Tag Archives: column

Separating the Art from the Artist: Why I’m Torn About Lords of the Sith

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Lords of the SithI don’t want to feel conflicted about this, but there’s no way around it.

It goes without saying that an LGBTQ+ character being introduced into the Star Wars story group era canon is unequivocally a good thing. Any step to diversify one of the most prolific and powerful pieces of entertainment in the world is welcome. Despite this obvious good news, I can’t help but be wary. Not because I don’t doubt there are good intentions by the story group and the folks at Del Rey, but because the author who is introducing this character has a pretty dubious history when it comes to speaking about diversity.

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Unlearning What You’ve Learned, and Why It’s Impossible When You Know Nothing

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Yeah, I’m still bouncing over The Force Awakens teaser. When I say bouncing, I mean I’ve been watching the teaser ad nauseum and drooling over Oscar Isaac and the new X-wings. I like the teaser the more I see it, and appreciate what they were able to convey in such a short amount of time. We can assume we’ve seen the new big three, and that there’s still a conflict between the Empire and “Rebellion”, or the New Republic, or whatever it’s called now. And then of course there’s the voiceover, which tells us something big has happened in the Force. This is all more than we officially knew, but we still know very little.

And this makes it impossible for me to to unlearn what I’ve learned about the post Return of the Jedi era. Allow me to explain.

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The Importance of She-Hulk and What the Jedi Could Learn From Her

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she-hulk 1Not long ago it was revealed that the current She-Hulk comic series will come to an end with issue 12. It was a sad day, not only because the book is fantastic, but also because the character has something very important:

She-Hulk has a life.

She has friends and a career and a commute to work and a bar she hangs out at and she has all of these things while still continuing to be undeniably She-Hulk.

She-Hulk, AKA Jennifer Walters, attorney-at-law, is close to my heart for all kinds of reasons, but what makes her stand out, other than being tall and green, is that she continues on with normal, everyday things while existing outside of the expected. She falls outside of the perceived norm but she refuses to let that define her. She is tall and she is strong and she is green and she continues to be tall and strong and green in everyday life, when she’s at her day job or getting drinks after work or meeting friends for coffee.

She-Hulk is clearly different from the way people are expected to be and is perceived by many as abnormal and intimidating, but she continues to live and work alongside the un-superpowered members of society. She does not let the parts of herself that are considered divergent from the perceived norm alienate her and she does not hide them. She embraces them and continues on with her life and I think that that is incredibly important.

She-Hulk is different, she embraces that, and she does not let that define her.

This is not something you see a lot in superhero comics and that is a huge shame. It’s a missed opportunity, both because it can be extremely comforting and inspiring to see characters like that and also because it makes a lot of sense from a setting standpoint.

In worlds like the Marvel or DC universes, there is a sizable population of people with superpowers. The idea that no one would incorporate their powers into their everyday life or that no one with superpowers would continue to have a life beyond that while still displaying their superpowered nature is, frankly, ridiculous. And yet you rarely see someone with superpowers have a life beyond superheroic or supervillainous antics unless they’re hiding their powers or are someone whose “everyday” life is already far outside of what anyone would consider ordinary, like an eccentric billionaire inventor. The few exceptions to this are people like Carol Danvers, AKA Captain Marvel, who is superpowered and can demolish buildings with her fists, yes, but still appears to be a typical human. Carol Danvers walking down the street looks like just another person walking down the street; Jennifer Walters walking down the street is a giant green woman. That she is different is noticeable, whether or not you know who she is.

she-hulk in courtThere’s also character and storytelling potential in giving characters lives outside of superpowered antics. By doing so, there’s a greater variety of kinds of stories you can tell. She-Hulk incorporates her superpowered status into her work as a lawyer, often working on superhuman related cases with the unique understanding of someone who is, herself, a superhuman and she’s able to pursue dangerous leads and accept dangerous cases that a lawyer without her superhuman toughness wouldn’t be able to.

And, of course, there’s also the added benefit of being able to work skills and interests from a character’s daily life into their superpowered antics, something you see some of from characters with secret identities as well, but for the most part there’s a very small range of careers that superpowered individuals have. For every Barbara Gordan, using her librarian skills to aid in her crime-fighting as Batgirl and later as Oracle, there are how many genius scientists? Incorporating careers with less obvious applications for heroics into the story is interesting and adds variety to the stories themselves.

