Skallagrim's ramblings

In my opinion, it's a bad idea to make villain factions "less evil" in all sorts of tiny little ways. This tendency is perhaps supposed to add nuance, but remarkably often misfires and instead just gives fodder to a certain type of fan; the type that wants to be able to say " See, the fascist dictatorship isn't so bad after all! " Naturally, there are settings in which various factions and sides exist, on a scale of grey-tones, and all or most are neither wholly good nor wholly evil. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about conscious attempt to "humanise" otherwise unambiguously evil factions. This is technically a general argument, but those who know me won't be at all surprised that I'll be using Star Wars as my main point of reference here. In the old Expanded Universe, before Disney purchased LucasFilm and shunted all of that off into a separate continuity, the Galactic Empire was as evil as anything can possibly be. We ...

In the context of Star Wars , the term infinity is used to refer to a non-canonical tale. The most famous use of the term is in describing a 'might-have-been': a story about a parallel version of the Star Wars universe, where things somehow went differently. I have already written a bit about what I consider the Star Wars 'metaverse'. In this post, I will explore two  'might-have-beens' of the Star Wars universe , based on one simple question: "What if the line of the Banite Sith had been extinguished at some premature point?" ------------------------------------------------- The Galactic Republic isn't in good shape when we see it at the start of the prequels. On the contrary: things have gotten very bad indeed. There is some reason to believe that even if Palpatine were to die on the eve of being made Supreme Chancellor, the Republic would still collapse into civil war before too long. The rot is already too deep. At the very least,...

Much has been made of the Jedi doctrine forbidding attachment, as introduced in the prequel trilogy. Some believe it to be a sign that the Jedi Order was hopelessly dogmatic and already caught in a terminal decline before Palpatine was even born. Others contend that the doctrine's meaning is typically misunderstood, and that the critical representation of the prequel-era Jedi aspiring to be (let us say) "Vulcan-like" in their attitude doesn't correspond to the actual Jedi beliefs and aspirations. I would like to argue that both these views are correct. The Jedi doctrine regarding attachments isn't what some critics make it out to be... but the actual doctrine also isn't the sensible ideal that its defenders would like it to be. More importantly, and often overlooked: the doctrine that we see in the prequels is not the historical norm for what the Jedi believe. First of all, let's define the Order's actual doctrine during the prequel era. The Je...

Several months ago, over at alternatehistory.com , we had a discussion thread inspired by the oft-noted similarities between Roman history and Star Wars . In particular, of course, the fact that the Roman Republic turned into the Roman Empire much as the Galactic Republic turned into the Galactic Empire. In particular, the question being asked was: what if Roman history had more closely resembled the plot of Star Wars? What would you have to change for that? Not as much as some might think, although certainly a bunch of things would have to be shaken up considerably. All in all, though, the actual history of Rome is already a lot more like that of Star Wars than one might expect at first glance. To begin with, George Lucas used certain recurring historical motifs that we see throughout history. Some people see Augustus in Palpatine, since he ended the Republic and created the Empire. But keep in mind that Caesar was murdered because people suspected (with good reason) that he was...

Suppose that (perhaps instead of the sequel trilogy, or at some other point in time) it had been decided to make a trilogy of films about Palpatine's youth and his ascent to power? Well, if that's the plan from the get-go, nixing the old Expanded Universe won't be in the cards anymore. After all, James Luceno already wrote roughly two-thirds of what you could put in such a trilogy, and did it better than anyone else realistically could. Just take Darth Plagueis , Darth Maul: Saboteur  and  Cloak of Deception . That's a pretty solid start. Include  Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter  by Michael Reaves and The Tenebrous Way by Matthew Stover, too. Then you can add what you like from The Wrath of Darth Maul by Ryder Windham, Restraint (a short story by Luceno), Jedi Council: Acts of War by Randy Stradley, Star Wars: Darth Maul by Ron Marz and Maul: Lockdown by Joe Schreiber. Simply hire Luceno to weld this all together into one coherent narrative, and to fill in the ...

In previous posts, I've looked at how thoroughly rotten the leadership of Palpatine's Galactic Empire was, and explored the underlying reason for this. The short answers are: " so rotten that you'd have to kill off almost the entire leadership just to get some half-way decent people in charge " and " because Palpatine was an evil space wizard who powered his dark voodoo by causing untold suffering ". None of that sounds even remotely attractive, and yet there were entire cohorts of people who fought avidly to defend and maintain the Empire. What's more, there were even quite a few who held on to "the Imperial way" long after Palpatine had been vapourised for good. The obvious question is: why? The Empire was undeniably terrible. So what drove the people who fought for that Empire? And what would possess someone to set up an Imperial Remnant, out on the fringes of the galactic disk? Let's try to find an answer. First, we must lo...