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captainmazzic · 5 years

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So every now and again I get a message in my inbox asking about what I thought about such-and-such a thing in new canon, or if I’m intending on writing any meta or analysis on a particular subject in Star Wars. And sometimes I keep those messages sitting in my inbox for months (one has been sitting there for a little over a year), because I think, maybe I will feel comfortable doing in-depth meta again and I’ll wish I’d remembered what this message had asked. But as time goes by I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Okay. Real talk for a minute here. Bear with me as I’m long-winded and I don’t really have a concise way of communicating this. Potential political views and personal opinions on certain points in cinematic history below.

Short backstory first. I’m an older Star Wars fan. I was a tiny child when the last of the original trilogy came out, and both my parents are sci-fi nerds so I was practically raised on Star Wars. They are also tabletop RPG nerds so I was also raised on D&D and the like. So naturally when Star Wars tabletop RPGs were floating around I snapped them up and consumed them like candy. The novels were a natural extension of the RPGs, and I consumed those just as enthusiastically. The Expanded Universe was my bread and butter, and to this day I’m very nostalgic and fond of it even if most of it is quite laughably terrible.

Where am I going with this? Everything is a product of their time. The original trilogy was created when George Lucas was a young liberal-minded fresh-faced director looking to change the world and make his mark. This was the 70s, war was awful, the government was evil, hippies and protests were everywhere, and the only thing that seemed to have any hope of changing the world were small bands of spunky misfits with a mission and a message. And that mentality is one that shows, in the original Star Wars films. Lucas designed the Empire as a representation of the United States circa the Vietnam War, just dressed up in the fashion and ceremony of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. (Sources: Chris Taylor, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, Pp. 87-88; Michael Ondaatje, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, p.70) The message of the original trilogy boiled down to “the ability of a small group of people to defeat a gigantic power simply by the force of their convictions… no matter how small you are, you can defeat the overwhelmingly big power.” (quote: Walter Murch). He really struggled to get Star Wars onto the big screen, with a lot of setbacks and rejections, and many times when he thought it would never happen. But it did, and it was wildly successful. And I think in part it was because that message really spoke to people, and it didn’t hurt that it was wrapped up in a package with cool laser swords and explosions and space battles.

But then the 80s happened. And the 90s happened. And through that, what happened to Lucas is what happens to many people as they gain success, wealth, and fame as they grow older. The system started to work for him instead of against him. Suddenly the Powers That Be weren’t trying to suppress his ideas from getting to an audience; suddenly all those organizations that seemed so hell-bent on keeping him out were now enabling him to get and stay in, to conserve and gain influence; suddenly his opinion counted for so much it almost seemed god-like, especially in this galaxy far, far away that was unflowering under his direction and all-seeing eye. I guess the system isn’t so bad after all, eh?

And thus we have the Prequels. They can be a rollicking good time, but their message is muddled. Before them the books and the RPGs seemed to try as best they could to hold on to that earlier message of underdog vs. the powers-that-be (with the RPGs succeeding more often, imho), but they couldn’t continue in the face of their Ultimate Creator coming back in to make more SW movies. With the Prequels, suddenly the Old Republic is portrayed as noble and struggling instead of corrupt and dying, with a lot of hand-waving and “something something well actually” in regards to the role of the Jedi, the nature of the Senate, etc. There’s mixed messages where sometimes we get the old Star Wars back, with energetic groups of activists and freedom fighters trying to bring down the oppressors, but there’s also a lot of storytelling awkwardness where the audience is implored to trust the authorities and rely on the judgment of those with power over you within the same breath. This trend continues throughout the Clone Wars animation, and it is there that it becomes often so cognitively dissonant one wonders how you don’t get whiplash trying to follow whatever garbled message they think they’re communicating. And I think that’s where the Star Wars franchise really began to become a monster in its own right. Big businesses are hulking entities unto themselves, functioning like capitalist plutocracies within their host nations, and the Star Wars franchise is no exception. Whatever garbled message Lucas tried to send out with the Prequels grew amplified and even more confused with the Clone Wars, spread into the video games and the books, and continued to infect Star Wars as the franchise was turned over to the quintessential mega-plutocratic-empire, The Walt Disney Company.

And here we have the Sequel movies, the New Canon, and all of the disasters that come with them.

Disney walks a fine line between well-meaning family-friendly sugar and spice, and ruthless all-consuming hypercontroller of everything from arts and entertainment to food and clothes and government lobbying. Their bottom line is the dollar and the influence on – and power over – people’s lives that the dollar brings with it. Handing them a story whose original message was about people resisting the very kind of mammoth force that Disney embodies, and hoping that they will try to stay true to said original message, is hopeless and foolish at best and utterly disastrous at worst.

With the Sequels and subsequent movies, Disney pays good overt lip service to the original trilogy with things like Rogue One and the Rebels animation, which on the surface certainly do look like the same sort of message as the original trilogy. But scratch just below that surface and Disney is all about communicating that submitting to the authority of, say, higher Rebel command and following their orders even when it goes against your gut feeling (ex. Ezra Bridger in the Rebels animation), or that rebelling against an unjust government is only valid if it is done according to a strict but nebulous set of arbitrary rules and only if it is done in the service of a different unjust government that just happens to be slightly less evil than the one you’re trying to overthrow (ex. any iteration of the Old Republic ever, but I’m especially and particularly looking at you, Sequel-era Republic/Resistance and SWTOR Jedi/Republic).