This is where the Jedi come in.

Back in the Olden Days of the Star Wars Legends books, before Episode I was released and changed everything forever, Jedi were allowed to have lives beyond simply being Jedi. Some were Jedi full-time but there others who maintained careers and families.

Then the prequel trilogy came along and presented a different kind of Jedi Order, one in which all of its members live entirely as Jedi and as nothing else. They live in the Jedi Temple with other Jedi, travel to do Jedi things on the orders of the Jedi council, and are not permitted careers or families so that they may remain wholly dedicated to the Order. They can leave the order, but they are chosen to be inducted into it as small children and are raised their whole lives to be Jedi and nothing else. There are no part-time Jedi. There are no people living their lives where they chose and then acting independently as Jedi when they see the need. There seem to be a few more specialized Jedi, but their role is clearly to support the other Jedi.

The old Jedi Order lived apart from the galaxy it served, separating itself so that its members could devote the entirety of their lives to being Jedi.

While I can understand why the old Order went in this direction, I feel like the new Order should be a bit more like She-Hulk. Even beyond the clear problems that come with separating yourself like the old Order did (please note how the Emperor was able to create a demonizing fiction about them and how they no longer exist), image the storytelling possibilities. Imagine people with great Force abilities, being trained in the Force and working to serve the galaxy with it, but having lives and careers beyond that. Imagine Jedi pilots, Jedi relief workers, Jedi construction workers, using their Force abilities while participating in the world around them, in addition to full-time Jedi knights.

Imagine Jedi navigating what it means to be Jedi in their everyday life.

Imagine Jedi embracing that which makes them stand out from the norm while not letting it alienate them from the galaxy.

If the new Jedi are once again separated, like the old Order was, it won’t be worst thing. But there’s so much potential for so many stories in which Jedi go about being Jedi in different ways and using different skill sets. I would love to see that potential used.

Gender, Race, and the Sequel Trilogy: A Few Possible Directions

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It was a happy day when Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie were announced as cast members in Episode VII. And with the later casting announcements of even more women, including another woman of color, it looks like Star Wars films are finally getting better with diversity. Media representation of women and minorities is hugely important to me, especially in science fiction and fantasy, which have the greatest potential to be the most inclusive. And not only will having a more diverse cast mean more potential for good representation, but it will open up world-building opportunities.

When we approach media, we bring assumptions about race and gender with us. But science fiction societies in fictional universes have no need to be bound to the attitudes of our society. The Star Wars films, though, have so few characters that are not male and so few human characters that are not white that you can’t really get a sense of in-universe attitudes. Knowing that Episode VII will have multiple people who are not white and multiple people who are not male (and assuming that Lucasfilm will not make the absolutely terrible decision to make all of the not-white actors aliens), there are a few different directions that they could go with in-universe race and gender biases.

One common approach is to have similar biases and assumptions about gender as our own society. Often this is done unintentionally, but the sexism of the Empire in the Expanded Universe That Was is an example of this being done intentionally. This was done largely to explain the lack of lady Imperials in the original films, but did still help to extend the world-building of the GFFA. Much less intentionally in the Expanded Universe was the rarity of non-white humans, which wasn’t directly addressed the way the lack of female Imperial officers was, it did still imply that the vast majority of humans in the GFFA were white. Fortunately, given the diversity of the cast of Rebels, it looks like this will not be the case from now on. While having the fictional universe reflect our biases is not inherently bad and it can be used very effectively when it’s done well, it is used far more often than one would hope considering the sheer number of possibilities that science fiction universes afford.

Another approach is to establish firm biases in-universe but to have them be clearly different from our own in some way. There are limitless possibilities for how this can be done, including Hapes’ matriarchy-with-dudes-mainly-acting-as-buff-eye-candy system in the Expanded Universe, but my favorite example of this is probably Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series of fantasy books because it’s done so well. In that series there are gender roles that in many ways are very similar to the traditional Western ones but the differences both drive home that this is definitely not our world and emphasize the arbitrary nature of our own society’s views. For instance, men call the shots and do the fighting and eat the spicy man-food… but all scholarly pursuits considered feminine, including engineering. Even the act of reading is ladies only, with very few exceptions.

