Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
Sequel trilogy fans need to grow up.
All the excitement, all the speculation, all the angsting. All for something that really doesn’t matter. It’s absolutely baffling why so much thought and effort is being put into something so meaningless. It kills me to see people wasting their time on all of this because, come on, let’s be perfectly honest.
The sequel trilogy isn’t real Star Wars.
In January, Nanci and I started a podcast. In April, we spun that podcast off into a blog. All sorts of crazy things have happened since. Welcome to our gratuitous 2012 in Review Linkdump. As a note, thanks for bearing with us over the holidays as we took time to visit our friends and family. We’ll be back Wednesday with regular coverage and posts. Be sure to also check out Club Jade’s 2012 retrospective.
For our year-in-review, to the jump!
In terms of explaining fandom, and especially fanworks, to outsiders, 2012 hasn’t exactly been a banner year. Gawker and Jezebel—and, briefly, io9, though they ended the feature and apologized for it—have mocked fanfiction and by extension those who write it. The self-insert One Direction one young fan is writing is going to be turned into a book.
And, of course, there was 50 Shades of Grey.
I’m not going to touch on the fact that it is a smutty novel, because one of the positives of fandom, at least in some areas, is that it provides a safe and healthy environment for learning about sex, sexuality, kinks, and so forth. There are plenty of people who read and write fanfiction, at least in part, because of the openness about sex and generally sex-positive culture that fandom often has.
However, generally speaking, I can’t think of anyone who reads fanfiction for bad writing, dangerous mispresentations of BDSM culture (link is to a not very safe for work video), and outdated and misogynistic narratives about just sticking with the bad boy because your love will make him change. Certainly, those are not reasons I would give my mother if I were attempting—again—to make her understand why I’ve been doing this for so many years.
Instead, I would talk to her about the things that transformative works can do, how they can reinterpret the original material, make it relevant (or even just more relevant) to a different audience, flesh out secondary and tertiary characters, and explore the dynamics of putting characters in different settings.
In short, I would talk to her about all the things The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is doing.
Last week, Bria put up a post regarding independent comic books. For those of us who are tired of the gimmicks and the ploys that the major publishers use to draw in readers but who still want that classic superhero feel, we still have options. Bria hit on some of them already, like the perennial favorite, Watchmen. I’m going to hit on some of the others that I consider to be my personal favorites.
I just don’t care about continuity like I used to.
The fiery passion I had for it years ago isn’t there anymore. I used to scour over Wookieepedia to try and see how things pieced together. How did this book tie in with that comic, or how did that obscure background character from that film work in this book? There’s a part of me that still really enjoys seeing the minutia of the universe fit together, but over the last few years I’ve noticed that my insistence that everything mesh perfectly together has more or less vanished.
I got worn out fuming over how The Clone Wars was treading on the Expanded Universe. I got tired arguing about how the prequel films trounced on the ethics and philosophy of post-Return of the Jedi novels. At some point, I realized that the only thing that mattered to me anymore was that I was reading a compelling narrative. For a long time I had been prioritizing continuity over the story and it had gotten in the way of my enjoyment of the Expanded Universe.
While I may not be a continuity die-hard anymore, I know it matters to many fans. It still matters to me to a certain degree. That’s the great thing about fandom, because there are countless ways one can be a fan of something. We all weigh certain things differently.
However, because it’s very important for a lot of people and still matters to me somewhat, we need to sit down and have a discussion. Continuity fans, there’s some behavior and expectations that need to change.
So, now we’ve reached the end of the initial run of the X-Wing series. The Bacta War is the capstone to Mike Stackpole’s work on start of the series and it represents, to me, some of the highest points of all four books. The tone of these books is different than the books in the past have been and for very good reason.
After we were left with the end of The Krytos Trap, many of us were on edge, disbelieving what happened and completely ove awed by the possibilities. Please be aware, once you cross this jump, you are deep into spoiler territory.
I read a lot—at least by any average person’s standards. Sure, there are plenty of people in fandom who can put me to shame, but I showed Brian my pinboard a while ago, and he commented that I’d read more fic in the past year than he’s read in his life—and that was just the fic. And I read everything from modern literary fiction to fanfiction.
So, while I’m certainly not qualified to comment on a lot of things about literature and stories, I do feel comfortable talking about why I read, and why I think a lot of people do. It’s an escape, certainly—last night I was unhappy and I immediately went after charming short stories that I knew would cheer me up while distracting me from my own life—but it’s also a reflection of the human condition, pretentious as that sounds. Stories are interesting because the people in them are interesting, because they have lives and struggles and triumphs and failures.
And here’s the thing I think we forget sometimes: romance and love are huge parts of the human condition. People fall in love every day, at parties and jobs and while walking their dogs. They also fall in love during wars and natural disasters, and they will continue to fall in love after the world ends. Girls fall in love and boys fall in love; teenagers and thirtysomethings and senior citizens all fall in love; deaf people and blind people and smart people and ignorant people fall in love. Sometimes the love is requited and sometimes it isn’t.
