Star Wars Needs To Learn From Korra

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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.

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Trope Tuesday: Retcon

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Welcome to another edition of Trope Tuesday, where we hit up the black hole of productivity and investigate a literary theme or device that helps our favorite entertainment chug along. This week, we’re hitting on one that many Expanded Universe fans are intimately familiar with: Retroactive Continuities, or Retcons.

Reframing past events to serve a current plot need. When the inserted events work with what was previously stated, it’s a Revision; when they outright replace it, it’s a Rewrite. The ideal retcon clarifies a question alluded to without adding excessive new questions. In its most basic form, this is any plot point that was not intended from the beginning. The most preferred use is where it contradicts nothing, even though it was changed later on.

While the term comes from comic books, dating to All-Star Squadron #18 in 1983 and shortened to “retcon” by the end of the decade, the technique is much older. Often, it’s used to serve a new plot by changing its context; however, it’s also done when the creators are caught writing a story that violates continuity and isn’t very plausible.

In Marvel Comics, the person who pointed out the problem and at the same time provided a plausible explanation was awarded a Genuine Marvel Comics No-Prize by editor Stan Lee, a tradition that was kept alive by other editors after he became publisher.

See also Ass Pull, which is something that was not properly set up before it is sprung on the audience. It is related to Deus ex Machina. Some but not all retcons are Ass Pulls, and a good retcon can actually improve the current narrative. A good way to get away with a retcon is to reveal new implications or motivations for events that have already been established.

Where do you even start in Star Wars? This is a franchise that ties itself into knots trying to explain away any minor-to-major inconsistency that crops up whenever a new book accidentally invalidates something an older book said. Or when The Clone Wars television series simply steamrolls swaths of the Expanded Universe. The latter (among other things) got author Karen Traviss to ragequit right before she was scheduled to start writing the Fate of the Jedi series.

You know retcons are important to a franchise when they hire a guy to keep tabs on all of them. Hello, Leland Chee, the Keeper of the Holocron.

Granted, all sorts of series in all sorts of mediums have needed to resort to retcons to keep things straight. The Other Star Franchise, anyone? No one, however, seems to be in the same league as Star Wars when it comes to making sure anything and everything fits into a lone canon.

Retro Review: Darksaber Part II

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For those of you that have looked at my reviews in the past, you know that I have a propensity for hyperbole.  And snark.  Lots of snark.  Kevin J. Anderson is a writer that I’ve thrown a lot of flak at in the past.  Really, he’s been one of my favorite targets, and I’ll say this, he really does seem to bear a good bit of it.  At a time not so far back, I’ve referred to him as being a kind of nemesis to me.

But to be honest, that was before I read some of the SWEU material that I was steered around the first time I was going through the Bantam/Spectra era books, which has been a long time ago.  You know that the last review I did was for Children of the Jedi in a series of posts that went on for a bit too long.  Barbara Hambly is likely not as bad a writer as she came across in that book, but it really seemed like she was pretty far outside her wheelhouse.

That book gave me a big dose of perspective for the concept of bad Star Wars.  I had held that Anderson’s books were bad Star Wars up to a point, but something else has come to my attention.  There’s a difference between bad Star Wars and not good Star Wars.  Children of the Jedi was bad.  Darksaber isn’t bad Star Wars; in fact it fits in with my usual prerequisites for being pretty good, but it has a pretty long list of bad features that throw it out of that.

I can say something good about Kevin J. Anderson up front.  I swear, just watch.  The Jedi Academy Trilogy established some very important aspects of the Expanded Universe at large.  I didn’t like it.  I didn’t like the way it was written, but for anyone who is coming into the EU from the start of the Bantam/Spectra era, it’s pretty much required reading.  For anybody who is wondering where the Academy came from, it’s important.  Let’s be honest, if you’re looking at anything except the core of the New Republic Era, anything later pretty much encourages you to read it.  The characters and concepts that get to be important later on have their sources there.

Now, you don’t want to read this; it isn’t the funny bit.  Me talking about the stuff that’s wrong–that’s what you want.  So, here’s where we stand, I’m going to break this down into just two parts, I’m not running a page by page analysis, you’re going to get the problems at large as I see them.  For me, Darksaber has two fronts of problems.  There’s the distinct storytelling issues and there’s the technical issues.

For today’s post, we’re going to focus on the latter of the two.  Hit the jump to see the story elements of this book that crawl under my skin.

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Latest Batch of ‘EG to Warfare’ Endnotes Tackles Imperialization and Military Academies

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Another Monday, another set of notes from Jason Fry’s brilliant Essential Guide to Warfare.

The Academy System: Another fun section to tear into, and a place where I definitely wanted to roll up my sleeves and get dirty in hopes of straightening out some continuity snarls. I hope that the account of the Academy system here amounts to a “good” retcon. Yes, the nebulous nature of the intake system and repeated transfers is designed to paper over various contradictions. But it’s also meant to be interesting in its own right – you can imagine cadets lying awake agonizing over where they’ll be sent next, exchanging baroque conspiracy theories that purport to explain everything, and grumbling about undeserving recipients of direct appointments. The Imperial Exploration Academy is new, as is the Merchant Galactic. (Though the latter has real-world antecedents.)