Stormlight Archives also takes advantage of its fictional universe status in the handling of race. Not only is eye-color the basis of discrimination but Sanderson recognizes that there is no real reason to assume that physical trait combinations in a fantasy world would be the same as here. Again, this method, when done well, is great at emphasizing the alien nature of the world while drawing attention to our assumptions about how things must be.

I do find this one to be the least likely to be as the norm in Star Wars, at least as far as gender goes, but let’s just imagine for a moment a world in which the Imperial Guards are retconned as being all women because only women are considered suited to the task of protecting the Emperor.

The final approach I’m going to discuss is to do away with gender and racial discrimination entirely. This method requires an active effort to include lots of representation of often over-looked groups. The Honor Harrington books by David Weber, which start off as a science fiction retelling of the Napoleonic War, I think do an excellent job of this. The main character, Honor Harrington, is basically Space Horatio Hornblower, fighting space navy battles to save Space England from Space France while gaining a huge amount of recognition and respect and collecting promotions like kittens.

Also, Honor is a she.

Also also, Honor is mixed race, with her mother being described as Asian.

Neither of these things matter in Honor’s home society. Gender discrimination and racial discrimination are not assumed facts of life there. Weber recognizes the flexibility of science fiction and that he can controls everything about the setting. Even with being based on real-world events and even with Honor being based on a historical figure (Admiral Lord Nelson, who was a white man, if you’re wondering), there’s no need for it to be bound to real-world biases and assumptions. Speaking of which, an extra bonus: Space England’s royal family is black. Because what better way to is there to combat our assumptions about racial dynamics than to make the most powerful and visible members of that society people who, in our society, would be marginalized?

This method is one that I think is very important to see, because attitudes and biases about race and gender permeate so our society that we need reminders that those biases and assumptions are not completely natural, that this is not the only way things can be, that a world with equality is possible.

It will be interesting seeing how the sequel trilogy approaches race and gender. I would most prefer to see that last approach, but whichever direction the sequels go, I’m excited to see how the universe develops.

Does this need to be said AGAIN?

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Hey, it’s my turn to tag in.  *slaps Nanci’s hand*  I can do this.  If you look back in the archives, I’ve got a post called Why Star Wars Needs Women.  Why don’t you go read that while I drag out the soapbox?

You know, this soapbox keeps getting heavier.  It seems like it keeps getting more difficult to step on to, too.  I know it’s my own perception, though.  It has nothing to do with the actual weight of the soapbox or my own strength.  It has everything to do with exhaustion.  You see, I’m tired.  

You know why?  Because I have to keep repeating myself.  Because I have to keep shouting myself hoarse and jumping up and down and saying “HEY YOU, HOW ABOUT THE GIRLS?”

People conveniently forget that women invented science fiction.  (Haven’t read Frankenstein?  You should.)  They don’t know that the history of science has been rewritten to excise the contributions of hundreds of women.  They don’t realize that there are systematic social roadblocks in the way of women and minorities entering into science and technology.  Don’t believe me?  Maybe you’ll believe Neil DeGrasse Tyson in his response to the man who used to be the president of Harvard University.

Tyson points out that to have women and minorities in science, “[Y]ou gotta come up with a system where there’s equal opportunity.”  You know how some of that starts?  With representation in media.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the original Star Trek and the influence that its intentional representation had.  (And yeah, I’ve called JJ out on screwing that up in the Star Trek reboot too.)  Star Wars can’t do that?

Star Wars can do better.

So why am I so tired?  Because when we get a casting list like this, it seems like all the work I do, everything I work for, everything I try to teach my cousins and my students, everything–has been worth precisely a hill of beans.

But Tyson points something else out.  To become an astrophysicist, he says “I looked to become something that was outside the paradigms of expectation of the people in power. Fortunately, my depth of interest was so deep, and so fuel-enriched, that every one of these curveballs I was thrown, and fences built in front of me, and hills that I had to climb, I just reached for more fuel and I kept going.”

So here we go.  Yeah, it needs to be said.  Again.  And we’re going to keep saying it.

