The Star Wars Post
An Actual Defense Of Star Wars [Sep 14, 2024]
If you haven’t read my previous Star Wars post, you probably should. I will refer to them a lot in this essay, and I also don’t intend to repeat anything I’ve already said, so you won’t get the full picture if you haven’t read them as well.
The Wokeism Question
Yes, Star Wars is woke now. But it wasn’t really always like this. It wasn’t ever really just another arm of the libtard propaganda wing like how superhero comics were/are. When you really get in to the books, they aren’t even all that particularly supportive of democracy. Depending on the book and the author, it may even advocate for some other political system (for example: all of the quotes in favor of a dictatorship in my above scrollspost). It’s also not really got any hints of le wholesome diversity to it or anything like that. Before the Disney buyout, you could count the number of homos in the entire Star Wars universe on one hand. Now you’re lucky to be able to get through one book without seeing one. It mostly has to do with all the new authors Disney brought on board, most of whom are essentially DEI hires or otherwise intended to comply with Blackrock diversity policies or what have you.
Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is a pretty good example of this. SWTOR came out in 2011, one year before Disney bought Lucasfilm and three years before Disney rebooted the universe on 2014 (this time period was mostly for ending ongoing storylines and finishing up planed novels). SWTOR is also still going strong today as one of the most popular MMO RPGs on the market. The original story lines for all 8 classes all prevent you from romancing same sex NPCs, but the DLCs stories (released after the Disney buyout) all allow same sex romances.
Now, I’m not saying that pre-Disney Star Wars was some sort of bastion of conservative ideology or anything. I’m not really even saying that Disney is particularly woke. I’m saying the the injection of libtard wokeism into Star Wars has nothing to do with who owns the rights and everything to do with the time we live in. In all likelihood, Star Wars would still be woke today if George Lucas never sold the rights and nothing else changed. Conversely, Star Wars probably would not be woke today if Disney had still bought it, but Gamergate had never happened.
You can also see this sort of thing in the characterization of older Star Wars vs newer Star Wars. As Wolliver puts it:
Now, compare this with the Disney era depiction of the Rebel Alliance, or even better: the Resistance. Newer depictions of the Rebels are much more focused on “bring back wholesome democracy” and the Resistance in particular is basically just DEI casting to the umpteenth degree. This is, of course, juxtaposed with the First Order which triples down on the Third Reich imagery you can see in the Empire.
Of course, Star Wars has always made it glaringly obvious who the bad guys were, but rarely did they ever tie it in to politics, at least not this explicitly (and frankly lazily). As Wolliver points out, Star Wars has really always been about the individuals more than the factions and ideologies and all that. Emperor Palpatine is a shriveled and disfigured old man because he is intrinsically evil. He’s not evil because he is part of the Empire, in fact it’s quite the opposite. The Empire is evil because it comes from Palpatine.
But of course we cannot escape the ramifications of 20th century political conflict, and Hitler is Literally Satan, so all bad guys ever have to be Literally Hitler. I might be a little more forgiving about the woke stuff if it was at least more original and creative.
Also all the people who constantly harp on the fact that the Original Trilogy was a critique of America during the Vietnam War are sort of retarded. First of all, Lucas has said that the political inspirations of Star Wars are ancillary to the mythological inspirations, which is primarily what the franchise is about. Second, there are like no parallels between the two to begin with. If it was actually like the Vietnam War, the Empire would have curbstomped the Rebels in every conflict. The Death Stars would have never been destroyed, and the Rebels would have only won by stoking anti-war sentiments within the Empire and its allies. Except the conflict in the Original Trilogy is called the Galactic Civil War and the Rebels are not their own distinct nation, nor does the Empire actually have allies since it covers the entire known galaxy. The Rebels are plucky guerilla fighters who fight within the Empire’s territory. And of course, this is to say nothing of the proxy war angle of the Vietnam War, which has even less in common with the Original Trilogy. So no, stupid libtard, Star Wars is not THAT political.
Something For Everyone
As I’ve mentioned before, Star Wars may very well be the most expansive universe out there. It has a wealth of material written by countless authors. While Star Wars, as a franchise, falls under the Science Fantasy genre its many constituent works do not. There are plenty of authors who lean more into the Sci-Fi angle while others lean more towards the Fantasy angle. Star Wars is a franchise in which you can read dozens and dozens of stories about ancient mystic warriors wielding actual swords and using rituals and enchanted artifacts to fight in massive campaigns against alchemical monstrosities. Star Wars is also a franchise in which you can read dozens and dozens of stories of hardened military veterans lobbing grenades at each other from the safety of their trenches (Battlefront: Twilight Company), or stories of a genius military officer masterminding a devastatingly brilliant campaign against his enemies, both actual and political (the Thrawn books).
