Research – Page 9 – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Galactic Style Guide – Shirts I

Welcome back to the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more Galaxy-accurate ‘outer persona’! It should be pointed out that it’s often very difficult to determine a character’s base layer, due to layering being such a key part of the galactic aesthetic. I was excited at first to dig through the character portraits in the New Essential Guide to Characters, but quickly ran into this issue. Because I want to include as many examples as possible, our deep dive into upper-body garments will have to be a multi-part entry; I’ve done my best to follow the directions of the original concept:

“[John Mollo] broke down the characters into general costume themes: peasant costumes (Russo-Japanese); Western/U.S. cavalry/motorcycle looks; Nazi-style uniforms/armor/cloaks; space technology-type outfits; ladies’ mock-medieval/Tarzan attire; semi-monsters with armor; and full monsters.” (Star Wars Costumes – The Original Trilogy, 16).

We’ll begin with the so-called Russian/Japanese ‘peasant’ style. Note that these are pretty much all from Tatooine.

Tops-Peasant — Shmi and Anakin Skywalker, Chokk; Owen Lars (22/19 BBY), ‘GalenErso’; Camie, ‘Fixer’, Owen Lars & Luke Skywalker (0BBY); Wioslea, Wuher, Lirin Car’n, Takeel/Zutton, Luke Skywalker (3 ABY), Winter Celchu (*Scoundrels*), Noghri (*Jedi Academy*)

Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Shirts I”

First Thoughts on ‘Star Wars Squadrons’

Earlier this week, YouTube’s algorithm pushed the first trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: Squadrons game onto my homepage. I have neither a console nor a good enough PC to ever be able to play this game, but as a player of the classic LucasArts flight sims, I took a look, and as an EU-loyal Star Wars ‘reenactor’, wanted to share my thoughts as they relate to our pursuit of the ‘costume arts’ and authentic living-history in the galactic setting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04mFcoCLmVA
First off, I really like that we are seeing a return to flight combat games. I mostly missed out on X-Wing Alliance back in the 90s, so I got it working last year, and really dug it – it’s a great primary source for living history research, so I highly recommend tracking it down on Steam or GOG. It’s cool to see that it looks like Squadrons might include the power management system for speed/shields/lasers, like in the old games. Since this is primarily a console title, I’m sure they won’t be able to go as in-depth like the old X-Wing games—which almost required a full keyboard to play—but anything is better than a simplified, Rogue Squadron-style arcade game.
With that said, I do have a few thoughts/grumbles:
Continue reading “First Thoughts on ‘Star Wars Squadrons’”

Galactic Style Guide – Comm badges

Welcome back to the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we take a close look at the elements that make up the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ to help you build a more accurate ‘outer persona’!
In this installment, we’re focusing on the little doodads that everyone seems to have on their vests and jackets nowadays. Official sources can’t agree on what they are—the Complete Visual Dictionary refers to them as a ‘rank plaque’, ‘rank insignia’, ‘communications badge’, or ‘command insignia’, while I believe the RougeOne reference guide calls them ‘personal transponders’, so who knows? Despite not appearing in the original Star Wars ’77, these devices have gained in popularity (especially among the ‘Batuu-bounding’ crowd) after frequent inclusion in many post-Disney materials. Since 9 times out of 10 they’re worn by Rebel Alliance characters, we didn’t see Any in the Prequel era (I could be wrong, though; leave a comment below if you know otherwise!)

Only two styles of badge are seen in Episode V. These use easily-castable or vacuformable shapes and components with brightly colored buttons. The first (we’ll call it Hoth #1) is worn by our three lead characters and the hangar technicians, suggesting they are transponders and not related to rank.

