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

Improve your Mandalorian cosplay with one easy trick!

Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and once I notice a trend, it starts to bug me and becomes hard to unsee. Each week, I see scores of ‘Custom Mandalorian’ costumes, and like the diehard Disney fans who hide an obligatory ‘hidden Mickey’ in their props, whenever I see a Mando come across my feed, I like to guess how quickly this standard cockeyed, off-kilter, cracked-skull Mythosaur will show up: “Is it hiding in the first photo? Second photo? Third photo?”

A kit which turns out to be sans mythosaur, on the other hand, is always a pleasant, refreshing surprise! (One of the things I really appreciated in The Mandalorian was that—so far as I can tell—none of the non-Boba Fett character designs included this stock symbol.)

Galactic Style Guide – Hats II

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! This month we’re continuing our survey of galactic headgear.

Conical ‘coolie’ hats might not be politically correct, but K’hkruk’s hat is still freaking sweet. The Mos Espa example appears to be a little more substantial (or maybe it’s just more broken-in) than the standard Asian rice hat, and looks tightly woven. Would probably be perfect sunshade on Tatooine (Ki-Adi Mundi wears his while tracking down Sharad Hett), and if paired with a fully GFFA-style outfit, you might be able to wear one without eliciting cries of “Cultural Appropriation!” As we see, this style was commonplace among the civilians of Nadiem during the Clone Wars (Hide in Plain Sight).

As I’ve found in my other ‘fictional anthropology’ pursuits, to make sure your audience knows you’re dealing with a fantastical, non-modern-Earth setting, throw in some Tall Hats…it works in BONE and Dinotopia, and the GFFA is no different!:

Back to Basics-What and Why?

While I started this blog back in 2017, I spent the first few weeks detailing the basic ideas behind the ‘Advanced Costumed Arts’ of reenacting and living history. Over the intervening three+ years this blog has been plugging away merrily, and those early posts—while still collected at the ^FIRST STEPS page^—are effectively buried for those who might find their way here and don’t want to endlessly scroll or use the search bar or Categories >>. Therefore, I wanted to put together a miniseries to lay out the underlying foundations for what it is we aspire to do here, why we do living history specifically, and how You can do it too!

WHAT are reenacting and living history?
(For a short but very complete general introduction to these activities, I recommend downloading F.L. Watkins’ The Reenactor’s Encyclopedia, from which I’ll be quoting here and there.) At their most basic, both reenacting and living history are activities in which participants seek to learn about and experience life in a non-contemporary time period. These activities usually involve the participant assembling a ‘kit’ (what you’ll often see referred to here as ‘the outer persona’) of “possessions…that might have been owned by his impression”; this should start with clothing, and then might extend to include tools, food, camp gear, sundries, and weapons.

what do reenacting and living history look like?

Galactic Style Guide – Hats I

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! For this month’s installment, we’re taking things from the top and talking Hats!
Our main cast of characters tend to go hatless, but for secondary and background characters, hats are very commonplace. While certain styles tend to work better with certain settings, covering your head in some way is a great way to remind your audience that you are portraying an inhabitant of the Galaxy Far Far Away.
When I put a call out to the SWLH facebook group for style suggestions, the immediate first response was ‘Caps with flaps!’. As this type of hat is readily available as military surplus, such hats are a no-brainer way to make yourself quickly blend into the galactic populace:

Jedi Temple guards (3653 BBY), Grotto Werribee, Donovian ‘rainman’, tramper, Suu Lawquane concept; Pfilbee Jhorn, Alliance cold-weather troopers, Echo Base hangar technicians, Benedict Vidkun.

It’s worth pointing out that the hats of the Hoth hangar techs are essentially a WW2 US Navy deck hat, so if you’re handy with a sewing machine, stick around at the end for a free pattern.

On the subject of bounty hunting ‘trophies’

As I’ve talked about a few times before, when reenacting any setting (historic or fictional) one of the best ways to add depth to an impression is by including small details or items of ‘pocket trash’! One of the ideas I frequently see discussed in online Star Wars cosplay circles is the idea of ‘hunting trophies’, and a recent thread made me realize I definitely have some thoughts on the subject!

Whether it’s bones and claws from critters, crystals from Jedi lightsabers, battle droid fingers, or actual lightsabers, the notion that a bounty hunter or mercenary character should have a collection of tchotchkes taken from past kills dangling from their belt, blaster, or backpack is one of those trends that the costuming community has really latched onto. However, I submit that this type of decoration is A) actually an impediment to such work, and B) a fan reenactorism not seen in either primary or secondary sources. Be sure to stick around til the end for some ideas on how to more authentically portray these kinds of character in true ‘living history’ style!

Searching for AgriCorps style

It’s somehow been several (4.5?!) years since first I first ventured forth to do some first-person galactic interpretation, and as you would expect in a hobby geared towards constant tinkering and improvement, I’ve made plenty of changes to that impression since then. In the coming months, I plan to roll out some ‘complete kit’ breakdowns for my various Star Wars living-history personas. In the case of my ex-Agricultural Corps Jedi impression, I realized that a kit breakdown wouldn’t be the right place for fully detailing the research that went into said impression…especially since I portray him long after the Corps has been dissolved!
What’s more, a recent addition to our community in the SWLH facebook group expressed great interest in pursuing an AgriCorps impression, so I wanted to use this post and lay out the few bits of information I’ve been able to dig up–not only for their benefit, but for anyone else who might be thinking about such a persona. If you have an interest in gardening, botany, biology, geology, or environmental science and want to apply it to the Galaxy Far Far Away, consider the AgriCorps!

