There’s a lot on the line today, so get out there, do your civic duty, and let’s make sure we don’t find ourselves in one of these situations!:
An important reminder for my American readers today:
Tag: WW2
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…
Galactic Style Guide – Ammo belts and Pouches II
Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the bimonthly series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! In our second entry looking at the various styles of belt pouches and bandoliers seen onscreen, we’re focusing on military surplus (and milsurp-style) examples as seen in the Prequel Trilogy.
Let’s begin (again!) on Tatooine!
Throughout Episode I, we see young Anakin Skywalker wearing one half of an Italian Army ammo pouch for the Carcano rifle (plus another mystery pouch):
Several of the background characters in Mos Espa have belt gear with ‘Lift The Dot’ fasteners; these appear to be a dual-magazine pouch very similar to this WW1-era pouch for the Colt 1911. As I discussed previously, I feel that these kinds of pouches are acceptable for outfitting far-background characters like these, but I feel they toe the line of ‘visible fasteners’. However, they’re usually very sturdily made to stand up to the rigors of authentic use, so if you are reenacting or doing living history with an audience inside the 10-foot line, it’s probably worthwhile to take the extra effort to cover them behind some canvas or webbing.
Galactic Style Guide – Ammo belts and Pouches I
Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the bimonthly 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 taking a deep dive into a specific category of gear that plays a major role in creating the GFFA’s uniquely grounded, quasi-militaristic aesthetic – belt pouches! As a great number of Star Wars character designs utilize longer robes or tunics instead of more western/modern shirts and trousers (and thus are are sans pockets), it seems that even the most pedestrian costume designs are routinely festooned with a wide variety of semi-rigid containers for carrying small items!
Due to the great number of onscreen examples, I waffled back and forth for how best to organize and present them all. Eventually, I decided to break them down by real-world source (milsurp vs. non-milsurp) and era (Classic Trilogy vs. Prequels) within these categories. As usual, we’ll close with some important takeaways for those of you who may want to incorporate a pouch or two in your own kit to add some in-universe style points! Let’s begin (as we so often do) on Tatooine!
The first folks we see onscreen wearing military surplus are the Jawas, who set the trend for what follows. Much like the majority of base firearms used for blaster building, the Jawas’ belt gear is comprised of European ammunition pouches and bandoleers drawn from a period of roughly 1890 to 1945 CE.
Farmboy Luke continues our trend of leather Euro milsurp pieces, sporting an interesting trio of belt pouches:
keep reading for more examples of authentic, in-universe belt gear!A295 rifle conversion update 3
The pandemic project saga continues! Last time I checked in, I was stuck at bottlenecks on the remaining stock, scope, and magazine fronts that kept me from proceeding, but after my usual lull, I again have something worth sharing!
-the StG’s wooden stock needed to be replaced with a metal ‘T’ stock; and as my potential welding instructor is in the COVID high-risk category, I outsourced this element to a machinist friend of mine.
Continue reading “A295 rifle conversion update 3”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.
A295 rifle conversion update
The quarantine project queue continues apace! It’s been a couple months since I started my functional A295 blaster rifle project, so I thought it was time for an update on how things are progressing.
Since I’m not scratchbuilding a prop gun, the steps to convert from StG44 to A295 are actually relatively simple, and most everything is reversible:
-Step 1: cut off the protruding rod* (okay, that one’s not reversible 😉
In search of the functional ‘blaster’ rifle
If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t posted in far too many weeks, this is one of the reasons. Don’t worry, projects are proceeding apace!
*I use EU terminology. If you’re into post-Disney stuff, just replace any instance of ‘A295’ in the following with ‘A280C’*
About a year back, I began toying with the idea of retooling my SKS into a more GFFA-style slugthrower. Eventually, though, I had to resign myself to the limitations of the Simonov platform, and abandoned the idea. However, a few weeks ago, someone in the Endor Commando facebook group was seeking help on a A280 prop rifle they were planning…and I got the bug again. I never liked the looks of the Endor rifle…it just seemed clunky and ugly to me (the alternate version with the triangle buttstock especially so) – give me an A295 Hoth rifle any day!
Owing also to having more time onscreen and the easier availability of the base gun*, I see way more prop A280s online. At the same, I got to thinking about what folks these days could use to build an A295 prop out of, and one fellow pointed out the most accurate base rifle would be AGM’s all-metal electric airsoft StG44, which retails for $235; he commented that it would be awfully expensive “for something you will be cutting up” for a prop rifle. I agreed, but this led me to my next question: well, what if you were cutting it up, but it was still a functional rifle? And just out of curiosity, how cheap could I do it for?
Continue reading “In search of the functional ‘blaster’ rifle”
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”
Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 