And here is where I balk about ever doing meta on Star Wars again. I hate that this is the direction Star Wars is taking. I hate that New Canon feels like propaganda to me. I hate that I can’t enjoy any of this stuff if I take it for what it presents itself to be. I hate that the only way I truly can enjoy Star Wars now is by cherry-picking all of the tiny bits of window dressing that was pretty enough or interesting enough for me to want to look at it again, and very deliberately and consciously throwing out all the rest.

The experience of Star Wars that I create for myself is escapist and isolating, because it is so very tailor-made to what I can enjoy out of it now. When I go see a new Star Wars film or play a Star Wars game, I don’t actually see whatever story the franchise is trying to actually tell. I see bits and pieces that I can put together into something I can cope with better, something I can actually enjoy.

Examples include:

In Rebels, when the official franchise’s story killed off Maul. I cannot and will not acknowledge that, or function as though it happened. And I can’t really give my opinion on how not having Maul around will affect the future story, because I very literally do not care at all about any Star Wars where he is not in it.

In The Clone Wars, there are so many instances of Anakin Skywalker having agency and making decisions independent of the Jedi Council or without having their insipid code squarely in mind, where if he had made those decisions in a more realistic setting they would have turned out quite well, but what we get on screen is ominous background music and FoReShAdOwInG.

In The Last Jedi, I cannot fathom any reason why Yoda would be given the role that he was given, and find it a complete affront to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, who had every motivation, every reason, every right to have that role instead. So I can’t see that scene without him in it. I just… I don’t see it. It didn’t happen that way, and I find I cannot discuss it as it’s presented on-screen. I have nothing to say.

In the Sequel media, both books and movies, Supreme Leader Snoke is portrayed as a one-dimensional Saturday morning cartoon villain whose intended role in the story is blurred as the story progresses, and his death is completely nonsensical in regards to the buildup of information that we as an audience have gleaned about him. We see pieces of evidence that he could have actually cared about Kylo Ren that go nowhere in the actual story, and he ends up just being a scapegoat that gets thrown away halfway through the second sequel movie. I choose to see more in his character than what we were given in Actual Canon™, and thus see him very differently than what common discourse would allow. Because of this, if I discuss Snoke in mixed company I know that I will be called out as someone who advocates for only the limited cardboard-character that is portrayed on screen, instead of for the internalized view that I have personally built for him.

I know everyone’s personal view of a character or characters is different, because we all have different points of view. But there is often some sort of vague common ground in their portrayal that the author or storyteller was originally going for, that most people usually pick up on and base their opinions around. But what if some of the key characteristics that make up a character are just… things you choose not to see or are incapable of seeing, and your own personal view of that character becomes almost entirely different from the “original”? Probably the most benign example I can think of is Hera Syndulla. If I take what I see of her in canon, she infuriates me with how she treats her crew. But if I just decide that such-and-such a conversation never happened, or her decisions on such-and-such a mission were different than the on-screen one, she essentially becomes an alternate-universe version of herself. Only that this version is one that I can tolerate, and it is the only version I see anymore.

How does one communicate that my entire experience of Star Wars is as an AU?

And on and on it goes. Discussing meta and Actual Canon Events™ as portrayed on screen and on printed page has become nothing but a migraine headache to me. I cannot engage in discourse, because I am very much not seeing what everyone else is seeing and talking about, nor do I care to. I just… I can’t keep talking about the same stupid things over and over again. I can’t keep screaming into the void about the unsustainability of the Sith or the Jedi, about the complete inequality and corruption that would have to be absolutely omnipresent in the Republic for it to even be remotely realistic even by cartoon standards, about the inevitability of the Republic turning into an Empire, about the weird dissonance given to the concept of the Force that would end up making both the Jedi and the Sith’s case baseless and weak, etc. etc. ETC. It’s exhausting, it’s stressful, and for something that I’m here to try to enjoy, it’s not even remotely enjoyable.

The very core of the matter is that I love the Star Wars universe. I love the worlds, I love the aliens, I love the ships and the droids and the technology and the concept of the Force. I love the characters. I love all of these things, and sometimes I even love the plots and stories (thank you Chuck Wendig and Timothy Zahn). But I just can’t enjoy digging into the meta of it anymore.

So if you like what I post of my own personal Star Wars-brand AU, by all means dig right in. But I don’t think I can do anymore general meta or discourse. I’m sticking with fanart and fanfic.

#sarc speaks #long post #text post #sarc talks about star wars #star wars meta #kind of #this thing is extremely unpolished and I'm not communicating what I want very clearly #but this is the best i can do

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captainmazzic · 7 years

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Hey, as a huge fan of your blog i am going to ask you a question: What do you think about the pair Thrawn/Vader ? I am also a fan of pairs like Thrawn/Pellaeon and Thrawn/Maul and somehow Thrawn/Vader crossed my mind. So, would they fit together and would it be a healthy relationship? I'd like to hear your opinion about that.

