Pets of the Old Republic: #1. Opal Vulptilla

Today marks the ninth anniversary of This Week in Aurebesh! Each milestone my little project reaches leaves me pleasantly surprised and thankful for all the visitors I have received over the years. I started this blog as a bit of a lark, but it’s taken on a life of its own, and I’m always amazed to see what it continues to inspire in me.

To mark the occasion, I’m starting a new project to draw portraits and highlight just a few of the many, many pets available to players of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The genesis for this came from a pair of tweets from Swtorista and Kal from Today in the Old Republic. Swtorista posted a funny screenshot of her pet Kell Dragon climbing on the furniture, and in response Kal drew, in what must be MS Paint, a quick picture of the dragon. Likewise, I added my own quick version. It was all very silly, but I had fun with the drawing, and I’ve decided to keep it going. Ever since I bought a White Kitten from Lil Timmy during my very first visit to Stormwind in World of Warcraft, I’ve enjoyed collecting pets and that passion has continued into SWTOR.

Number One in this series has to be the Opal Vulptilla Puppy. This version of the pet has been available to players as giveaways from SWTOR and members of its Content Creator Program or as a reward for participation on the game’s test server.

This little fellah is completely adorable. I’m certain he loves scritches, but be careful where you pet him, because it’s not all soft and fuzzy! I like the creature’s mix of textures with its floppy ears, thick fur and iridescent crystal mane.

Vulptillas are available to players as both pets and mounts aside from the Opal presented here. Check the Cartel Market or the GTN for the original Blue pet and mount or the infernal red mount.

SWTOR’s Vulptillas are, of course, inspired by the crystal foxes from my favorite Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi. The foxes in the movie are called Vulptices and share some traits with the Vulptillas but they are not identical. The crystal fur of a Vulptex is much finer than the large shards found on the Vulptilla, and the Vulptex has a leaner, longer frame than the much larger and broader mature Vulptilla.

There is not yet any lore in SWTOR concerning Vulptillas, but it is reasonable to assume that the two foxlike creatures are related. Can Vulptillas also be found on Crait? Or perhaps Vulptillas are natives of Ilum? Given that we have seen at least three different colors of Vulptillas, it leads me to wonder if their crystalline manes are somehow related to the Kyber crystals of the Jedi and Sith.

What Pets Would You Like to See?

My goal for this Pets of the Old Republic project is to create over the next year twenty-five portraits of some of the cutest, grossest, silliest, most loveable pets from the history of the game. I have a list to start on, but I would love to add some suggestions from you!

Is there a favorite pet you’d like to see me draw? Leave a comment below! The pets with the most votes will be added to the queue. In addition everyone who leaves a comment will be entered into a raffle for an Opal Vulptilla pet. And if you have one, already let me know and I’ll send you 450 cartel coins instead. I will select up to 12 winners from among all entries.

Here are the rules:

To enter, leave a comment below with the following information:

  • Your character name (be mindful of spaces and special symbols!)
  • Your faction
  • Your server
  • Which pet you’d like to see me illustrate
  • Would you prefer an Opal Vulptilla pet or 450 cartel coins?

That’s it! I will accept entries for two weeks from this posting and will randomly select the winners on October 17 at 1 PM ET.

If you prefer not to comment publicly, I will also accept entries via email at twia@generic-hero.com, or through Twitter or Bluesky.

There are no country or server restrictions on any of the prizes that will be awarded.

This giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with LucasFilm Ltd, Broadsword or Electronic Arts Inc.

We’re on the honor system here, so one entry per person, please.

Good luck, and you can keep it if you remember to feed, walk it and clean up after it!

 

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All That Once Was Good and Could Be Again

This week we learned that James Earl Jones passed away at the age of 93. As Star Wars fans, we know him best as the man who lent his deep, booming voice to Darth Vader, but the scope and breadth of his award winning career extends far beyond that one role.

My first exposure to Jones was likely on Sesame Street where his recital of the alphabet remains thoroughly delightful to watch. Jones performed in movies, on stage and on TV and his presence was always welcome. I vividly remember my surprise at seeing him play the villain in Conan the Barbarian, but my favorite of his roles was Terrance Mann in Field of Dreams. Jones imbued the J. D. Salinger inspired character with elegiac authority and just a little bit of mischievousness.

But, of course, in this corner of fandom Jones will be best remembered as the voice of Darth Vader. So many people from George Lucas and Ralph McQuarrie and David Prowse and Bob Anderson and more helped bring Vader to life in Star Wars. I’d argue that Jones wasn’t just the final piece of the puzzle, but the cornerstone that held it all together. His voice framed the work of everyone else and made Vader the most iconic motion picture villain of my lifetime. It’s no small achievement.

For that and so much more, it’s worth remembering and honoring his life and art.

 

 

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A Time to Get and a Time to Lose

Well, so much for that. Last week the Hollywood trade press has revealed that The Acolyte is not going to receive a second season. I am saddened by this news.

I don’t think The Acolyte was the best thing ever, but I thought it had a compelling take on Star Wars lore and its narrative had me coming back for more each episode. It’s a shame Disney denied it the chance to grow its audience and find its creative groove. It deserved better.

I don’t know why Disney ended the show, and you shouldn’t believe anyone on the internet who claims to know. All I can say for sure is that it’s about the money. Star Wars productions don’t come cheap, and I gather The Acolyte was more expensive than other shows. Still the speed at which Disney gave it the hook is heartbreaking.

It goes without saying that not every great show is great or popular out of the gate. Star Wars fans need look no further than The Clone Wars, which debuted to poor reviews. I myself had written it off, and only returned to it in later seasons. I think there is value to the argument that The Clone Wars redeems the prequels. At the very least, it gave us Ahsoka and Rex, two of Star Wars’ most beloved supporting characters. and an absolute humdinger of a final arc.

