Galactic Civil War – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Why don’t we have a starfighter mobile game yet?

While this post is perhaps outside the scope of this blog’s usual meat&potatoes of galactic reenacting research and costume crafting, I still think it’s a worthwhile concept that I think many of you will appreciate, and which I hope gains traction! I trust that my aviation historian readers will note the date: 7 September, 1940 marked the beginning of nighttime bombing of London that became known as the Blitz.

As part of ‘inner persona’ “research” for the pilot impression I’ve been working on, I’m always looking for ways to gain insight into the flyboy life. I can only rewatch Top Gun, or Maverick‘s trench run so many times, and while some of Dan Hampton’s books were decent overviews, they’re largely lacking the level of detail I crave. At the same time (whether a cause or byproduct of the pilot project, I’m not sure), I’ve been on a bit of a Second World War kick lately and was curious if there are any good WW2 pilot-based mobile games to play on my lunch break. Luckily, I managed to find one that I think is pretty much perfect, and it got me thinking…

a fun game recommendation and a great idea, after the jump

Building the Inner Persona: pilot slang

Hello there and ‘May the Fourth be with you’! It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these ‘in-universe vocab’ entries, but in the course of my recent work on a pilot impression, I was reminded of this excellent set of terms, as found in The Essential Guide to Warfare, (p. 141):

3-9 line: A line across a fighter’s wings, based on an imaginary clock in which 12 is ahead of a fighter and 6 is behind. The goal of dogfighting is to keep bandits in front of one’s 3-9 line.

ACM: Aerial combat maneuvering, better known as dogfighting.

Bandit: A hostile fighter or starship.

Big L: Lightspeed.

Bingo: Having enough fuel for a safe return.

Bluelined: Disabled by an ion cannon blast.

keep reading for more terms to make you sound like a gffa stick jockey!

Galactic Style Guide – Footwear II

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! In this entry, we’re continuing our look at the great variety of galactic footwear seen in live-action sources.
If you’re not able to acquire taller boots but still want to get a Star Warsy silhouette, our first two categories are great options!

**Puttees/leg wraps/winningas:** Luke Skywalker (0 BBY), ‘Galen Erso’, unidentified Warrick Davis character (Episode I), Anakin Skywalker, Wald (32 BBY), Owen Lars (19 BBY), Padme Naberrie (?)

many more examples below (some you may have in your closet right now!)

Galactic Style Guide – Footwear I

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! It’s taken us a few years to get here, but in this entry, we’re finally taking a look at the one element a good costume literally stands upon – shoes! There’s a lot to unpack here, so our first two entries will look at live-action sources, and the third will cover visual examples from EU sources.

I’ve done my best to break these down by category, but my research library is far from exhaustive!; these are mostly drawn from the Complete Visual Dictionary (DK) and Alinger’s SWCOT. (Even if I could afford a copy, Trisha Biggar’s Dressing a Galaxy is not as useful for those of us interested in ‘common’ galactic folk…plus, the prevalence of characters wearing long robes means we don’t often see any footwear anyway!).
Let’s get started by looking at what it seems just about everybody wears in the Galactic Civil War era:

**Riding boots**: Biggs Darklighter, Ben Kenobi, Dannik Jerriko, the Tonnika sisters, Han Solo;
Rebel pilots (0 BBY), Luke Skywalker (medal ceremony), Bespin wing guard, Alliance generals, Luke (4 ABY), Bib Fortuna

I didn’t include them here (because…y’know, space-fascism), but I should note that most ranking Imperials wear similar boots. If you’re portraying a character in the Civil War period, you really can’t go wrong with something tall, black, and shiny!

Plenty more examples within!

Upgrading the Rebel persona: flak vest

As the name of the game in rigorous reenacting is ‘continual improvement’, I’m always on the lookout for things to help add some depth or otherwise level-up my impressions. While Rebel characters typically steer away from the plastoid armor side of things, I realized that the ribbed vests worn by various characters were probably meant to protect the vital organs and so would be perfect for a partisan persona as well!

Rebel pilots, BoShek, Bossk; 1313 mercenaries, Ruusan rebel (Dave Dorman)

A few months ago, my buddy Anders (of DT Blasterworks) sent me a link to a lower-priced rebel pilot-style flak vest he was thinking about buying. Since my initial impetus for building a SectorForces partisan/guerilla kit was to pair Alliance-issued materiel with local planetary style, I had initially considered including one of these vests. The only one I had looked into was produced by Wampa Wear; at $125, while it’s probably—if anything like their flightsuits—extremely well-made and screen-accurate, I couldn’t justify paying that much for a purely costume piece…so the idea returned to the back burner.