Thrawn/Vader is SUCH a good ship A++ would ship again. They don’t really have much going for them in new canon (yet), but in old canon there was a lot of mutual respect - and trust - between the two. They were each confident in the other’s abilities, and neither one felt the need to undermine the other to the Emperor, even though both had Palpatine’s ear and attention (and usually he tends to pit one person against the other to see who will claw their way to the top - with Thrawn and Vader, neither ever took the bait on that one. They each knew the other was competent and had the Empire’s best interests in mind instead of amassing influence only for themselves).

Vader even entrusted his Noghri assassins to Thrawn, which is HUGE. “Yeah you want to have exclusive control over a group of elite DEATH COMMANDOS that only I have had personal control of, and bent over backwards with manipulation and misinformation to get? Here ya go, ENJOY.” Who DOES that? Vader, apparently. To Thrawn. It’s HUGE. So their relationship already has a real big chunk of respect in it, and that’s one of the most important components of a healthy relationship, imho.

…And new canon gives us a Thrawn that likes tinkering with old droid technology. Mutual interests ftw.

I honestly think they’d form a remarkably stable relationship. Vader is impulsive, temperamental, and openly aggressive, whereas Thrawn is quiet, contemplative, and more subtly sinister. His long-term planning with Vader’s knack for on-the-spot improvisation make for an impressive complement of each other. Instead of their differences driving them apart, I see those differences being the interlocking pieces that would fit them together. And they could inspire each other with those differences, too. In old canon, Vader calms when he’s faced with Thrawn’s implacable patience and methodical logic. And I feel like Thrawn also benefits from seeing Vader’s spontaneity and passion.

It’s such a good ship ;v;

#sarc speaks #replies #sarc talks about star wars #thrawn x vader #do they have a ship name #thrader #lol #text post #tytonidae-fly

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captainmazzic · 7 years

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Some thoughts on Luke.

I’m sure all of these things have been said, and by people far more eloquent and capable than I, but I felt the need to say them again. Thoughts below are, as usual, heavily Jedi-critical in general but particularly so of Kenobi and Yoda.

Obi-Wan Kenobi tried his damned best to manipulate Luke into believing the things he believed, and into doing the things he wanted him to do. He and Yoda lied to Luke repeatedly, in an attempt to distance him from his connection to Vader and in hopes that he would ultimately reject that connection before he even knew it was there, and kill Vader for them. Kenobi’s first attempt at distancing Luke from Vader was creating a persona for him in some form of “other”. “Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.” He’s attempting to plant seeds of hate in Luke, a bias against Vader that Kenobi is hoping will grow so that he can use it to his advantage later on.

And later on it does. Kenobi knows he will become a Force ghost. And he deliberately ensures that Luke is watching when he raises his lightsaber and allows Vader the finishing blow. You can’t tell me that was not a very deliberate and calculated attempt to make the seeds of hatred he already planted in Luke to grow. He succeeds quite well, but things backfire on him when he and Yoda both fail to take into account that Luke’s protective feelings towards his friends will win out over his tenuous new devotion to learning the Jedi ways.

When Luke left Dagobah for Bespin to save Han and Leia, he was disobeying and rejecting the high-minded distant “feelings are bad, m’kay”, that the Jedi of old espoused. Both Yoda and Kenobi ideally would have wanted Luke to adopt that mindset, but also be fueled by some sort of motivation to kill Vader. They tried to have their proverbial cake and eat it too, by presenting Vader as a being worth both hatred and murderous intentions, but also by stating “Anger, fear, aggression. The Dark Side are they.” As if they wanted some sort of insurance policy that if they couldn’t get Luke to do their bidding one way, then maybe some other way would work.

And then Yoda has the balls to tell Luke “Unexpected this is, and unfortunate” when Luke confronts Yoda after Vader has told Luke that he is his father. And even further balls to pretend like his explanation of “that you rushed to face him, that not ready for the burden were you” is even half of a sufficient excuse. Yeah, not ready for the burden. As in, wasn’t sufficiently Jedi-brain-washed enough to be totally a-okay with the thought of murdering his own father that he’s been wanting and looking for his entire life. Yoda would have been perfectly happy having Luke stay to be trained brain-washed further and let Han and Leia die, because I mean, after all, they’re simply nothing more than superfluous attachments and would only get in the way of Luke’s potential Jedi-ness. He’d have been perfectly happy to have extra time to enforce the proper warrior-monk mindset into Luke so that the idea of murdering someone that he shares a deep connection with suddenly turns into something tragically noble rather than shocking and repugnant. Because letting his friends die through purposeful inaction and deliberately killing his father is supposed to purge him of unapproved attachments and fulfill the “last hope” for the Jedi.

Because it’s not the fate of the galaxy’s people in general that concerns Yoda and Kenobi. It’s not even the fate of the Force. It’s the survival of the Jedi Order. They equate the Jedi with all that is Good and Right and Pure, and all else be damned if they can’t survive. Luke was their “last hope” because of his heritage and his power in the Force, and if he failed then they intended to conscript his Force-sensitive sister as a contingency plan. Only Force-sensitive people can be Jedi, after all, and in their mind if the Jedi die out, then nothing good could possibly come out of the rest of the galaxy.

But pinning their plans on Luke backfired. Yoda was right in that Luke was too old to begin the training – he had already learned that his decision to care for and love people in his life and want to protect them meant more than any vague and distant dogma, meant more than some will of or balance to a mysterious and impersonal Force. No amount of Yoda spouting “you must unlearn what you have learned” could recondition Luke.

