of Twilight Company, the Darth Vader comic, and that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Legends gave rise to plenty of these sorts of stories that trickled in over time, but the new canon has been a lot more reluctant to give us a sort of “day in the life” story of the most clearly identified antagonists in the saga.

That is, until this week’s episode of Rebels. While not a typical Imperial-centric story, since it’s long been evident that his-first-name-is-Agent Kallus is a turncoat, a traitor to the Empire he once tried to uphold. But narratively, this is the first episode of this series that follows someone other than one of the members of the Ghost crew. As it opens with the POV shot of Kallus waking up in his bunkroom, alerted by the sounds of sirens, this is a different and daring sort of step for the show to take.

We get to see a very different perspective on a lot of things, and by things I mostly mean people. Kallus has a very professional and courteous relationship with most of the other officers around him, but even interactions on that level are far different from the orders being barked and blasters being fired that we usually see. We see the young and eager Lieutenant Lyste almost bounce in anticipation as he and Kallus are called before Thrawn, so eager to please that he makes some rather foolish decisions that have some rather long-running ramifications. Read More

The Force Does Not Throw Dice: Oops We Killed Darth Vader

Posted on February 24, 2017by Six on the Wild Die

vips-vaderHello and welcome again to The Force Does Not Throw Dice, the very irregular ETE feature devoted to tabletop roleplaying games in the galaxy far, far away. It’s been a long time since my last piece but, after seeing the warm reception that my Star Wars RPG tweets usually get, I’m going to try to change things around and turn this into a more regular feature. So expect more RPG rants in the near future!

Last month we asked Twitter for suggestions for future features, and the topic of this month’s piece was inspired by Mario Escamilla’s question on the use of VIPs in the game. So first let’s define a VIP as any canonical non-player character, from a main character like Luke Skywalker to a secondary character like Officer Thanoth. Using canonical characters in your game is, to many gaming groups, intrinsic to roleplaying in the Star Wars galaxy. If we used the jargon from the old GSN Theory classification method, we could classify Star Wars RPG as a “setting simulation” system: although there can be a variety of approaches and many divergent campaigns can be played, one of the most common objectives is to make the game feel like it’s set in the Star Wars universe. Some Game Masters find that, alongside using known worlds and technology, one of the easiest ways to make sure that the game is unequivocally set in the galaxy far, far away is to have an established character guest star in it.

Yet using VIPs in your Star Wars game is not as simple as it sounds, and can bring some unexpected headaches if not thought through. Although all published settings come with their own canonical characters, be it the wizard Elminster from Forgotten Realms or the various corporate chairmen from Shadowrun, few can claim to have any characters as ingrained in popular culture as Han Solo or Darth Vader. So let’s take a look at some common challenges and mistakes when it comes to using VIPs. Let’s ask ourselves a few questions.

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An Imperial Loyalist’s Live Reaction to the Empire’s End

Posted on February 22, 2017by Imperial Court Circular

16487291_10155039902778713_2212637714534622461_o[This is a chapter-by-chapter reaction to the newly-released novel Empire’s End. This post is FULL of spoilers. Read at your own risk.]

[This post was pre-written and was a live commentary at the time of reading, and it is being posted after the book’s release date to comply with review embargo restrictions. Thanks to Del Rey for providing me with a review copy of this book!]

In a first for Eleven-ThirtyEight, I’m going to be doing what’s essentially a live chapter-by-chapter commentary on Empire’s End. There are many reasons for doing this, all of which are named RAE SLOANE. This is the book that terrifies me – not least because of its title, but for the implications it has for the Galactic Empire, the Concordance, and the Empire’s relationship with the First Order. So – let’s go.

Oh and needless to say, there will be spoilers.
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Mandalorians in Rebels – From Traviss to TCW and Back Again

Posted on February 20, 2017by Feature Articles, Sidelong Glance

rr-sabineursa

Ever since Boba Fett first graced screens, whether you count the Holiday Special or The Empire Strikes Back as his debut, the Mandalorian visage, that “T”-shaped visor, all-encompassing armor and jetpack with weapons strapped across every extremity, has intrigued people. From that initial appearance, with as little time spent on him as there was, a whole subculture of the Star Wars fandom grew, even before anyone really knew or codified exactly what “Mandalorian” meant. It was the mystery that drew people in, the very Star-Wars-fan idea of taking something that looked cool and sounded cool and latching on to it, filling in the gaps in the existing storytelling with our own ideas.

Since then, there have been several waves of Mandalorian backstory fleshed out, both canon and not, but there has been a main, consistent drive through almost all of them: a warrior culture. In the grand tradition of dozens of other fantasy and sci-fi franchises, the Mandalorians became a Proud Warrior Race, with honor, a clan-based social hierarchy, and a thirst for battle as the cornerstones of their society. This led to problems, of course, because what little we know of Boba Fett showed a man very different from that, and the idea of him being an outlier or social outcast was established early on.

Thus, Mandalorian culture left him behind and continued to grow and evolve through its different portrayals, typically in novels and comics. But things did not really start taking off until Jango Fett, Boba’s father, came onto the scene in Attack of the Clones. In establishing Jango’s backstory, the ideas of Mandalorian terrorist groups like the Death Watch, who took the ideals of their culture to their most violent extremes, and of more honorable groups like the Protectors, were first really presented. Also, and just as important in the long run, was the ideal of family.

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The ETE Special Edition

Posted on February 10, 2017by , , and Not A Committee

jedirocks

Last Tuesday, January 31st, was the twentieth anniversary of the release of the Special Edition of Star War—ahh, I mean A New Hope. While the exact date I saw the thing is lost to history, this anniversary is doubly important to me, as it’s the twentieth anniversary of my own Star Wars fandom. Being a contrarian, I’ve always had a special appreciation of the fact that the thing that got me into Star Wars was seen at the time (and still by some) as controversial, even sacrilegious.

Can I appreciate the argument against Greedo shooting first? Sure. But if George Lucas hadn’t been nitpicky enough to want to make that round of changes—not the first round, but definitely the most high-profile—who knows if I’d ever have found an excuse to watch the original trilogy at all? Who knows if I’d have gone to college for Visual Effects, a decision to which I can trace almost everything about my life today? And of course, who knows if this blog would exist?

I did eventually learn how it felt on the other side of the fence, though—when Hayden Christensen was added to Return of the Jedi, it bugged me not so much for philosophical reasons, but because Hayden doesn’t seem to have any idea what’s going on in the take they used (the rumor is he didn’t realize what he was being filmed for) and it takes me out of the moment. I can’t stand the blu-ray version of Obi-Wan’s krayt call, and the less said about Vader’s “nooo!” in the blu-ray version of Jedi, the better. Read More