Likewise, Breaking Bad, one of the very best shows of the “prestige era” of television launched to mediocre ratings, but AMC stuck with it and gave the show time to connect with more viewers and become a cultural landmark. Or consider Star Trek: The Next Generation which was close to unwatchable for its first two seasons. Had it been given the same treatment as The Acolyte, the legacy of what kicked off arguably Star Trek’s best period would’ve instead been nothing more than “Encounter at Farpoint” and “Angel One.”

No, The Acolyte was not as good as Breaking Bad, but it was better than the best eight episodes of the first two seasons of Next Generation. And maybe in time it would’ve become the best Star Wars thing ever. We’ll never know.

It’s funny. The promise of the streaming era was that it would be the best of all possible worlds for viewers and creators alike. Studios could produce shows without having to worry about ratings. Viewers could watch and discover shows at their own pace. But somehow, these media companies have only managed to iterate their platforms into cable, but worse. One of the reasons I ended my Netflix account is that they started cancelling shows before I could even start watching them, just weeks after their premiere. It’s shocking to see Disney do the exact same thing. It is simply not possible for every show to be both fully formed and massively popular right out of the gate.

We’re seeing the big studios doing this everywhere now. It’s ridiculous that it’s more profitable for these companies to erase completed movies and series from existence as tax write offs or to avoid paying creators than to let them see the light of day. Something is very broken in the entertainment industry right now. The attitude that “If it’s not a blockbuster, it’s a failure”, feels like a dead end to me.

Is this the end of The Acolyte’s story? Probably not. This is Star Wars after all. Nothing is ever really gone. I’m sure there will be novels and comics by other creators that will carry on Osha and Mae’s story, but it’s not quite the same, is it? I loved many aspects of the old Expanded Universe, but its storylines were mainly driven by novels, and words on a page just never quite capture the full feeling of Star Wars for me. It is a shame that Leslye Headland and all the talented writers, directors, designers, cast and crew who made the show won’t be able to continue their story.

I don’t want to give any oxygen to the worst corners of “fandom” who rained hate on the show’s cast and crew. The Star Wars they want is demonstrably worse than any era of Star Wars we’ve ever had. They can screw off right into the sun as far as I’m concerned.

If you didn’t like The Acolyte, that’s fine. Not everything has to be for everyone. Star Wars should be allowed to be big enough that it can serve different tastes. I don’t imagine there is much overlap between the audiences of Andor and Young Jedi Adventures. That’s a good thing. If Star Wars is truly to be modern folklore, then it has to be accessible to everyone, not just the idyllic version of the eight year olds that only ever existed in our heads.

I enjoyed The Acolyte and I’m glad Leslye Headland and company got to tell us the sad story of Master Sol, and, for a little while, show us some truly thrilling lightsaber fights and take us to an unseen corner of the Star Wars universe.

 

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The Acolyte Review

While it is still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share some thoughts about the recently concluded Disney+ Star Wars series The Acolyte. Beware there shall be spoilers ahead!

Overall, I thought it was very good and very interesting to watch, especially as a long time Star Wars fan. If Andor and Rogue One are the Star Wars stories for people tired of the Jedi, The Acolyte is the complete opposite; it dives deeper into the questions around the Jedi than any other live action or animated Star Wars story. It poses questions I’ve asked myself, and it goes to places about which I’ve long wondered.

The Acolyte was created by Leslye Headland whose last show Russian Doll I really enjoyed, so I was prepared to give The Acolyte as much space as it needed to tell its story. The cast is very strong, with a diverse group of actors bringing to life an era of Star Wars previously unexplored in live action. Amandla Stenberg does a good job in her dual role and I really like how you can tell Mae and Osha apart without difficulty, until, of course, you can’t. Lee Jung-jae is terrific as Master Sol. The entire show would fall apart if all of Sol’s strengths and weaknesses aren’t given an empathic and relatable face, and he expresses the flawed, beating heart that holds all these contradictions together until it breaks. The cast is rounded out by faces familiar from Russian Doll and other popular media, but I want to single out Dafne Keen who makes Jecki instantly likeable and wise beyond her years and Manny Jacinto who is clearly reveling in the role of the sneering villain and chewing just the right amount of scenery.

Many of the Disney+ Star Wars series have been rightly criticized for their smaller and confined settings, but I think The Acolyte, and Ahsoka just before it, show that they are working to broaden the scope of their environments in post-lockdown Hollywood. Neither show quite matches the reach of Andor, but it feels much more expansive than the recent Mandalorian seasons.

Otherwise the costumes, special effects and set design is as excellent as you’d expect from a modern production. I’m always happy to see another Wookiee, and Bazil the Tracker feels right at home in the Star Wars universe. Something about the prequels that always disappointed me was that the Jedi’s costumes embraced the brown bathrobe aesthetic a bit too much, depicting the Jedi in their prime as rather more drab as I’d always hoped to see., but The Acolyte’s Jedi garb follows the tone set by other High Republic stories and the characters’ costumes display more color with vivid gold accents, bright white cloaks and individual expression.

I’ll go into more depth below about the things I found interesting about The Acolyte, but it’s not perfect. There are moments that the show just races by that I wish it had lingered on more: Mae’s arrival on the Stranger’s planet at the end of the first episode feels abrupt, and I wish young Osha’s interactions with the Jedi on Brendok were explored more fully, for example the scene in which she meet Kelnacca the Wookiee feels like it needed at least one more beat to show the characters actually connecting.

Some of the action of the first episode feels unnecessary; the prison-ship sequence shows Osha’s resourcefulness and kind heart I suppose, but it also feels like it just serves to delay the reunion of Osha and Sol, which is when the show’s story really gets into gear.

I also found the season’s ending in which Osha and Mae are separated again somewhat contrived. That Osha would choose to go with the Stranger and leave her sister behind didn’t quite work for me. Clearly the story is not over yet, but splitting them up feels like an awkward reset of their journeys, even if they have swapped their relative places.

