A Blog Post About the Disney Star Wars Trilogy

If I invited you over to my house for dinner, and I promised to serve you spaghetti and meatballs, but served chicken alfredo instead, how would you feel? Pasta is pasta, right? Eat up! Yum, yum! Or, would you look at me with a furrowed brow and tell me you feel like you were tricked and lied to? I believe that if you're going to promise something, you should do your best to deliver it.

So, Star Wars is a film franchise with the themes of family, faith, and mythology. If someone tells you they're making a Star Wars movie, and the themes are not these, would you feel like you were promised spaghetti and delivered alfredo? In other words, have your expectations been unmet leading to disappointment? For some people, the answer is yes.

Now, what happens if I offer you spaghetti and meatballs, but I actually serve you chicken alfredo, except underneath the chicken alfredo is shepherds pie with pickled beats? Ok, that's a little weird, right? And certainly not what you were expecting. Now, you're disappointed and also confused.

To break it down, Star Wars 7 is spaghetti with meatballs. Star Wars 8 is the chicken alfredo. Star Wars 9 is shepherds pie with pickled beats. I regret that the problem with my food analogy is that I've picked foods that I like to eat. In reality, Star Wars 7 is spaghetti with cucumber spirals instead of noodles and tofu for meatballs. Star Wars 8 is rotten fish. Star Wars 9 is trail mix on top of pizza that's still frozen in the middle. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong. This trilogy does not have a feeling of consistency or cohesion. It's like the Mona Lisa with pasta and glitter glue. As a result, it's less than what it could have been.

Thank you for patience. Let's talk about the themes in Star Wars 7, 8, and 9.

What is / are the theme(s) of Star Wars episode 7? The movie begins with Poe doing spy-guy things, then Kylo-Ren does villainous things, and then we introduce Finn who does traitor things. Then Poe and Finn crash on a desert planet. Thematically, what do we set up? A sort of a found-family in the making? Cool. I like that.

Then we introduce Rey. She's alone on a desert planet and counting the days. She's unhappy with the world as she finds it. I see where we're going with this, and I'm getting excited! The first real weakness with the theming is that Poe goes missing until one of the final scenes of the film. This right here is the promise of spaghetti and meatballs and the delivering of the cucumber spirals instead of noodles. Darn.

So, let's speed this up. Rey does not have any family. You might say she's desperate for a family. Then she meets Han Solo. She might as well ask, "will you be my daddy?" And Han Solo being a guy with a rough exterior, but a heart of gold takes her under his wing. OK, I love it! What could possibly go wrong?

Skip ahead, and Kylo-Ren kills Han Solo. D'oh! So close!

OK, so the theme of family is still on the table (pun intended, see my food analogy above)! Very, very much so! How do we tie this knot? Well, let's discuss the family. The family in question is the Skywalker family; Or rather, the Skywalker-Solo family! Yes, these families are tied together via the marriage of Han and Leia. Kylo-Ren's real name is Ben Solo. Cool! That means Han, Leia, Luke, and Kylo-Ren are all family. Yippie!

But what about Rey?

Rey was 100% intended to be a Skywalker! I'm not privileged to the behind-the-scenes information, but how could you not piece this together based on episodes 1 through 7? Let's review. Luke Skywalker went missing. Why? Unclear; but if Luke went missing, does it not stand to reason that maybe he also wanted to hide his baby? Gasp! Rey is Luke's daughter? Can it be true? Well, why the @#$%! else would Leia Organa-Solo snub Chewbacca and hug Rey at the end of episode 7, you twit! And why the @#$%! else would Rey be so gifted with the force if she wasn't a descendent of Anakin Skywalker whose midi-chlorian count (bleh, I threw up!) was the highest ever recorded! Duh!

So why was Rey later revealed to be the daughter of a no one in Star Wars 8 and then re-revealed to be a Palpatine in Star Wars 9? That's the rotten fish dish and the half-frozen pizza topped with trail mix that I previously told you about. There really isn't a pay-off to wild changes like this, and it means we need a new reason for why Leia would hug smelly Rey Palpatine.

