Where Eagles Dare and Star Wars

I've said before that the middle section of Star Wars is very similar, probably on purpose, to the plot and situation of the popular 1968 WW2-spy movie Where Eagles Dare. I've always liked Eagles, but I hadn't watched it in a while. I own it on DVD, so it was just a question of making some time and doing it. My youngest son likes to watch movies with me, and this was one where we were both in alignment that we wanted to see it, so we watched it this weekend. Because the movie is long and we started it late, we actually watched half of it on Saturday (up to the end of the interrogation scene in the Great Hall of the Schloss Adler. Then we watched the second part last night, which is the escape from the castle, and by far the best part of the movie, with the thrilling murder of a gazillion Nazis, as well as the iconic cable car fight scene. This is the part that especially reminds one of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and the rest of the bunch being stuck on the Death Star. I'm not the only person to have noted this similarity over time; I did a quick search, and found that many other people had remarked on it (some of them also remarked that the part that followed the escape from the castle; the flight to the airport, etc. could easily be a prototype for the truck chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think it's fair to say that Lucas liked Where Eagles Dare. The biggest tell, which I hadn't recognized until now, was the Clint Eastwood's character says to Richard Burton's character, more than once in fact, that "we've got company", a line which Lucas adopts pretty closely when Han shouts to Luke that "we're gonna have company."

He used some other WWII action movies from the 60s; 633 Squadron and The Dam Busters (actually, that one's a little older; from 1955); this is even less secret; he showed this films to his special effects guys saying specifically that that's what he wanted the X-wing fight scene to look like. Of course, the plot and situation is lifted right from those movies, both of which had a very similar scenario.

Dumb virtue-signaling people like to say that Star Wars was a reworking or even a remake of The Hidden Fortress, but in reality, the movie bears very little resemblance to it, in favor of the movies listed above, except for maybe the opening act, and the concept of the bickering droids mirroring the bickering peasants, and some of the other set-up. Where Eagles Dare also doesn't feature the rescue of a princess, which The Hidden Fortress does, but it does feature the rescue of a downed American general who has access to secret plans. Given that princess-rescuing is a pretty time-honored scène à faire, pegging that to A Hidden Fortress is dubious. Certainly, however, the earliest drafts of Star Wars more closely resembled The Hidden Fortress but by the time we get to the movie as filmed, it's at best the source of the first act only, if even that. 

Of course, by saying that Star Wars used these elements, I don't mean to say that they were the Tragedy of Darth Plagiarism the Wise or anything, just that they clearly form the inspiration core that was adapted and adopted to fit into the screenplay as it emerged. There's nothing wrong with doing that, and hardy any writer, even one much better than George Lucas, will fail to honestly admit that writers to that all the time; take an element from some other work, and then adopt and adapt it to fit into their narrative. Assuming that they also adopt and adapt other elements too and mingle them, and twist what's left to be unique somewhat so that it's not an obvious copy-paste routine, then why not?

I always say that writers and game-masters too, for that matter, should be familiar with lots of different fiction traditions and genres, and what makes them work and not work. I've heard of D&D players that not only only read fantasy, but they even only read D&D fiction! I doubt that's true anymore for this guy, since he said that years ago, and I don't think WotC publishes many novels anymore. And even if it was literally true and not some weird exaggerated claim, then that suggests that he probably just doesn't read much at all; I doubt that he doesn't watch TV, movies or play video games of various genres, at the very least.

As Lucas himself proved, his greatest inspiration for the setting of Star Wars was almost certainly stuff like Dune and the Lensman series, and the old Flash Gordon Republic serials, but when it came to plot, his greatest inspiration wasn't science fiction at all, but a Japanese historical swasbuckling film, a WWII spy-thriller, and some WWII war movies.

Switching gears, I watched a YouTube video recently about Star Wars and Dune, and it claims that Brian Herbert called his dad in late May of 1977 telling him that he needed to see Star Wars because it copied so many elements of Dune that it was scary. Then he specifically mentioned the desert planet and the evil empire. If that's really all he could think of, he was really reaching. Evil empires are a stock plot element from all kinds of fiction, and in any case, the most obvious proximal source for the Empire was the caricature of the Nazis that our propagandists have foisted on us to justify our involvement in WW2, not anything out of Dune. It's not clear that the Empire is even necessarily evil in Dune, or if it is, that Paul Atreides and his Fremen jihad aren't even more evil. And a desert planet? That's a little easier sell, but then again, desert planets are hardly unique to Dune, especially given the prolific subgenre of science fiction set on Mars. In fact, Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark double book The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman offers a more Tatooine-like experience, I think, than Dune does. Dune isn't anything all that interesting or unique without the context of spice, the worms and the Fremen, all of which Tatooine lacks. Although the offhand shot of C-3PO walking by a long giant skeleton is maybe supposed to be a veiled Dune reference, and certainly his fear of being shipped to the spice mines of Kessel is a veiled Dune reference. It's a little unfortunate that Star Wars used the word spice at all in any context other than something you put on your food to make it taste more interesting, although it was just an off-hand reference in the one movie until the EU and then the Disney movies (Solo in particular) made it more mainstream again. Of course, Star Wars spice has developed in ways that bear little resemblance at all to Dune spice.

I don't actually like Dune that much as a novel, which I think I mentioned recently in reference to the new movies. I think the movies are better then the book, but they still aren't great. A lot of people think that Dune is to sci-fi what Lord of the Rings is to fantasy. I completely disagree. It's epic in scope, but lacks epic themes. Dune is A Song of Ice & Fire, a disappointing and nihilistic critique of humanity and Western civilization in particular, a dark and cynical downer where there are no heroes, no good guys even, and no good even at all. Everything is dark, tawdry and cynical. 

Also, Dune hasn't had the effect on the genre that Lord of the Rings has, although there it at least comes closer. Rather, I suspect Star Wars is itself the Lord of the Rings of science fiction, or at least it was when we only had the original trilogy. It's the work that's the most imitated and has done the most to make the genre mainstream. Like Lord of the Rings, it also synthesizes older, familiar tropes and puts them in a new context; in Lord of the Rings case, it hangs mythology and old Germanic sagas on an epic good vs evil struggle, where Star Wars takes an even broader selection of genre tropes and also hangs them on an epic struggle of good vs evil, even going so far as trying to justify its seriousness by appeal to Joseph Campbell's debunked and out of favor "monomyth" theories.

Yes, that's another tell of someone who isn't very educated but is trying to appear so; if you refer to Joseph Campbell without even knowing that his work is largely discounted, discredited and not taken seriously at all by academics, then you're just a parrot trying to appear intelligent by referring to an academic thesis that you've heard about vaguely but don't understand at all. Please just stop. Nobody is impressed by the fact that you've heard the name Joseph Campbell and might even know the name of his most famous book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The more you try to summarize the Wikipedia summary of it, the deeper the hole you're digging for yourself for anyone who actually knows the status of Joseph Campbell's credibility to see.

Anyway, here's Johnn and his common law wife Raina Temple on Tatooine, which isn't really very much like Arrakis. In fact, here it specifically has a Lovecraftian vibe to it, although I think that was mostly made up for the Old Republic material, rather than something that is otherwise very present in the Star Wars franchise overall.

Here's a better view of the outfit. It's based on the Intelligence Agent's Armor, with a secondary black (IIRC) dye module, and the Crimson Raider helmet. 

Space Opera

The history of the space opera is an interesting one. Arguably, space opera is the earliest and original format of science fiction other than some proto-science fiction adventures. (It’s arguable, because some critics distinguish between space opera and planetary romance. Which I actually think is fair, although it’s questionable to what degree you can really call planetary romance true science fiction at all, honestly. Edgar Rice Burroughs kind of created his own thing with the Barsoom books and others that bear little resemblance to much of the science fiction that followed.) E. E. “Doc” Smith is usually credited as the founder of space opera as it was known in the 30s and 40s when it was quite popular. In addition to Smith—who sadly, I have never read—some important authors in this space and time include Edmond Hamilton (often credited as a co-founder of the subgenre, along with Smith), Leigh Brackett and others, many of whom I have read.

