A Republic Both New and Familiar: The First Clues from Bloodline Emerge

Posted on April 25, 2016by and Not A Committee

bloodline-posters

First, a disclaimer: while this piece won’t be getting into major plot details from Bloodline (since we haven’t read it yet), we will be dealing directly with information from the three-chapter excerpt that was released late last week by instaFreebie [1]Editor’s note–this piece mistakenly credited the release to the Playcrafting newsletter in its original form regarding the political context and background of the sequel era. If you deem that to be spoilery, proceed at your own discretion.

Mike: So Jay, you and I have spoken on and off about Leia’s founding of the Resistance as a difficult move to judge from our perspective here in the real world—on the one hand, we know the First Order is a serious threat, but in-universe, it’s very easy to see how she’d come across to the post-Endor generation as an old soldier refusing to accept peace, or worse, as a warmonger. At the beginning of Bloodline we learn that after a couple decades the New Republic senate has polarized into two factions: the Centrists, who favor a stronger leadership role for the Republic and a more aggressive military, and the Populists, who prefer more power and autonomy for individual planets. While at first glance it seems sensible that Leia would be part of the Populist faction, it’s especially interesting considering that she’s on the verge of starting her own army.

What first struck me about this backdrop, though, is how believable it felt—at least to someone used to American politics, which are nominally divided into “federal” people and “state” people. Something you’ve brought up here multiple times is the danger of haphazardly translating contemporary political issues into Star Wars’ fantastical setting, when they don’t really apply. Not only does Centrists/Populists feel to me like an artful distillation of real political divisions, it feels like a very appropriate division for the GFFA to have at this point, when so many of its members would be ex-Imperials and ex-Separatists alike. It takes the sort of generic sense of “corruption” we already knew was coming (and which appeared to varying degrees of success in the Expanded Universe) and grounds it in the known history of the galaxy—just like I’ve been hoping for all along. Did you get a similar real-world feeling from it? Read More

 

References
↑1 Editor’s note–this piece mistakenly credited the release to the Playcrafting newsletter in its original form

Visions of the Future—Kanan and Ahsoka’s Struggles with Destiny

Posted on April 22, 2016by

ahsoka-mortisvision

Star Wars Rebels presents us with a look at two Jedi with similar pasts—Kanan and Ahsoka were both separated from the Jedi Order at the end of the Clone Wars, both spent their lives on the run, and both encountered a Sith Lord on Malachor—but entirely different futures. At the end of Rebels season two, we find the two Jedi on opposite ends of the spectrum: Ahsoka, after a duel with Darth Vader, walks away from everything; on the other hand, Kanan embraces the Force fully after a duel with Maul. What separates these two Jedi, and what of their pasts helped move them to embrace, or completely renounce, their Jedi pasts?

The two Jedi had similar experiences in the Order, like their initial struggles to find acceptance, their histories with troubled masters, and their earth-shattering expulsions from the Jedi Order. Ahsoka, at her first mission, the Battle of Christophsis, was not greeted warmly. Obi-Wan met her expecting her to be his apprentice, but was almost rejected by Anakin when it was revealed that she was assigned to him rather than to Kenobi. Under Anakin’s tutelage, Ahsoka took on a lot of the characteristics of her master. Toward the end of the Clone Wars, Ahsoka was framed for the murder of Jedi, clones, and civilians, and was put on trial by both the Jedi and the Republic. Because everything she knew turned against her, Ahsoka fled from the Order. Despite moving away from the Order, Ahsoka seemed to walk toward any path she found where she could help someone: she was instrumental in founding the Rebellion, she helped the crew of the Ghost find missions and help people, and she fought Inquisitors.

On the other hand, you have young and brash Caleb Dume. His master, Depa Billaba, was highly troubled after an encounter with General Grievous, who wiped out ninety percent of her forces. Caleb struggled to find a place in the Order, being known as highly inquisitive and almost disruptive at times. Caleb felt at home in the war and felt like he belonged on the battlefield more than he belonged anywhere else. Depa taught out of her brokenness, and used her experiences as a way to guide young Caleb. At the onset of Order 66, Caleb was forced to literally run from the Order to survive. Caleb kept running, took on the name Kanan Jarrus, and tried his best to avoid connections that could grow into meaningful relationships. For years, he ran. He continued to run until he was stuck: Hera helped him turn his running into something beneficial. Finding Ezra forced him to return, ultimately, to the Order and rely on the Force again completely. In a highly symbolic move, Kanan donned a mask of a Temple Guard, reversing the order that the Grand Inquisitor moved in: Kanan evolved from someone running from the Jedi to someone who fought to keep all of their ideals alive. Read More

The Force Does Not Throw Dice: 1d100 Bounty Hunters!

