After finishing the retool of my DH-17, I realized that I needed a way to carry the blaster on my person during workshops or presentations (because it’s part of a kit instead of a costume prop, I need be able to do more than stand around, look pretty, and get photographed—I need my hands when I’m teaching!) Continue reading “Experimental Archeology: Rebel style!”
Category: Rebel
Building the Rebel Persona: 5.2 – Blaster rifle
Once I had made enough progress on the research front to begin crafting the ‘outer persona’ for a Rebel impression, and had made plans to debut ‘Citizen Olis’ at a summer camp presentation on wilderness survival, I knew I’d need some kind of blaster. While I talk with my hands and demonstrate a fair amount during workshops, it’s still nice to have a blaster at your hip or on a sling, etc., as it underlines the always-armed attitude of a partisan guerilla: Continue reading “Building the Rebel Persona: 5.2 – Blaster rifle”
Building the Rebel Persona: 5.1 – Helmet
As I said in the previous Hard Kit overview, I opted to give ‘Citizen Olis’ a little armor in the form of a Rebel ‘swoop’ helmet.
“Rebel soldiers wear very little protective armor, typically a helmet at most, though some soldiers wear chest and abdomen plates. Alliance tacticians believe that complete freedom of movement is more useful than the dubious protection provided by armor—which rarely stops a blaster bolt anyway.” West End Games: Rebel Alliance Sourcebook p.99)
As my first serious foray into the world of Pepakura (cardstock + resin), while it’s not perfect, I am extremely pleased with how it turned out! (While researching construction techniques, I came across one fan’s attempt at making the helmet using the same files as I did…I was determined to have the final product come out better than his—a rather low bar—but I am still quite surprised how nice mine looks in the end).
The road from computer file to three-dimensional helmet, however, was long and winding. Continue reading “Building the Rebel Persona: 5.1 – Helmet”
Building the Rebel Persona – 5: Hard Kit
#1 Helmet:
This is my take on a standard Rebel ‘swoop’ helmet as featured in Episode IV, but which has been commonly depicted in various planetside conflicts in plenty of secondary materials. It is made using the Pepakura technique (cardstock hardened with fiberglass resin and Bondo putty).
(Full, detailed account of construction found here).
Naturally, we have zero hard references to specific gear that local Rebel cells received from Alliance Ordnance and Supply, so I don’t know how appropriate the swoop helmet is for my context—versus something like the ‘Endor donut’ helmet. My main issue with the swoop helmet is that the light color clearly stands out in outdoor settings (although it’s still frequently shown worn in such settings), but I’m hesitant about painting it a light brown or something, which might deviate a bit too much from the accepted visual norm of what we’re used to seeing. Continue reading “Building the Rebel Persona – 5: Hard Kit”
Building the Sulon Rebel – 4: Soft kit
What follows is a breakdown of the practical kit I eventually assembled for a Rebel ‘partizan’ persona, based on Sulon around 4-5 years ABY.
I. Soft Kit:
When starting to plan out what clothes a Rebel partisan on Sulon would wear, I didn’t have a lot of reference material to build from; the three Dark Forces novellas are each illustrated by three different artists with wildly different styles, and as typical Star Wars media, tend not to focus on the mundane minutiae of everyday citizens.
This gave me a certain amount of freedom, but I still wanted to keep things fairly conservative while starting out (a wise approach to take while reenacting in general!) Continue reading “Building the Sulon Rebel – 4: Soft kit”
Developing the Rebel Persona – 3: Naming
When creating a new living history persona, I find that using a name similar to my own given name is a great way to strengthen my connection to the persona. In my main Middle-earth impression, I use the Gothic translation of my name, which isn’t too far off. While there are plenty of ‘Earth names’ present in the GFFA, I felt that mine probably wouldn’t be a good fit; in which case, I was stuck until I could come up with an appropriate in-universe name.
While there are a ton of ‘Star Wars Name Generators’ out there, most of them are pretty arbitrary, and usually come up with a list of names that uncreatively follow the ‘Obi-Wan’ pattern. They also never take cultural naming conventions into account—Rodian names are distinct from Twi’leks, who are distinct from Hutts, who are distinct from Corellian Humans, who are different from Naboo humans, who are…you get the point. Continue reading “Developing the Rebel Persona – 3: Naming”
Developing the Rebel Persona – 2: Homeworld
When building a persona from scratch, a few basic questions must be answered before getting too far ahead of oneself:
WHO would this be?: Some sort of generic partisan Rebel from a local Sector Force.
WHEN were they be?: Galactic Civil War period—which, properly speaking, limits us to the 2BBY-5ABY period.
WHERE did they live or come from?: ?????
This last one had me stumped—I may have had a whole galaxy to pick from, but I naturally wanted a degree of verisimilitude in my choice. I’m from (and most likely to operate in) a temperate, deciduous biome, so I knew I wouldn’t be picking a desert or ice planet, but unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of planets in the GFFA that resemble eastern North America! Continue reading “Developing the Rebel Persona – 2: Homeworld”
Developing the Rebel Persona – 1: Groundwork
After getting my AgriCorps Jedi impression mostly ironed out last year, I started kicking around the idea of picking up a second persona, something Rebel Alliance-related during the Galactic Civil War period (because that’s Where It’s At, of course!). Eventually, after some quality research time and a bit of creative synthesis, I came up with something that I think works just fine. Continue reading “Developing the Rebel Persona – 1: Groundwork”
Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 