Realistically, many of the “non space opera” science fiction of the 50s and 60s, like Tubbs’ Dumarest, Dickson’s Dorsai, Herbert’s Dune (don’t know why everything starts with D) or Niven’s Known Space or Piper’s Terro-Human Future, and many others that are later, like Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flinx from the 80s, etc. were heavily influenced by space opera, including the big sweeping scale, interstellar empires and space feudalism, etc. although the focus of the stories was perhaps less on the space opera-like setting and swashbuckling melodramatic plots. Joseph Campbell and his stable of authors like Isaac Asimov and others may have done sweeping interstellar empires, but they notoriously disliked space opera, and were part of a cabal of editors and writers who kept it down in science fiction literature during much of the 50s and 60s… although it lingered in other media for some time; the Buster Crabbe Republic serials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were hugely popular (as were the source material that they were based on in decades past.) But it’s fair to say that space opera was at a nadir during much of the 60s and 70s until George Lucas and his friend and frequent collaborator/partner producer Gary Kurtz were chatting during or shortly after the filming they did together of American Graffiti about what to work on next, and they both agreed that the kind of fun, action and melodrama oriented space opera of the Flash Gordon Republic Serials was something that they both missed and would love to work on. Which of course, they did, a little bit later. Dino de Laurentis owned the rights to Flash Gordon and wouldn’t let them go, so Lucas set about synthesizing all of the science fiction, especially the old space opera stuff that he read, into a new setting that was little more than a fusion of a bunch of stock elements, with very little that was truly new or innovative, other than 1) its obvious and immediate intention for a new medium: feature films, and the changes that that would entail, 2) lots of psionic powers and mysticism was pretty normal in the genre by this point (see the Bene Gesserit of Dune, for instance) but combining them with Oriental mysticism in particular and Japanese samurai films in particular was a new idea. To be fair, the influence of the samurai picture was greatly reduced from Lucas’ early drafts, but greatly reduced does not equal completely excised, and some of it lingered in the conception of the Jedi. 3) Although neither Lucas himself (nor Kurtz) probably deserves credit for this, Star Wars was made what it was in the editing room, and its impact on pacing in the genre and even beyond in the entire world of film-making, is hard to underestimate. Hirsch, Chew and Lucas’ own wife Marcia certainly deserved the Oscar that they won for Best Editing more than most winners of that award ever do. But Star Wars as a space opera setting, not as a feature film with innovative feature film features, was really heavily based on the Lensmen series by Smith, with some stuff from Dune, some serial numbers filed off, and of course Lucas’ influences from beyond the science fiction genre, like the Western, the chivalric romance, Japanese samurai films, and World War II aircraft movies. The plot is in many ways an early set-up in the first twenty minutes or so that gives a generous nod to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, turns into an extended Where Eagles Dare homage, followed by a synthesis of the plots of two already similar movies; The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron. With plenty of details changed, of course, and significantly different characters and tone, but still, the plots are easily remarked on and it’s clear the Lucas liked all of those movies. He even used the WW2 aircraft movies as reference points when asking ILM to create the Death Star attack sequence; he wanted the dogfights to look the same, but in space.

But my point here is that Star Wars really isn’t very original, and little of what it did was ever meant to be original. Not that that’s a problem, but it’s worth pointing out. People sometimes think of it as original because nothing had been done in that medium before, and it made space opera mainstream, so people who had no exposure to the vast body of work that Lucas was digesting and regurgitating (basically) probably felt like it was new. Science fiction films prior to Star Wars were dark, often allegorical, cynical or weird (cf. Silent Running, Soylent Green, 2001, etc.) Then again, similar problems were infiltrating all of Hollywood and other entertainment media as well; heroic, idealistic Westerns had been replaced with cynical Revisionist anti-Westerns, vigilante crime stories like Dirty Harry were popular, etc. If the characterization of the Carter years and the lead-up to it was called an American malaise (and it was) it was reflected in our pop culture too. One thing that Lucas tapped into, whether consciously or unconsciously (I sometimes think the latter given that he described the Empire as the United States and the Rebellion as the Viet Cong at one point) was the desperate desire of the American people to feel confident and right again, and not be deluged with reflections of the problems that liberals caused in our country in our pop culture due to their dysfunctional self-hatred. I’m not always sure if pop culture leads culture or the other way around, but it’s no shocker that not long after Star Wars came out,  Reagan was elected with a kind of America First type agenda and a firm belief that America was a great place full of great people, in spite of what the politicians and other radicals had done to it during the late 60s and 70s.

I’m personally a little less interested in the specific tone of the original space opera, but I’m even less interested in the cynical woke attacks on that tone and identity politics that were already started to creep into pop culture as early as the 60s and which really metastasized following the 2016 election and the complete flipping out of the most broken and dysfunctional aspects of America—which sadly, kind of steal the show in our country, since they infiltrate the corporate world, the governmental world, the academic world, and the various entertainment media. We’re bombarded non-stop with anti-American and anti-white agitprop and hate speech. So, space opera doesn’t have to just slavishly repeat the tone and tropes of the 30s and 40s, or even the 50s and 80s—but it also shouldn’t subvert them and turn them upside down. It’s possible to have a more organic rather than resentful and destructive evolution of the genre, and that’s what I’m looking for. Star Wars was originally an organic evolution of the tropes of the earlier Republic serials take on space opera, which was in turn an organic evolution of the works of Smith and Hamilton et al. but Disney Star Wars has been a conscious and mean-spirited rejection of what Star Wars was and an attempt to wear it as a skinsuit for hateful, resentful, covetous and envious woke ideologues. This is exactly the reason why—or at least one of the prominent reasons why (another being that it's just simpler to play in your own playground, even if you’re using someone else’s toys)—that my Star Wars Revised game setting, originally set 1,000 years after Return of the Jedi, evolved into Ad Astra and from there into Space Opera X. I want to explore different themes and different tones with different details than Star Wars has done, although in a setting that is superficially very similar to it in many respects. But it’s also just as superficially similar to other space opera settings, for the same reason and  in the same way that Star Wars itself is superficially similar to them. Space Opera X is a synthesis of all of the pop culture influences that are in my mind, and Star Wars itself looms large there, but not monolithic or alone.

One of the curious things about Star Wars is that it literally embraced the critiques of critics of the past generation. The first issue of Galaxy, for example, mocked the idea of space opera by having a passage on the back cover that was simultaneously set on Mars and in the Old West, and showed that with the substitution of a few descriptive words;  Martians for Apaches, rayguns for six shooters, etc. that the passage itself was identical. While the idea that science fiction could be so divorced from science that the plots, characters and scenarios could be transplanted from one genre to another without any change was mocked by the Campbellian crowd, in reality, there wasn’t ever anything wrong with that, and Star Wars has shamelessly adapted plots, characters and scenarios from all kinds of other genres, most especially Westerns, hardboiled or noir stories, Arthurian romance, samurai tales, spy thrillers, etc. And its done so reasonably well and reasonably successfully, to the point where later generations are probably both confused and even miffed at the suggestion that it shouldn’t have ever been done. The Mandalorian show was successful (for a time) by rather carefully and cautiously being a flat-out Western set in space, Boba Fett promised (and then failed to deliver) the idea of The Godfather or some other kind of crime story set in space (and was instead a really cheesy remake of Man Called Horse interspersed with a nonsensical and incoherent crime story with a main character that they shied away from making a criminal, for some reason), the Andor show promised to be a spy story set in space (although many, including myself, had tuned out by then. I may yet watch it, though. I’ve consistently heard relatively good things about it.)

So space opera just becomes shorthand, in its modern, evolved definition, for adventure stories that are set in space but don’t focus on the science so much except as a bit of color. In fact, most space opera that I’m familiar with specifically uses pseudo-science and absolute technobabble in place of science. In some cases, Star Wars included, they have flat out magic and space wizards replacing science, and they do it with a straight face. The Campbellian ethos is well and truly dead, and I, for one, don’t miss it. A good example of actually good elements representing this stuff even comes from the terrible Rise of Skywalker movie. Exegol, the Sith cult dark lord magic planet is actually a cool element. (I’d love to see it brought into the Old Republic. If Exegol is supposed to be this really old Sith world associated with the quest for immortality, it makes sense that Tenebrae slash Vitiate slash Valkorian would have been there at some point.

SWTOR 1/25/2024 big ballooned out update that was meant to be minor...

Just a quick update, without even an image file to pretty it up (unless I edit the post and add one later, which I may do.) By grinding for a few hours last night, I finished Hutran Thanatos' story, and I'll let him fall to the back of the list of characters through non-use, I think. I may yet return to him, and do Ilum, or some of the other post story story, if that phrase makes sense. Maybe Makeb, and Rishi, and all that, although I tend to peter out with all of my characters after Yavin IV at the very latest, and honestly, even getting past Ilum is sometimes tricky. Makeb is big and kind of intimidating to start when I feel like the payoff isn't as big. What I really miss are the class specific stories, and without them, I just don't care nearly as much. The big story expansions; KotET and KotFE aren't class specific, and really only make sense for a Jedi character anyway. I know, I know... you can play them with anyone. But it only "feels" right with a Jedi, or maybe a reformist Sith, if you played a relatively light-sider Sith.