If Rey is the daughter of Luke, then she would be Kylo-Ren's cousin, and thus, the family theme could be salvaged! Rey's goal would be to save / redeem her cousin like Luke's goal was to save / redeem his father. Insert the clip of the interview with George Lucas talking about the prequels when he says, "it's like poetry, it rhymes." Ta-da! Instead, the way movies 7-9 work out, Rey turns out to be a Palpatine who survives when all Skywalkers and all Solos die, and Rey Palpatine, daughter of the villain of 7 movies, inherits the name and legacy of the heroes. She ends up alone in a desert without Finn and Poe. So, the found family concept is dropped, and Rey ends up as alone as she was at the start of the movies except for force ghosts. She has no kids or family of her own.

Now, let's talk about theme conceptually. What is a theme in a literary context? Well, stories are as much about entertainment as they are about teaching a lesson. The lesson is therefore the substance of your story. The lesson is the theme; the theme is the lesson. In stories, the lesson is communicated to the audience through the hero who must learn the lesson. The value of the lesson is communicated through the hero using that lesson to overcome the conflict (and presumably win or survive or achieve their goal). If the hero fails, it's usually because they didn't learn the lesson. So, if there is no lesson, there is no literary theme, and your story is entertainment with no substance. It's hollow and unfulfilling. It's unsatisfying, like  the 2021 Mortal Combat movie. It's just an excuse to watch people fight and blow stuff up for 90 minutes, and it's lacking the human element.

What lesson did Rey have to learn on-screen in order to achieve her goal? @#$%! if I know.

So, I invite you over for spaghetti and meatballs, but I serve you something else. Is my analogy working? OK, let's change it; what if I promise you spaghetti and meatballs, but it's all tofu and it's chemically altered to taste like spaghetti and meatballs, but it's not very accurate, and it leaves you feeling like something is missing. You're unfulfilled. You just sort of scrunch up your nose and try not to think about what you could have eaten instead. You regret your meal. It was a waste of time. But worse than that, you don't know if you can ever appreciate pasta again. That is the Disney Star War trilogy.

Managing Expectations in TTRPGs - Discussing What We Do and Don't Like

When it comes to TTRPGs like D&D and Pathfinder (pronounced pat-h-fin-der), I think the trickiest part is managing expectations. That is to say that I have had a lot of personal experience with trying to run one kind of game, and players trying to play another kind of game, or vice versa if I'm a player. For me, it's very unsatisfying to tell players, "I'm running a game for heroic characters", and someone still brings a joke character, and someone else still brings a character of neutral alignment and needs some extra motivation to do anything. Ugh.

This article is my attempt to work out a way to manage these expectations. The first thing is to identify the motives, experiences, interests and influences of the participants. Some people's only exposure to fantasy might be Adventure Time. You might think I'm making that up, but I'm not! I have played with that guy. He didn't know any of the classic fantasy conventions and he played like it.

We're going to start with some useful vocabulary. Ask and discuss these questions:

• Influences or Interests: What movies, books, comics, video games, tv, etc. have you seen? that you like? What do you like about them?
• Disinterests: What do you dislike about TTRPGs, genres, literary conventions, etc. Some people are open to anything, some people aren't! For people with discerning tastes, this is as important.
• Experiences: Previous experiences with TTRPG(s). What did you like about them, what did you not like? Players may have learned some things that you would like them to unlearn.
• Motives: Why are you interested in TTRPGs? What about this hobby is fun for you? What makes you want to play a TTRPG?

My Interests: My favorite work of Fantasy might just be Kentaro Miura's Berserk. Let's discuss why. The art is badass. The dark themes are interesting. The scenarios are interesting. There's a sort of cosmic horror to it. Guts is just this regular guy who manages to become above average by sheer effort and a will to survive. He has an extraordinary tenacity for survival in the face of overwhelming odds. His opponents are often otherworldly and nightmarish in power and scale but they have such simple motives like eating people or avoiding boredom. He even earns their respect with his will and fortitude. What else? It's otherwise a low-magic, earth-like setting. The horror elements almost replace the fantastic elements, and I think that's really cool!

I also like Vampire Hunter D for some similar reasons, and because I think it's stylish as hell. In this setting, Vampires became the rulers of the earth. To the extent that the word noble became synonymous with vampire and few people use the word vampire. Humans are cattle. That's pretty dark. The titular character is D, and he's a Dhampir. That means he is a half human half vampire. Because of this, he's rejected by both humans and vampires. He's also secretly the most badass character in the setting. The question is what does he want and why? It seems to me that the author intends to leave these things up to interpretation or inference, but we are to come away believing that this is not a character with ordinary motivations.

