Lit A Bright Center: The Official Core Worlds Discussion Thread (Aftermath & Shattered Empire Spoilers)

Let's not forget that the Star Wars equivalent to Hollywood is in one of the most remote parts of the Outer Rim.

 

Personally, I think it's because he smuggles sex slaves out of Ryloth and gives them as gifts to senators in order to procure votes. Don't ask me where I heard that.

 

As mentioned "political skills" bribery just happens to be one of those skills.

 

Judging by the tie in comic for the Ryloth trilogy, it was also pretty influential as a place where rich people could store their precious goods...discretely.

Also that it had enough natural resources to be ranked fairly high on the CIS list of planets to invade.

 

Ryll Spice seems to be about the only thing that you can dig from the soil that seems to be worth anything, though per WEG that stuff sells for anything from 100 to 7500 credits a Kilo, so I guess not that bad.

 

Don't forget that... it must flow.

 

Seems like a good time to bring up Dan Wallace's awesome essay on the GFFA's regions as US regions, from his Essential Atlas endnotes:

DAN: This is a good point to discuss my thoughts on structuring the galaxy, and what it would mean from a cultural standpoint. Apologies in advance for the U.S.-centric nature of this explanation, but it's what I was drawing on from personal experience, and I thought a society that initially formed in a concentrated area and later spread out into a vast, untamed frontier lent itself well to such parallels. The Republic is split into six major divisions, and while working on the Atlas my mental stereotypes were:

Core: Manhattan. An undisputed center of business, fashion, music, publishing, tourism, food, you name it. "If you can make it there you can make it anywhere." Undeniably impressive, but its residents are hated by outsiders as arrogant elites.

Colonies: Brooklyn/Queens. The outer boroughs of New York City just aren't the same as Manhattan, but what the hell, it's still New York.

Inner Rim: New Jersey. The object of much mockery from New Yorkers, despite the fact that New York City and New Jersey are all right on top of each other. Culturally, New Jersey is considered some sort of remote hinterland, but only to New Yorkers. Outsiders don't quite get it (somebody from Indianapolis has no reason to make a New Jersey joke) and that's part of the point. To those who live in the area, once you've traveled out of their small patch of the eastern seaboard you've left the Core and entered the Rim.

Expansion Region: Detroit. The beginning of the Rim, i.e. a place settled during frontier expansion where it eventually became an industrial powerhouse. (Actually Detroit was settled in 1701 by the French, but let's not split hairs.) Like many such places in the so-called "Rust Belt," Detroit's days as a factory town are on the wane and it is filled with empty symbols of industry.

Mid Rim: Iowa. A place of modest towns and modest ambitions, known for honest, hard-working friendly folk. Derided as hopelessly behind the curve and about as exciting as a bowl of unbuttered mashed potatoes.

Outer Rim: Dogpatch, Arkansas. If you live here you live a long way from anywhere with cultural bragging rights. It doesn't matter how smart, stylish, or brilliant you are - as soon as you announce your hometown even Midwesterners give you "that look" and mentally classify you as a hillbilly.

I'm sure I annoyed many U.S. readers with my gross stereotyping, but this isn't meant to be a commentary on America so much as it is a structure with which I could set my head and write about the regions as if they were real places. (It's obviously an incomplete structure anyway, since a city like Los Angeles has no place in this particular cosmology.) I'm a Mid-Rimmer by birth who has lived in the Expansion Region so I'm certainly not one to cast any culture-war stones. Except for this one aimed at Jason, who is from the Colonies and is therefore a huge snob.

 

I always imaged Matellos as SW's Detroit

 

That's not so much US-centric as it is Eastern US-centric. But thinking of it in Western terms (I mean the genre), which is one of the primary ingredients of the SW salad, it makes perfect sense: the farther west you go, the wilder things tend to get. It's also immensely helpful for writers to associate, say, the Expansion Region with the Rust Belt, because, honestly, how else are you going to remember what the hell the Expansion Region's even supposed to be?

PS @blackmyron What is the SW equivalent of Hollywood?

 

I think he underestimates the reach of New Jersey Jokes:


And on that note:

Anyway, if it comes to America stereotypes, I have to wonder if there is a California equivalent.

 

Is there anything like it but with Europe?

 

Since he didn't mention the Unknown Regions and sticking with New York theme, I nominate Staten Island. After telling people I am originally from there, they usually tell me they have never heard of it, so I just say I am from New York City.

 

It kind of fits with the New Republic being hastily put together and much too similar to the old one. You never get a sense that the Rebels had thought through their endgame beyond "restore the Republic" - which sounds good when contrasted with the Empire, but kind of ignores the fact that there's a reason the Republic crumbled in the first place. You never get a sense that the Rebels had put any thought into how to prevent their new government from repeating the Old Republic's mistakes. As a result, you end up with a Republic under Fey'lya that looks pretty much like the mess in Episode I, corrupt and inefficient and unable or unwilling to put out the brush fires far away from the center.

(It's to their credit of the NJO generation that they actually do put a lot of thought into redesigning the government and the Jedi - too bad the powers that be didn't follow up on it).

 

I blame the authors that seemingly can not write competent government

 

[quote="Charlemagne19, post: 51556636, member: 251830"It still strikes me as a great injustice the territories in the Outer Rim were deprived of representation and influence because of the Core focus (specifically, CORUSCANT focus) of the post-Empire books. It's tough to take Jacen and Jaina seriously as heroes knowing they grew up the privileged children of Coruscant-life than the rough and tumble farmboy as well as smuggler's son of their family. It's why I never much cared for Tenel Ka as a romance because it's more rich powerful people marrying other rich powerful people.

I think the Prequels did touch on more of this, which makes me think it was originally part of George Lucas' vision since the Outer Rim territories and Separatists were so interested in divorcing themselves from the Core Worlds. Sadly, the revival of this in the Legacy of the Force series showed no interest in dealing with the second Separatists. Only continued focus on the Core Worlders and their drama.

[/quote]

I read a bunch of the YJK books recently and they really do hammer home the point that the twins were raised in privilege. Often it's just a cheap way for the villains to score points, but it doesn't let them off the hook completely, especially when it comes to Zekk.

Regarding Tenel Ka, she's the interesting one because she has a foot in both worlds, the privileged Hapan court and the rough and tumble Dathomiri village - and she expressly prefers the Dathomir heritage (also worth noting that when the twins make friends with her, they only know her as a Dathomiri). I wouldn't have minded seeing books centered on her after returning to Hapes, with her as the one honest person in a Game Of Thrones world (and, hopefully, trying to change it).

 

Maybe Metellos is more like the old Five Points section of Manhattan. You know, the Dead Rabbits and all . . . .or maybe that would be the Dead Lepis?

 

The original "Hollywood" was NYC, though - and California is anything but a "remote" part of the New World nowadays.

The Minos Cluster, on the other hand, remains a backwater's backwater.

 

Yeah, it causes a serious rift between them and Zekk despite how much they love him and treat him with respect.

 

Speaking of the Minos Cluster, I have to wonder how GrandAdmiralJello feels about this:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Eliad

 

The metaphor's far from perfect, as Dan said himself -- it's kind of like the famous Steinberg New Yorker cover of the world from a NYC resident's perspective. But it was really useful for the Atlas as a general cultural guide, and still is.

There are exceptions everywhere, sure -- frontier worlds in the Core, urban more-Core-than-Core worlds in the ORT, areas that are centers of power for other cultures/species etc. But if I wanted to give Star Wars newcomers a 2-minute sense of how the GFFA's own citizens would see their galaxy, Dan's post is what I'd point them to.

 

Eriadu?