However, Anders’ link (and his report that it was decent quality) renewed my interest, so at about 1/3^rd the price of a Wampa Wear vest, I pulled the trigger. Out of the package, I could tell the vest fell in the category of “close enough”, about which I’ve written before: presumably, there are variations on the flak vest throughout the galaxy, and they’re not all produced identically. All the same, I still wanted to try my hand at ‘accuratizing’ the cheapo vest to see if I couldn’t get it a little closer to Alliance specs, as a few things stood out to me that could use tweaking:

**The to-do list:**
-fix the diameter and spacing of the sewn channels
-bind the curved edges with twill tape
-replace the rear buckle
-replace the large side clasps (down the line)

Upgrading the Rebel persona: camouflaged helmet

Ever since completing it back in the summer of 2017, I was never fully satisfied with my Rebel ‘swoop’ helmet. My dissatisfaction wasn’t necessarily with the construction—despite being my first serious foray into Pepakura, I think I pretty closely nailed the shape and paintjob (accurate light gray, not white!)—but rather with its usefulness to a Rebel fighter….

What’s wrong with the classic swoop?

Galactic Style Guide – Pants II and Shorts

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 wrapping up our look at in-universe lower-body garments, both long and short.

When the subject of non-cargo kinds of pockets comes up in costuming circles, I’ve seen some people try to argue that hip/slash pockets don’t exist in-universe. Based on our sources I can say that slash pockets do exist in the GFFA, but they aren’t appropriate for all impressions. Rebel soldiers, agents, or operatives frequently wear pants with familiar pockets.:

Pants with hip or rear pockets: Rebel specialist (Battlefront2!2017, Dresselian (NEGtAS), ‘Cassian Andor’, human male Jaden Korr (14 ABY), Kyle Katarn (12 ABY).

It is worth noting that the distinctive hip pockets-and-belt-loops of the Specialist appear to be inspired by surplus Austrian M75 pants (though those also have thigh cargo pockets).

Searching for Rebel trooper helmet variations

Almost as soon as I finished my ‘fleet trooper’ helmet back in 2017, I started planning a ‘donut’ helmet build, which I hoped would remedy all the complaints I had of the ‘swoop’ helmet: it would be smaller, more mobile, quieter, and much better at blending in with woodland scenery. However, on the off chance that I ever feel like busting out my ol’ swoop again, I’ve still kept my eyes open for examples of documented swoop helmet variations that might be a little more woodland guerilla-friendly. Sure, it would be easy to say, ‘Ehh, I’m sure a Rebel cell somewhere must have painted their helmets to blend in better, just make something up!’ But for accurate reenacting and living history, the bar is a little higher, and we can’t settle for fan creations on DeviantArt—we need examples from the visual record! Therefore, I wanted to share the examples of non-standard Rebel ‘swoop’ helmets that I’ve been able to dig up in hopes that they might be of use to someone else in the same boat. Enjoy!

These swoop-less helmets (art by Brian Schonburg) appear in Rules of Engagement, the Rebel SpecForces Handbook (1997).

seven more examples after the jump!

Upgrading the Rebel persona: captured armor #2

While a good partizan should ideally do all their ambushing from a distance, after binge-watching a cool edutainment series on the SOE training curriculum (Churchill’s Secret Agents—highly recommended) this summer, I realized that sometimes up-close-and-personal hand-to-hand combat can’t be avoided. Adding to this realization were nightly examples earlier this summer of my city’s ‘finest’ beating protestors with batons just a few blocks away from my apartment. With these motivations in mind, I started thinking about what kinds of hard kit items I might use to improve my odds in the area of personal defense.

Upgrading the Rebel persona: uniform tunic

Over the years, I’ve acquired a number of different ‘in-universe’ garments. Some are based on examples from film or print sources, some are extrapolations based on planetary styles, some are just attempts to apply the generic ‘galactic aesthetic’ to my everyday wardrobe.

But so far, I haven’t tried to outright copy a specific example…the closest I’d come was the ‘bib’-front shirt I whipped up for the debut of my ‘Citizen Olis’ persona in 2017, meant to be a local take on the style worn by the Rebel ‘fleet troopers’ and Yavin communications officers seen in Episode IV: