How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

PSW: discuss Star Wars without "versus" arguments.

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How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Ender »

I was reminded the other day that "Twilight" started off as "Harry Potter" fanfiction that went on to become a multimillion dollar enterprise, and that Fifty Shades of Grey started off as "Twilight" fanifction that went on to become a multimillion dollar enterprise. That the respective autors did with their franchises what Jim Butcher did with his Fury series - take the basic background/worldbuilding from a popular branded franchise, strip off the branding, and tell your own story. Because it turns out that once you move off from the main characters and do a Find and Replace of trademarked names, a lot of it is sufficiently generic and comes from the same tropes.

So I'm wondering, how much of that can you do to "Star Wars"?


On first blush it should be pretty easy. Lucas never hid in the least how much of what was the original story came from other sources. He was pretty open in his film homages, and talked often about the golden age scifi influences. Then much of the WEG/Bantam era background was pulled either from other film/scifi sources, or real world events with a minor spin to them. And in the decades since a ton of other works have taken elements from "Star Wars" into their own works as homages to that, further making things less distinct. So it seems like you could probably do damn near the entire background and tell your own story ala Rogue One, but I'm not sure what remains as "oh yeah, that will scream Star Wars at folks"

To put it another way, what is still distinct and what is/has become a trope?

The list I've been able to come up with is

* The Clone Wars. Yes, a big war happening prior to the story that set the stage for the current political order that must be overthrown is pretty common, but it being robots vs clones still seems distinct enough.

* The Death Stars. Yes, the big bad having an apocalyptic superwapon is nothing new, and it being destroyed by a minor flaw/its destruction taking out the big bad are classics. But them being entire government centers into themselves stands out, and more to the point the Death Star seems sufficiently iconic that if anyone tried to do something quite like it, it would get compared to the Death Star

* the name "star destroyer" might stand out. Most series have "destroyers" as their space ships, but I think "star destroyer" might be sufficiently branded.

What else stands out a distinct and unique to SW as opposed to appearing in a large number of other works?
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Adam Reynolds »

Lightsabers and The Force. Other science fiction has telepathy and laser swords, but few do this in quite the same way as Star Wars. This is what often gets Star Wars labeled as "science fantasy," despite not really being much less realistic than something like Star Trek.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by The Romulan Republic »

What defines Star Wars, primarily, is that it is a fairly idealistic epic of metaphysical good vs. evil, and specifically a story of corruption and ultimate redemption, as personified by the Jedi and Sith Orders and particularly the Skywalker family, set against a backdrop of space travel and futuristic technology. The setting is more a backdrop to that story, rather than the focus being on the futuristic tech and so forth. Hence, yes, the "science fantasy" designation.

Their are also very specific tropes which are immediately associable with Star Wars, some of which have been mentioned above, including giant super weapons, laser swords, and a sort of "space western" vibe.

But yeah, strip away the branding, and I think that any story featuring a fairly light/idealistic tone, good vs. evil magic/psychic powers, a fall/redemption arc (particularly one focussed on a specific family), and space warfare/adventure on a grand scale would be recognizably derived from Star Wars.

I'm not sure why one would want to just copy Star Wars without the branding, though, other than as a cynical money-making grab. I mean, no one looks at Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey as great literature/film. I haven't read/watched them, but from reviews/reputation, my impression is that they're basically romanticizations of abusive relationships for people to get off on.

The closest thing to "Star Wars without the branding" that I've seen, and which actually has much artistic merit, is probably "Firefly"/Serenity. Rebels vs. universal authoritarian government, psychic powers, space western vibe, sci-fi sword fights (though no laser swords), and even a bit of a fall/redemption arc. Although it makes more use of the technology of the setting for thematic purposes, rather than just for plot devices/spectacle, and thus could perhaps be considered more "pure" sci-fi.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by The Romulan Republic »

And you know, I can totally buy Twilight being derived from shitty Harry Potter fan fiction.

Not derived from actual Harry Potter, where (contrary to what most fan fic writers seem to think) the stupid romance shit was never more than a minor B plot, but derived from shitty Potter fan fiction... yeah.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Alter the presentation of the metaphysical fantastic aspects, make it more cerebral or give it a less pulpy flavor of mythicness... and you end up with something akin to Dune or Asimov's Foundation.