Ultimately, when confronted by Emperor Palpatine on the second Death Star, Luke throws away his lightsaber – the symbol of the Jedi, the symbol of their authority and power. The same symbol that Obi-Wan Kenobi had chastised Anakin Skywalker about when he told him “this lightsaber is your life”. And immediately after he throws away his lightsaber, he claims, proudly, that he is “a Jedi, like my father before me”.

I read an awful lot into that line. I see Luke defining the Jedi as something very different from what they were. He doesn’t define it the way the Jedi Council defined it, he doesn’t see being a Jedi as something embroiled in politics or wallowing in dogma and ritual. Luke is reaching for a higher meaning than the Jedi Order we saw of old. He knows very little of the Dark Side, and nothing of the Sith. He’s rejecting the petty generations-long feud between two Force-adhering sects and embracing the only thing he knows and feels right in front of him – that he loves his father, whoever he is and whatever his name, and is willing to die defending him. He doesn’t see “Sith”, he doesn’t see “Dark Side”, he doesn’t see “Destiny” or “Fate” or “Jedi must win at all costs” or even “Maintain some sort of hazily-defined ‘balance’ between two fabricated and inadequately described sides of one supposed whole”. He just sees someone he has come to care about that he wants to protect.

That’s it. That’s what it boils down to. The higher meaning that the Jedi could never seem to grasp was ridiculously simple, and it took a farmboy with next to no knowledge of the Force and an innate tendency to question authority to bring it out.

The Jedi Order didn’t win the day at the end of RotJ. Luke did. Vader did. And while Kenobi and Yoda seem to enjoy basking in some sort of credit, it was Luke going against everything they ever taught him that actually managed to do anything effective in the end.

I can only hope that the new sequel trilogy won’t stomp all over that. I can only hope that the new generation of Jedi that Luke was training had nothing in common with the Jedi of old, that Luke was sparking something new and simply calling it by an old name. I know my hopes are probably going to be dragged through the proverbial mud if the way Rebels and The Force Awakens are going is any indication, but what else can I do. I’m the most optimistic pessimist I know.

#star wars meta #jedi critical #yoda critical #obi-wan critical #kenobi critical #luke skywalker #long post #text post #sarc speaks #sarc talks about star wars

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captainmazzic · 4 years

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"not a fan of the whole “rogue Jedi tracked down by Vader and his edgy minions” plotline in general" Can you elaborate? Am curious to hear your thoughts!!

Hm. I guess it’s just not my cuppa, to be honest. There are so many other tropes in Star Wars I’m far more interested in -- Old Republic era Sith shenanigans, Yuuzhan Vong craziness, Mid- and post- One Sith speculation (that’s where the old EU left off before Disney got their sweaty palms on it), classic Galactic Empire vs. Rebels, pretty much any storyline focused on bounty hunters, Prequel/Clone Wars-era stuff if it involves my faves, etc. etc.

Like, I like a lot of the inquisitors, as characters. But I just don’t find them interesting. I don’t find their stories compelling. Not in a way that makes me want to consume a whole lot about them, at least. The whole “corrupted Jedi” thing irritates the ever-loving shit out of me, because it almost always carries an implied statement that any Jedi who was disillusioned with the system or who was abused or tortured will inevitably become an evil minion and a terrible person by default, and also they will, to a man, die terrible deaths. And that’s... just not interesting. I hate being introduced to a good antagonist knowing for a fact that there’s no hope for them to survive the story arc. Call it attachment or abandonment issues or whatever, but it makes me far, far less interested in getting to know them.

ex. Hell, I’m still mad about Maul, I will always be mad about Maul, because I invested a lot into that character, having an idea that he was going to end but at least I thought they’d let him... have something. But they systematically took everything away from him, beat him down, tortured and abused him, and expected us to cheer. If they do that with a character as beloved as Maul is, I know for a fact that they’re not going to go easy on newly-introduced characters coded as villains, like the doomed inquisitors.

I have problems with character deaths.

Star Wars can’t seem to figure out what to do with characters that have nothing more to add to the narrative once their involvement in their story arc is done. Because the main storyline has already been established, they seem to think that the only way to sideline newly introduced characters not in the OT/Prequels/Sequels is to kill them off, and almost always without those characters having ANY effect on anything in a positive or meaningful way. Nevermind the fact that the galaxy is huge, and they could very feasibly affect their own corner in their own way without affecting the “main canon”. But Star Wars prefers to kill off characters after dangling them like carrots in front of those of us desperate for anything other than standard hero template. One of the few exceptions I can think of off the top of my head is Ahsoka, but she’s so fucking close to the hero template anyway (and the baby of one of the main driving creative forces in Star Wars, so of course she’s still around), that she just doesn’t quite strike the same chord. Boba Fett (and Cad Bane, if I’m not mistaken) have dodged this bullet too. Fett got a phenomenal run in the EU, solely because of being such a fan favourite. But not everybody can reach that level of popularity, so after a book or two, or a comic or three, or a series arc, most of the best and most interesting characters are conveniently dropped off a cliff or run through with a lightsaber. Can’t have any loose ends keeping our stories from being tidy little episodic packages, can we?

Whatever happened to worldbuilding where there was room enough for lots of stories?