Cinematic Influences

The Acolyte has a whole raft of influences many of which are familiar to Star Wars fans. The Acolyte fully engages with the messy practices of the Jedi as seen in the prequels and the history of the Jedi from both the High Republic and the Old Republic eras.

The Acolyte draws on a wealth of Star Wars lore, but in a way that feels unobtrusive to me. As a Star Wars nerd, I had many moments of recognition. “Hey, did he just quote the Sith code?” “Wait, is that Cortosis?” “Ooh, I bet I know who that creepy dude in the shadows is!” But here’s the thing, you do not need to be in on the jokes to understand the show’s meanings. The Stranger’s identity was not meant to be a surprise. You don’t need to read a decades old novel to understand how the metal helmet works; it’s clearly communicated in the action of the show. And, look, the creepy dude lurking in the shadows is just some creepy dude lurking in the shadows. You should be able to draw your own conclusions on what he is without having someone on the internet explain it to you.

Star Wars traditionally has been inspired by samurai movies, but The Acolyte also draws on influences from Chinese action cinema and “Wuxia” stories of fantastic martial artists. I’m sure it’s no accident that Carrie-Anne Moss, the star of The Matrix, the most famous American film influenced by Chinese martial arts movies, was cast as Master Indara. Moreover, The Acolyte’s very first action scene was a loving tribute to the teahouse battle from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The Acolyte‘s young protagonists being torn between and forced to account for the mistakes of the older generation is a theme very similar to Ang Lee’s movie.

These influences mean that The Acolyte‘s action choreography is very good, especially for a TV show. If you’ve always wanted more Kung Fu in your Star Wars, you’ll enjoy the fight scenes in The Acolyte. The centerpiece of the series is the battle in the woods on Khofar in the episode Night; it is as absolutely thrilling, tense and heartbreaking a set piece as any similar sequence you might find on any TV series or even in most action movies.

Some of the influences go even deeper and farther back. Twins and siblings, both literal and metaphorical, are important in other Star Wars stories, most famously Luke and Leia, but also the Dyad of Ben and Rey in the sequels or Arcann and Thexan from SWTOR. But the exploration of twins and the strength of their bonds goes back thousands of years into the myths of our cultures including Castor and Pollux ancient Greek heroes with divine parentage and a bond that transcended death, or Romulus and Remus, the contentious twins central to the stories of Rome’s founding.

Likewise the stories of twins from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to the modern classic The Parent Trap also play with twins and mistaken identity. The Acolyte embraces this whole-heartedly. Both Osha and Mae pretend to be the other sister, but the theme of opposites and dualities as reflections are baked into every aspect of the show from the titles of the episodes: Lost/Found, Revenge/Justice, Teach/Corrupt, Day and Night, Destiny and Choice to Osha’s tattoo, which I interpret to be a simplified and abstracted depiction of the butterfly from the girl’s favorite tree on Brendok, but it is split in two with the wing shapes reflecting their opposite sides. The metaphor is very much on the nose.

Likewise the Stranger and Master Sol are reflections of each other, they both have two faces, one of which they struggle mightily to keep hidden. The story reaches its climaxes when their masks come off, and their roles are reversed. Master Sol’s two faces aren’t quite as obvious as the Stranger’s, but the show does suggest that he is not quite the flawless hero you might assume he is. Several times during the season, The Acolyte alludes to key moments from the original trilogy, and in each case Sol is cast in the part of Darth Vader. On Carlac, Sol reaches out to catch a falling Osha as Vader reaches out to a falling Luke Skywalker on Bespin. During Sol’s duel with Mae on Olega, he can sense that Mae’s thoughts turn to her sister; Vader sensed the exact same thing from Luke during their duel over Endor. Back on Brendok, both Mae and Osha’s final confrontations with Sol directly echoes the climax of Return of the Jedi with Luke, Vader and the Emperor. Heck, even Sol’s hair flares out around his head to give a similar silhouette to Vader’s helmet. None of this strikes me as accidental. The Acolyte suggests almost from the get-go, that Sol is tinged by darkness. He’s not a Dark Lord of the Sith, but he’s hardly pure of heart either.

As for Osha and Mae, they are more than just twins; Sol argues they are one person split in two through the power of their mothers and the Vergence in the Force on Brendok. While they briefly exchange identities early in the story, they completely swap their positions relative to the light and the dark sides of the Force during the finale. This is overtly foreshadowed through the poem the two have shared with each other since childhood, and made explicit when Osha’s droid companion Pip and the tracker Bazil begin treating Mae as they would Osha. In the finale, Mae abandons her quest for revenge which kicked off the story, only to have Osha turn to the dark side before our eyes and complete her sister’s mission.

What is it with the Jedi, Anyway?

I’m certain I’m not the only Star Wars fan that has wondered about the practices of the Jedi when it comes to how and when they recruit new members. I remember being confused that Anakin, a nine year old, was considered too old to join the Jedi in The Phantom Menace.  “How young are they taking these kids?” and “What about their parents?” were common questions that came up in conversations around the prequels. And for the most part, Star Wars stories since then typically steer clear of those issues, because it is weird no matter how you answer those questions.

When thinking about them and wondering about the emotionally stunted upbring most Jedi seem to have experienced, I’ve often been amazed that the Jedi weren’t producing Darth Vaders at a record pace. As we’ve seen in Star Wars over the years, they kind of were. Fallen, disgraced and expelled Jedi are all over the place, from Count Dooku and Baylan Skoll in live action to the corrupted Inquisitors of the Dark Times and Revan of the Old Republic.

The Acolyte dives head first into the murky waters around those questions. How can any child possibly have the understanding and experience to make the life altering decision to become a Jedi at such a young age? And what if the parents disagree? What if one parent disagrees with the other? What if the Jedi disagrees with any of the involved parties?

These are tough questions. The Acolyte asks them all, and the answers are messy, unsatisfying and tragic.

