reenacting – Page 7 – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

The issue of Original Characters

It’s been a while since I’ve done a ‘back to basics’ post, so we’re taking a break from the usual projects-and-research content and taking a turn for the nitty-gritty. The vexing issue this week is that of the ‘OC’, or ‘Original Character’ (differentiated from a recognizable ‘Face Character’). Stick around at the end for a list of character ideas to take your OC to the next level!

After hanging around a popular SW cosplay facebook group for the last few years, I have noticed a pattern that my historical-authenticity-focused mind finds quite aggravating: Continue reading “The issue of Original Characters”

The ethical dilemma of rationalizing DisneyCanon with the EU

As always, apologies for the recent delay in posting…real life takes priority from time to time. I try to post a decent variety of content—see the CATEGORIES menu over there >>>>> —and when it comes to ‘Artifact ID’ series, I’m afraid I’ve hit a bit of a bottleneck. You see, I have several identified artifacts queued up and ready to share, but there’s a problem – they’re all from Rogue One Colon A Star Wars Story…and as you may have noticed if you’ve been following along, I’m not really a consumer of post-Disney Star Wars content.
With that in mind, I’d like to take a break from our regularly scheduled content to share my thought process and try and get to the bottom of this recent quandary.
Continue reading “The ethical dilemma of rationalizing DisneyCanon with the EU”

Whittling & galactic ‘pocket trash’ – R4 Astromech

In his Getting Started In Living History series, Master Jon Townsend suggests that the small items carried on one’s person are a great way to add depth to a living history impression, as well as create a more intimate connection to your persona. Reenactors refer to these items collectively as ‘pocket trash’, and can be anything from a love letter from the homefront, empty brass and small change, to an interesting rock or a pocket compass.
Continue reading “Whittling & galactic ‘pocket trash’ – R4 Astromech”

Building the Rebel persona – 4.1: Naboo soft kit

Based on the broad trends noted in the previous post, I decided that my Naboo civilian impression would need (at minimum) a tunic, trousers, and tall boots, and possibly an outer layer as well.
shirt
The tunic would need to follow local style, and so be in a muted color, have an overlapping and/or asymmetrical closure, a high Mandarin collar, and long sleeves, probably without cuffs.
Continue reading “Building the Rebel persona – 4.1: Naboo soft kit”

Searching for civilian style on Naboo

When I first started toying with the idea of portraying a Rebel ‘partisan’, I knew I wanted to integrate elements of the local planetary fashion, but also include enough elements of the larger galactic style so that the impression would still be recognizably Star Wars.
Finding the right ratio between the two would be the real trick, since a) Naboo’s nobles in the late Republic period tended to dress in an impractical, distinct Renaissance style, b) we don’t really know what Naboo fashion was like during the Imperial period, and as I’ve written before, it’s hard to be taken seriously as a guerilla fighter when you’re dressed like Catherine de Medici. If I wanted to pull this off, I was going to have to do some detective work.
Continue reading “Searching for civilian style on Naboo”

The Cure for Temporal Headaches

Whenever you begin putting together a new persona (in any setting, fictional or historical), it always helps to firmly ground yourself in a specific time. This is simply Good Living History—the narrower the range, the more focused your research can be, contributing to a more accurate impression. If you’re portraying a ‘longhunter’ (an 18^th century market hunter), you don’t want to be drawing your ‘outer persona’ (aka clothing and accoutrements) from the 1720s or 1790s (even though they’re technically still in the 18^th century); rather, you would focus on the 1750s through 1770s, since that’s the period in which these folks operated. If you have enough information from primary or secondary sources, you can even pin your impression down to a specific year, month, or week (this becomes easier to do the closer to the present one gets, as the amount of raw information (and therefore, potential sources) increases exponentially).
Deciding on a specific span of time makes your persona more authentic, especially if you’ve done your research.
Continue reading “The Cure for Temporal Headaches”

Building the Inner Persona: Vocabulary

Updated terms in italics
One of the later steps (#7 of 8) in Townsend’s Getting Started series is the process of further developing one’s persona through building of the ‘inner persona’. This means going beyond the superficial outer persona (one’s clothes and gear), and better inhabiting the mental headspace of your chosen individual. One great way to do this is through the words we use for things.
For example, if I were portraying an American settler in the early 1700s, referring to the indigenous population as “Native Americans” would smack of modern political correctness; but to refer to them as “savages” or “naturals” would be quite appropriate. Likewise, to greet someone with the postmodern “Whatsup?” in a 19^th century reenacting context would be quite jarring!

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).
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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”