So yeah. I just... I don’t like a lot of the inquisitor stories because I know they’re doomed to die ignoble deaths usually at the hands of their torturer, or some plucky Jedi spouting cute snark or pretentious bullshit.

That and I have zero interest in whatever Jedi they’re supposedly pursuing. I don’t care about their stories. I don’t cheer them on while they run for their lives, I don’t hope that they survive, I don’t worry for their safety. You could fit my concern for them in a thimble and still have room for tea. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. And since it’s usually the Jedi that are the focus of the stories that include inquisitors, those are the stories I’m least likely to want to read about.

I got a little off track there, but sometimes the vitriol just leaks

EDIT: I’m not sure what happened there, but the readmore is stuck in the ask itself. Sorry about that. Long post.

#sarc speaks #sarc talks to strangers #replies #jedi critical #star wars critical #sarc rants about star wars #Anonymous #long post

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captainmazzic · 3 years

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Happy Halloween.

So it’s about time I gave a real fucking update instead of just dicking around being cagey about shit. I’ve mentioned a new project repeatedly. So let’s sit down and actually talk about it, friends. Pull up a chair, grab yourself some hot cocoa and strap in. Welcome to Sarc’s emotional roller coaster.

Bear with me. This is hard to talk about for so many reasons, but mostly because I’ve been belittled and ridiculed so many times in my life for liking “cringy” things or wanting to do things that other people think are stupid or childish. I hear the voice of my father telling me to “make something of my life” and “don’t squander your talents”, I hear the voice of my mother telling me I have “so much potential” and “one day I hope you get some ambition”, I hear the voice of my ex telling me to “stop wasting time with stupid shit” and “nobody is interested in failures”. I hear old teachers telling me honor roll students should go to college and study high-demand majors and anything else would be lazy and detrimental and won’t contribute anything worthwhile to society.

It’s the same shit that prevented me for a long time from posting art online. From posting writing online. From making ocs and showing them to other people. And now it’s preventing me from starting this project, and I’m so, so tired of it.

My biggest fear right now is that once I start talking about this project I’ll lose this tiny little community of people vaguely interested in my stuff that have somehow stuck around. External validation and sharing the things I love are my primary motivations with everything I do online, and while screaming into the void is all well and good, I need feedback and interaction and community. I need it so, so badly. I wouldn’t post jack shit – ever – if I didn’t need that, to be honest.

So anyway.

When the pandemic kicked into high gear earlier this year I got laid off for a few months. It gave me a lot of time to think about who I am and where I wanted to be in life, what mattered to me, what dreams I still had and which ones had fallen by the wayside.

Some of them are huge – once upon a time I was very religious. I went through seminary, got my minister’s certification, and was slated to be an associate pastor in a mega-church and rake in a six-figure income within 3 years. But I lost my faith and couldn’t stand the idea of being disingenuous.

And there was also a time when I received a full-ride scholarship to a very prestigious university that would have spanned a 12-year program and resulted in me having several doctorates and masters degrees by the end of it, in the fields of geology, palaeontology, and cladistics. But the scholarship program that was supposed to sponsor me went bankrupt the very semester I was supposed to capitalize on it. I was still accepted into the school, but the $1.2 million price tag would have all been out of my own pocket. So obviously that didn’t happen.

Those were the “acceptable” dreams. Those were the ones that parents and teachers and the general outside world approved of and thought were worthy goals. But neither of them panned out, and all I have left are the cringy ones. Like homesteading and sustainable living (can’t start without land, can’t have land without money). Like making comic books and doing art commissions for a living (it has to be steady to support myself, and I’m far too slow an artist for things to be steady). And like… playing video games.

Ha.

What’s funny is I can already envision the eyerolls and hear the snorts of laughter. What kind of dream is that? Only a handful of famous youtubers and twitch celebrities play video games for a living, and breaking into a field like that is pretty much impossible unless you already have friends in famous places.

Yeah, but… it would be so much fun. Right?

It WOULD be fun. I don’t have to become a super popular celebrity for it to be fun, right?

I don’t have to make it my day job and rake in piles of cash for it to be fun, right?

… I don’t have to actually be successful for it to be fun… right?

… Right?

… I love video games.

I’ve loved them ever since I tried and failed so many times to win The Empire Strikes Back on Atari 2600. I’ve loved them ever since I played Mortal Kombat with my cousin in his basement with the sound down super low because it was ultra-violent and I would have been in so much trouble if mom caught me playing it. I’ve loved them ever since I tried and failed to finish Strife and Hexen and Heretic without the computer crashing and rebooting to DOS. I’ve loved them ever since I had to cheat-code my way through Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II just to get past the first boss fight but then no-clipped through the wall and died anyway. I still love that game.

But I stopped playing video games for a very long time. I was intimidated out of them by an ex and a somewhat toxic friend group who were Real Gamers™. I was brought to LAN parties but not allowed to play, because I slowed down the team and didn’t know the controls. I was banned from commenting on other people’s moves or cheering people on because it was distracting and I could cost them a win. I was even kicked out of their online D&D campaigns because I couldn’t be serious enough or roleplay well enough for their standards. Even if I was playing a game on my own, I couldn’t play with anyone else in the house because I’d be ridiculed for dying a lot, or for going the wrong way, or for picking the wrong game because only certain games are “good” and most of the ones I wanted to play were “stupid” or “trash” or a “waste of time”.