Hutran Thanatos would also be a great candidate for grinding through potential reputation or seasons (when another one starts), if I still have any interest in getting reputation. It's not a sure thing that I do. But now that I'm back in the game, I'm still interesting in the drip, as the kids say, because it's one of the few things that you can do that at least gives you that dopamine hit of being fresh for a moment. Otherwise, I've got loads of story still to play with loads of characters, and then I need to decide what I'm really going to do with them. Honestly, I don't really know what to do with all of these characters. I'd like to play them to completion, but after that? I have no idea. I don't really want to get rid of them. Maybe I'll use my slow drip of cartel coins to buy a few extra character slots so I can keep these and not feel like my character slot situation is quite as full as I feel like it is now. I do still have two slots, but that's not a lot. I'd like to have a buffer of a few more, especially if I do let my son play through. He'll obviously take one. Realistically, I probably can't and don't have much need to keep all of these "junior" characters. If I decide that I want to keep them instead of the originals, then I'd need to max out the crafting on the newer characters, and try and get them a load of schematics that my current characters have. I doubt that I'd have any interest in doing that, although at least it'd give me something to do with them. The only reason that I'd otherwise keep these newer guys is because I have some reason to come back and play them again. I doubt that that's will be true, but in the meantime, I'm having a hard time making that decision and letting go. To be fair, I literally just finished the story with him last night...

As a quick aside, the ending for the agent was a bit underwhelming, although appropriate. For the Jedi Knight, for example, and most of the other classes if I remember correctly, there's a whole big deal obviously modeled after the medal ceremony in the first Star Wars film. For the agent, you just have a quiet moment with your crew. Your crew that I mostly can't stand, if you'll remember. (The companions are clearly the worst aspect of the Agent storyline.) I was kind of waiting for something else before I realized that I was actually done and that the next thing I was supposed to do was go ahead and go to Ilum.

Or, maybe I can do a few non-solo flashpoints with him still. I'm starting to lag behind even with my top characters in gear rating for group stuff, and these newer characters are farther behind still. I guess I can go pick up stuff on the Fleet to get him more up to speed than he currently is, but I just don't want to grind for a few points of gear rating; or even a few tens of points. It simply doesn't matter enough for any of the material that I prefer to play. I'll make another plug for I wish BioWare, or Broadsword, or whomever it is these days, would allocate someone for a few weeks on making all of the Flashpoints soloable. Half of them were upgraded, because they're important to the story, and you can't really do solo story play without them, but why not do the rest of them? And figure out some way to have solo flashpoint versions of the Operations and Heroic 4s too. Here's a flowchart of a lot of this stuff. It doesn't have the newest stuff on it, but the newest stuff is more obvious anyway.

I kind of like Ilum well enough. It feels like a nice coda to the original faction/planetary stories, as well as many details from many of the class stories. I might yet go back to Thanatos and do Ilum. And maybe the Black Hole and Section X, etc. By the time I get all the way to Makeb, however, I'm much more likely to feel "done" with the character, and if not, I really am usually by the time I'm done with Rishi or Ziost at the absolute latest. Although in light of above; I should double check and make sure that I've maxed out my Makeb reputation. Right now, like I said, the only one that I'm super interested in that I haven't finished (or even started) is Ruhnuk. And I may only have one character who can play that. I'm not sure. I think I have to do the Ruhnuk story before I can do the Ruhnuk dailies for reputation.

Meanwhile, Johhn, my OG agent and one of the more important of my crafters (because he makes by far the most bank on the GTN, and looks poised to continue to do so even with the GTN changes) is still crafting Advanced V-9 Seismic grenades, which I can sell for about 125,000 credits a pop. In an evening, even in the background, I can usually have him craft 30-40 of them, and my net profit is ~four million credits per batch. If I keep him pretty anxiously engaged, I can actually afford to keep shopping on the GTN on occasion, although even the cheaper of things that I really want tend to be tens of millions of credits, so... a of work to get, say, an adept pilot dye module for ~60 million.

I had thought that I'd turn to Taul Kajak, my Mirialan Jedi who I already finished Alderaan with earlier this week, but I didn't really feel like picking him up again, and I ended up going to Taris where my more junior zabrak Jedi was in the middle of some missions instead. I like this guy, because he looks more like Darth Maul (with a bit of red hair) and has blood-red black core dual lightsabers, but I'm playing him straight as a "chaotic good" Jedi. By "chaotic good" in this sense, I mean that I'm not caring what the game itself thinks is light or dark side, because as I've said many times before, the moral compass of the game itself is ridiculous, and the moral dilemmas that they try to set up are hoaky and stupid.

I also have a swamp camo outfit for him, which I'm enjoying on Taris. Probably the only place where it would be appropriate to wear it anyway. Except maybe Rishi, Rakata Prime, or possibly Onderon. I also created a "stillsuit" outfit from Dune that he can wear on Tatooine later, or any other hot planet, I guess. All of my characters also have at least one cold weather outfit, since Alderaan, Hoth and Ilum are all cold worlds.

Honestly, that's what I should have done all along; had outfits specific to each planet, and named them after them. Maybe I can still do that with my newest ones; see below...

Anyway, after I finish Taris with Elemer Kell, including (probably) the Taris bonus series, it'll be time to bounce back to an Imperial character. Probably Vant Galaide, the bounty hunter who's due to start Balmorra. He's at about the same stage in the story as Kell which works well. In fact, if I could (in theory) keep almost all of my characters at more or less within a two-three planet band of each other as they progress, that would be ideal. But I have... had... Hutran Thanatos all the way about to start Voss until recently, and Haul Kajak just finishing Alderaan, they're kind of the outliers. And the several characters that I have who effectively haven't started yet and are still on their home planets with their introduction done and their first real mission still waiting for them, can probably be part of another wave. There's four of those characters, Saxon Hettar (agent story), Beorn Hengest (bounty hunter story), Gael Heckett (smuggler story), and Gändalf Greyhame (jedi consular story).

That still gives me almost certainly too many characters to try and keep in the same place; Mirabeau Tane (trooper story), Anstal Tane (no relation) (smuggler story), Codon Veile (trooper story), Phovos Maledict (sith warrior story), Revecca Arden (sith inquisitor story), Vant and Vash Galaide (maybe a relation—brothers or cousins or something) (bounty hunter and agent story, respectively), Embric Stane (bounty hunter story), Elemer Kell (jedi knight story), and of course Haul Kajak (jedi knight story), who's kind of out in front. Ten characters to juggle still, not to mention the stuff I'm still doing off and on with my "finished" characters, and four more waiting in the wings to launch after that?

Not for the first time, I'm wondering if I didn't bite off more than I should have attempted to chew.

And that's sometimes what drives me to the more mindless tasks, like grinding for reputation, or taking screenshots of outfits.

UPDATE: The "minor" update ended up being a longer post than my major update (post title changed.) In any case, I didn't realize it, but that version of the flowchart doesn't have the bonus series. There is a bonus series on almost every major planet after the capital worlds. Haul Kajak should go back and do the Alderaan bonus series, and Elemer Kell should count on doing the Taris bonus series while he's still on-world. Honestly, I'm thinking maybe something to do with Hutran Thanatos, now that he's done, is go back to Belsavis,, Voss and Corellia and do the planetary series as well as the bonus series for the first two of those (Corellia doesn't have one, although you could consider The Black Hole to be a de facto Corellia bonus series.) Or maybe I can do all kinds of missions on bonus series, since they're repeatable, and get footage or screenshots of various of his outfits while I'm at it. That would be a nice epilogue to the character, and a way to send him off in style. Once I've done that, I'll still keep him on the backburner, because I may want to do Ilum, the Black Hole, Section X, and maybe all of the rest of the stuff that was added to the game in Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadows of Revan. Not that I'm super pumped to do that; I still haven't done it with most of my original run of characters, after all. But we'll see.

A quick quote from an old Kairos post by Brian Neimeier:

1997 began with a film event that would portend an even more ominous trend than the aforementioned Batman and Robin. The Star Wars Trilogy Special Editions were released starting in January and continuing monthly through March. Thus began the cynical strip-mining of a 70s space opera that until recently was the only remaining cultural touchstone that bound the atomized American populace.

Everybody likes to point out how the warning signs of what awaited us in the prequels were all there in the Special Editions. But now another, more distant, red flag pops into focus: the fact that George Lucas doesn’t particularly care about the iconic saga whose artistic success he personally had little to do with. If he was willing to shoehorn in Special Jabba the Hutt and a CG Muppet dance number, we should’ve known he’d eventually sell out to the highest bidder.

In short, the bastardization of Star Wars that plagues us to this day began in 1997.

The post is about the decline of arts and entertainment in general in Western civilization, and makes a pretty convincing case that 1997 is the day that all of it dies, fed only by inertia in the years since, which has mostly completely run out. Any actual good art doesn't come out of the industries that specifically are supposed to produce and distribute it anymore, but rather from indie or even individual artists doing what they love for love of the art alone. But I think he's right; the release of the Special Editions was supremely disappointing, and I say that as a guy who waited in line for hours when the first one came out. It was clear even then that George Lucas either didn't really understand why his own creation was so successful (which may well be true, because he never expected it to be, and back in the day farmed out the stuff that he couldn't do well to help; he had help with the script, with the dialogue, with the pacing, with the editing; the only thing that he actually was good at was 1) restating what made older space opera so beloved into a slightly revised format, and 2) spectacular visuals the likes of which hadn't at that point been seen. And frankly, almost anyone could have done 1) if they'd simply been bold enough to do so. Arguably, Gene Roddenberry did it too more than a decade before Lucas did.