Compared to the larger Order as a whole, our sample size of analyzable visual examples for the Service Corps (and AgriCorps specifically) is a miniscule—only nine.

This generic Mohawk’d fellow comes from the Power of the Jedi Sourcebook (2002), while The Jedi Path (circa 115 BBY) gives us six more individuals, plus a generic Service Corps member:

Galactic Style Guide – Shoulders II

Happy Boxing Day, and welcome back to the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! For our final installment of 2020, we’re wrapping up our look at the archetypal exotic space-fantasy ‘wide-shouldered’ look.

We’ll begin by teasing out some examples of armor-based wide shoulders from the earlier phases of galactic history (pre-1000 BBY):

shoulders-armor-Ancient — Naga Sadow, Freedon Nadd, Exar Kun Ulic Quel-Droma, Arca Jeth, Gav Daragon; Vitiate, Arcann, Darth Vindican Satele Shan, Darth Malgus; Lord Hoth, Valentyne Farfalla, Army of Light

I don’t have a ton of interest in (or access to) much material from this period, so it’s totally possible I’ve overlooked some key figure. Is there anyone I’ve missed? Please let me know!
As we’ll see, more modern characters from the Clone Wars all the way into the Legacy era have also worn armor that widens the upper body: Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Shoulders II”

Thoughts on ‘The Believer’

Welcome back to my commentary series on Season 2 of The Mandalorian; for this installment we’re breaking down Chapter 15 ‘The Believer’. Aside from the first episode, I haven’t been too especially fond of any of this season’s installments; after the on-rails themepark ride of ‘The Siege’, the poor direction of ‘The Jedi’, and the mindless action of ‘The Tragedy’, I had low hopes for the next episode. As we will see, having lowered expectations meant I was able to be pleasantly surprised.

The episode opens with a scruffy-looking Mayfeld on a New Republic prison work detail, where he’s busting up wrecked TIEs. Right off the bat, I’m onboard, because while Star Wars might refer to prisons from time to time, we almost never get to actually see people in prison, much less doing menial labor – it’s a nice bit of worldbuilding. (Off the top of my head, all I can think of is the Jedi Knight novella which saw Alphonso Obata incarcerated by the NR on Milagro, jackhammering a city glassed by orbital bombardment).

In this opening we see Boba has repainted his armor, and it looks…Not At All Star Wars-y. While one could easily make the argument that ‘Everything was new once’, seeing him with a refreshed paintjob and how weird it looks really underlines how key the ‘Used Universe’ look is to the Galaxy Far Far Away. If you, dear reader, have just finished assembling and painting your own Star Wars kit, don’t stop now! It may feel wrong to intentionally ‘mess up’ something you’ve spent a lot of time and effort on, but if you really want to do right by the aesthetic, you need to bite the bullet and do some weathering and aging to really sell the look.

Also, is this the first time we’ve seen a light-up identification doodad? I can guess what all the fancy propmakers and Batuu-bounders will be upgrading to this winter…

Galactic Style Guide – Shoulders I

Welcome back to the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to create a more authentic ‘outer persona’!
Ever since the days of Ming the Merciless, sci-fi designers have been using a wide-shouldered silhouette to let the audience know a setting is exotic or non-Earthy, and Star Wars has been no different. While I’ve found no specific mention of this design point in comments from costume designer John Mollo, his original designs for ‘girl Luke Starkiller’ show a mantled hood that may have planted the seed that eventually became this prevalent costume element:
DIGITAL CAMERA It’s worth pointing out that even though the very first onscreen SW character (C-3PO) could be said to display a form of this style, it really didn’t kick into full gear until Return of the Jedi, and by the time the Prequels rolled around, giant collars, mantles, and shoulder pads were in full force!

shoulders Ep1 Naboo — **Wide shoulders on pre-Clone Wars Naboo:** Amidala, Sabe; NSF Palace guards, Sio Bibble, Phylo Gandish; Unidentified Theed civilian, unidentified advisor, Hugo Eckener, Horace Vacil, TC-14; civilian prisoners. Note that the entire Naboo Royal Advisory Council and Theed nobles dress pretty much alike.

Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Shoulders I”

In defense of ‘close enough’

Let’s talk about fish-lady sweaters for a second.
When a Mon Calamari showed up in The Mandalorian Chapter 11 wearing an off-the-rack fisherman’s sweater, the community lost no time in memeifying it before hopping on Amazon to snatch up one or two for themselves. I find it encouraging that people are interested in costuming a common civilian for once (instead of the rare-in-universe but over-represented-in-cosplay Jedi/Sith/Mando/bounty hunter ‘player classes’)…but if I was looking to put together a GFFA dockworker impression, I definitely wouldn’t go out and buy the exact onscreen sweater—and not just because they’re probably now very scarce! Here’s why.