That kind of thing sits with me for a very, very long time. I didn’t really play games at all for over a decade. Even after I ended up on the opposite side of the country, with a new circle of friends, I couldn’t bring myself to play much of anything.

And then I had an extended visit with a friend of mine, and he introduced me to an early version of a ridiculous little game called Minecraft. My friend was an avid gamer but also a very kind one. In the ten years before this, I had told myself that I just preferred to watch other people play games instead of playing them myself (a lie. I mean, I absolutely adore watching other people play, but I also want to play too lol), my friend saw through that and very gently encouraged me to take a stab at playing Minecraft myself. He moved his laptop over to me, and I played a whole ten minutes with him watching before my nerves failed me and I promptly died. But miraculously it wasn’t a big deal to him. It was just a game. I might have cried in relief, I don’t remember.

After my visit I shelved playing video games for like another year, despite buying a whole mess of them because other friends online loved certain titles and wanted to talk about them with me. (I never played them, just bought them. I couldn’t even handle the thought of playing by myself in my own house). But for some reason I mentioned to my brother-in-law my old visit to my Minecraft-loving friend, and he just… up and bought the game for me. My brother-in-law is also an avid gamer with a lovely and patient disposition, and he suggested I just play in creative mode and build things to start. So I did that (behind a locked door in the RV that I lived in by myself, with the lights off and the sound down low) and Minecraft was my sole video game for another several years.

Then a couple years ago another friend of mine (hi Char) introduced me to Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I fell in love. It sparked a renewed interest in video games that I thought I would never really have the opportunity to satisfy, because games were still intimidating.

Let me clarify: I… SUCK. At video games. I’m terrible at them. Learning controls is a nightmare and a tunicate evolving its own brain would learn faster than me. If I’m aiming, I can’t hit the broad side of a barn. I have the direction sense of a whirligig beetle on the back of a drunk pigeon. I die fast and I die often. I can count the number of games I’ve actually finished on one hand. Even less if we don’t count the ones I had to use cheat codes to get through. But none of that diminishes my love of experiencing them, and over this whole pandemic and quarantine thing I’ve had a lot of time to unpack and mull over my thoughts and feelings and passions about them.

… I moved my RV to a new spot literally the day before the lockdown in my state first initiated. Before this I was in a spot that had no internet other than what reception I could get on my phone, with severely limited bandwidth and patchy, unreliable service. The new spot has a steady wi-fi connection, and while upload speed is utter shit, downloading and streaming video are just this side of manageable. So I spent the first three months of the quarantine lockdown doing pretty much nothing other than watching Jacksepticeye, CrankGameplays, and Markiplier play video games on YouTube. (I honestly had no idea before this that people even did let’s plays. My internet access/speed has been shit for so long I’m totally out of the loop).

It… for fear of sounding utterly stupid yet again, it inspired me.

Like. These people really love what they’re doing. They just. Play video games and have fun with it, and I mean yeah they make money hand-over-fist doing it but the main thing is they HAVE FUN doing it. They have fun! Playing video games! In front of people! It’s wild. And the thing that REALLY got me was… they have feedback on it too. They have a COMMUNITY. They have people they can talk to about it. They have people that they can play games WITH, even, who don’t yell at them or tell them they suck every five minutes or tell them they can’t play with them because they’re worthless as teammates. They can fuck up in a game and their friends are laughing along with them on Discord instead of screaming at them to get it right or get out. They can play games by themselves in their house and then upload videos on the internet and then they can talk to other people about it! They have fun! It’s awesome! They have fun!!

I just. It meant so much to me. It meant so much to me to see these videos of these three, and then another dozen or so that I’ve followed since, play all these games and have such a good time and also be such a positive and kind and encouraging source of energy.

I know all of this is not exactly about video games specifically. It’s about coming to terms with how I’ve been treated as a person and as a friend, about how other people respect someone’s interests and passions, about how it’s okay to share your interests with other people and it’s okay to like things that other people might not care about or think are important.

And I’m so, so tired of not doing the things I love because I’m afraid of what other people will think.

So I, uh. I invested all of the stimulus money I had into a new rig and equipment like a camera, lighting, acoustic panels, all that shit. I dug out all the games I bought but never played, I made accounts on all the big gaming services like Steam and Itch.io and GoG, and I made a YouTube channel. And I’m going to be making my own let’s plays. And it will suck, and it will be cringy and awkward and badly done, and it won’t make me money or be a valid career option or be anything but another very expensive hobby, but it will be mine, and it will be something I can share with people and (hopefully) have fun with, and it will (hopefully) be an avenue for some of this positive social interaction I’m craving.

I know YouTube can be toxic and super negative and full of trolls and cancel culture fanatics and people just waiting to find something to tear you down for, but like. Come on, y’all. I’m posting this on tumblr dot com. Toxic is everywhere anyway. I just want to try, you know?

I just want to love video games again.

Someone famous that I look up to so, so much told me – without knowing that I was even listening, without even knowing that I even exist – that if I enjoy doing something, to just go for it. To just jump in and do it, and if it works then it works, and if it doesn’t, what have I actually lost?

And I’m lucky enough to have four whole offline friends that I’ve mentioned this idea to, and each of them has said encouraging things like I’d have a good voice and face and style for making let’s plays. I honestly don’t know how true that part is, but on my good days I believe them. And they also said that I should go for it, to just try.