Yes, after the fall of the Galactic Empire and ten thousand years of galactic chaos, twin siblings must navigate the trap that is prescience, to resurrect the golden Galactic Republic, recover archeosciences, ride sandworms, with the brother becoming this warrior prince of the Golden Path having lightsaber duels with Sith Lords in loincloths played by Sting, while the funny-bun-haired sister with her soothsaying mastery of the diplomatic arts channels her abilities to be a Bene Gesserit witch! They must then face the dark order of mystics from the Second Foundation and the tyrant Mule!

Ironically while fantasy began with the simple black versus white LOTR and gradually tried to differentiate into more ambiguous stuff like Moorecock's Eric of Melbourne... in sci-fi it seems like the more nuanced complex ambiguous cerebral predecessors gradually led to the black-white good-vs.-evil myths of Star Wars.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Also...
Peregrin Toker presents...

C.J. Motonow's Star Wars!

In the later 200 years, two remakes of George Lucas' Star Wars series have been made. One was made in the 3210s and followed George Lucas' original six movies closely. Another, however, was quite distant from George Lucas' vision and was, when its first entry hit the theatres in 3247 among the costliest and most visually impressive films ever made.

Filmed back-to-back over 6 years under a veil of secrecy by relative unknowns on the biggest budget a film trilogy ever had, USS-born avantgardist Cesar Jorge Motonow (known also for Twin Fullmoon, The Cupcakes Of Justice and The Vortex Octology) financed the movies with the enormous sums paid by art galleries for the paintings and drawings he produced as a member of an artist collective called The Divine Mirror. Even that was not enough to pay for it, he also received generous donations from the governments of the United Solarian Sovereignty, the Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya and the Toraamal Republic.

The first entry in Motonow's take on Star Wars was met with extremely mixed response. Fans of Lucas' original films hated it for its practically nonexistent resemblance to the source material. Others appreciated it for its skilled scenography, deep philosophical content and a visual style which could best be described as unique.

Motonow explained the difference between Lucas' Star Wars and his own interpretation:
C.J. Motonow wrote:"Star Wars" is a myth of the modern days. George Lucas did not create that myth, he merely was the one who communicated the myth to the general public. Storytellers don't make myths, they tell the myths. Each of us has our own interpretation of a myth. What your ancestors saw on the screen back in 1977 was George Lucas' interpretation of a particular myth. This is my interpretation of the same myth. One should neither forget that George Lucas was an American, while I am half PeZookish; half Españan. Thusly, George Lucas' Star Wars was an American rendition of a myth that belongs to no culture, while I have created a fundamentally Nova Terran version of the same myth.

With most of the sets, costumes and spaceships designed either by Motonow himself or by artists who were influenced by him (some hailing from as afar as Zigonia), it was not as much the style as the substance which shook the "Warsies".

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!

C.J. Motonow's A New Hope

In Motonow's version, Luke Skywalker was aware from the start that he was the exiled heir and presumed last survivor of the Skywalker Noble Family. Owen and Beru Lars were not his relatives in this version, rather, they were the two surviving servants of the Lord Anakin Skywalker.

The Jawas from whom C3PO and R2D2 were bought, were depicted by Motonow as a cyborgized degenerate splinter faction of a machine-worshiping religious cult. The designs for C3PO and R2D2 were radically changed, too. Where it really started deviating from the original were Luke's conflict with the Sandpeople. In Motonow's version, the Sandpeople brought Luke into their cave and presented him before Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom the Sandpeople worshiped as a god. Obi-Wan Kenobi (portrayed by Motonow himself) then taught Luke the ways of the Jedi Order (which the Sandpeople had adopted as their own religion) and revealed that he used to be the mentor of Luke's father. Motonow's changes to the code of the Jedi were also a point of critique; the Jedi experience now included minor cosmetic self-mutilation (obviously a reference to Motonow himself having torn off part of his own left ear when he was young) and the lightsabers were actually corporeal steel swords whose blades glowed white-hot with the wielder's telekinetic fire.

One of the most memorable scenes in Motonow's A New Hope may have been the flashback depicting Darth Vader's origin as told by Obi-Wan. In Motonow's version, Darth Vader was not a cyborg but a golem, who decapitated himself to let his disembodied soul possess a robotic humanoid body.

