Step 1 – Overcome the Paradigm

Welcome to the First Steps series! Here at the threshold, before you can “take your first step into a larger world”, you must gather your courage and first Take the Leap to decide to pursue this hobby/sport.
When it comes to doing ‘living history’ in the GFFA setting, this is possibly the biggest and hardest hurdle to overcome, for a couple of reasons. The first obstacle is that the ‘fan’ paradigm doesn’t currently accommodate these activities. What do I mean by that?

There are a lot of Star Wars fans out there, but like any society, they’re probably a bellcurve:

At the bottom, there are a few folks with zero cultural osmosis (or who’ve been living under a rock for the last 40 years) who might know there’s this thing called Star Wars out there, but they’re pretty sure Dark Vader is from Star Trek (this segment may include children not-yet-introduced).
In the main segment we have the casual fans who know the main characters, catch new films while they’re in theaters, and watch the trilogies when they’re marathoning on cable. At the upper end, you have the devoted fans: they own the movies on Blu-Ray, see new releases on opening day, and have some posters or toys displayed at home. They may be familiar (to varying degrees) with the Expanded Universe material.
The top 25% are the hardcore fans—these are the folks who make up the membership of the 501^st or the Rebel Legion. They wear Death Star socks and have the Imperial March as their ringtone (there’s often a lot of conspicuous consumption involved). They make costumes, attend conventions, cosplay, and maybe have a Star Wars display shelf or room in their house.

Unfortunately, under the current ‘Star Wars fan’ paradigm, that’s about as far as it goes: the accepted way to demonstrate your love for a property is to buy (or, these days, 3D print) a bunch of stuff and display it prominently at home, at your desk at work, or on your chosen social-media profile.
Because of the underlying bias that views pop culture as purely for entertainment, it seems no one has thought of the GFFA as a legitimate setting for ‘reenacting’ or ‘living history’ (using a historical period for education). Under the current fan paradigm, if you want to immerse yourself in this setting, you just watch the movies again, or play a video game again, and use your imagination. Maaaaybe you wear a costume to a convention and wander around while being photographed, play a tabletop RPG, or maybe search out a LARP…which too often are combat-focused. Nowadays, there are a few more options for immersive activities since the opening of the Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge parks and Galactic Starcruiser hotel, but Batuu is still little more than a themed shopping mall and the hotel experience is behind a paywall for many folks.

The thing is, when it comes to reenacting any setting, there’s always more to it than shopping or combat alone (even in a setting like Star Wars). More often than not, ‘doing living history’ (pick any period that folks have reenacted: Paleo, Classical, Medieval, ECW, Colonial, F&I, AWI, Mountain Man/Fur trade, ACW, Old West, WWI, WWII, etc) usually winds up looking like Camping. All that differs are the materials and degree of comfort involved. Honestly, modern ultralight camping gear is pretty much science fiction already, so why not have some fun with it?
What percentage of Star Wars fans like to go camping? What percentage of them would want to try camping in a Star Wars style? I don’t know, but probably enough that I’m surprised no one’s tried it yet!

A related reason getting started may be difficult is due to the prejudice often seen in online reenacting venues. A group like facebook’s Living History~Show Your Impressions—which has around 19,000 members—exists for users to show off their work, yet has a strict ‘No Fantasy!’ policy, which is quite frustrating to those who have high-quality, authentic-material, field-tested, fully-researched, defensible impressions…that just happen to come from sub-created settings that never strictly happened. I can understand wanting to keep progressive reenacting groups at a level of quality beyond ‘bathrobe Jedi’, but how can we address this prejudice if no one ever sees what legitimate fictional living history looks like?

Are YOU up to the challenge?

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