So that’s… that’s what I’m doing, I guess. I just want to try.

I know it’s not Star Wars fanart. I know it’s not Star Wars fanfiction. I know it’s not Star Wars meta or essays or ranting about the Sith and the Jedi and the Force. I know it’s not what y’all want from me. And that’s utterly terrifying. I’m bracing myself to be alone on the internet again, because I know that when I dive headfirst into this thing, it’ll eat away into the time that I normally might be spending doing writing or art, and it’s going to be something no one else wants to see and no one signed up for. And that’s partly why it’s taken me so very, very long to get started.

The other part is more physical. Of course as soon as I decide that I’m going to put my face on a camera is when my entire face goes to shit. I’m currently waiting on a potential diagnosis for mouth cancer, while already dealing with a severe jaw infection that’s causing my teeth and gums to rot inside my mouth. They already took part of my jaw, I’m missing teeth, others are turning black, if I open my mouth even just a little it is so obvious and I look like a very, very literal zombie. I have never been more grateful that masks are socially acceptable. I have a series of twelve appointments scheduled to treat this shit now that I have dental and health insurance (goodbye paycheque), and I might qualify for reconstruction surgery too. But that doesn’t really help how I look right now.

So I just can’t bring myself to start this project just yet. I’ve been sitting on it for months now with all the other pieces in place, but I just. Can’t. Start. It’s driving me crazy, because I want to start so badly. I feel like I’m wasting time. I feel like I’ve already wasted so much time, because I haven’t even done anything else in the meantime. I haven’t done hardly any art or fanfic, nothing. My anxiety is spiking so high right now because I have all these expectations of myself, but I can’t do anything about it. I’ve been told that I could just start without a camera or wear a mask on screen, and I’ve actually done some recording doing exactly that, but I just… can’t seem to make anything I want to finalize.

It’s also frustrating because I have no way of uploading anything at home. I’ll have to go over to my partner’s house which is nearly an hour’s drive away in order to get internet good enough to upload videos, which means that upload schedules are going to be shiiiiiit and that’s also frustrating.

But. But. BUT. I want to do this.

I want to do this so badly. I want to share let’s plays and experience a love of video games with other people. I want to actually play games with other people too. I also just acquired a piano keyboard, and I want to play again on the regular because I miss it so much. I used to play piano for hours every single day, it’s so relaxing and fun, maybe I can post that too. Maybe I can post let’s draws or something, where I ask y’all what to draw and then make a video of me drawing it while bullshitting to the camera I don’t know it sounds like fun. Maybe I can post videos of my cooking because the shit I make seems to be everyone’s favourite thing on instagram, and maybe I can take my camera with me when I go to the ocean or hike up into the middle of nowhere in the mountains and film how beautiful everything is up there. Or maybe I can do none of that and just focus on one thing, I honestly have no idea what I’m doing or how to do it, but I just… I want to try. I just want to try.

I don’t know where any of this is going anymore. I’m sorry I haven’t responded to messages, or opened up commissions. I’m sorry that this isn’t what y’all wanted. I’m still going to continue drawing and writing, I’m still going to be around, I’m not going anywhere, but I have no idea how prolific I’m going to be and I have no idea even when I’ll start uploading videos, to be honest. But I just. I’m just gonna try. It might still take me a while but I’m gonna try. Wish me luck. I love y’all.

#long post #psa #sarc speaks #sarc speaks a LOT #3k words worth of a LOT #I'm so sorry #OTL

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captainmazzic · 5 years

Text

I decided that I could use 10-15% of my tax return on something frivolous and indulgent, so I went down to my local comic book shop and purchased a few Star Wars anthologies. I got Captain Phasma’s comic (quite good), both volumes of Vader’s newest series (excellent), and the Infinities collection.

I was not expecting the Infinities collection to be my absolute favourite out of all of those, but here we are. SPOILERS below the cut, because this comic series is FANTASTIC and I want to highlight my favourite points about it.

Okay so first of all, the Infinities collection is essentially a series of AU stories set in the Original Trilogy timeline. There are four story arcs total, one each dealing with an alternate timeline for each movie, and a fourth one that is simply a comic book adaptation of the original rough draft. Each one is better than the last, but I’mma breeze over the first three just so you can get a taste of this smorgasbord of awesome before I hyperfocus on my favourite one.

So the first story deals with the “what if” storyline of if Luke had missed his shot on the first Death Star. Essentially, it detonates too early on its way down, the rebel fleet is routed, Han and Chewie hightail it out there to save their own skins, Leia gets captured, and Luke goes straight to Dagobah. In this one, we get such treats as Imperial!Leia, Blaster-wielding Imperial!C-3PO, a restored Imperial Senate, Yoda actually getting off his ass and leaving Dagobah to confront... Tarkin?, an Imperial Guard fight scene, and the whole-ass fucking Death Star ramming into goddamned-fucking-Coruscant. It’s a glorious hot mess and once I breezed by Yoda’s typical pontificating, I loved every single panel.

