Chat corner 74: Celebrities

[annathecrow]

Welcome to this week’s chat corner!

Optional(?) prompt

The topic this week is “in-universe heroes and celebrities”. Who is famous? Who has a fan club? Who’s poster or a life-size holo sculpture is in teens’ bedrooms all over the galaxy? And who isn’t, who grew up on stories about heroes and then gets to meet one of them? (Or can’t but wishes they could, when we’re talking e.g. Old Republic characters vs Skywalker Saga protagonists?)

Mod note: Here’s a wrinkle to iron out! If we now have Free Fridays, should Mondays be on-topic discussion only? I would highly prefer not, but I’d like to know what you think.

Comments

[kittywhite]

Something I found interesting when watching Rebels was that Ezra had to be told by Ahsoka who Anakin Skywalker was, someone who was so famous less than 20 years before was no longer. The Empire certainly did a good job suppressing information!

Then when reading "A New Dawn" a character muses over if Darth Vader is actually a human or an alien from a strange world in a suit, fancy being known/feared galaxy wide but your species is still a mystery...
According to another book (Heir to the Jedi) there are even apparently unflattering songs sung about Lord Vader and his Prosthetic Parts ;)

[yourlibrarian]

That is interesting to consider, but I'm guessing it was part of the reason why Luke didn't even know about Jedi by New Hope, which was only a few years later. Then too, there's lots of things which get lost from one generation to the next, including popular heroes, stories, etc.

[annathecrow]

Empire suppressing information and people not knowing things -- ha, my mild obsession with SW information technology worldbuilding strikes again, because this is so interesting to me. On one hand, how would they wipe him out that completely? There's a whole galaxy of people and (I assume) sources of information! But then I think about real life, and the way information (does not) flow, even with internet... it would be doable. It might even be easy: all you have to do is strike him out of any unified school curriculum or knowledge databases (if there even are any!), and every planet that didn't personally deal with him will be like "Anakin who?" within years.

...but then you would have planets (or just communities) that will remember him no matter what you do. Maybe he destroyed an important cultural monument. Maybe there was a really shitty meme. Maybe a generation on Planet Whatever decided that General Skywalker from the Republic propaganda posters was peak sexappeal, and suddenly you have a generation that will not forget him no matter what you try (even when some of them might want to XD).

Just. Good stuff!

"Long Vader and his Prosthetic Parts" -- this made me cackle XD the alliteration! Perfect for a stupid pub song.

Slightly off-topic, but speaking of stupid Star Wars pub songs: Jedi Drinking Song by Brobdingnagian Bards. Horrible. Horribly catchy. Warning about Luke(???) puking. "Luke, you just kissed your sister!" "Nooooo!"

[fleurviolette]

It’s pretty wild in universe (or at least in the classic eu canon) that there were fabricated holovids about Luke. Yes, he’s a celebrated hero but profiting off of his story in such a way? LBR, he’d definitely side eye what Disney has done to him lol.

[yourlibrarian]

This I did not know (though it would explain why so many people know him). I came across a fanfic which mentioned novels based on Obi-Wan (inspired themselves by fanfic) but it's interesting to see that EU canon was not far behind.

[yourlibrarian]

I think it's good to have a prompt (great topic today, btw!) but agree that wandering off it would be good to have. Although DW is great for "anytime" posting, some people may end up forgetting or coming late to the Friday post and want to pick up on a Monday opportunity.

[annathecrow]

Thanks for chiming in! Yeah, that's what I was also thinking, that trying to store up your off-topic thoughts to one day in the week would get frustrating.

[primeideal]

I've been doing a lot of fic backups from FFN and that reminded me that LPK9 has several funny fics with popular media/broadcasters commenting on the Skywalkers' exploits. (Some of those characters might be borrowed from Legends? I'm not familiar with them.) Stuff like "is rebel hero Luke Skywalker dating princess Leia Organa? details at nine" Vader: "um, what."

[annathecrow]

oh lol. Thanks for the rec!

I'm sure a lot of people all across the galaxy have listened to the grave warnings about the dangerous fiends Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa and went "...I ship it". XD

[sathari]

Oooh, I like this topic!

I've always imagined that Rey had a fairly grounded idea of the kind of people who might end up leaving a kid on Jakku (even if she almost certainly did indulge in all kinds of "powerful people intrigue" stories of the kind that actually turned out to be kind of true for her!) and that some of the galaxy's more notable scoundrels were on her list of possible parents--- in particular, given my headcanon that Qi'ra in later years got involved with labor organizing as part of Crimson Dawn, I also headcanon that she's one of the people Rey imagined as her possible family.

And, yeah, I love the general issue of how the empire memory-holed the Jedi, or at least twisted what was known of them--- given that Han's old enough to have more or less remembered the Clone Wars (even if people living like he apparently did as a kid would not exactly have been up on larger galactic affairs) it seems like from what he says about the Jedi in ANH, the Empire had gone the route of "they were flim-flam artists and snake-oil salesmen bilking the Republic". Which is ironic to say the least given that on the one hand the Emperor seems to have been running at least the military side of the Empire as a secular proposition ("Don't frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader!" etc.) and on the other he's a Sith himself--- I wonder, given the events of TROS, if he wasn't more or less deliberately running essentially two parallel systems of power, one the secular military arm and the other the Sith cultists, so that he could hedge his bets and play them off against each other at need (certainly the little exchange between Vader and Motti in ANH that I referenced gives us a hint of that).

And since I've sort of wandered off from celebrity and into galactic realpolitik, this is as good a time as any to answer the other question. Namely, I am just so, so charmed by the experience of having a mod actually encouraging off-topic comments instead of the reverse! I mean, I'd be inclined to say that if someone wants to bring up another topic, now that we can all post we could just do that? But, again, just the fact that our own mod is pro-off-topic comments just charms me to death. :)

[annathecrow]

Rey dreaming about possible famous parents -- oh noooo, I absolutely believe that and it's so sad D: now I kinda want to write an "Annie" kind of story where baby Rey gets adopted by someone rich and famous!

Jedi as seen in ANH -- that movie has a lot of "first season weirdness" in it! The way it shows Force-users is one of them. (I kinda like to think of different ways some references could have gone, had Lucas not done things the way he did. Like the mention of the Clone Wars...)

meta -- aww! :D I mean, this is all mostly me being overly attached to the original conception of the chat corners, but I do believe that enforcing on-topic-only discussion is silly in a comm as small as this one. Although yes, creating a separate post for a specific topic is now also an option!

[sathari]

Oooh, forgot to add another of my quirky headcanons about "celebrity" in the GFFA.

Namely, that post-ROTJ, there was an uptick in Republic-era historical and semi-historical pop culture "stuff" of all kinds. And that one of these was basically a holodrama called "Reign," which was more or less like "The Crown" or "Victoria" but about the youngest-ever queen of the human Naboo, except with the names changed--- Padme who reigned as Amidala is now Reyne (for the near-homophone with the word "Reign") who reigned as Vittora, so that the showrunners could take more license than they might otherwise. And that "Reyne" thus became a popular name for human and Near-human female-type kiddos of a certain age.

And if you think that I think that means that Rey's full name is Reyne, and that she was in effect named for Padme--- that her parents gave her the name of a fictional character based on a popular ruler from her grandfather's homeworld, not least because it was a popular name and therefore innocuous but also tied back to her origins--- you're right.