Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
So, hypothetically speaking, Nick Fury shows up in the Galaxy Far, Far Away and makes some allusions to an all new Big Bad looming out of the distance. He says he’s putting together something called the Avengers Initiative and needs five heroes to form a team with a high badassery quotient. We asked you who you think should make the cut. You delivered.
See the suggestions below the cut!
It’s Tuesday, which means I’m about to bludgeon you over the head with another entry from that great timesink in the cloud, TV Tropes. This week, we’re examining one we like to call Darker and Edgier.
A Tone Shift that seeks to make a work of fiction “more adult”. Usually, this is practically interpreted as “add more sex, profanity, heavy violence, and controversial content”.
This trope usually means that a show will attempt to shift towards seriousness, cynicism and grit. In theory, archetypes which we are usually accustomed to acting in a more noble setting will have to act in one where they must think and act grimly in order to make progress, thus forcing re-examination of the tropes involved and making a different sort of character. In practice, though, writers often are too lazy to make use of what most of those words mean, and ending up randomly “spicing up” a work with gratuitous gore, cursing, and sex. See Not A Deconstruction
When a show uses this trope as a tagline, expect anything that can go wrong will go wrong, the setting to be a World Half Empty, everyone to be bastards, lots of unpleasant things happen to the characters or backstories giving the characters a particular issue they can spend time angsting about.
As we can expect, this is fairly easy to screw up and poor use of these tropes can just result in Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy and Narm instead.
Thankfully, the Expanded Universe hasn’t fallen victim to this trope. I mean, it’s not like fans are keeping a running tally of how many major characters get killed, abandoned the tone and philosophy of the source material, or shifted the villains from tactical geniuses to more trite Eldritch Abominations or any…
Erm…
Author Jason Fry released another batch of Essential Guide to Warfare endnotes on Monday. This time around he’s covering the Separatists and Order 66.
Order 66: The Road to Empire: Lucasfilm passed on a very cool diagram drawn by Dave Filoni of the galaxy’s powers and institutions and their role in Sidious’s plot; it was extremely helpful in seeing this section clearly. Making Kol Skywalker the narrator seemed like a natural move, helping tie the Legacy era into the more-familiar era here and adding a poignant note to the story of the Skywalker clan.
Finally, I like the point that Sidious was telling the truth when he accused the Jedi of plotting against him, trying to kill him and scheming to take over the Senate. He’s leaving out some key details — such as, oh, being a Sith Lord — but he isn’t lying. The best plots depend not on lies, but on manipulating your opponent to do what he’d rather not.
For more tidbits from this batch, head on over to Jason Fry’s Tumblr.
Bad news for Electronic Arts, Bioware, and Lucasarts. Their massively-online Star Wars IP is having a very hard time retaining subscribers as 400,000 have left the virtual universe according to an EA earnings statement.
To put this into perspective, subscriber totals peaked around 1.7 million and have crashed down to 1.3 million. Nearly 25% of subscribers have bolted since the game’s launch. Those are numbers that no one involved with the development of the game ever wanted to see, especially this early in the game’s life.
You have to wonder, would a proper Knights of the Old Republic III have been a better choice in the long run?
They’ve got five questions with one of our favorite Expanded Universe authors, Timothy Zahn.
What’s the best Mara fan experience you’ve ever had?
TZ: Best (and most gratifying, humbling, and on-going): The various women who dress as Mara at conventions, and who thank me for creating her.
Second-best: *All* the readers — in costume or not — who appreciate her. (I’m pretty easy to please.)
The interview is part of their month-long celebration of Mara Jade. Keep tabs on them all month for all content Mara.
The majority of my teen years sucked. I was one of those kids who was a permanent outcast—I was geeky and nerdy, and for a teenage girl, that can be the kiss of death. I had two friends in middle school, both of whom shared an enthusiasm for Star Wars.
