Finding Your Place in the Galaxy

I was recently sent this video of the ‘Mando march’ parade held at Star Wars Celebration ’17. Since social gatherings are now few and far between in these days of COVID, I wanted to share it with you here, not only as a visual aid for my points in this essay, but also just for a vicarious dose (albeit virtual) of the con experience for which many are currently in withdrawal.
After watching, I had two (okay, three) reactions:

1) Man, the Mando costuming community is bloody Inclusive. There are folks of ALL ages, abilities, body types, and (I’m guessing, since they’re all helmeted) races, genders, and sexual orientations on display in that parade, all with their love of all things Klingon Mandalorian proudly on display. Good on them! With that said, though…
2) I have a hard time believing that some of these folks could make it up their starship’s boarding ramp without getting winded, let alone tracking down wanted criminals. Partially this is due to…
3) Wow, would you look at the sheer amount of stuff that many of these Mandos have hanging off their person?—dangling, rattling trinkets, ‘trophies’, gewgaws, and tchotchkes, all of which combine to give the impression not of an efficient high-speed, low-drag operator, but rather something closer to ‘ren faire gypsy’.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by my other fictional-living-history setting (Third Age Middle-earth), where we have created rigorous standards and encourage our members “to pursue portraying peoples which closely fit their own personal capabilities”. I feel it’s important that if you want to do this thing right, choosing a living-history persona shouldn’t be done on a whim; instead of trying to force yourself into a box that’s not a good fit (going with one’s first idea, such as choosing one of the over-represented ‘player classes’), it requires taking some serious stock of what you are capable of doing and what you’re comfortable doing.
Historic reenactors run into this issue all the time; for example, the average soldier in the American Civil War was aged 18 to 29, but a lot of the reenactors you see at events are middle-aged guys in their 40s or 50s (or older), and the same is true of other reenacted periods. There’s room for everybody in this hobby, but that doesn’t mean that every role is right for every person.
Personally, I’m built like a nerdy scarecrow, so it would be hard for me to portray some kind of ‘heavy’ infantry or trooper believably…but I can be a scout or an academic-turned-partizan no problem.

As an great example of the importance of choosing a persona that works for you, let’s take a look at this entry in Townsends’ Getting Started series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gxBzLVyng8
Kevin Carter may be a fella on the larger side, but that doesn’t stop him from doing an incredible job in his first-person interpretation of Silas the itinerant Irish knife-sharpener. One of the reasons this persona works so well—in addition to his commitment to details like an accent—is he hasn’t tried to force himself into a persona that would be less believable: a combat-oriented woodsrunner might strain credulity, but a more sedentary knife-sharpening tradesman is totally believable.

And, hey, I get it: your casual Star Wars costumer just wants to put on the Boba Fett helmet or pose with their glowstick to feel cool or badass and live their hero fantasy, and that’s fine. But we’re talking Living History, and everybody can’t be The Special.
However, this is not to say that everybody who wants to can’t be a Mandalorian…it’s to say that there’s room in the Mandalorian culture for folks to be more than just another Boba Fett. Surely there must be Mandos who have ‘aged out’ of the bounty hunting or mercenary game, put on a few pounds, and have settled down on some backwater to run a blaster repair gunsmithing business, and tell hunting tales about the glory days to the locals who hang around the shop. Where’s the guy portraying him?, because that’s a believable impression, and one that makes the galaxy richer and more immersive.

Do you have an idea for an unconventional, realistic persona? Drop a comment below, or join the conversation in the SWLH facebook group!

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