Beyond even those two broad categories, there are a number of other genres which pop up quite often. There are, for example, a number of horror stories in Star Wars ranging from Goosebumps style novellas like the Galaxy of Fear books to the zombie story/body horror style of Death Troopers and its prequel novel Red Harvest. There are political thrillers, mystery novels, in-universe sourcebooks and encyclopedias, and all manner of other genres.
There are a LOT of books that you can read where not even one Force User will ever pop up throughout the course of the entire book. And of course others focus entirely around the conflict between a group of Force Users. There are books which focus heavily on one particular faction, often not even one of the major ones. There are plenty of books written from the perspective of some small time crime syndicate or local government or just an independent agent.
And that’s just the books. Star Wars has touched basically every medium possible, from TTRPGs, video games, comics, novels/novellas, and the more mainstream TV shows and movies. And of course, each of these mediums has dozens of different takes and settings. Video games, for example, may be shooters, open world RPGs, MMO RPGs, mobile games, etc.
So most of the time if someone is trying to write off Star Wars as cookie cutter or contrived or whatever it usually means that they just don’t know how to read.
Soy Wars
I’m not really even going to try to defend the rampant consoomerism of Star Wars. I will say that it became much worse under Disney. There were only a handful of Star Wars Funko Pops prior to Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, and it was basically just the main cast of the Original Trilogy.
Today you have “Star Wars fans” who have never read more than maybe a half dozen Star Wars books/comics but own hundreds or even thousands of dollars of Star Wars merchandise. Star Wars isn’t like Warhammer where you actually have to buy figurines to participate in the franchise. All Star Wars merchandise is literally just there to consoom. I think, more than anything else, this is really just a product of the Nerd-Geek War, which Sectionalism Archive has already covered in depth:
As it relates here though, you could consider me a Star Wars nerd since I own like 50 Star Wars books and have read at least twice that. Conversely, the guy with a “Star Wars room” in his house is a Geek, because he doesn’t really care that much about actually being into Star Wars so much as he does looking like he is. For me, I actually hate Star Wars merchandise. I think it is grifty and I have never bought any for myself. When family buys me that sort of thing as a gift from Christmas or my Birthday, I just politely accept it and then stick it somewhere that nobody will ever see it. Meanwhile these Geek types might buy the entire Legacy of the Force novel series because “it will look awesome on my shelf, in my STAR WARS ROOM!!!” I really hate these sorts of people.
Recommendations
So what do I recommend you all look in to if you want to see the non-pozzed side of Star Wars? Well first of all, as mentioned previously, Canon Star Wars still has some good to it, just more libtard pozz than Legends did.
I’ve also linked a number of books/series throughout this post and prior ones which I have read and can recommend as good. Basically any time I mention a book here by name, it is a hyperlink to the Wookipedia page so you can check it out and see if it interests you.
So instead of trying to cover all the possible recommendations I could make, and retreading a lot of ground in the process, I’ll just open up the comments for anyone interested. Just give me a brief run down of what you think would be cool to see and I will reply with the name/link to what I can recommend. That being said, I’ve never really been in to the TTRPG scene so I can’t really speak to that beyond telling you that they exist and take place in so and so era on so and so planet.
If you are completely new to Star Wars though, I’ll give you the same list I give to everyone looking for the quintessentials of Star Wars:
The Thrawn Trilogy (Legends)- One of the earliest books in the Star Wars universe. Most content set after RoTJ pays homage to this series in some way. I would also recommend all of the Thrawn books beyond just this trilogy (including the Canon ones), but this trilogy is what started it all so it has the most historical significance, so to speak.
Dark Empire (Legends)- The original story of Palpatine’s resurrection. Also one of the earliest Star Wars works, which people also pay homage to. Also one of the first comics in Star Wars aside from the mainline series.
Crimson Empire (Legends)- Direct sequel to Dark Empire, which follows a Red Imperial Guard. It’s really just awesome to read.
Tales of the Jedi (Legends)- The starting point for the entire “Old Republic” era of Star Wars.
Darth Bane Trilogy (Legends)- Really just peak Star Wars. It’s a good read and covers one of the most significant components of Star Wars’ mythos.
Legacy of the Force (Legends)- The go-to series for post-RoTJ content.
X-Wing books (Legends)- The real starting point for post-RoTJ content.
Legacy (Legends)- Interesting comic series which takes place in 130 ABY or later. Effectively the ending to the Legends universe, since it was the latest media in the timeline upon Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm.
NJO>LotF. I hate troy denning!!!
So there are no legends that take place in the far future after the original trilogy?