It’s not cut and dried. The coven on Brendok is not identified as being Dathormir Witches, but they are coded in such a way as to cause viewers familiar with the villains of The Clone Wars and Ahsoka to make that association. The leaders of the coven, Mothers Aniseya and Koril act to protect their family and their community, but they are very, very aggressive in their reactions to the Jedi.

The Jedi are hardly without sin. Even given the benefit of the doubt, they are presumptuous, and they trespass and intrude uninvited. Moreover, I think The Acolyte argues that the Jedi are raised in a way that they simply cannot properly process their feelings or soothe them in others. Torbin is homesick. Who can’t relate to that? Apparently, the Jedi can’t. Sol is worried about Osha. That’s a good thing. But he isn’t able to step back and see the big picture before he draws his lightsaber.

The tragedy is that the Coven and the Jedi were drawn to Brendok for the exact same reason. Something miraculous happened there and instead of seeking common ground, the Jedi over-reached and the Coven over-reacted.

The Jedi compound tragedy with obfuscation and arrogance. The show draws a bold, straight line from the events on Brendok to their self-inflicted fall in the prequels. Ki-Adi Mundi appears on The Acolyte not to break continuity but to be as wrong about things here as he was in The Phantom Menace. Vernestra is hiding things from the Senate in exactly the same way Yoda did in Revenge of the Sith. In the finale Senator Rayencourt lays it out in no uncertain terms for anyone who missed it the first time.

As a long time fan, I find this interesting. Not many Star Wars stories choose to fully engage with the strangeness of the prequels, perhaps for good reason. But I always like it when Star Wars is strange. Strange creatures, alien planets, and space-magic, I dig it all. I don’t think The Acolyte fully succeeds, but I appreciate that it tries to embrace the weird and uncomfortable aspects of the lore. So many Star Wars stories take themselves too seriously and to my tastes, they come across as dry and lifeless. The Acolyte is messy and alive, and I’ll take that any day.

Old Republic Influences

I’m not saying Leslye Headland mains a Consular in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it kind of feels that way. My favorite SWTOR character is my Consular, and maybe my bias is showing, but there were many aspects of The Acolyte that I recognized from SWTOR. Both Osha’s and the Consular’s stories are set in motion by their masters’ expeditions to mysterious Force-shrouded worlds that end in death and tragedy. In both cases the Jedi conspire to keep the truth of what happened secret and years later the next generation must face the consequences of those actions. There are significant differences, of course, but the similarities don’t end there.

On Tython, the Consular witnessed an apparition turn to smoke and vanish in a manner not unlike the Mothers demonstrated on Brendok. Likewise, Kelnacca is controlled by the Coven and made to attack his allies; while it probably wasn’t caused by Terrak Morrhage’s dark plague, Master Indara does use the Force to free Kelnacca of the domination in a way that to me specifically recalls the Consular’s shielding technique that is central to Act One of their story. And that suddenly breaking the connection has violent and tragic implications recalls a certain infamous Dark Side choice players can make after their confrontation with Lord Vivicar.

It doesn’t stop there. both Revan in Knights of the Old Republic and Mae in the finale seem to have their memories erased in similar ways. And finally, after the disasters that turned Brendok and Nathema into wastelands, mysterious Force empowered explosions of life has somehow rejuvenated both worlds. These are just the similiarities I noticed, but I suspect there are more.

I’ve seen some fans react negatively to the Jedi in The Acolyte being portrayed as flawed and imperfect. But as a SWTOR veteran, that’s old hat to me. Jedi doing the wrong things for the right reasons or the right things for the wrong reasons are all over the game. My Consular has great fondness for Yuon Par, but if she’d told someone, anyone, what happened on Malachor Three, so many lives would’ve been saved. On Alderaan, the Sith Warrior can shatter Jedi Master Nomen Karr’s facade of self-righteousness with just a few words. And anyone who’s played the Bounty Hunter story knows that Jedi Jun Seros is just as vengeful and violent as any Sith.

And I’m not even considering the choices players make for their own characters. SWTOR is all about exploring shades of grey in the Star Wars universe.

But SWTOR is not just about falling into darkness. It’s also about the struggle to make it back to the light. Tau Adair is haunted by her actions in wartime, but grapples every day with her demons to find a new path. Darth Marr, one of the most powerful Dark Lords of the Sith in the game’s canon, turned to the light in his last moments and his spirit persists as a Force ghost. Sol, for all of his faults, explains it simply to the Padawans he teaches on Coruscant: the Force is as powerful and raging as fire, you find balance in the Force not when you quench or control the flame, but when you respect its power, weight and uncertainty. Sol claims he made his peace with what happened on Brendok, but his fear of the spark he lit there never left him, and in the end it consumed him.

The Acolyte‘s ending is a bit of a bummer, but clearly its story is not over. A second season has not been announced, but I feel like it’s bound to happen. Will Osha and Mae’s split spirits unite into a single whole like Revan’s did in SWTOR‘s Shadows of Revan expansion? Probably not, but I do hope they find their balance. Their journey is just beginning and I’m very curious to see where it takes them.

 

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Strike

Today SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents performers who work on video games called for a strike against many game companies including Disney Character Voices Inc. and Electronic Arts Productions Inc. For now, I am assuming that this includes Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I don’t believe anyone can argue against the importance of voice actors to the success of SWTOR. Debates about which player character or companion or villain is our favorite are inextricably tied to the performers whose voices helped bring those parts to life.

I strongly support the union’s efforts to protect its members against large corporations’ efforts to exploit performers and replace them with lifeless AI shortcuts. I have no illusions about the scope of my reach and influence, but until the strike is resolved, I will be taking a break from this project. I have one more post, a review of The Acolyte, set to go up Tuesday, but after that I will step away from this blog.

I will not stop playing SWTOR or discontinue my subscription or stop supporting my friends in the community. If you are enjoying the game, then I encourage you to do the same. Our subscriptions also pay for all the artists, writers and developers who are not striking, and I am happy to support them and their hard work which has brought me countless hours of joy over the years.