Star Wars' inertia was considerable for people like me, who grew up on it, who were naturally inclined to be science fiction fans anyway, and who also enjoyed the post-Star Wars sci-fi boom, that's still going strong, although not being led by Star Wars anymore. Like I said, the Special Editions were excruciatingly disappointing. They showed us exactly what to expect from the prequels, which were also excruciatingly disappointing. Star Wars was at a nadir until a few things, including the Clone Wars animated show, and a series of video games (especially Knights of the Old Republic) reinvigorated it for me. The Old Republic itself bears some credit for having made Star Wars cool again, although they had a very rough out the gate approach, due to supremely shortsighted and foolish business decisions to try and cash in on WoW money. Once they finally fixed that and made SWTOR a good single player experience, it remained one of the  last good Star Wars products that has a lot of replayability/rewatchability potential.

And, of course, we all know about how Disney has completely destroyed most of the goodwill fans have left. SWTOR's newer material suffers from most of the same problems, but at least you can still go through the older stuff. But almost everything that was good in the Old Republic is over a decade old now.

UPDATE: As promised above, here's a few images of Thanatos, one in his classic "work outfit" and two in his "retired attire".

Sadly, the "retired attire" outfit doesn't show properly on the character select screen. There's an issue where sometimes your dye modules, especially if you have separate ones on some components, land pants seem to be the worst offenders, won't color right. He still looks good, but his pants are black with a gray stripe rather than khaki in that view. 

I really love the rifle he has in that look too. Of course, I also really love the laser tommy gun look he has going on his "work clothes."

George Lucas is a petty, toxic little gamma

This article is ten years old, but holy cow if it doesn't still pack a punch.

https://www.tor.com/2012/03/16/lucas-shot-first-the-surprisingly-powerful-sense-of-betrayal-george-lucas-creates/

Even if it is posted on tor.

As I read The Secret History of Star Wars the first time, I was more and more disappointed in George Lucas himself; the man obviously has some talent, but it's squandered because of his resentment of supposed slights, and the lack of adulation that he got from some of his movies that maybe he liked better than Star Wars. Lucas comes across as the guy who was ignored by the popular people in high school—not actively bullied, but just they were totally apathetic to him and ignored him completely—and now in his old age, he's trying to get revenge on everyone who didn't appreciate him as much as he believes he is entitled to.

There are lots of reasons to be disappointed in Star Wars lately, most of them attributable to Disney and Kathleen Kennedy's even more toxic attitude toward the brand, but before there was Kathleen Kennedy, there was George Lucas. And while he deserves a lot of credit for creating some pretty cool movies ~40 years ago, everything he's done since has eroded that accomplishment. His attitude and statements since are the most damning thing of all.

Basically, George has turned around and made the studio system his justification for going back and editing anything he wants. Those heartless men in their Hollywood suits took something precious from him, denied his right to true ownership, and now he’s taking it back inch-by-CGI-saturated-inch. And the fans who are reediting the films themselves, rearranging the prequels so they make more sense, or knocking out those ridiculous “Noooo“s, well, he’s got news for them:

“On the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie. I’m saying: ‘Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.’ “

Which is, of course, just another way of saying “they’re my toys and I’m the only person who knows how to play with them properly.”

And that’s not a nice thing to say to the people who made your little empire, who paid for every brick and microchip that line the gold-paved road to Skywalker Ranch. We want to love you, George. You created our collective childhoods. What we can’t understand is how you never seem the realize the sanctity of that. Then again, you don’t even seem to understand the how people connect with each other, much less how they bond with and over a work of art.

We know Star Wars means more to us than it does to you, the man who reportedly hated talking to actors until he directed the prequels, who wanted to replace people with effects in his youth and has nearly achieved that goal. We don’t need Boba Fett’s voice to sound like his retconned father’s—that’s not why we loved that over-armed bounty hunter. We don’t need to see Hayden Christensen’s ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi—he’s not the person who Luke held as he died. You’re taking away the moments that reverberated in us, the little bits and bobs that made a silly popcorn film so damn special. And you have the gall to act above it all when you do it.

“Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie.”

Then why do you need to keep coming back to it? It’s not Homer or Milton or even Dante, we all know that, but couldn’t you make an effort to protect it from the ravages of time?

I suppose this line from a recent interview with Oprah should tell us all we need to know:

“Don’t listen to your peers, don’t listen to the authority figures in your life—your parents—and don’t listen to the culture. Only listen to yourself. That’s where you’re going to find the truth.”

That brand of myopia is painful to hear, because it means that a creator who we piled so much love and admiration onto was never really worthy of those sentiments. That he is, in fact, resentfully dismantling something beloved, and in the name of… truth? A truth that he can’t be bothered to share with the rest of us? Movies are supposed to be made for people who watch them, but George has obviously forgotten what business he’s in.

Disney

I don't really like the anti-woke YouTube ecosystem all that much. I watch a lot of videos from guys like Overlord, Ryan Kinel, The Quartering, Nerdrotic, Adam Post, etc. But mostly, I feel like these guys are all on the exact same page; they agree with each other on everything—suspiciously lockstep—and tend to make sure that people on the internet who disagree with wokeness don't wander too far off of the plantation. At all cost, even losing the gay mafia and feminism to Florida, etc. is OK as long as nobody challenges the hoaxes of racism and especially anti-semitism. That's the real goal; keep people enslaved to those two cons.

Anyway, in spite of that, they do say a lot of good stuff sometimes, which is why I still watch a lot of their videos.

This one is pretty good.

Untapped potential

It's unfortunate when Joe Blow on the Internet (no offense intended to the channel I'll be linking to) can see the untapped potential of a major franchise like Star Wars significantly better than the owners of that franchise. As has been pointed out by more than a few people now, the fact that Andor is a better show than just about anything else Disney has done with the Star Wars brand, and yet nobody is watching it means that they've killed it with their mismanagement and poor offerings. Now, even with good content, people have already tuned out and lost interest. The brand has become nearly worthless. They'll have to provide non-woke, or even anti-woke content that is actually entertainment for some time as atonement before they can win back their audience. To paraphrase Mr. Darcy from Pride & Prejudice, the fans good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. But forever isn't literal. It just will take a long time to regain any sense of trust from the actual fans of the franchise to bring them back.

But it could be done. Actually, a major change in the leadership at Lucasfilm and a public declaration of commitment to the fans instead of an anti-fan, anti-white, anti-American screeds would go a long way towards making that possible in a single day. But then, they'll have to deliver. And they could. The franchise still has a lot of potential. Here's a sampling of what it could be, made by fans from footage cut from the Old Republic.

 For some reason, this guy didn't make a tribute to the Jedi Knight, the most iconic Star Warsy of the stories in the game. But the bounty hunter and smuggler feel a bit more iconic after The Mandalorian, at least, even if they don't have any lightsabers or idiotic "heroes' journy" beats.

SWTOR Tracker 10/7/2022

I haven't done much with SWTOR since going out of town for my first wave of vacations this summer, to Boise to see my son and his kids, and then to Bear Lake for a family reunion, and then hiking in the Cloud Peak Wilderness of central Wyoming. After that lengthy vacation, I'd obviously lost loads of momentum with SWTOR.

Of course, not long after getting back and getting caught up with work, I got laid off from work, which made me feel unmotivated to play computer games when I needed to be finding a job. I also went back to Boise for two weeks as my oldest son (well... his wife, anyway) had another baby. I was already planning on doing this before getting laid off; it wasn't really vacation, it was working remotely so I could be around when needed. The baby came early, so it wasn't really exactly what we envisioned; neither my wife nor I watched the other kids while they were in the hospital, because we haven't even showed up in town yet. And, of course, I spent a fair bit of that time chasing around; the first week I was there, I had on average two interviews a day, and by the time the second week was halfway through, I had four offers to sort through. I had to accept one before coming home, or it would have expired, which I did, and now I'm scheduled to start on Monday.

Of course, this means less time to play video games again. Although my evenings will be relatively as free as they had been, I think, I'll be a lot busier during the day, and will—at least for now—be in an actual office, not working from home, so that means no firing up the game during my lunch break or anything like that. That said, due to timing, even though I haven't played much the last couple of months, I hadn't actually had my subscription run out either (I buy one-off two month blocks of subscription at a time). It was about to in a week or so, so I actually just bought another two month block. I'm feeling a bit motivated to play some more again, and let Hero Forge take a little bit of a back-seat. Not that I want to stop doing that, and my Dark Fantasy X posts—in fact, I envision a fairly substantial revision to the monster list of Dark Fantasy X in the nearish future—but I also want to get back on the bandwagon with my SWTOR videos and playthrough.

So, here's my latest version of the tracker; basically the same as the one I posted in June. A few updates, not because I've done much of anything, but because I've made some decisions that I hadn't back then.

Anstal Tane. Level 44 Scoundrel playing the smuggler story. Sith Pureblood, male. Recording all missions. Just finished the Taris bonus series. Although he's the farthest along, I may well play more of him, so as to spread the pack out just a bit and not have everyone bunch up on just the second and third planets.