Hoth #1: worn around Echo Base by Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, and hangar technicians

Galactic Style Guide – Belts of the Galaxy

Welcome to the first installment of the Galactic Style Guide, a monthly series in which I will be collecting and curating many visual examples of a single type of in-universe item. Why am I doing this, you ask? Besides having a lot of time on my hands in quarantine, too often when we think of ‘Star Wars’, we limit ourselves to thinking only of the main cast of characters, with secondary or background characters falling by the wayside. In this series, I hope to turn an analytical eye towards the incredible variety that collectively creates the larger ‘galactic aesthetic’. To my knowledge, this sort of project has never been done before, and I suspect will likely prove very useful to those of you heading (once they reopen, post-pandemic) to Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge parks, which are becoming very accommodating of GFFA-style outfits (provided they don’t stray too close to those of main characters). By shining a spotlight on previously-overlooked designs, I hope OC cosplayers and potential ‘Batuu bounders’ will see that there are many more options for Star Wars style beyond copying Han, Luke, Leia, Lando, etc.
With that out of the way, for our first installment, we’re looking at BELTS. Let’s get started!

Rectangular plates:Ben Kenobi, Shaak Ti (22 BBY); Luke Skywalker, ‘Galen Erso’; Dannik Jerriko

Artifact ID: Greef Karga’s cup

Thus far I haven’t posted anything related to The Mandalorian, but this one was “all too easy”.
copper-india Too often, Star Wars prop collectors fixate on weapons, armor, and vehicles. But we—who are engaged in Star Wars living history—know there’s more to life in the Galaxy Far, Far Away than fighting: there’s also…DRINKING! Continue reading “Artifact ID: Greef Karga’s cup”

First thoughts on ‘The High Republic’

HR0 While I try to avoid association with the post-Disney canon, I feel like the recent announcement of the-project-formerly-known-as-Luminous could prove very intriguing, and I wanted to share my observations and initial thoughts as they relate to our pursuit of the ‘costume arts’ and authentic reenacting in the Star Wars setting. As has been mentioned by many, the idea of a multimedia publishing campaign is nothing new for Star Wars; it’s somewhat reminiscent of the ‘movie without a movie’ approach of the Shadows of the Empire project in the mid-Nineties (games, a comic miniseries, toys, novel, soundtrack). But while SotE filled in the gap between 3-4ABY, the High Republic has a much bigger sandbox to play in… Continue reading “First thoughts on ‘The High Republic’”

An authentic Medpac at long last!

In the spirit of my New Year, New Gear tradition, I recently finished up an essential piece of my in-universe survival/hiking kit. Some 20 months ago, I made a discovery – I noticed that the health powerups in Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy were essentially the same design as one from an early SWRPG sourcebook:

a bit of digging turned up similar designs in the Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology and the more recent SWRPG Revised Core Rulebook (2002):

As my backpack’s current first aid kit has been stashed in a repurposed extension cord waterproof safety box, I’ve been thinking about what I could use as a container for my medical supplies that would better fit the in-universe aesthetic. Continue reading “An authentic Medpac at long last!”

Image Analysis: Mon Calamari outfitter

It’s been awhile since our last Image Analysis, and we’re looking again at the work of Langdon Foss, who consistently infuses his images with plenty of details that sell the galactic setting, and therefore are ripe for teasing out insights!

gcg84 — This image published in SWRPG Galactic Campaign Guide p84.

Although this picture is chock-full of details, there’s one in particular that I will focus on later, as it has the most potential for real-world usage. Continue reading “Image Analysis: Mon Calamari outfitter”

Boba Fett’s survival knife: Accuracy vs. Authenticity

bobaknifeSWVD
I’ve been thinking about this item a lot recently, as a possible easy project to bang out with the drill press and benchgrinder some weekend. We don’t have many references to non-vibro knives in the Star Wars galaxy, and its identification as a “survival” knife lends itself easily to my purposes of wilderness adventure and interpretation. With a beefy 5 or 6 mm spine, I can easily see it being perfect for batoning firewood and other tasks around camp (in GFFA style, of course).
The problem is, there are two versions of Boba Fett’s ‘survival knife’ out there – so which one is ‘right’? Continue reading “Boba Fett’s survival knife: Accuracy vs. Authenticity”

Artifact ID: Galen Erso water test kit

Galen-Erso-11182016 — (Credit for successful identification of this prop goes to Replica Prop Forum member ‘Saranac’.)

This ‘water tester’—which I guess fits in with the Erso character’s disguise as a ‘dirt farmer’?—is comprised simply of two items, one of which we have seen already! Continue reading “Artifact ID: Galen Erso water test kit”