I have no reason to believe that the SWTOR team has any plans or intent to replace its voice cast with AI substitutes. In fact, I hope the opposite is true. Nevertheless, corporations like EA and Disney are so large and powerful these days, that I believe unions, collective bargaining and labor actions are an effective tool to help ensure the rights of workers. If I can show some support in affected areas related to this blog, I shall.

 

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Living Life a Quarter Mile at a Time

This week, I’d like to take a deep dive into the iconography of the All Worlds Ultimate Swoop Rally, one of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s recurring events which is active in the game as I post this article. The Swoop Event remains a favorite of mine; I appreciate that characters of most levels regardless of their gear can fully participate in the event. Completing the races is not especially challenging at their most basic level, but finishing off a course and all of its bonus objectives does require extra attention, and I still cheer when I manage to beat the Horizon Razor’s course bonus timer objective on Dantooine.

The Swoop Event consists of completing rally courses on three planets for three different swoop teams. The courses each have their own objectives and obstacles and each team’s speeder has their own special abilities for players to use on the course.

Likewise each team has their own personality and flavor, and this is best embodied in their team logos which can be seen emblazoned on their banners, jackets and speeders. So let’s take a moment to look at these logos and explore their connections both inside and outside the Star Wars universe. Even though there is no text to translate, I have also attempted to re-contextualize these symbols in a way that might make them more familiar to people from our own galaxy.

The Blatant Beks

Although apparently not directly connected to their namesakes “The Hidden Beks” with whom Revan teamed up during Knights of the Old Republic, the Blatant Beks were perhaps named by their founder Bangcap with aspirations that this team would be as famous as the one from ages past, but with even more explosive power. Clearly subtlety was not one of his goals.

The most prominent feature of the Bek’s logo is the targeting reticle, and, during their rallies, the objective is to detonate as many eplosives as possible along the way. The crosshairs are framed by a roughly triangular shape. Within SWTOR this shape has at least two meanings that spring to mind.

First and perhaps most obviously to myself and regular readers of this blog, the triangular shape closely resembles the Aurebesh letter “X”. I don’t know if it was meant to be taken this way, but overlaying crosshairs with an X marking the spot feels like a neat connection. However, this shape is more commonly seen in the game as part of warning signs and holographic indicators for explosive devices or spots for players to place explosives during their adventures around the galaxy. In this case, I definitely think the association is intended.

Finally, the Bek’s shield-like shape might also remind us of one of the most iconic super-hero logos in pop-culture. To bring home this comparison, I thought I’d add Superman’s colors to the Bek’s symbol, and I think it works quite nicely.

The Pit Screamers

Next up we have the Pit Screamers, a team focused on coming out of pit stops with sound and fury to show off their skill as they maneuver through slalom-like courses filled with hoops and gates and huge jumps. The Pit Screamers logo is the most abstract of all three team’s symbols. At first glance I thought the hook shaped curves that make up their logo shared more than a passing resemblance to the letters of the Huttese or Outer Rim Basic “language”, and it makes sense that the Pit Screamers’ logo would share a design aesthetic with text and glyphs used by the podracing teams first seen during the Boonta Eve Classic in The Phantom Menace.

But I don’t think these shapes are meant to be taken literally or can be translated. Rather, I think we can look at the symbol in a context more familiar to us as players. All it takes is a dash of fiery colors or some gleaming chrome and this symbol would look right at home on the hood and side panels of a hot rod from American Graffiti or a souped up street racer from any of The Fast and the Furious movies. I am certain the Pit Screamers would appreciate either association.

The Horizon Razors

Finally, let’s take a look at the logo of the Horizon Razor’s whose name tells you everything you need to know about them: they want to slash across the sky. The strength of their logo is that it can be interpreted in many ways, any of which feel appropriate to the team.

The symbol could be the wings of a bird in flight, it could be streaks of clouds moving quickly across a wide open sky, it could be the contrails of dust and exhaust left in the wake of their swoops, it could be the tails of a rider’s scarf fluttering in the wind behind them as they race across the landscape, or it could be quite literally a zoomed in view of a pair of razor blades. It’s cool to me that such a simple shape can be credibly read in so many different ways.

In addition the Horizon Razor’s symbol shares similarities that I believe are intentional to a pair of logos from both within the lore of the Star Wars universe and around the people who bring it to life.

To me, the pair of sweeping speed-lines recalls the logo used by Skywalker Sound, the division of Lucasfilm responsible for sound and music effects and design and recording. Iconic sounds from the hum of lightsabers, the howls of TIE Fighters to the sonic booms of Seismic Charges to BB-8’s beeps and chirps all came to life thanks to the talented artists at Skywalker sound.

Although the Skywalker Sound logo seen here has since been updated, I think it’s fair to say that the Horizon Razor’s icon takes some inspiration from it. However, the symbol within Star Wars lore that shares the most DNA with the Skywalker Sound logo is the one seen on the back of Ezra Bridger’s jacket in the early seasons of Star Wars: Rebels. The wing shapes and bounding arc from the original are clearly transposed onto Ezra’s version.

That said, I’ve never quite been able to interpret Ezra’s logo. Is it a bird lifting off to the left or a ram leaning down and charging to the right or something else altogether? I really can’t say. In my research, I’ve seen it most commonly referred to as a “starbird” which is vague enough to not really mean anything if you ask me. If you know what this logo symbolizes, please let me know in the comments below. I’d love to see this mystery solved!

Blazing out of the Gate!

If you have not yet tried out the All World Ultimate Swoop Rally event, I encourage you to give it a shot. To make it worth your time, there are many fun rewards including decorations, mounts and SWTOR’s only non-combat Tactical items usable by characters of any level.