Half an hour through Motonow's version of A New Hope (the first film to be completed), Obi-Wan and Luke led the Sandpeople in a failed guerrilla war against the Imperial government on Tattooine as a response to the Stormtroopers' slaughter of Owen and Beru. When captured, Luke and Obi-Wan broke free of the Stormtroopers tasked with guarding them and fled offworld with Han Solo and Chewbacca, who in this version were fellow freedom fighters who had not yet been taken prisoner. It did not help the purists that in this version, especially not in retrospect, that Chewbacca was portrayed by young Vossrashak Kalnaxxir, who later would become a staple of action films from Zigon-5.

In the Millennium Falcon (a real spaceship custom-built for the movie), the heroes of the story fled and were captured by the Death Star... which in Motonow's remake was made entirely out of crystal, and armed with a choir of specially trained super-psychics who combined their telekinetics to destroy planets. Another extremely memorable scene here was the views of Alderaan's capital city as the planet was hit by the psionic super-weapon of the Death Star.

The fight aboard the crystallic Death Star was in Motonow's version fought primarily with swords and telekinetics against Storm Troopers who looked more like Roman Legionnaires than the ones in Lucas' version. Here came another scene which burned its way into every viewer: Obi-Wan Kenobi's death was marked by a huge flash of white light which filled the room wherein he was duelling with Darth Vader.

Yet another scene which solidified the Motonow version's status as much more adult than Lucas' was nothing else than a zero-G sex scene between Han Solo and Leia.

Motonow's version of the Battle of Yavin did not differ that much from the one in the Lucas version, other than the spaceship designs being remarkably different and the Death Star's destruction causing a galaxy-wide psionic shockwave due to the death of the Psionic Choir. Still, most fans of Lucas' Star Wars were quite upset due to the aestethical deviations alone (which could not possibly be further from the Lucas version), and the plot changes upset them more. It still found its fans, and every single reviewer had something good to say about Ibrahim Ansar's portrayal of Grand Moff Tarkin. Yet the Motonow version of A New Hope, odd as it was, was only a taste of what was to come.

C.J. Motonow's The Empire Strikes Back

Film critics consider this film where the true weirdness started. It opened in 3248, the film annoyed Star Wars purists even more than the preceding entry in the serious.

Its version of the scenes were perhaps the most surreal depiction of a battle on film yet. The mechanical-looking AT-ATs had been replaced by sleek dragon-like walkers which in form looked more organic than mechanical, with close-ups revealing something obviously inspired by 20th century painter/architect Hans Rudi Giger. It didn't make things better that Motonow depicted the Wampa as a noncorporeal ethereal demon, and that the Snowtrooper costumes were even more outlandish than those of the "ordinary" Stormtroopers shown in Motonow's A New Hope.

The flight to Dagobah by Luke Skywalker was yet another downright bizarre visual which enchanted as many as it baffled: Instead of using hyperdrive, Motonow's Luke Skywalker used his extraordinary telekinetic abilities to move his fighters thousands of lightyears - and in this same bizarre trippy colour-explosion scene, it was revealed that at the end of the Battle of Yavin, Luke absorbed the souls of the Psionic Choir whom died aboard the Death Star.

As for the Dagobah sequences themselves, Motonow managed again to annoy purists. Yoda was now a ghost which possessed Luke to produce a "soul-merging" at the end of Luke's stay on Dagobah. This process, along with the myriad hallucinations it provided Luke with, was nominated by critic Reuben Goldberg as "3248's Top Unforgettable Movie Moment". The Imperial Starfleet's hunt for the Millennium Falcon was perhaps the first sequence which reviewers said that Motonow improved from the original version - aside from the "space slug" now resembling a leech more than anything, Motonow opted to add psychedelic "warp storms" and a spaceborne duel between the Millennium Falcon and bounty hunter ships. Fans of the Lucas trilogy, however, did still not like Motonow's tampering with what they considered holy.

Yet what some considered the most breathtaking parts of Motonow's The Empire Strike Back was the scenes aboard Darth Vader's flagship, which Motonow had renamed the Executioner. (He felt it sounded "better in the mouth" than the original name "Executor") Though the interior of the Executioner looked more like that of a nightmare gothic palace than a spaceship, it left audiences breathless either in admiration of the wicked imagination which had designed it, or in disbelief in whether it made sense. The Emperor Palpatine I, played by ex-Divine Mirror painter Romain Passeron (one of Motonow's best friends), had a vastly increased role in Motonow's version of The Empire Strikes Back where he appeared upon the Executioner's bridge as an actual astral projection rather than a hologram.

