Tag: Second Look

Continuity, or Why You Are a Bad Person was my first article as a regular staff member of ETE, and it’s probably the one that has caused the most controversy and discussion, both here and off-site. This article came out of my need to express my frustration with the approach that I saw in the most vocal part of the fandom and to state my belief that that continuity-trumps-quality point of view had been partially responsible for, well, almost driving me off Star Wars forever. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I expected this piece to resonate with at least part of the fandom. Actually, I needed it to resonate with people: I needed to know that I wasn’t alone in having grown tired of the encyclopedic approach to world building that had been reigning for one decade. And now, taking a look at it, I can see that some of my journalism professors would have killed me if they had caught me writing this: it came from the guts, not from the brains; it’s mostly raw and unedited, and I think it shows. For good, for bad… well, that’s for you to say.

It’s been eight months since I yelled my frustration here, and I’m really happy with the way things are going. I feel relieved every time I read whatever Pablo Hidalgo has to say about continuity and canon, and I’ve come to trust the Story Group. Things are exactly how I hoped they could be: the powers that be seem more than happy to leave things undefined, continuity is a means to an end and not the end, and solid storytelling appears to be pulling the cart. No more anal need to fill in every minute detail and let the authors try to find a way to write around them.

And on a personal level, I no longer feel like whatever is said in a secondary source should be binding anymore: I merely shrug when people point out contradictions with the Ultimate Star Wars sourcebook. I no longer feel that need to make everything fit neatly. I don’t feel bad spending my hard-earned money on Star Wars material anymore. I haven’t felt this engaged as a fan since… well, since ever. Things are looking up, friends.

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I feel sort of bad about this review — it’s apparently one of the most popular articles on this website, and it gives the impression that GOG’s TIE Fighter release was subpar. Everything I wrote when this was published is accurate, but since then, GOG has listened to its customers and has added (at no extra cost) the TIE Fighter Collector’s CD to the GOG.com release. This brings the number of versions of TIE Fighter included to three: the original 1994 floppy disk release, the 1995 collector’s CD, and the 1997 Windows “remastered” edition.

As I mentioned in the original review, the floppy disk release has incredible music but no voiced dialogue and rather awful graphics. The remastered edition has improved 3D graphics, voiced dialogue (though poorly digitized), and really bland movie music. The 1995 collector’s CD really was the ideal middle ground: it had the incredibly responsive and well-composed music of the original release, with voiced dialogue that isn’t poorly compressed, and with a higher resolution (and less painful) version of the original release’s polygonal graphics. The 1995 TIE Fighter Collector’s CD is the ideal version of TIE Fighter, and it’s the version I fell in love with. It’s the version of TIE Fighter that had such an impact on me that I became a fan of the Empire and to this day play a role as an Imperial Colbert on the internet.

So if my original TIE Fighter review made you hesitate to get the TIE Fighter release on GOG, let that hesitation be banished. GOG has listened, and we now have the best possible version of TIE Fighter available to play (along with all the previous supplemental materials). In my heart of hearts, I wish it were possible to get the original music and dialogue along with the 3D graphics of the Windows release… but wishes aside, I can enthusiastically and without reservation recommend the GOG.com release.

(And if you’re feeling really bold, I can recommend getting high quality MIDI soundfonts to run with the GOG TIE Fighter release that make the game’s instrumental music sound positively orchestral).

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Maybe it’s weird to call this one a “Victory Lap” when the original article was partly about suggesting a theory that ended up being incorrect, but the fact is, a successful piece isn’t always about staying power—sometimes it’s more about vocalizing the right questions (or suppositions) at just the right moment, even if you don’t have the answers yourself.

In hindsight, it all boils down to what appears to be simply a case of James Luceno describing the Dark Times-era Jedi Temple in a confusing, and/or misleading, and/or flatly erroneous way. The new canon was only a few months (and two novels) old at this point, and many were still feeling out the status quo—it was new territory for us continuity geeks, and I think I just happened to give voice to the questions a lot of people were asking: when something looks like an error, is it an error, or a deliberate change? Or even more interestingly, is it laying ground for something in the sequel trilogy?

Well, in this case, it looks more or less like an error; or at least a very common misreading. While we can say pretty definitively now that the Jedi Temple in Tarkin still looks (structurally, anyway) the same as it did in the prequels and stayed that way through Return of the Jedi, the mysterious well of dark side energy deep below the temple remains just that—a mystery. It may just be an interesting new bit of background detail, or it could yet factor into Lucasfilm’s now-unfolding storytelling plan; we’ll just have to wait and find out.

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Editor’s note: twice a year I give the gang a week off and run the Second Look feature, which normally highlights older pieces I think deserve a little extra attention. This time, just to mix things up, we’re going to revisit five of our most popular pieces from the past year or so and reflect on why they were so successful and how their authors feel about them in retrospect. First up is our newest staff member Sarah Dempster, who roared out of the gate last summer with her piece on Rogue One and intersectionality. – Mike

Star Wars fans have pretty much been exclusively focused on The Force Awakens during the past three months so it’s easy to forget that this time in 2016 we’ll be focused on Rogue One, the first of the Star Wars spinoff movies. The full cast list, as well as the first official cast photo, was released earlier this year during the annual D23 expo, which of course set the internet buzzing with excitement. However, it also reopened the discussion of representation within the Star Wars universe, especially along the lines of gender and race. Though everyone was excited (and for good reason) about the racial diversity of the cast, many were quick to point out that Felicity Jones is apparently the only main female character in the movie. Once again, Star Wars fans had to choose between racial diversity and gender diversity.

I have to confess, I was rather blown away by the response to this piece. There’s no shortage of thinkpieces on representation in Star Wars, but I suppose not many of them had tackled the subject from an intersectional point of view. It inspired a great deal of discussion within the comments and on social media, which is always gratifying as a writer. And it’s important to keep having these conversations about representation and diversity, even if (at times) it feels like retreading the same worn territory. A recent Vulture article revealed that Captain Phasma was originally written as male and that the idea to switch her gender to female happened around the same time as fandom was criticizing the cast for only having one female character. Whether this online brouhaha was directly responsible for the gender switch is impossible to say, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

Judging by certain Amazon reviews of Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath (more specifically, the gay characters he includes) as well as certain reactions to John Boyega’s Finn in less savory parts of the Internet, there’s still a lot of close minded views out there. Star Wars has the chance to change minds and push a more progressive vision of a galaxy far far away, and here’s hoping they’ll take that chance. They’ve made strides (the casts of Rogue One, The Force Awakens, and Rebels are definite steps forward) but let’s work towards being inclusive on multiple axes.

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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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