(More under the jump)
There’s been a certain sentiment I’ve spotted around the interwebs lately in regards to a few Expanded Universe books that are coming out this year. People are unhappy with what has happened in recent series like Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi. So unhappy they claim they won’t be buying books like Mercy Kill and Scoundrels because they want to send a message to the folks at Del Rey at Lucasfilm. They do this despite the claims that they’re legitimately interested in these books. At first I thought that this kind of thought was isolated, but I’ve seen it mentioned by enough people now to warrant some kind of analysis and response.
Now, surely, a lot of this is just hyperbole. I imagine a fair amount of the people making these claims are going to go right out on release day to buy both of these books, but for a moment let’s look at this claim at face value. I’m unhappy with the state of the Expanded Universe so, as a means of protest, I will not buy these books I’m legitimately interested in. I don’t mean to belittle you if this is a mindset you’ve taken up, but I feel it’s important to spell this out explicitly.
A blanket protest of the Expanded Universe will not help your cause.
I apologize for being blunt, but it’s a point that needs to be made (and there’s going to be a lot of bold text in the rest of this PSA to drive the point home in an over-the-top fashion). Here’s the thing, even though sales numbers of EU material are down, series like Legacy and Fate of the Jedi are still selling relatively well. Well enough that Del Rey and Lucasfilm can continue telling stories like that and still make money. Even if you decide to stop buying books, period. There are enough fans who are content with the state of the EU to continue the status quo without you. In fact, the vast majority of EU fans are content with the status quo. You and I make up a minority. A vocal minority, but a minority nonetheless.
Here’s what your blanket protest will accomplish. If you choose not to buy books like Mercy Kill and Scoundrels, the only thing Del Rey and LFL will stop publishing are books like Mercy Kill and Scoundrels. Tim Zahn said as much during Origins. While his standalone books may be more critically reviewed than a series like Fate of the Jedi, they do not sell as well. The same concept will apply to Mercy Kill.
If you want more books like Scoundrels, you had better buy Scoundrels. If you want more books like X-Wing: Mercy Kill, you had better buy the first X-Wing book published in thirteen years.
If you don’t buy these books, the takeaway on Del Rey and Lucasfilm’s part won’t be that fans are discontent with the state of the Expanded Universe because the EU is still selling relatively well. The takeaway will be that there isn’t a market for the books you are interested in and have been asking for over the last thirteen years. Now is the time where we, as fans, have to put up or shut up because we’re at a very critical juncture that will determine what kind of stories are told in the Expanded Universe moving forward.
If you’re going to vote with your wallet, you need to be smart about it. Buy the things that interest you, refrain from buying the things that don’t. That’s how you can send a clear message. A blanket protest doesn’t tell Del Rey and LFL anything useful. I can’t make this any more clear. If you are interested in books like these and you want more stories like them, you need to buy them.
There’s a scene in The Avengers where Black Widow is fighting Hawkeye. He’s being mindcontrolled by Loki and is trying to kill her; she just wants to incapacitate him. A few minutes before this fight scene, she hurt her ankle and was visibly limping when she was fleeing the Hulk. She volunteered to go after Hawkeye, despite being understandably shaken by her encounter, and the fact that she and Hawkeye clearly have an emotional bond.
Oh, and the fight? She won. And she didn’t win because Hawkeye was distracted or something happened that got his attention or he was wounded from a previous scuffle. She won because she’s better. There was no reason for her not to—Hawkeye is an archer, not a hand-to-hand expert. If it had been a contest of marksmanship, he would have won, and rightly so. But it wasn’t, and she won by simply being a better fighter.
The best part, though, was probably when he looked up at her, after being hit in the head, and said “Tasha?” A lot of people would have stopped fighting then—I probably would have done—but Natasha Romanoff is a trained spy, and she just clocks him in the head again. It’s the choice of someone whose job is to be suspicious of other people, regardless of what they might mean to her.
This sums up a huge part of why I love Black Widow—Natasha Romanoff—so much: she is a professional and she acts like one.
Meet Korra. She’s awesome.
I honestly hadn’t planned to chime in on this.
By now I imagine most of you are aware of the Great Gender Kerfluffle of 2012 that cropped up in the Star Wars fandom over the last few weeks with much being said about the need for more well-developed female characters in this franchise. Emily chimed in last week and eloquently put things into perspective. Frankly, people far more knowledgeable and better with wordy-like-thingamawhatsits than I am said what needed to be said. Still, as I was reading through things on the sidelines, I ran into one comment in the Club Jade post that got my gears turning. I can’t even remember what exactly it was or who posted it, but it set off a bit of something in my head that needed to be addressed. Well. Three things, specifically. A trio of arguments that I’ve seen recycled numerous times during the recent dustup and over the years.
While I was turning these arguments over in my head, another thought hit me. There’s a television show, a current one, that has addressed these points that were troubling me. Then it all clicked.
Star Wars has a lot to learn from The Legend of Korra.