I hope that the Broadsword team expands this event one day. There is room in the pits for another team, maybe one inspired by the Mods from The Book of Boba Fett or perhaps the teams could establish rally courses on other planets around the galaxy: Taris seems like an historically appropriate choice, but I can also imagine it might be fun to race over the shark infested waters of Manaan or leap across Ruhnuc’s yawning canyons. The sky’s the limit!

 

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Pits and Potes and Skiffs

While I still intend to write about the story of Star Wars the Old Republic’s Desperate Defiance update, I’d like to instead start with a look at a brand new Aurebesh sign that has ties to not only one from the earliest days of SWTOR but also to an extremely obscure bit of Star Wars lore from more than twenty five years ago.

Much of the action in Desperate Defiance takes place in a new area of Hutta called the Minboosa District. Now that I’ve visited Minboosa as part of the story and seen how the changes have also affected “regular” Hutta as well as the Karagga’s Palace operation, I want to take a moment to appreciate how impressive the updated Hutta looks. The old yellow cast to the areas was intense and alien, but now every corner of Hutta is thick with haze and smog. Being outside on Hutta feels gross; it feels like it’s going to stick to your character even when you scramble indoors, and it’ll take more than just a long sonic shower to wash it all off.

At first glance, Minboosa shares similar architecture to the town of Jiguuna on Hutta where Imperial Agents and Bounty Hunters begin their class stories. Minboosa is perhaps a bit more densely packed with buildings, but once you venture outside the town itself, you can really appreciate the changes. Soaring trees, Tibanna gas refineries and landing platforms tower overhead like skyscrapers on Coruscant. Nem’ro’s palace feels positively quaint by comparison.

The center of Minboosa is, of course, the cantina. Shining above its entrance, is a holographic neon sign. This sign is similar to the one above the cantina in Jiguuna, but there are some differences. It’s this earlier sign with which we’ll start. The neon declares that the cantina is called “The Poison Pit” and features radiating circles that act to focus our attention on the logo and the letters atop it; below the three lower letters are framed by octagons and follow the arc of circles. These design elements feature in many examples of the holographic glow that illuminates the player’s journey across the galaxy, most prominently on nearby Nar Shaddaa. The purple creature at the center is a Chemilizard, one of Hutta’s native species that evolved to survive off the pollution that resulted from the Hutt’s short-sighted mistreatment of the planet.

The writing used in this sign is not technically Aurebesh, rather it is a variant known most commonly as “Galactic Standard.” I’ve written about the different types of Aurebesh before, but in general I imagine these alphabets are at least legible and perhaps interchangeable to most of the characters in the game world.

The neon sign above the cantina in the Minboosa District shares a similar design to the Poison Pit sign. This difference that jumped out at me immediately is that this graphic employs a “traditional” Aurebesh font familiar to anyone who’s encountered these letters in other Star Wars media or even Galaxy’s Edge at Disney. While sharing a similar circular design to the previous graphic, this one places the word “skiff” in a horizontal shape which acts as a base for the central graphic which helps enhance the feeling that the speeder is floating above the ground.

I imagine it must have been an interesting design challenge to create a new neon sign for the cantina in the style of one from well over a decade ago, but the artists at Broadsword pulled it off. The two signs are similar, but different enough that they can be told apart at a glance.

However, I do want to explore the meaning of this sign. The image in the center depicts a skiff, a light, open-top repulsorlift “hover-boat” first seen during Return of the Jedi during the battle above the Great Pit of Carkoon.

The name of the cantina, the “Dirty Skiff” sparked a very specific memory for me. Throughout the history of the various Star Wars action figure lines from Kenner and later Hasbro, the toys often includes additional gimmicks: cheap collectible coins, digital bobbins with poorly recorded bits of dialogue or sound effects, and, perhaps most unusual of all, “Freeze Frame Action Slides.” These were two-inch square frames with a small, still image of a scene from one of the Star Wars movies. These images were meant to be seen through an “Action Slide Viewer” (Sold separately, of course; batteries not included, of course) a toy shaped like a pair of Macrobinoculars that allowed you to look at the slides in a manner similar to the old Viewmaster toys. The Freeze Frame Slides could also be used in a traditional slide projector, something familiar to anyone who grew up in the era before digital photography. If this all sounds weirdly retro to you now, believe it, it was nearly as silly back then.

The Freeze Frame Slide included with the “Pote Snitkin” figure, a character both obscure and ridiculously named even by Star Wars standard, features Luke Skywalker in battle during Return of the Jedi’s Sail Barge rescue with a caption that stuck with me all these years.

Some of my Star Wars friends found the phrase “cleaning skiff” to be quite amusing and imagined that it might have come to be slang in the Star Wars universe for “kicking butt.” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it’s too far a leap from “Cleaning Skiff” to “Dirty Skiff” which, depending on how dirty your mind is, could have all sorts of additional meanings.

Is this holographic sign an intentional homage to an odd accessory from a twenty-five year old action figure? I can’t say for sure, but once I made the connection, I knew I had to share it. And it’s not the first time something from Star Wars toys seems to have inspired something in SWTOR.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: there is so much weird, dumb, silly and wonderful lore across the history of Star Wars. None of it should be taken seriously, but it’s funny what bubbles to the surface sometimes.

 

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Spring Has Sprung

At the end of May, SWTOR’s game update 7.5 launched. Called “Desperate Defiance”, it includes a continuation of the expansion’s main story, the next PVP season, a new springtime event, and a system of activities called “Ventures” the first of which is focused around our character training Lane Vizsla’s Basilisk prototype droid project: Bessie. And there is even some Aurebesh for me to translate!

It’s a busy time for both SWTOR and Star Wars, which also saw the debut of the new Disney+ series, The Acolyte. I haven’t been able to make time for all of it, and my desire to cover all of 7.5 in a single post has proven to be impossible. Between the ongoing Galactic Season, a new PVP season and my regular activities, the addition I’ve spent the most time on over the last three weeks is the “Festival of Abundance” the game’s new spring-time event. Given that I publically speculated that there was a gap in SWTOR’s yearly calendar where a spring focused event could naturally fit, I was, as you can imagine, glad to see this addition.