We’ll get another look into the Academy system when we come to Han Solo’s career.

There’s a whole bunch of early Empire notes in this latest batch, so if that’s your thing, head on over to Jason Fry’s Tumblr.

Hunger Games/Star Wars Mashup Tee is an Instant Purchase

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I fully admit it, I’ve got a thing for nerdy t-shirts. Especially nerdy t-shirts that have crossover fandom appeal. I’ve got Woot’s lovely DeLorean and TARDIS fender bender shirt, the It’s a (ghost)Trap tee. I’ve even got that Cheers/Star Wars mashup. Suffice to say, when Nanci spotted today’s crossover gem, it was an instant purchase. Ript Apparel put together something I couldn’t say no to.

A Hunger Games/Star Wars mashup? Yeah, that’s a purchase. And you should get one too. The Rebel Games tee is available today only for $10.

Engineer Thinks the ‘Enterprise’ can be Built in 20 Years, Fans Begin To Salivate

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Hammy starship captain not included

Sure, it’s not 2245 yet, but why let that stop us from getting a jump on building a vessel to seek out new life and new civilizations? To boldly go where only television serials have gone before? io9 talked about one engineer who thinks not only can we build our own Enterprise in the next 20 years, we absolutely should start the process right-the-frak-now.

Emily briefly touched on this last night, but this is so cool it deserves its own post.

Complete with conceptual designs, ship specs, a funding schedule, and almost every other imaginable detail, the BTE website was launched just this week and covers almost every aspect of how the project could be done. This Enterprise would be built entirely in space, have a rotating gravity section inside of the saucer, and be similar in size with the same look as the USS Enterprise that we know from Star Trek.

 “It ends up that this ship configuration is quite functional,” writes BTE Dan, even though his design moves a few parts around for better performance with today’s technology. This version of the Enterprise would be three things in one: a spaceship, a space station, and a spaceport. A thousand people can be on board at once – either as crew members or as adventurous visitors.

While the ship will not travel at warp speed, with an ion propulsion engine powered by a 1.5GW nuclear reactor, it can travel at a constant acceleration so that the ship can easily get to key points of interest in our solar system. Three additional nuclear reactors would create all of the electricity needed for operation of the ship.

Pipe dream? No doubt it is, but it certainly is fun to imagine. Hey, who knows? Maybe if we actually fund space exploration beyond low-earth Orbit, we could have something crazy awesome like this. As Neil Degrasse Tyson says, we just have to be bold.

Happy Birthday, George

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All of us would like to wish a very happy birthday to The Maker! George Lucas, aka the reason this blog is named Tosche Station, turns 68 today.

Happy birthday, George! Thanks for all the friends and memories you’ve given us over the years.

Happy Mother’s Day (and some news)

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It being Mother’s Day in the U.S., our intrepid bloggers have been spending some quality time with some very patient women who raised some really geeky kids with great grace. (I count myself doubly lucky because I not only get my mom, but I get to enjoy Shane’s mom too!)

As for today’s news, here’s what we’ve come up with.

Lucas gets revenge on Marin County residents.  When those who live in Marin County finally stopped the project to build the movie studio on George Lucas’ land, George Lucas decided to get back at them by using the land for something else: low-income housing.  From the article at Movies.com:

He’s working with the Marin Community Foundation to instead construct affordable housing for either low-income families or seniors living on small, fixed incomes.  In order to smooth along the development, he’s already given them all of the pricey technical studies and land surveys Lucasfilm spent years conducting.  And we thing that’s just great.  Because if there’s one thing rich people will hate more than having movie magic made in their backyard, it’s poor people moving in.

I’m not sure that The Great One’s motives are the purest here, but if it’s going to do something good for the community, I can’t knock it.

In other geek news, my brother sent me this link today: Buildtheenterprise.org.

Yes, you read that correctly.  It’s a site outlining the plan to build a working spaceship, based on the greatest ship ever conceived, the U.S.S. Enterprise, and is trying to show the feasibility of doing so.  Do be patient–six days into the site, they’ve had to purchase a new server because they’ve gone from 100 visitors a day to lover 60,ooo, so the site is moving a bit slow right now, but it’s worth it.

Edited to add: Also, the box office receipts are in for the weekend, and The Avengers just pulled in over 100 million for its second weekend.  That’s what most movies hope to make in their entire run.  This now brings the total for The Avengers to over 360 million dollars in two weeks.

 

‘Harry Potter’ Will Be Free in Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library

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For those of you who have Amazon Prime, your Kindle just got a little bit more magical. Time Online reports that Harry Potter will soon be available for for free as part of the Kindle Lending Library, a service offered to Prime customers that allows them to one book per month.

Today Amazon announced that it’s adding all seven of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

That means if you have an Amazon Prime membership (available for an annual fee of $79) you can “borrow” any of the Harry Potter books for free. Amazon Prime members can borrow one book per month with no due dates, plus they get free two-day shipping on most products sold directly by Amazon and the ability to stream certain movies and TV shows for free.

As if the free two-day shipping wasn’t enough to entice you to the Amazon Prime service (I swear my account pays for itself every Christmas thanks to that). The books will be available in the lending library starting June 19th.