common – Page 11 – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Building the Inner Persona: Galactic Idioms

As we’ve touched on before, one of the last stages (in Townsends’ model) of putting together a living history impression is the ongoing process of building the ‘inner persona’. This means going beyond the superficial ‘outer persona’ (one’s clothes and gear), and working to inhabit the mental headspace of your chosen individual – for our purposes, a citizen of the Galaxy Far, Far Away. While this level of detail is probably not necessary if you just want to be a GFFA reenactor, if you’re interested in using your impression as an historic interpreter—especially a first-person one—it can be very helpful to have at least a few in-universe sayings stashed away in your mental ‘word-hoard’. We may take such phrases for granted in our everyday life, but they can really help sell the illusion when speaking in-character!
We’ll begin with variations on familiar phrases from Earth.

for “bull in a china shop”: “A nerf in an antiquities bazaar” (I, Jedi, Chapter 6) Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? 😉

for “making a mountain out of a molehill: “making meters out of microns” (X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, Ch4)

Continue reading “Building the Inner Persona: Galactic Idioms”

Galactic Style Guide – Shirts II

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide! We’ll begin with a look at the very first style of shirt seen on-screen in a Star Wars film. This is essentially the same shirt as the double-breasted ‘Custer-style’ we looked at last time, only worn with both layers done up (usually). While I believe it is properly known as a ‘placket’ shirt, this type is commonly referred to in the costuming community as a ‘bib’ shirt. In order to follow Lucas’s ‘no fastenings’ rule, such shirts must be closed via snaps, hidden buttons, or Velcro – or else allowed to fall open and reveal a contrasting inner lining.

Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Shirts II”

Galactic whittling – shaak

After thinking about other possible pieces of pocket trash, I eventually decided that my partizan and archeologist personas could use a little memento of home. Enter the noble shaak, Naboo’s tick-like ‘space cow’ (meant to be designed as a sheep analogue).

shaakR20200522_125034 Continue reading “Galactic whittling – shaak”

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

More Galactic Whittling – V35 landspeeder

Because research and living history are never complete (one’s persona can always be improved), as part of my continuing efforts in refinement, I am always on the lookout for more goodies to put in my pockets to flesh out or embellish my personas, and as I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of whittling. It’s easy to pick up, requires a little brainpower but is still relaxing in the moment, and the end results–like this V-35 landspeeder–are lots of fun to show off. Why did I decide to whittle this vehicle specifically? Continue reading “More Galactic Whittling – V35 landspeeder”

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’”