Elemer Kell. Level 36 Sentinel playing the Jedi Knight story. Imperial Zabrak, male. Just arrived on Taris and walked out of the spaceport, but otherwise have to start all of the missions. After moving to Nar Shaddaa and recording just a bit with Anstal, I'll probably do him next. In fact, I'm trying to reorder the list of characters in the order I expect to play them. Recording all missions.

Vant Galaide. Level 35 Mercenary playing the bounty hunter story. Human male. Just arrived on Balmorra. I actually skipped the phone call from Crysta so I could go shop for a Mako customization on Balmorra and make her blonde, but then I fast-traveled back to my ship. Recording all missions.

Revecca Arden. Level 34 Sorceress playing the Sith Inquisitor story. Human female. Just about to go to Balmorra.

Haul Romund. Level 33 Mercenary playing the Smuggler story. Human male. On Coruscant.

Codon Veile. Level 21 Sniper playing the trooper story. Chiss male. On the Republic fleet; needs to take the Esseles to Coruscant.

Vash Galaide. Level 35 Powertech playing the agent story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas

Phovos Maledict. Level 28 Juggernaut playing the Sith Warrior story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas.

Mirabeau Tane. Level 20 Gunslinger playing the trooper story. Cyborg male. Just arrived on the fleet from Ord Mantell.

Wulf Hengest. Level 30 Vanguard playing the bounty hunter story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas.

Embric Stane. Level 19 Mercenary playing the bounty hunter story. Cyborg male. Just finished Hutta. I actually decided to bench Embric and not worry about recording him. I may still play him from time to time, just like I do my other benched characters, Taul Kajak and Hutran Thanatos. (Who by coincidence are both Mirialan.) In fact, that's what I've been doing since getting back in town and playing a bit again; crafting and selling with John and playing a bit of Hutran Thanatos on Tatooine. 

I've got a fair number of videos to edit, but I'm deliberately not going to worry too much about that for now. In the past, I'd sometimes psyched myself out not to play, because I didn't want to record more video, because playing is more fun than video editing, and I didn't want to mess with the latter. For now, I'll do whichever of the two I feel like and not allow myself to get worked up over the backlog.

UPDATE: I was looking through my raw videos, and I've got a lot of Anstal Tane on Taris coming up, and then some other stuff, including the launch of Codon Veile and Mirabeau Tane. However, the last several have, for some reason, no sound. I screwed up when recording them and probably forgot to adjust my settings on OBS, so it was looking for sound coming from my Xiberia headset, which I wasn't using, or something like that. Luckily, most are of Embric Stane, who I'm not going to worry about... but not all of them. Sigh. Maybe I should just use someone else's archived play if I ever want to watch this again when it's gone. That's discouraging.

UPDATE II: Well, I played Phovos Maledict through to getting his ship. I actually think, because I have so many "young" characters that don't have their ships yet, that I want to get everyone their ships before moving on. The galaxy really comes alive once you have a ship; not before. That means, I'll be doing a bunch of Coruscant and Dromund Kaas, I suppose. I had six characters, three and three on the two factions, that needed it. Since I just did a Sith Warrior, I'll need to switch to a Republic character next to break up the rainy jungle monotony. And maybe I should do one of the trooper stories so that I can space them out a bit too. I'll probably do Codon Veile next.

UPDATE III: Before I do that, though, I'm finishing off a few things that have lingered for too long. Luke, my OG smuggler is on Makeb, and I want to both just finish that, and also finish leveling up the Makeb reputation which has been on Champion for months. I actually just finished the max for the week, and I'm only a couple of hundred shy. But in addition to the Makeb reputation track, which has been almost but not quite finished for months, I've got the Section X on Belsavis and the Yavin 4 reputation tracks in basically the same place. I won't actually be able to finish any of them this week, but I want to max out my reputation this week so that I can easily and quickly finish them next week because I've only got a couple hundred rep points left to do. Then I'll record the next part of the next character, which will be Codon Veile doing the Esseles and Coruscant. Let me reorder the characters in the order I plan to do them, starting with Phovos Maledict, who I just recorded a bunch of earlier this week.

Phovos Maledict (check)

Codon Veile

Wulf Hengist

Haul Romund

Vash Galaide (the agent)

Mirabeau Tane

Vant Galaide (the bounty hunter)

Anstal Tane

Revecca Arden

Elemer Kell

From now on when I make updates to this, I'll use that order.

Han Solo Adventures

Before I begin; a quick SWTOR note. I doubt that my playthrough will advance as fast as I anticipated in the tracker update, because I've spent more time yesterday editing and posting videos of the playthroughs rather than playing through and generating more raw footage. I'll probably do the same today, and maybe tomorrow too. I feel like there's a big backlog of raw footage that I've recorded, and continuing to make more without addressing the backlog is starting to feel like a poor logistical choice. So I'm playing just a bit of catch-up before I move on. But I'll address what actually happens at some point next week. In the meantime, if you follow my YouTube channel with the SWTOR playthrough updates, you've got five new videos to watch, and probably a fair number more coming today and tomorrow.

The other thing that I did other than play last night was buckle down and read the last ~80 or so pages of the Han Solo Adventures, an omnibus novel that I've been reading for way too long. This book is just short of 600 pages, and collects the three slimmer Brian Daley novels written (or at least published, I should say) in 1979 and 1980. Prior, therefore, to the release of Empire Strikes Back. Although the story has, as far as I know, no input from George Lucas other than a mandated exclusion of any use of the Empire, it is an interesting place; a window into a point in time. Like Splinter of the Mind's Eye, it's the only glimpse into a more space operatic version of Star Wars when only the first movie was out and the tone hadn't yet changed and this is how people perceived the franchise still. 

Of course, I believe that Daley (as well as Lucas himself) were bringing as much from the genre as they were from Star Wars specifically. Star Wars has been so massive in the cultural zeitgeist that even to many science fiction fans themselves its defined how we view the genre in ways that are different than how we viewed it before Star Wars. But with only one movie and one novelized sequel yet in place in the late 70s when Daley was writing this, he didn't have a lot of material to fall back to to understand the "feel" of Star Wars, so he just did what he was familiar with. Daley was already an author, although much of what he wrote wasn't published until after these Han Solo novels. His Alacrity Fitzhugh and Hobart Floyt novels are probably a good example of what he'd do on his own in space opera outside of Star Wars. Two space-faring adventurers in a light-hearted, sometimes humorous romp through space, dealing as much with irritating bureaucrats as with any other danger. To be fair, that's a fair enough description of his take on Han Solo too. 

Unable to use the Empire, because Lucas wanted to reserve it and its iconic characters for his own upcoming sequel, which was of course The Empire Strikes Back, Daley went a prequel route for Han Solo and described some of his adventures and set them in the Corporate Sector. Now, although the canon-aficionados have made Daley's Corporate Sector and the Corporate Sector referenced many times through the Clone Wars series the same place, its not very clear that his vision for them is very similar to that of the story overall. The vibe of this bureaucratic and amoral Corporate Sector Authority vs the Empire is very different, of course. Not that that's a bad thing, but that does suggest that it will feel somewhat different than Star Wars as we're used to. 

The version pictured here looks like mine, except that my prices were a little bit lower, so it must have been an earlier print ($14.99 and $4.99 respectively, and no mention of Canadian prices.) It is, as noted, three original slim novels that have been omnibused. Given that the omnibus is under 600 pages, the average page count of each novel is under 200 pages. 

And this is a major change from how we read now. The Timothy Zahn books are roughly the size of the Lord of the Rings books, i.e. ~350 pages each, or so, and with a much more tightly linked story spread over three books, as opposed to books that are nearly half the length and they are only loosely connected rather than part of a single epic storyline. How does this impact the end result? Well, older, shorter science fiction stories were much more punchy and focused much more on fast-moving plot, and had very little emphasis on character. In fact, I'd suggest that few if any of Daley's characters come to life at all; they're just names and plot points, for the most part, and only a handful of characters really "come to life". Part of this is certainly predictable; you just don't have time to develop them, especially if the cast starts to proliferate. Characters who really work include the two robots, Bollux and Blue Max, who are spread across all three books (which helps) and Gallandro, the dark mirror and would-be nemesis of Han Solo across this small series. A few others actually have some personality, but they're still mostly forgettable. In fact, Hasti, for example, a kinda sorta love-interest (maybe; not really, not sure) in the final novel was never more than a name and a very vague image to me, other than her role in advancing the plot. 

Whether this is a good or a bad thing is a matter of opinion, of course. Plenty of people like the punchier, plot-driven type of science fiction, although I'd suggest that in more general terms, all good stories are stories about interesting characters. I think that the novels would have been better if they weren't necessarily longer, but with a slightly slimmer cast of characters and a bit more emphasis on character vs plot. Curiously, even Han and Chewie rarely come to life as real characters. I think Daley figured that since they were known characters from the movie, they didn't need development, but curiously they were kind of boring characters in their own series. 