Posted on April 20, 2016by Six on the Wild Die
Han rolled first
Han rolled first!

Hello and welcome again to The Force Does Not Throw Dice, our irregular feature devoted to the world of pen-and-paper roleplaying games set in the Star Wars galaxy. This time we have a slightly different treat to offer.

For the past weeks I’ve been quite busy rediscovering a fantastic classic aventure called Tatooine Manhunt and writing a retrospective on it. During the research process, an idea came to me: a classic roleplaying article, the one you would find in fanzines back in the 1980s and that you can still find in several blogs around the Internet. I’m talking about a random table, on its most Gygaxian nature.

In the following table, you are going to find one hundred bounty hunter concepts, ready for you to flesh out and use in your games. Use this table if you desperately need to give some character to a random bounty hunter encounter (something that happens often in Tatooine Manhunt), if your players have been naughty and you desperately need a hunter to set their sights on them, or if you simply want ideas. If you don’t have time to stat them out, don’t worry about it: use the stock bounty hunter stats you will find in the rulebooks, no matter the system.

These descriptions are short and sweet, describing the general appearance and their weaponry, what usually makes a bounty hunter memorable; you are expected to flesh out the rest of the character, discard what you don’t like and change it to your liking. You might also want to use this table as a springboard of ideas for your fanfiction: feel free to do it! That’s the point.

Read More

Let’s Hear It for the Boy – In Defense of Ezra

Posted on April 18, 2016by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

rr-ezravizago

I’m a big fan of metafiction—stories that incorporate, either directly or through themes and subtext, their own artificiality into their narratives. In the Expanded Universe, this manifested itself in Luke, Han and Leia’s increasing weariness as the years dragged on and they lost more and more of their loved ones (and debatably, their souls) due to an endless series of galactic conflicts. As early as 1999, Han’s reaction to Chewbacca’s death in Vector Prime was framed in overtly out-of-universe fashion as the evaporation of a perceived bubble of safety around the core group of characters.

While that particular safety bubble was handily popped in The Force Awakens, it manifests in a different way on Star Wars Rebels. While the Disney XD animated series hasn’t shied away from killing any number of Imperials, as the stakes have increased over the past two seasons it’s become increasingly hard for many to believe that no one from its core group of protagonists has died. Personally, I think fans—older ones, at least—get way too wrapped up in life and death being the only stakes that matter in a story; not only is it perhaps unrealistic to expect Whedonesque fatalities among the heroes of a cartoon, but doing so makes it harder to become invested in the stories the show is telling, hence the common complaints that this episode or that is “filler”.

As such, I neither expect nor desire any deaths from the Ghost crew in the near future—by the end of the series, maybe, but not soon. More than that, I’m actively rooting for Hera and Sabine to survive into the original trilogy and beyond. But what’s very interesting to me from a meta perspective is the tension between Kanan and Ezra’s story and the very real pressures both in- and out-of-universe forcing them inch by inch toward the grave. As someone who survived for years on the fringes of the Empire, and who has now endured a handicap that could limit his ability to be a true threat to Palpatine, I can imagine any number of second-tier fates for Kanan that don’t involve his death. Ultimately, though, Rebels is no more his story than A New Hope is Obi-Wan’s—it’s about Ezra. Kanan’s function in the story is to take a dumb, self-centered kid and facilitate his transcendence into a higher plateau of importance, one where he could be a force for great good, unthinkable evil, or purely for himself. Read More

Portrait of a Professional

Posted on April 15, 2016by Interviews

geller1I began my interview series Better Know a Fan almost exactly one year ago as a method of engaging directly with Star Wars fans who had very different backgrounds and points of view than myself; people whom I respected but couldn’t quite get my head around without a little extra work. If you follow this site on Twitter, you’ll know that there’s no one I struggle with more often than Eric Geller, current writer and editor for the Daily Dot news website, and like myself an evacuee of TheForce.net.

I’ve never told Eric this, but part of the reason I mix it up with him so often is because he reminds me of myself at his age—restless, hyperopinionated, and as he would say, thirsty—except I didn’t have anything approaching the microphone your average young and excitable Star Wars fan has now thanks to the ubiquity of social media. Eric’s already gone much further as a real journalist than I have as a fake one (he met BB-8, for god’s sake), and while I feel compelled to impart upon him some of the humility and composure I’ve picked up in the last ten years, the fact is I’m also just a teensy bit jealous. Nevertheless, he indulged me with this interview. Read More