Wookieepedia’s Apology Falls Well Short

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Earlier today, Wookieepedia promised they would respond to the criticism and blowback to their ill-conceived and poorly thought out April Fool’s Day joke that was crass at best and deeply misogynistic if we’re being honest.  They have finally put that response up, and to say it’s lacking would be quite a bit of an understatement.

As a community of individuals, not everyone at Wookieepedia agrees with every action taken by the community as a whole or by other individual Wookieepedians… Due to the size of Wookieepedia, it’s the unfortunate nature of our project that not every addition made to our wiki is controlled in a perfectly efficient manner. The actions of one or a few individuals do not necessarily reflect the entire community, though Wookieepedia nonetheless assumes responsibility for all of its content.

While I do sympathize that it’s hard to enact changes on a resource the size and scale of Wookieepedia, there needs to be a system in place to address abuses of the wiki as was demonstrated on Tuesday. That the article in question remained up for so long without so much as a statement speaks volumes and is rather damning. The size of your community is not an excuse for leaving such crass and offensive material up for so long, nor is it an excuse for that material going live in the first place.

Without attempting to mince words here, the article was crass, offensive, and ill-considered. It was not part of our community-approved main joke, which centered around our wiki becoming a subscription service.

If it was not a part of the “main joke,” there’s even less of an excuse for it to have been left up as long as it was. Again, this does not reflect well on Wookieepedia.

This year our main April Fools joke was the introduction of Wookieepedia Pro, a pay-to-read subscription service. In addition to this, a decision was made to highlight a modified “joke” version of our “Breast” article on the Main Page. Without attempting to mince words here, the article was crass, offensive, and ill-considered.

This is actually appreciated and does address part of what people were upset about. Acknowledging that the joke was crass and offensive needed to be said, and I thank Wookieepedia for owning up to that.

Although I cannot and do not presume to speak for the entire community, I can say with authority that I and many of my fellow Wookieepedians deeply regret this decision, and we offer our sincerest apologies to those whom we have offended.

Author and solid human being John Scalzi wrote a great blog post a while back on the subject of apologies. Early on in the post, he states that an apology can only be effective if you’re actually sorry for others and not just yourself. This apology from Wookieepedia reads, essentially, “We’re sorry you were offended.”  This is perhaps nitpicky, but I’m not sure whether or not Wookieepedia is actually being sincere with this post. Do you regret the joke, or do you simply regret that you were caught and rightfully called out?

The “Breast” article’s main image depicts a partially nude character with an exposed breast. This image comes from the book Star Wars Art: Visions, a fully-licensed Lucasfilm product that was published in 2010. Wookieepedia objectively documents its subject matter for its canon nature despite its sensitive material and therefore treats it with the utmost seriousness.

This is the second major cop-out. Hiding behind canonicity and saying that “Hey we know it was offensive but this appeared in a Star Wars publication so it’s totally fair game” comes off as trying to pass the buck to Lucasfilm in an attempt to avoid consequence for your own actions.

This is not a joke to us nor do we intend it to be offensive, although we acknowledge the latter is an inevitability for some of our readers.

Once again, here’s the “We’re sorry you were offended” line that tries to place responsibility for the problem on the offended rather than the transgressor. But that isn’t even the biggest problem with Wookieepedia’s apology.

In light of this, we have recently added a notice to our Main Page warning our readers that not all of our subject matter is appropriate for all ages. We recognize our significance in the Star Wars online fan community, and that we have a responsibility to act in a duly responsible manner.

The solution, then, is to put up an age restriction warning. Rather than address why what they did was offensive and offer solutions to prevent an incident like this from happening again, Wookieepedia has decided that that the better alternative is to tell site visitors that they’re not welcome here. Let’s not mince words. That’s exactly what they are doing.

Are you not of legal age? You’re not welcome. Are you offended by crass and misogynistic humor and content? Well we’re sorry you were offended, but you’re really not welcome here because we’re not going to do anything to prevent this from happening again.

For what Wookieepedia may have done right (acknowledging the joke was crass and attempting to write up an apology), it’s undone by a complete lack of commitment. This apology is a non-apology. There’s little regret over what was done, only regret that people are now calling them out for this poor behavior. It’s undone even further by what appears to be punitive action against people who stood up and called them out. Edit: and undone to even greater lengths by other Wookieepedia admins stating they didn’t think an apology was warranted.