One of the aspects I enjoy most about MMO-RPGs is simply being in the world the game creates for players. I like having an excuse to go out and do things. In SWTOR, these things are most often dailies and heroics, stuff I’ve repeated many times over the years. So I embrace events like the Feast of Prosperity,  the Swoop Rally and now the Festival because they offer a relaxed change of pace. Their focus is less on combat than on just existing as a person in the game world.

If I want to fight and test my skills there are already plenty of ways for me to do so in this game. This new event instead offers me opportunities to pet baby Tauntauns, cook vomit inducing pies, dance around a futuristic Maypole and traverse the galaxy hunting hidden eggs. It’s all very silly, and I’ve been having fun with it.

That’s not to say there is no combat. To my surprise, the event’s story quests include encounters with a few fairly tough opponents. Don’t forget to put your pants on and have a companion at your side, or you might be in for a rough go.

In general, however, the event’s objectives have been very low key. That’s just the way I like it. There are lots of activities and achievements, including many hidden ones, to chase and plenty to keep me busy during my play sessions. I honestly enjoy that I’ve been able to summon my favorite companion and hop on my favorite speeder and just run around and do stuff for neat rewards. There will be plenty of time in the weeks and years to come for me to put my game-face on and jump into the action, but for now I’m having a good time with the event.

Is it perfect? Not quite. The Festive Footwork quest to dance at the holo-ribbon could be more interactive. As it is now, you approach the pole, click a button and wait. That’s it. Being able to move around, try different dance moves or cross the holo-streams for different results might’ve been fun. In addition, if you want to earn more than a handful of the rewards, you really need to commit wholeheartedly to the event. I know Broadsword wants players coming back again and again, but I think the rewards, especially from the story quests, could stand to be more generous with the event currency. And, to be honest, I wish the armor and weapon rewards were legacy bound. SWTOR has done so much to make Legacy gear an integral part of the game, but that I’ve had to “farm” up currency for multiple pairs of both versions of the goggles for all the characters who could use ‘em doesn’t feel great.

But other parts of the event do feel good. Setting a pie on an empty table is satisfying. Chilling out while I zap fishies or dance around the holo-pole for Conquest points beats the heck out of any heroic mission. The “dark side” option at the end of the story made me laugh; that my Sith Inquisitor has put on display an ancient, obviously active Sith relic in the barn of her farm feels very much like something she’d do. And given that the event is mostly about being nice, healing sick animals and sharing pies, it’s fair that those who walk the path of the Dark Side should get the last word in one regard.

And that’s just the tip of the 7.5 iceberg. There are elements of “Desperate Defiance” from how it advances the story, its presentation and a major change in the cast that I want to discuss, but that must be a topic for next time. And later after the series concludes, I also want to explore The Acolyte’s parallels to SWTOR’s lore.

But this post is late enough as it is! Next week, I’ll be back to my routine, but for now I encourage everyone to check out the Festival of Abundance and have some fun with it.

 

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Phantom Menace

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of The Phantom Menace, and that seems to me a good excuse to look back on Episode I and its place in fandom, especially my own.

I am among the first generation of Star Wars fans and the return of Star Wars to the larger pop culture landscape in 1999 was a very big deal indeed. The movie’s cast was overflowing with well-known and well-regarded actors, and the marketing push was enormous. I’d never stopped being a Star Wars fan even after Return of the Jedi faded from memory, but the prospect of seeing a brand new Star Wars film on the big screen was something I’d given up on. It’s so very different today when it feels like Star Wars will never go away.

However, even before the movie’s premiere, there were murmurs of discontent, and after release some fans had strong negative reactions to the movie. I won’t belabor the point and subject you to a two-hour long video essay breaking down in excruciating and tedious detail all of the problems with The Phantom Menace. Honestly, the movie’s shortcomings are on the surface and obvious for all to see, and I basically agree with the criticisms we’ve heard over the last two decades. To this day, I’m baffled by some of the creative choices George Lucas made in the prequels.

But I also don’t care. Even now, I can sit down and watch Episode I and have a good time. The pod race is daft and fun. The lightsaber work throughout is among the best in any Star Wars production. Liam Neeson brings a noble presence to the role of Qui-Gon, a character whose actions don’t always seem that noble. Ray Park took a brilliant character design and imparted into it a wonderful physicality that brought to life one of Star Wars‘ best villains. Everything you need to know about Darth Maul is right there in how he looks and how he moves.

But among my friends and many of my fellow first generation Star Wars fans, The Phantom Menace was a disappointment. I think my reaction was tempered by the fact that I’d never stopped watching Star Wars. Since the original trilogy became available on home video, I’d rent all three from Blockbuster once or twice a year, and in between marathons there were countless comics and novels and games to discover as well. Upon repeated viewings, it became clear to me that the original movies are not without their flaws. The lightsaber fight in the first is not good at all; it’s cringeworthy every time Luke and Leia kiss, and, boy, Harrison Ford doesn’t seem like he was trying too hard with what little he was given to work with in Return of the Jedi.

And that’s not counting the Expanded Universe. I love so many of those original adventures that filled the gaps between movies, but plenty of those stories weren’t my cup of tea, to say the least. As far as I was concerned The Phantom Menace was a damn masterpiece compared to Splinter of the Mind’s Eye or Shadows of the Empire.

I make no bones about it: I grade Star Wars on a curve. In spite of Episode I’s flaws and because of its ships and costumes and music and alien worlds, it still feels like Star Wars to me, and that counts for a lot, indeed, it probably counts the most. Not everyone judges movies the same way. That’s cool.

As a Star Wars fan who is more on the fanatic side of the spectrum, I’ve engaged with the movies and fandom in ways different than others whose appreciation is more casual. I watched the backlash to the prequels turn to anger at people who were just trying to make a kid’s adventure movie. Anger at people who most certainly did not deserve it.