If there was one thing about this entry into Motonow's remake of the Star Wars trilogy which did not disappoint anyone, not even the purists, it was the climactic lightsaber duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. In addition to the intense and energetic swordplay, which many considered to be better choreographed than that in Lucas originals', Motonow included psychic duelling which culminated in Darth Vader tearing off Luke Skywalker's hand by such powerful telekinetics that the arm was turned to pulp as it was torn off. The dialogue which revealed Vader's relation to Luke was extended and touched also on the golem nature of Motonow's Darth Vader. Aside from the Emperor, Motonow had added more importance to the character of Boba Fett. Motonow's Fett was another element whom many reviewers considered an improvement on the original.

At barely more than 3 hours in length, C.J. Motonow's The Empire Strikes Back was even more loaded with philosophical content than the previous installment. Motonow himself said: "I do not care what other people say - there are reasons that my version of this myth is different than that of George Lucas."

C.J. Motonow's Return Of The Jedi

By far the strangest of Motonow's Star Wars trilogy, his version of Return Of The Jedi was even further removed from the Lucas version than the preceding ones. It started with Luke Skywalker being contacted by the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi and then assimilating Obi-Wan's soul into his own as he had done with that of Yoda. This did not shock Lucas' fans as much as how much Motonow had changed Jabba and his palace. Instead of an anthropomorphizes slug ruling an abandoned monastery, Motonow's Jabba was a "scorpion-mantis-lizard thing" which ruled from an elaborate subterranean mansion whose vast and surrealistically ornamented interiors were steeped in darkness.

A scene which sparked even more controversy, also among those who did not care the slightest about Lucas' version, was the one where the Great God Rancor (Motonow depicted the Rancor as a Lovecraft-inspired demon-god instead of a mere chained beast) raped the captive Leia. Aside from infuriating womens' rights groups all over the galaxy, it also caused much debate in Art And Philosophy about Motonow's alleged sexual deviancies.

As the Great God Rancor ejaculated, Luke rushed to the altar after a swordfight with many of Jabba's guards; upon finding that he arrived too late, he entered yet another bloody fight to slay the Great God Rancor.

For the slaughter of a God, the entomo-reptilian Motonow version of Jabba sentenced Luke, Leia and the now-thawed out Han to death by sacrifice to the Sarlacc, which again had changed in Motonow's version to a God, exactly like the Rancor. The Great God Sarlacc was a being equal parts snake, centipede and leech, woken from its slumber in the centre of the planet Tattooine by a group of shadowy wizards which Jabba had hired. Here, the Great God Sarlacc even had a reason to devour Boba Fett - it punished him for blasphemy against the Great God Sarlacc. Here, Leia used her latent psionic abilities to sever the chain connecting her to Jabba's dais and threw the monster into the Great God Sarlacc's mouth. The Great God Sarlacc then, in a scene which caused some Lucas fans to walk out of the theaters, thanked Luke and Leia for ridding the world of these blasphemers and heretics.

However, for the purists, many more changes in Motonow's Return of The Jedi were to come. The Second Death Star was built entirely out of a bronze-coloured fictional metal called "Orichalcos", and while it made sense to introduce more characterization of Emperor Palpatine, not many considered it necessary to show a scene of the Emperor defecating, nor did everyone like the purple mohawk hairstyles sported by the Crimson Guard in Motonow's version. Others did not even know what to think about Motonow's decision to portray the Ewoks as winged, bird-like creatures which lived in great sylvan cities built in the tops of mile-high trees. A visually impressive fantasy culture if there ever was one, and far more original than the teddybear-like Ewoks in Lucas' ROTJ, but they had only the name in common. A visually impressive scene of the Battle of Endor was when the avian Ewoks duelled in mid-air with Imperial Stormtroopers mounted on futuristic versions of Da Vinci's ornithopter.

All this still paled in comparison to the spaceborne Battle of Endor, a CG spectacle which Motonow had scripted in collaboration with an Anglian naval officer who happened to be his cousin. Said naval officer, Lt. Commander Wladyslaw Motonow, commented in an interview: "This looks more like a real space battle than most of the anti-pirate skirmishes I've fought in."

The three-way swordfight/psi-duel aboard the Second Death Star between Luke, Darth Vader and the Emperor was even more over-the-top than that in Motonow's rendition of The Empire Strikes Back. In another significant deviation from Lucas' original version, the one to destroy Darth Vader was actually the Emperor, who crushed the mechanical body after Vader defected over to the side of his son. Vader's soul, seperated from a body yet once more, merged with that of his son Luke. (Which by now had absorbed several other souls) This way, Anakin Skywalker avenged his own physical death.