All in all, I'd suggest that the book is an interesting peek into Star Wars while it was still in an almost "larval" state; it hadn't yet accrued most of the details and tone that make it recognizably Star Wars to us. This is both interesting and yet also not in some ways, as the novels feel very much like they could be forgettable, generic space opera and nothing all that special when seen in that light.

May the 4th be with you

It used to be my tradition to try and "celebrate" May 4th by at least watching some Star Wars movies or shows or something, and making a blog post. It's not a real holiday, but it was kind of fun to do something, because I was a Star Wars fan from back when I was five years old, after all. Just like May 5th isn't a real holiday, but it's a good excuse to make some Mexican food. (And since I'm an ethnic Texan, that means "Tex-Mex" which is as much Texan as it is Mexican anyway, in spite of the label.) I'll still make a blog post, but I doubt I'll do anything different than what I would do it if it wasn't May 4th today.

By which I mean, I will play some SWTOR, which is a Star Wars game, but I'd almost certainly do that anyway, especially given that we're in a week of double XP and I've got a bunch of lower level characters who can actually take advantage of that this week. I won't watch any Star Wars movies or Clone Wars episodes, or anything like that. I may, in fact, take a break from playing SWTOR for a while and read my Brian Daley Han Solo novel. But I've been reading those three novels for a while anyway. So, again, I'm not looking to uproot my routine any, although maybe I'll focus just a tiny bit more on some Star Wars activities than I otherwise would have, but not really.

SWTOR has traditionally given a modest gift to people on May the 4th. Usually its a reskinned little astromech pet. This year, it's actually something different, but it's coming from some other thing and been reskinned. It's a floating droid that looks for all the world like a space cooler so your character can keep his space beer cold on the tailgate of his speeder. It's been a little funny watching everyone running around with them the last day or two. Yeah, yeah... I'll get it for all of my characters too, no doubt. I launch pets (if I remember to) so that it picks one at random, so it won't come up all that often when I'm playing. It's also an esoteric in-joke and reference to a bug at launch, the "orange pixel." Either way, the whole thing is a bit sillier than normal, but it's nice that they put at least a little more effort into it than they usually do. But they still didn't put a lot, unfortunately.

I mean, the real story of Star Wars this year is how the franchise has managed to make fans like me completely apathetic if not actively pissed off. While not literally everything Star Wars in the last few years has been terrible, its obvious that even when they do something good, it's almost accidental, or because some creative type was able to go against the grain of the direction of the franchise overall. The Mandalorian show briefly excited the fanbase because it was OK. I have a funny feeling, however, that after the debacle of the Boba Fett spinoff that most fans will now have their eyes opened to the fact that The Mandalorian isn't really that good, the problems of Boba Fett were natural evolutions of Mandalorian, and the direction of the show is to entropy, not a satisfying resolution. Boba Fett was, for me, the last straw. I'm no longer a fan of the franchise. I'm a fan of SWTOR the game. I'm a fan of the original trilogy, although not as much as I used to be. I'm a fan of a few elements of the Clone Wars era content, although not really a big fan of that content overall. The prequel trilogy really just isn't all that good, and neither is the Clone Wars animated show, so that even when there's good stuff in it, it almost feels like happenstance  rather than because of a good plan. And the good elements are dragged down inevitably by so many bad elements. And I've liked very little at all from Disney Star Wars; most of what they'd done has actively turned me off from the franchise. Star Wars is like the bad girlfriend that you had when you were young. You were honestly in love with her, but her behavior and attitude were never really going to work for a long term relationship, and as you gradually realized that, it all just went sour. It wasn't a bitter, angry, explosive break-up. I'm just tired of being taken for granted and treated to toxic behavior in this relationship, so I walked away. I'll still check in on Star Wars occasionally to see what it's up to, but I don't feel like I have a relationship with the franchise anymore. I just have memories of a time when the franchise was much more fun and likable. And that means a lot to me; as I've said for a long time, The Empire Strikes Back was my favorite movie from the time I was a teenager until I was a good 40 years old or so, when problems with the franchise made me realize that I didn't like it as much as I had thought I did and I moved on even then. Star Wars was a huge part of my life, as was my fandom of the franchise. But now I'm left with a few DVD-Rs of the old laserdisc rips, the DVD editions that I bought but won't actually watch as long as my DVD-Rs still work, a few Clone Wars episodes, and a few EU novels that I think are worth keeping. And I have the Old Republic games, although that won't last forever either. Other than that... I'm pretty much over Star Wars. I'm on to something else that is more likely to engage with me in a healthier way.

UPDATE (5/6/2022): https://boundingintocomics.com/2022/05/05/this-is-how-may-the-fourth-dies-with-thunderous-silence/

Also, by coincidence (well, not really) this was posted yesterday; the Revenge of the 5th. 

All of the above. People are apathetic towards Star Wars. Quite honestly, even before the Disney takeover, the brand was doing plenty of mediocre things that weren't helping it. The Disney Debacle has taken away whatever momentum and inertia it was using to power through mediocre (or even poor) prequel movies and other content, but that momentum and inertia was always going to eventually run  dry anyway. People are also pissed off at Disney and their handling of the brand, as well as Disney as a brand in its own right. That's especially true in the last month or two, but it was already a thing among people who were paying attention, including especially Star Wars (and Marvel) fans.

But the reality is that none of that is happening in a vacuum. The self-loathing creeps of the left have gone hysterical in the last few years and have been making non-stop war on normalcy. This isn't just Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm, or Bob Iger at Disney; it's the entire structure of institutionalized Leftism. And since institutionalized Leftism is our government, our academia, our advertising, our corporate leadership, our media and entertainment industry, most churches, and pretty much the entirety of any Establishment organization that we interact with normally other than regular, normal people around us in our families and neighborhoods, normal American people, especially if they're men, conservative, white, Christian or southern have had to adopt a siege mentality to our interactions with everything and everyone other than our own families and closest friends. It's not Star Wars that I'm through with, it's everything. I play an older video game, watch old movies and TV shows on blu-ray or DVD, and read old books for entertainment, or go for walks, travel to the West or the South where people are more normal, and go hiking, camping, etc. In other words, I've gone Galt in terms of interacting with The System™ as much as possible. My apathy towards Star Wars is just a small facet of my apathy towards everything that is hostile towards me that I'd rather not interact with anymore.

Some minor SWTOR updates

Some minor updates. I haven't played as much as I'd have liked. I do have a bunch of raw video of Anstal Tane and Elemer Kell on Coruscant; I'm mostly done with both planets with both characters. Hutran Thanatos has also finished Balmorra, including the bonus series quest, but I quit recording him some time ago. 

I had earlier said that I didn't really like the gameplay for the Operative and Scoundrel, but the more I've done both of them, the more they've grown on me. I like the sneaking around stealthed and then ambushing someone from behind to get an early head start on killing small trash mobs. And if I don't want to kill them, I can just bypass them altogether. I've been using one of the two as a the backup class for all of my tech characters for sneaking, but it wasn't my intention to actually play with them. I'm kind of coming around to changing my mind on this, though. I've enjoyed both more than I thought. I think part of it is that I now have more abilities unlocked, though. I do really miss a good area attack, though, which are the strong points of their counterparts; the Sniper and Gunslinger. My scoundrel, Anstal Tane, is a direct damage spec, while my Operative, Hutran Thanatos, is a damage over time spec. 

I think I should go back and make sure all of my load outs for where the stealth class is in the backup spot is actually filled out and properly geared. I may end up using them much more than I had thought that I would in the future.

I've also been watching milinc's playlist for his smuggler. I'm playing my own new smuggler, of course, in the form of Anstal Tane, and I'm playing him a bit more edgy than milinc did, who automatically flirted with everyone and almost always picked the nice-guy light-side option. My impression this time around isn't as beta as I thought it was when I played it myself the first time. I suspect that I may have overstated how much of an issue that was because it had irked me an stuck out in my mind. Now, I'm feeling more charitable towards the characterization. And, of course, I can always shut down Akaavi Spar pretty hard, only kinda sorta flirt with Risha instead of pick every single flirt option (a lot of the flirt options are the worst offenders, honestly, especially in late game) and avoid flirting with the unlikable or unattractive ladies, like Marshal whats-her-name on Belsavis and the way-too-old Senator.

In general, I think the BioWare writers just weren't capable of writing a good romance except by accident, which is why only two of the eight really come across as credible and "cute" at all, although flawed even then: Kira and Mako. It's a real shame because in my opinion almost all good adventure stories need a credible romance, and lack thereof has ruined or at least stunted the potential of many an otherwise good swashbuckling action romp. 

You wanna read a good swashbuckling adventure story romance? Here's my recommendations, and then from there, adapt what you saw in these without reference to the nonsense of equity and feminism.

• Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
• Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson
• a bunch of stuff by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I'm partial to A Princess of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes, but maybe The Mad King is a better example for this specific question.
• Robert E. Howard isn't really great normally at romances, but he did a pretty good job in Skull-face of having a real classic pulp romance story.