The second story answers what would have happened if Luke had died in the snow on Hoth. Despite the pretty sobering premise, there’s an ongoing humor point of Han thinking HE’S the next chosen one and has to train to be a Jedi, but it’s clearly Leia. Insert hilarious misunderstandings here. Boba Fett shows up unmasked in this one, and because of a single scene I’m not hopelessly shipping him with Lando. In this story, we have things like Jedi!Leia, lots of beautiful shots of Dagobah landscapes, Cloud City falling, Vader interacting directly with Jabba, Vader interacting directly with C-3PO, a trippy inside-Vader’s-head sequence, and the epic conclusion happening in Dagobah’s swamps. Leia is a constant treasure throughout this one, and it makes me sorely disappointed that we never got lightsaber-wielding Leia in the actual movies.

The third story asks what would have happened if Han Solo’s rescue from Jabba the Hutt had failed, and is by far the best of the “what if” stories. In this one, Jabba has an early demise in a massive explosion that takes his entire palace out with him. But Fett still has Solo, so our friends set off on a long chase to hunt him down. In the meantime, Yoda is whining about how magical-Force-fate isn’t doing it right, and Luke should have come back by now to complete his training. He dies mid-whine, the Emperor feels his death, and sends Vader to Dagobah. Luke also feels his death, and also ends up going to Dagobah. The rest of our heroes find Fett, Leia steals Slave I along with Solo-the-still-carbonitecicle, but by the time they thaw him out he’s permanently blind. Meanwhile Luke’s been captured by Vader, we have a ton of father-son angst and attempts at bonding, and Leia tries to go and rescue him. SHE gets captured as well, and they’re both taken before the Emperor on Death Star 2.0. There’s a scuffle, but Vader can’t bring himself to kill his kids. He loses an arm (again) and as the rebel fleet attacks all around, the Emperor disappears into the shadows and Leia insists on taking wounded Vader with them. Luke happily agrees, and they flee the scene. The next time we see our intrepid heroes, they are joined by Vader, still very Vader, but dressed in a white version of his suit. Together they plan on discovering the location of the Emperor and finishing their fight. It’s... honestly glorious. Vader has no major moment-of-regret or tear-filled turn-around, he simply thanks Leia for saving him. He just wants to be with his kids, and if that means he’s helping the rebellion then WELP looks like he’s a rebel now. It’s delightful.

But even as awesome as that story was, my favourite is still “The Star Wars”. It’s adapted directly from the very first rough-draft screenplay by Lucas, and even though it is certainly familiar, it’s definitely NOT the same story. Lightsabers are everywhere, and generic characters have white-blue ones while Important People like the main characters all have red ones. The Galactic Empire is literally just an empire that supplanted a PREVIOUS Empire. The Jedi-Bendu and the Knights of Sith are also very literally just rival warrior clans that have nothing to do with quasi-religious drivel and while they have mysterious powers the only reference we have to the Force is when they stay “May the force of others be with you all”. I just... I LOVE this aspect of this story. It makes it so much more enjoyable.

Luke Skywalker is a grizzled old Jedi who used to be a top general and then war advisor, with little in the way of posh diplomacy, and who is not shy about saying things like “War is by business”. He’s buddies with one Kane Starkiller, whose son Annikin is a teenage-ish Jedi warrior-in-training that Skywalker takes on as his Padawan. Leia is the spoiled and scrappy princess that he ends up having to protect, and while she’s kind of a disappointment in the story many of the other characters are definitely not. C-3PO and R2-D2 are in this one as well, but AJKFLSFHDS HOLY SHIT R2 TALKS, that threw me for a fucking LOOP I’ll tell you. Han Solo is a massive green alien who reminds me a little of a scaly version of Khem Val except Solo is old buddies with Skywalker. Solo gets a red lightsaber too. He big. He hot. Sarc like.

Anyway. Darth Vader’s in this one, but he has no face-covering helmet and is instead a rather engaging man with one red eye. He’s not a Sith, though. That role goes to one Prince Valorum, who is an unfairly pretty man in black with a breath mask (most of the time).

(apologies for picture quality, I took these with my phone). It didn’t take me long to ship Vader with Valorum, but honestly Val’s got better things to do in this story. Namely, saving Annikin’s ass and breaking him out of interrogation. They even have that little “we’re not so different” moment, but it’s literally just... rather lighthearted banter while they plow their way through stormtroopers and find the princess. They rescue Leia (again) together, and end up... in a garbage masher.

(I clearly have a thing for Valorum he is my favourite in this, okay.) Their banter is adorable, they think they’re about to die, but a clan of massive Wookiees that look like hairy versions of Garrazeb Orrelios show up, the day is saved, big explosions happen, and our suave Sith Prince Valorum is standing right along with our more well-known heroes celebrating Annikin’s new status as Lord Protector.

It’s... it’s so charming. The whole story. It’s deep enough that you can get into the gritty wartime tragedies happening all around, there’s family bonding and humor and decent people confronting shitty-ass people, but it doesn’t get in over its own head and the characters are just... people. On different sides. Doing their best and doing their thing. Sometimes they’re swapping sides when it makes more sense, and there’s zero angst about it. It’s... refreshing, honestly. The romance subplot between Annikin and Leia is really contrived and kind of painful to watch, but it takes up so little of the story it can easily be ignored. It’s beautifully and expressively drawn, moves fast, and is pretty solidly put together. I really like it. I think I’m gonna go read it all again. XD

#sarc does star wars stuff #sarc reads star wars comics #long post #star wars infinities spoilers #the star wars spoilers #star wars comics #star wars infinities #the star wars

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