The ending of the movie however, topped all this in sheer otherworldliness and offensiveness to Lucas' fans. Luke, now having become one with his father, voyaged to Coruscant (depicted by Motonow as a "Dyson Sphere" rather than an actual planet) where he was coronated as the new Emperor of the Galaxy in a scene where statues of Palpatine are toppled over, the Crimson Guard swear new oaths of loyalty and a new flag flies over Coruscant. As his future successor, Luke Skywalker nominates the demigod with whom Leia is pregnant due to the rape by the Great God Rancor.

As Leia gives birth to the demi-god, an impossible-to-describe 20-minute scene (making Motonow's Return Of The Jedi almost 4 hours long) happens where the very nature of the space-time continuum is fundamentally altered. After over 15 minutes of pure psychedelics, we see a young girl standing atop a meadow, saying: "This is not the end. This is a new beginning."

The Aftermath

Motonow followed it up with his own take on what a prequel trilogy to Star Wars would look like. Having absolutely nothing in common with George Lucas' prequels, the three-part C.J. Motonow's Star Wars: The Beginning opened in 3255 and drew a somewhat more positive response from the viewing public.

It did spark a dilemma which exists among filmmakers today in 3267 and is still debated hotly - namely that of whether the Motonow version is better than all other versions of Star Wars, including the more faithful remakes and Lucas' originals. This is perhaps the area where C.J. Motonow's Star Wars is a true groundbreaker: It is perhaps the first remake radically different from the original and also considered an improvement by a considerable bulk of the population.

On their own right, Motonow's Star Wars movies are also among some of the most beautiful and thought-provoking epics ever to be seen on screen, and among the most expensive movies ever made. (even though they at first flopped at the box office, Mendelson Films reports that they later have become cult classics in the home theatres)

Not surprisingly, they were also Motonow's only voyage into the world of big-budget movies. It still stands as a testament to the most vivid imaginations of the galaxy, that such a surreal space opera epic got made in the first place.'
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by LadyTevar »

Du fuck did I just read?
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by FaxModem1 »

Shroom's parody/homage/yearning? for the Giger-inspired adaptation of the Dune movie that never came, only this time it's a far off adaptation/remake of Star Wars.

That's just my guess though.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by hellified »

edit
never mind...
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

FaxModem1 wrote:Shroom's parody/homage/yearning? for the Giger-inspired adaptation of the Dune movie that never came, only this time it's a far off adaptation/remake of Star Wars.

That's just my guess though.
Jodorowsky inspired. And the thing was written by an old SDN user, Peregrin Toker.

It's the Star Wars remake for our sci-fi setting.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OZq-tlJTrU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6HKO8JINj8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M

Well, I'd point to these clips for one thing. 633 Squadron and the Dam Busters. Original Star Wars is a rescue the maiden in the tower plus those movies story in pretty direct terms. The added movies got more complicated. Lucas did well overall, Disney is just going to give us lazy WW2 propaganda victory movies, instead of clever WW2 propaganda victory movies.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Cykeisme »

That is an insanely brilliant piece of.. "satirical hypothetical future rewritten alternate meta-fiction" (I'm not able to properly describe it).

So from the profile, this Peregrin Toker is a dude who was on the board from 2002 to 2006, and turned out some crazy humor like that, but for some reason or other, did not post on this board again.
And that was over a decade ago.

For some reason, this elicits a disproportionately poignant sense of melancholy regarding the impermanence of... everything.

But I go off topic, sorry.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Cykeisme wrote:That is an insanely brilliant piece of.. "satirical hypothetical future rewritten alternate meta-fiction" (I'm not able to properly describe it).

So from the profile, this Peregrin Toker is a dude who was on the board from 2002 to 2006, and turned out some crazy humor like that, but for some reason or other, did not post on this board again.
And that was over a decade ago.

For some reason, this elicits a disproportionately poignant sense of melancholy regarding the impermanence of... everything.