Cross-posting; Star Wars, Ad Astra, Space Opera X and D&D

I don't often like to cross-post on more than one blog, but I'll do it this time, because this kind of straddles the topics of the legacy Dark Heritage blog (this one) and my more focused Dark Fantasy X blog. Anyhoo, on to the content. Arguably, it fits better here, but for various reasons which are probably apparent, I did it there and I think it needs to be there too:

This is going to be a little bit roundabout, but let me set some context for an idea I've had that would alter a major guiding principle of Space Opera X and change a lot about how I see the setting, and therefore how it gets presented. Before I get to the punchline, though, I'll need to spend some time winding the thing up. Also, here's a video of Tim Kask, the first employee of TSR back in the 70s, talking about life at TSR and in D&D in the first few years of its existence. Not only is this an interesting little video in its own right, but it'll become relevant down below. Watch it, and log away what Tim says.

It's no secret that George Lucas was a big fan of Akira Kurosawa's samurai movies, and that in his earliest drafts, the Jedi order resembled the samurai of movies like Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo and Seven Samurai much more than they eventually later did. Although echoes of this samurai past still stick with them. Originally Jedi weren't superheroes at all, and there isn't much—if any—hint of mystical super powers that they had, at least in the earliest versions of the scripts. They were just honor-bound warrior clans or organizations, and the Jedi and Sith were rivals here. The original Sith warrior was actually not Darth Vader in these early drafts, but Valorum, a Sith Knight who is demoted for some failure and eventually joins the rebels. Valorum is later renamed Dodona, and Espaa Valorum is later the head of the Empire, or at least the Sith clan. In the Star Wars graphic novel by Dark Horse based on these early versions of the script, Valorum is certainly a villain, but he's a relatively honorable one, who's more interested in dueling honorably with Starkiller (the early version of Luke Skywalker) then he is on advancing what he sees as grasping and puerile goals of the Imperial bureaucracy.

It's also worth noting that there was a lot less difference between the Jedi, the Sith and everyone else. There's concept art by MacQuarrie showing stormtroopers with lightsabers (and shields!), as well as the original concept painting for Darth Vader which shows him sporting a blaster pistol on his leg; as much like a black hat gunfighter from a Western movie as like a samurai or mystic warrior.

By the time we get to the novelization and the movie as presented in theaters, both the Jedi and the Sith had undergone a major change. The lightsaber becomes their signature weapon, that nobody else uses. Belief in the Force is an "ancient religion" that most people are skeptical of, even when they know what Darth Vader can do, for instance. Obiwan becomes, by necessity of George Lucas' idea to modify his plot to conform to his interpretation of Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey*" plot arc, a wizardly mentor figure, so he has to have some magical powers. It's worth noting that in the first movie especially, but in the original trilogy overall, these magical powers are much more subtle and modest then they later end up being.

But this was a major change to the setting, to the nature of both the Jedi and the Sith, and to the idea that it faithfully represents the samurai ethos at all anymore. The Jedi and Sith as rival samurai clans idea never really recovers, they neither really resemble samurai all that much anymore. For that matter, the plot doesn't resemble the samurai movies much anymore either. When people tell you that Star Wars is basically a remake of The Hidden Fortress, that's now a reliable tell that they're midwits (at best) parroting something that they've heard in an attempt to sound smart and name-drop, but that they don't actually understand what they're claiming at all. Star Wars has very little resemblance to The Hidden Fortress; it's more like after a lengthy introduction, a remake of Where Eagles Dare spliced to a remake of 633 Squadron. But that's stretching it. It's not a remake of anything, just because it borrows some sequences and plot points.

While we're treated to an escalation of Force superpowers in the next two movies, that's in an attempt to raise the stakes. Darth Vader throwing things at Luke with the Force while swordfighting is supposed to be impressive because we didn't imagine that that could be done. Same with Yoda pulling up an X-wing out of the pond. Later, when the Emperor shows remarkable precognitive powers (although fallible ones, obviously) as well as shooting lightning out of his hands, that's supposed to shock us (no pun intended) because, again, we had no idea that something like that could be done. The Force superpowers remain relatively modest throughout the original trilogy, and those we see using the force in these remarkable ways are (other than Luke himself) presented as true prodigies of force power anyway; much greater than the run-of-the-mill Jedi or Sith would have been. Although that presentation is a bit implicit rather than explicit.

Unfortunately, then George Lucas made another major change to Jedi between the Original Trilogy and the Prequel trilogy, and turned them overtly into superheroes. It's not just the Force, but the lightsabers are escalated immediately. Right off the bat, we're told that lightsabers can now cut through thick blast doors. Funny; I don't remember Darth Vader thinking of doing that when Luke and Co. were escaping the Death Star and he was cut off from them by a blast door. Dooku throws around lightning like its throwing a football in the backyard, Yoda doesn't just strain, struggle and pull an X-wing out of the swamp, he rather casually catches a falling cavern ceiling and throws it aside to save Obiwan and Anakin's life. Even within the prequels we see this escalation; when Obiwan and Qui-Gonn are stopped by destroyer droids in the first sequence of Phantom Menace, we later see Jedi and even clone troopers treating destroyers as if—in the immortal words of Ryan George's Pitch Meetings—they're super easy; barely an inconvenience. If the prequels weren't bad enough—and they were—then other media from this same era is even worse. The Starkiller character from the Force Unleashed video games raises his hands, uses the force, and pulls a freakin' Star Destroyer out of space and crashes it to the surface of the planet he's on. 

Somewhere around here, it occurred to me that Star Wars had become an overtly superhero story, even though people like Dave Filoni and others in featurettes and interviews explicitly denied it. The Jedi and the Sith were like the X-men or the Avengers; completely disconnected from normal people altogether. They also developed a bit of the Superman problem, i.e., the only kinds of stories you can tell about Superman are ones where his dedication to his ideals are tested, because those ideals conflict with him using his deus ex machina powers to easily and handily solve literally every problem that ever comes his way. Watching some of the episodes of The Clone Wars which was the follow-up media to the prequel movies themselves, it occurred to me that most of them were really boring, because the Jedi never even struggled to overcome all of the challenges thrown at them. There were no real stakes anymore; they were just going through the motions of making action sequences. Using your lightsaber to fight off enemies is supposed to be cool, but they had all of the excitement of the Jedi using a lightbroom to clean up their rooms. 

When I created my own Star Wars Revisited stuff for homebrew RPG use, which later lost the Star Wars IP connotation specifically and became Ad Astra and then Space Opera X, my analogs to the Jedi and Sith were always supposed to be more like the original trilogy version, and I actually made that explicitly clearly stated. The rest of the characters were equally competent swashbuckling heroes; if the Jedi had modest magical powers, the others were still Batman and Captain America or whatever and could stand toe to toe with them even without magical powers. I wanted to seriously de-escalate the power creep of the Jedi. Which wasn't really so much of a creep as it was an abrupt shift during the prequel era.

But now comes the time to think about what Tim Kask said about Gary Gygax and what he thought. Remember that from the little video up above? Star Wars as a high concept world-buildling episode could be seen as a three-legged stool. One leg was space opera, one leg was superhero stories, and the other leg was high fantasy. The setting superficially resembled space opera and takes place in space, but once you get rid of the superficial trappings, it's a combination of Old West American frontier and Medievalism, the plots are very high fantasy, and the characters have superpowers like the Justice League or the Avengers. Well, maybe Justice League is a bit much, but like the X-men at least.

But what if Space Opera X were more like a three-legged stool of space opera, the Old West, and sword & sorcery of the kind that Gary Gygax claimed he was modeling D&D on? Specifically the Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber kind, who are the two most iconic authors in the genre? And like with Gary Gygax, who failed to really understand why anyone would want to play a wizard or an elf when you could play a more down-to-earth heroic figure, what if the Jedi and Sith were treated much more like the sorcerers of Robert E. Howard or Fritz Leiber than like actual protagonists? In Howard, they're almost always villainous. Leiber has friendlier sorcerers; the Gray Mouser actually apprentices under one briefly and has a few modest magical tricks up his sleeve from time to time, and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes tend to be sponsors and patrons of the two main characters. Although they're weird. They're inhuman, and bizarre, and inscrutable. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser never really trust them, because they can never understand them. 

I don't know that that changes the way the game would work, at all. In fact, I don't see any reason why it should. But it is a major change to the worldbuilding side, if my Knights and Warlocks are much more rare, and much more inscrutable, and are usually played more like plot devices than like characters. Heck, there may well be something about them that specifically makes them go insane over time, or at least become trans-human creeps. While Star Wars has gradually become the story of Jedi and Sith, with everyone else kind of falling into the background (even The Mandalorian and its sad Boba Fett spin-off are not immune from this, although they should be from a structural standpoint. I think the writers just can't help making it all about the Jedi and Sith) Space Opera X, on the other hand, would specifically be about swashbuckling "normal" people, with the magic-users being relegated to more of a plot-devicey role most of the time. 

