Tusken raiders – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Thoughts on ‘The Marshal’

Since The Mandalorian is the hottest thing in the galaxy right now, and with my queue of current projects winding down and no opportunities for public interpretive events in the foreseeable future, I want to share my thoughts on each episode shortly after each airs. Because…I have thoughts! These won’t be general reviews, but I’m going to try and focus on applying the topics of this blog (character design, material culture, issues of in-universe consistency, etc). Additionally, my research tends to uncover random details which enhance our knowledge of the galactic setting, but which aren’t always meaty enough to merit their own essays; I think Mandalorian episode writeups will be the perfect place to sprinkle these in.
I’ll be discussing topics in the order they appear, so let’s get started!

Since S01E06(‘The Prisoner’), the show seems to have a problem with its male Twi’leks. The size, shape, and angle of the head-tails is all wrong—they’re female-style(ish)—and I think it’s a side effect of the show’s relatively small budget. Since the usual male Twi’lek doesn’t wear a headband to hide the transition between actor and prosthetic, the look requires much more time in the makeup chair; the show’s makeup team have apparently decided it’s simply easier to pop a pair of female-style lekku and a headband on and call it good…but it looks hella weird:

This post from DIY the Galaxy gives a good overview of previous lekku depictions.

Event Debrief: 17 March 2018

As a borderline hermit, meeting and conversing with celebrities isn’t something I have a lot of experience with. So when I learned that the prodigal Dr. David West Reynolds was going to be returning to his hometown library for a screening of his film-archeology documentary “Journey to Tatouine’ and that the event was being advertised as ‘Star Wars Day’, I knew I was going to have to make an appearance.
31718 This would be my second ‘Stars Wars at the library’ event, and since the first, I’ve had several other events with the public to help me focus and refine my approach. This time, I knew what to expect and was somewhat prepared with a rudimentary engagement hook—a thick stack of facsimiles of the Declaration of Rebellion to distribute.
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Recipe: Yoda Stew

(as made BY Yoda, not WITH Yoda!)

This has been shared all over in the last 34 years, but I thought it would be fun to include here as there are so few edible connections to make with the GFFA.
While I wish this was the actual recipe that was served on-set in Yoda’s house (any leads would be amazing!), we’ll have to make do. The recipe originates with the 1983 adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back made by National Public Radio, who solicited gourmet chef Craig Claiborne to come up with something to approximate Yoda’s ‘rootleaf’ stew of the film.

The finished product might look like something made out of swamp-sourced ingredients, but it tastes very much like a modern Indian dish!
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Building the Outer Persona: an authentic Gaderffii

Back in the beginning of the year, when I was only doing an AgriCorps Jedi impression, I started thinking about what it might look like to do a living history ‘display’ in the GFFA. For actual historic periods, displays at events often take the form of a collection of soldier’s gear laid out for the public:
VnamLHDisplay
In my mind’s eye, I thought it might be interesting, starting out, to simply have a collection of in-universe ‘artifacts’ for the public to examine, which could function as potential ‘engagement hooks’ for interpretation. Continue reading “Building the Outer Persona: an authentic Gaderffii”