I’ve become frustrated with friends when discussing The Phantom Menace. Their complaints are nothing I haven’t seen, heard and read a hundred times already. I don’t think anyone is wrong or unjustified for disliking the movie, but when the reactions are so strident and filled with bile years or decades after the fact, I start to wonder if something else is going on. I think George Lucas’ cardinal sin may be that he failed to make a generation of jaded 30 years olds feel like they were 8 again.

I have also chatted about The Phantom Menace with younger fans who grew up with the prequels the way I grew up with the original trilogy, and their reaction is often quite different because they sometimes feel like they need to temper their enthusiasm with embarrassment because older fans hate the prequels. Now I see the cycle of conflict repeating between fans of this new era of Star Wars and followers of the older ones. And this all just makes me sad. No one should be embarrassed for liking something.

One of my great pleasures over the years has been watching new people discover Star Wars for themselves. Each generation has their own era:the Original Trilogy, the Expanded Universe, Prequels, the Clone Wars-Rebels-Ahsoka cycle, the Sequels, Rogue One/Andor, the High Republic, and on and on. I love that what Star Wars means to me is different from someone else. My nephews could rattle off the names of every clone who fought in the Clone Wars; I draw a blank after Rex and Cody.

Seeing that kind of enthusiasm for different parts of Star Wars lore makes me want to see what I’m missing. I don’t connect with it all by any stretch of the imagination, but because of my nephews, I gave Dave Filoni’s Clone Wars show a second chance, and I’m glad I did. Star Wars is better with Captain Rex, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Doctor Aphra, Luthan Rael, Rose Tico, Ezra Bridger, Satele Shan and Geode in it. And, yes, Star Wars is better with Jar Jar Binks in it.

It’s not my position that The Phantom Menace is “good, actually” or that it’s above criticism. It is, at best, a shaggy dog of a film, but isn’t every Star Wars movie? What I’m saying is this: don’t turn that dislike into resentment. There are bad actors out there all too willing to harvest that resentment to feed the algorithm and force their tastes on everyone else. Just because you loved Star Wars as a kid, doesn’t mean you have to love it years later. It’s okay to move on and let Star Wars become something different for new audiences. Just don’t be a dick about it. No one likes hipsters who tell people they’re wrong for liking the things they like.

In the end, I think the closest that Star Wars can actually come to making you feel like an eight year old again is to see it through someone else’s eyes. Let their discovery of it remind you of your own, even if it’s not the same as yours.

 

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Good Riddance to the Yellow Filter

Wednesday’s SWTOR Livestream previewed the new additions coming to the game with Game Update 7.5, Desperate Defiance, but I want to focus on just one: the visual change to Hutta’s environment. One of my goals with this project is to examine the symbols in SWTOR, but not just their literal meaning, but also their connections to the worlds inside and outside of the game. The changes to Hutta does not involve fake space letters, but the meaning does involve something symbolic that I think is worth exploring: the “Yellow Filter”.

Color is an extremely powerful tool in visual storytelling. It can be used not only to differentiate locations, but also suggest a mood and meaning to places and the people in it. Within Star Wars lore, The Empire Strikes Back best demonstrates the use of color as a means to enhance the story. Hoth is “cool” white and blue; Dagobah is covered in “lush” greens and earth tones; and Bespin is primarily lit in reds that swing from “passionate” to “hellish.”

SWTOR is often staged in a similar way, but over the years it has also been influenced by other cinematic techniques popular at the time. Hutta is a case in point. The Hutta players have experienced since launch is bathed a bright yellow color grade. But why? Yellow can mean different things in different contexts, but I think we can agree Hutta is yellow to suggest the world’s corruption and pollution.

If we take a step back and look at how yellow grading is used in other media, we can see that SWTOR was likely inspired by movies and TV shows like Traffic and Breaking Bad which applied a yellow color grade to scenes set in Mexico. In those cases, this effect serves to make the action set there among the drug cartels feel not only more arid and hotter than scenes set in the United States, but corrupt and rotten as well.

So, of course, I can see how the SWTOR of 2011 might have been inspired to use a similar visual shorthand for Hutta. But in the years since, the meaning of the yellow filter changed, and in many case it has become known as the “Mexican Filter.” Even if we leave aside the fact that casting locations in a yellow color key does not accurately represent their actual appearance, the filter has become used to imply that a location was not only hot and arid, but foreign, poor, different. And it did not go without notice that people who lived in the locations that get the yellow filter treatment from not only Mexico but also the Middle East and Asia almost always have brown skin.

I am not saying that Yellow Hutta is racist and that the devs who made it are racists or anyone who prefers the original version is racist, but I do think that SWTOR is an evolving thing, and new players are experiencing aspects of its game for the first time well over a decade after it launched. I am glad that the team at Broadsword is willing to make changes and updates to the game, even after all this time. I believe that Hutta’s yellow filter has not aged well. It is at the very least clichéd and at the very worst reminds players of a filmmaking trope that has become lazy and often racist itself.

The updated Hutta of 7.5 shifts the color cast towards the earth toned end of spectrum. Certainly there is still plenty of yellow, but a bit more reds and browns instead of orange as well. In addition the cloud cover is now at ground level and the entire environment feels murky and clammy. I can see how many people might prefer the first iteration of the world. Certainly the strong primary color cast of the original Hutta is very dramatic and immediately marks it as an alien world, but, to me, the new Hutta feels sticky and I can practically smell the swamps and polluted air. And when we do see different colors, whether they are the nameplates of enemies or the neon sign of the cantina or an oil slicked rainbow, they pop a bit more.

I think the muted color tones and smog of the new Hutta does a better job of implying that the current environmental catastrophe is something that has been done to the planet by its Hutt overlords and not simply how it has been all along. To me that is more interesting symbolically than a hackneyed yellow filter that these days just says “hot and poor.”

 

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