* I'm not really very impressed with Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" and I see the name-dropping of it as a red flag that I'm dealing with a midwit who greatly overestimates his own intelligence. The plot arc and the archetypal characters are not actually nearly as ubiquitous as its adherents claim, and they often struggle to name anything other than Star Wars itself that really fits it very well. They're certainly common, but that's a far cry from universal, and they often appear without the rest of the "Hero's Journey" package, which defeats the purpose of the the model. I also think that the plot outline of "The Hero's Journey" is so reduced to banality that it says very little to point out obvious similarities that it posits. Mostly, Joseph Campbell is a tool for the self-important to flatter themselves that they are intelligent and academic without them actually having to be intelligent or academic, or even to know very much about what they're talking about. If you want to work in this same space but actually read someone who's said something more interesting, then check out the work of Georges Dumezil. It's still a just-so story, but it's fundamentally a much more serious and interesting just-so story than the one Campbell has pushed on us.

It's also interesting that those very interested in showing how academic they are by referring to Campbell and the monomyth are completely unaware that the monomyth is very much out of favor and has been for decades in the field of academic comparative mythology.

2006 Northrup, Leslie: Mainstream scholarship of comparative mythology since Campbell has moved away from "highly general and universal" categories in general. 

1998 Constantino: "It is just as important to stress differences as similarities, to avoid creating a (Joseph) Campbell soup of myths that loses all local flavor." [ed. Pun intended, I presume.]

1999 Ellwood, Robert: "A tendency to think in generic terms of people, races... is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking."

1990 Crespi: "... unsatisfying from a social science perspective. Campbell's analytic level is so abstract and devoid of ethnographic context that myth loses the very meanings supposed to be embedded in the 'hero.'"

1984 Dundes, Alan: "Like most universalists, he is content to merely assert universality rather than bother to document it. […] If Campbell's generalizations about myth are not substantiated, why should students consider his work?"

Old Republic Update

I haven't played a lot of SWTOR lately. I've logged in every day and done the Seasons daily challenges—because let's face, it I've had the weekly challenges done every week so far on the first day that they're available. Three weeks of them so far, and I'm on level 32—or rather, only one daily challenge shy of it. That's about a third of the way through in 3 weeks; so even with some Spring Break traveling, I should be done quite early with the entire thing.

This coming week, which starts tomorrow, I should be extra busy in the game, however, since it's Bounty Hunter week and I need to get a bunch of Bounty Hunter contracts. I've got at least seven characters who need to get a bounty contract every day. I think that may be all that it allows me to do, actually. If I can get more than one contract for those characters, then I will. I can't remember for sure how it works, however. I may be able to get contracts with some of my lower level characters too. I'll need to check on that, though; I've never tried to do it with a character who wasn't mostly done with the main story before.

Even so, if I can get fifty contracts this week, that'll be pretty nifty. I'll be able to buy the bowcaster rifle that I want and still have a fair number of contracts left to buy something else further on, when I decide what exactly it is. And I'll be able to accrue enough rep to hopefully get my BBA rep up to Legendary status. 

After that, I need to decide what to work on. I'll still have Seasons to do, but it isn't enough to really keep me very busy. This week, on most days, I only logged in for about fifteen minutes a day to go get a few syndicate plans and sell them for rep tokens, which in turn gave me my daily challenge. I played just a bit with my greenskinned agent, who I'm no longer recording, but I'd like to get back to my recording characters. That said, I've got a fair number of lower level characters that I need to continue doing; Anstal Tane the Scoundrel, Vant Galaide the Mercenary, Hutran Thanatos the Operative, Elemer Kell and Taul Kajak the Jedi Sentinels, and Revecca Arden the Sith Sorcerer. And I want to start a new Vanguard Bounty Hunter too. So I'll have plenty to do, but it'll all be relatively low level, and I'll be recording most of what I'm playing with them. But I have relatively little to do with my other characters, other than reputation and seasons.

All of that will keep me pretty busy. And then, when I get word that the Legacy of the Sith stuff has been sufficiently debugged, I'll probably take my main Jedi Knight M'aa'rk and go do that stuff. Other than that, there's still a little bit of daily reputation for places like Makeb, Section X, Yavin 4, Ossus, etc. that I want to continue to chip away at. I'd like to think that every week or so I'd finish off another one of those until I've only got a few left that I may or may not even be interested in, like the various swoop bike gangs, etc. Makeb and Yavin 4 are already at Champion level, so they'll be relatively quick.

I've only got seven Legend rank reputation tracks so far, and with four more that are close or that I'm specifically targeting.  

To be fair, though--some of my other hobbies are starting to peek through the clouds again and demand attention. I've got the materials I need on hand to build a DIY dice tray so I can throw my metal dice without scratching our kitchen table, and I've got people that I could potentially play with again too. I'm getting remotivated to draw more maps again for my Dark Fantasy X setting. I've been doodling again with Space Opera X as a setting, adding a few more things to it. The weather is improving, and some hiking possibilities are starting to take shape. I've even started reading more again, and dabbling more with music again. It's crazytown right now, I tell you.

Most of those latter updates, if they get a blog update at  all, which they will not all do so, will be over on my Dark Fantasy X blog, however, rather than here. I've tried to take most of my RPG hobby stuff over there, my hiking stuff to Lone Star Hiker, etc. 

UPDATE: To my surprise, I did a lot more today than I thought possible. I finished all of the weeklies fairly early, and I not only did all of the seven high level characters through the bounty hunter, but I took four lower level characters through it too. A fifth one can do so if I spend an hour or so (tops) finishing up just a bit of what he's doing on Hutta and get him to the fleet.

This means, of course, that I'll have considerably less to do this week than I thought. Other than 12 (!) BBA missions each day, which are largely repeated grinds, I'll have little to do. 

UPDATE 2: I made my Vanguard Bounty Hunter, as well as a Mercenary Smuggler. But I'm not in any particular hurry to play either of them. That said, I will buy the bowcaster I want today because I'll have enough by this point, and I'll mail it to my vanguard. He won't be able to use it right away, because it has a level 10 prerequisite, but that's OK.

UPDATE 3: I did it. Finished all of my bounties for the day. I bought the bowcaster, and I have 6 bounty contracts left. I'll get 48 more if I do henchmen bounties for a total of 54. If I buy one more kingpin bounty, that'll take that down to 49, but give me one back for getting the kingpin bounty, leaving me an even 50—which is exactly how much I need to buy some of the most expensive of the BBA gear, like the dye module schematic, or the HK-51 skin. I'd like a few of the bounty hunter monster rock n roll speeders, which are 25 each. I can either get the dye module schematic, or two of the speeders. I think I'll go for the dye module, and catch the speeders next time this comes around.

I do find, however, that the event is starting to get tedious. This is true for all of the grind type activities, but I'm now regularly doing 12 bounties a day with each of my characters (ed. that is, 12 bounties a day because I have 12 characters. Each can only do one per day), and then I've unlocked two of the kingpin bounties (I'm planning on slowly unlocking more of those) which gives me a bit more. This isn't cost effective if the goal is to rack up completed bounty contracts; you still only get one contract for doing a kingpin bounty, but you have to pay five to unlock them. You get better reputation, but I'm almost certain to exceed the reputation I need to cap it permanently this week anyway. I'm already capped for this week, but I'll have the trophies in my inventory to spend next week and even the next week after that most likely to get me up to Legend rank. There won't be any reason to do the bounties next time around except to earn contracts, and it costs contracts to unlock kingpin bounties. The only reason to unlock the kingpins would be to have them available to break the monotony of doing a bazillion henchmen bounties every week that it comes around. Blegh. Wish I could have unlocked the kingpin bounties by rep level instead of having to spend contracts. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to buy with the bounty contract currency, and not enough opportunities to earn it. That's why I'm so focused like a freakin' laser to earning as much as I can this time around.

Meanwhile, I now have both a Vanguard bounty hunter, with a bowcaster (which he can't use quite yet) and a Mercenary smuggler with double Fortitudes, the biggest pistol (I believe) in the game. Meanwhile my "normal" mercenary is finally unlocking enough of his abilities to be fun to play as I'm approaching level 20 with him. I've been doing Hutta bounties with, because technically he hasn't really advanced beyond Hutta except for to the Imperial Fleet just briefly to pick up bounty missions. After this week is over, I'll finally do the Black Talon and take him to Dromund Kaas. 

And finally, I'd love to do another Agent, since I haven't really been recording Hutran Thanatos after forgetting to record some of his story. He's also an Operative, and I find that I don't really love the Operative mechanics. I do really love the Gunslinger and Sniper mechanics, but I don't have any other than my original Gunslinger and Sniper, so I'll probably do my next Agent as one of those two again. But I'm juggling enough characters right now that I don't need to worry about that right now.

One more small thing; the login rewards do now occasionally give bounty contracts, so before the event comes around again, I'll probably get a dozen or so contracts. Not enough to do much with, but a little extra padding. I may buy some of the "frozen in carbonite" decorations, because they only cost 1, and make my strongholds just a little bit less empty.