We hoped that Wookieepedia would understand exactly why the joke was offensive, but clearly they have not. We hoped to see them understand that they were alienating fans, but they have not (and instead have enacted policies to alienate them further). This apology falls short on nearly every level imaginable.

Wookieepedia is an enormous touchpoint in the Star Wars fandom, and it sadly appears many running the site have little regard for that responsibility.

Addendum: Please also go read Dunc’s great take on this apology.

An Open Letter to Wookieepedia

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Dear Wookieepedia,

I generally try not to get involved in discussions of feminism in fandom–at least not here on the blog.  I don’t think any one really wants a not-so-short introduction to feminism here (and yes, I am qualified to teach Women’s Studies at the university level, in case you were wondering).

What started as a joke-and yes, I’m willing to say it probably started as a April Fool’s joke with no ill intentions-has just snowballed into a real problem.  And it all could have gone away if you’d apologized, admitted mea culpa, asked forgiveness and taken it down.

But I’m not going to lecture you.  I’m not going to pull out my Gloria Steinem quotes.  I’m not going to talk about marginalization.

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Deconstructing Four Arguments Against Diversity in Media (That my Stupid Teenage Self was Guilty of Using)

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If there’s one thing we do with frequency here at Tosche Station, it’s discuss the importance of diversity and representation in media. Hell, we did just that yesterday. It’s something I do pretty regularly.

I haven’t always, though.

At some point I’m going to have to write the column discussing how the Star Wars fandom made me a feminist and much more socially aware than I used to be. The younger me was often flat-out dismissive of the need for better representation in fiction and fandom, and I went to some pretty great lengths to try and argue that those asking for more diversity in characters and better representation for other demographics were off-base.

I’m not particularly proud of the arguments my teenage self made to try and support what I firmly believe now was an erroneous belief. Again, there could eventually be another post as to why and how fandom changed my thinking about this particular subject. Suffice to say, I’ve learned that diversity and representation for people that don’t fit traditional character types is extremely important.

As I learned just how important the call for diversity was, I realized just how wrong the arguments I used against it were. Four in particular stand out. Four arguments that I was guilty of using thanks largely to how frequently others around me said the same thing. The one thing all of these arguments have in common is that, on the surface, they seem generally positive and fair and in no way designed to personally offend or attack those asking for better representation and diversity in media.

I would learn in time that they were anything but fair and were incredibly offensive.

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On Brian Wood and Changing Harassment Culture

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Brian Wood, writer for one of Marvel’s X-Men runs and Dark Horse’s ‘Star Wars’ series, has been accused of harassing female convention goers. The Mary Sue reported it here and Beccatoria has a detailed and very insightful rundown here. Read these posts for more information if you’re not up to speed, particularly Beccatoria’s. Additionally, please read Dunc’s latest post on harassment.

It goes without saying that this is going to be a post that will probably elicit some very charged reactions. So before going too much further, three points I want to make clear.

First: I’m not going to call for Brian Wood to be fired strictly for what he confessed to in the links above.

Second: If the additional allegations beyond what he confessed to turn out to be true or if more individuals come forward with accusations of misconduct by Wood, I believe Marvel/DH/LFL should re-evaluate their working relationship with him.

Third: This issue goes beyond infidelity between Wood and his wife. There are much broader fandom and societal issues this brings up that should be discussed.

To the jump.

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Uh-oh: Amazon announces Kindle Worlds

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bad feelingClub Jade clued us in this morning to Amazon’s new plan to pay fanfic authors to publish their works via Kindle.  Introducing Kindle Worlds, which is getting around the fuzzy legal grey area of fanfiction by officially licensing these Worlds, and the first to sign on has been Warner Brothers’ affiliated Alloy Entertainment, who owns the license for Pretty Little Liars, Vampire Diaries, and Gossip Girl.

On the surface, this looks great.  Star Trek has been doing this for a long time–anyone who has ever submitted a story to one of the Strange New Worlds anthologies has certainly been aware of what has been, in the past, a relatively willing openness to fan work, and many fan writers have broken into professional publishing through writing for these anthologies.  It also seems like a way for fans to get generally professionally curated (?) writing for their favorite universes at a reasonable price.

But there is, I fear, a dark side to all the bright, shiny, happy togetherness Amazon is toting. Continue reading →