But I go off topic, sorry.
He was ahead of his time and he got tarred and feathered for it, even I took a while to get it and it was influential in how I approach things now lol... but you know that it's not the standard fare viewpoint especially in this place where it's all gigajoulified spherical masses of iron QED fuckface, and you know there was a time when such confrontational zero sum attitudes were peaking at the expense of more meditative phases. That's partly why I left the board for quite some time.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Galvatron »

SoD motherfucker! :finger:
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Cykeisme
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Cykeisme »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:
Cykeisme wrote:...Peregrin Toker...
He was ahead of his time and he got tarred and feathered for it, even I took a while to get it and it was influential in how I approach things now lol... but you know that it's not the standard fare viewpoint especially in this place where it's all gigajoulified spherical masses of iron QED fuckface, and you know there was a time when such confrontational zero sum attitudes were peaking at the expense of more meditative phases. That's partly why I left the board for quite some time.
:lol:

For him to have been an influence on your train of thought (or the derailment thereof) is high praise, in my judgment.
He came and left this board changed for the better, then!

I'm all for scientific analysis of visuals, but we can't have our collars starched at all times.
Galvatron wrote:SoD motherfucker! :finger:
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Sea Skimmer »

The problem was whenever people forgot that the calculation ideas being used...were only good for within 1-2 orders of magnitude. AT BEST. On the other hand it helped me teach myself lots of rational reasoning I now use for irrational purposes and controlling groundwater flooding caused by other peroples incompetence, so its all win.

I do remember Peregrin Toker, but as someone who was just like, neutral. t you know, a lot of people posted fiction back in the day that was pretty good but in some cases I never found time to read it until years after they left or went pure Spacebattles, and well, if I'd read all that stuff I wouldn't know all the kill-facts or amassed the hundreds of pages of kill-fact-silly derivied notes I have for stories I'll never find time to write. So that's life again.
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Shroom Man 777
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Sea Skimmer wrote:The problem was whenever people forgot that the calculation ideas being used...were only good for within 1-2 orders of magnitude. AT BEST. On the other hand it helped me teach myself lots of rational reasoning I now use for irrational purposes and controlling groundwater flooding caused by other peroples incompetence, so its all win.

I do remember Peregrin Toker, but as someone who was just like, neutral. t you know, a lot of people posted fiction back in the day that was pretty good but in some cases I never found time to read it until years after they left or went pure Spacebattles, and well, if I'd read all that stuff I wouldn't know all the kill-facts or amassed the hundreds of pages of kill-fact-silly derivied notes I have for stories I'll never find time to write. So that's life again.
Hey you were never one of the QED GIGAJOULE SPHERICAL MASSES OF IRON CONCESSION ACCEPTED FUCKFACE.

For one of the folks in the board most adept at talking about the technicalities behind mass killings, you're also pretty mellow not like a lot of the others in the Smartest Board in the Internet :lol:
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by FaxModem1 »

Anyone ever play KOTOR II: The Sith Lords? The opening level is still Star Wars, but it's very much a survival horror game, with you walking about the Peragus Mining Facility and investigating why everyone else is dead, what happened to you, and why the only one with answers is a creepy 'protocol droid' who seems to be cagey about what's going on, a dead woman come back to life, and an imprisoned pilot.

Heck, most of KOTOR II could be considered an exploration of what Star Wars isn't, in which you can't trust your mentor, all of the party hate each other, there is no real grand battle, but instead most of the game is exploration of who you were, and and what you did, as well as the main villain being someone who is both a force user, and utterly hates the idea of being dependent on it, and wants to cut the strings.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that the game is also a bit of a deconstruction of RPGs, in that everyone else is worried about the fact that you keep on getting stronger and leveling up, which in-universe, is alarming to lightside users.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Q99 »

The comic "Steam Wars" written by Fred Perry is very much star wars even though the swords are different (electrofoils), there's a different special power ('quantum dragoon' training instead of the force), and... it takes place on a single steampunk planet with airships and trains (yes, trains!) taking the place of space ships, and there's no Death Star equivalent (there is a major advantage of the Empi- er, 'Hegemonic Crux,'- that the rebels have to get knowledge of, but it's no battle station or even weapon of mass destruction). Also, Luke- er, Bo, I mean- knows who his father is, and announces it soon after meeting the Duchess and Hansel Lowe.

Yet if you read it, you'll find it more Star Wars than some Star Wars products. A lot of Star Wars products, really, and not just because of the names. It shows how you can keep so much of the tone while swapping out parts of the setting wholesale, as long as what's swapped in keeps a similar role.
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Re: How much of "Star Wars" can you strip out of Star Wars?

Post by Knife »

I watched Eregeon and it was SW with dragons and medival knights. My son said the movie was a bit different from the book that I've never read, but meh.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong

But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
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