But I wanted to be part of the cliques. I wanted boys to notice me, not because I was weird, but because they noticed me. Every time I was skipped over for an invitation to a party, left out of a social activity, or out and out ignored, I felt like I was being stabbed in the heart. We take these things more seriously when we’re 13.
TPM had just come out. My best friend and I soaked up every piece of information The Star Wars Insider had to offer. And most importantly, for Christmas in 1999, my aunt bought me Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta’s Young Jedi Knights: Shards of Alderaan.
I immediately fell in love with the character of Tenel Ka. She was strong, she chose who she wanted to be, and she got past being different to find acceptance. I wanted to be Tenel Ka.
As I got older, I moved on to the adult novels, and I wanted to be Mara Jade. She was even better than Tenel Ka, because Mara had emotions and wasn’t afraid to show them. She was who she wanted to be, with no apologies.
It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized that there were other people like me, but by the time I got there, I’d finally come to grips with the idea that I could be whoever I wanted to be, thanks primarily to the characters of Tenel Ka and Mara Jade.
USA Today with the news that Dark Horse heavy hitter John Jackson Miller will be bringing the Lost Tribe onto the pages of a five-issue comic series.
Writer John Jackson Miller is just one of many guys who digs that galaxy far, far away, and he’s going way, way back in it for his new five-issue Dark Horse Comics series Star Wars: The Lost Tribe of the Sith, launching Aug. 8.
The comic removes three aspects that are some of the most essential of the Star Wars films — technology, starships and Jedi knights — and focuses on the Tribe, an ancient group of Sith believers stranded on a remote planet for 5,000 years. (The Sith, by the way, tap into the dark side of the Force.)
The Lost Tribe of the Sith project began three years ago with the Fate of the Jedi novel series, which found this group escaping their prison in the time of Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker and threatening the galaxy.
For more, head over to USA Today.
May the Fourth be with you indeed.
The official site has gotten their hands on a whole boatload of Expanded Universe shininess including a nifty Essential Guide to Warfare art timelapse video, an essay from the Fate of the Jedi authors, and a cover and preview from the new Darth Maul: Death Sentence comic from Dark Horse.
Most importantly, however, is the entire second chapter from one of the year’s most anticipated novels: Timothy Zahn’s Scoundrels.
For more, head on over to the official site.
This week on Tosche Station Radio, we’re excited to feature our first ever interview on the show.
Kicking off the show, we highlight what’s new on the blog. We asked you to tell us what kind of attractions you would like to see at a Star Wars theme park and you delivered some delightful suggestions. New blogger Maggie posted a spoiler-free review of the Avengers, Marvel’s latest entry into their successful film franchise. We’re not jealous that she was in the UK to see it a week early or anything. Meanwhile, we’re holding a contest. We’re sick of Mara’s awful catsuit, so we’re asking costumers and artists to replace it with something more appropriate.
In Fixer’s Flash, Nanci’s been reading a neat young-adult novel called Across the Universe and is looking forward to completing the series. She’s also been rewatching firefly, something Brian ought to do. She also announced that she’s launched a new blog of her own devoted to her writing projects. Go check it out! Brian’s been keeping himself busy with Marvel’s comics and a rewatch of their films leading up to the Avengers. Unfortunately, he’s been too busy with midterms to do much beyond that. Boo midterms.
There hasn’t been an X-Wing novel in thirteen years.
That’s an awful long time for fans of the Rogues and Wraiths who have been wondering what shenanigans they’ve been getting up to while the Jedi have been dealing with the weekly galactic apocalypse of certain doom and terror. While, thankfully, we’re finally getting a new book this August, there’s another way fans have managed to fill the void over the last decade and change: fanfiction.
Over at the Rogue and Wraith Livejournal comm, members have put together a starfighter jockey-themed fanfiction marathon. If you’d like to read some great stories about Wedge, Tycho, Wes, Hobbie, the Rogues, and the Wraiths, head on over and read the entries.