Tim Burton's Sleepy Hallow was pretty fucking stylish too. In this movie, everyone's dressed in a period era outfit, there's only one monster and he's an absolute badass, no one understands the monster or magic, and the fantastic elements are not casually accepted by anyone. They're all as wild as if you went out for a walk and met an extra-terrestrial.

Generally, low fantasy settings or earth-like settings where the supernatural or extraordinary are rare and maybe even intrusive upon the ordinary world are interesting. Monsters are monsters! Magic is dangerous or even forbidden. The elements of the fantasy that make fantasy unique are kept low so that they when they are used, they have a greater effect, like a guy who never says curse words finally dropping an f-bomb. I also like the low fantasy, dark fantasy Campaign Diaries of Professor DM on the Dungeon Craft YouTube channel!

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean is cool for similar reasons. The fantastic elements are presented as curses, and they present the supernatural as dangerous and mysterious. If you had to assign all the characters in that movie a D&D class, they would either be fighters or thieves (rogues). 

My Disinterests: You might think I don't actually like fantasy, and there might be something to that, but I don't like pure horror and I'm not into the horror TTRPGs because in those you play as a survivor or a victim. I do want to be a hero. Fantasy can be pretty @#$%^ nerdy. The way nerds use wizards, vampires, demons, and lycanthropes can be really cringy because they make it mundane and ordinary. Monsters aren't monsters anymore, they're just like cat people or something. And then there's people who think it's racist to kill monsters and take their stuff, and those people are just detrimental to the hobby. I don't like elves, dwarves, hobbits, and some of the other fantastic races that have become standard like Tieflings, half-orcs, and dragonborn (dragon people). These things make me feel like I'm watching the Muppets. I don't like that magic is common and ordinary, like a skill or an art that people can just pick up and learn. What's so special about magic if everyone can do it?

My Experiences: I have mostly played 5e D&D. It's pretty lame. There's furries. There's scalies. Goblins, bugbears, and other monsters are humanoids or goblinoids, and so they're treated like an exotic people. I don't like that. Demons from the Christian hell are not people. Even goblins should be monstrous. D&D makes me feel like I'm Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabit. Tonally, it's lame. Players play these goofy characters, or they make characters who are kind of goofy conceptually but are intended to be played serious. It makes it difficult for me to care. I don't care about non-humans, and I don't care to humanize the non-humans. I'm hoping for something more serious, but this can't help but feel cartoonish. Besides that, the player characters get pretty powerful, and after a while they play like they know they are. Powerful player characters are antithetical to horror. I have played mostly in Faerun and Eberron, and slightly in Draconlance, Spelljammer, the Underdark, and Greyhawk; but I think 5e modernized it all made it all lame. It's casual and accessible and safe. Even the modern Ravenloft setting is kind of watered down and plebian. I also hate chaotic and evil player characters! They're dicks and they spoil someone's fun. I want PCs who can play as a damn team. And I don't want to be a villainous character, and I don't want to be a character who would particularly tolerate villainous companions or allies. But when you play D&D, this game permits evil and chaotic player characters, and so do most GMs, so I have to put up with it.

Motives: I have lost interest in tv, movies, comics, anime, and books because I think it used to be good, now it's not; but I still want to indulge in some narrative entertainment. I want an outlet for creativity, I want to socialize, and I want to play a game!

I think this was a particularly interesting exercise and I recommend you all do the same.

Here's what I learned about myself: I am not down for any game.

I want an earth-like or low fantasy, human-centric setting where magic and monsters are rare and dangerous. The line between fantasy and horror is blurred. Monsters are not people, they are monsters, and they are opposed to humanity. Magic-users are rare, maybe even feared and hated. Stakes are low, not epic. Characters are generally relatable; scenarios are generally plausible; environments are generally realistic. Your character is an ordinary or above average person. You are not great, but you can earn greatness. You have a chance to become a hero, and I want you to aspire to be, but if you become a villain, I take your PC and make them an NPC in my setting, and they become the property of the me, the GM. Don't do anything you wouldn't do in real life. Play your character like you care what happens to them. This is low, dark fantasy.

Human-Centric Settings (No Monster PCs)

Here's the real reason for wanting a human-centric setting. Personal taste. This article is not about convincing you to agree because I don't expect to be able to. Persuasion doesn't work like that. This article is about giving you the perspective of people who don't want monsters as player races, among other features of generic fantasy. It's not about the right or wrong way to have fun; it's about why I can't have fun the same way you can.

Let's start with the strongest point before I peter out at the end. Monsters are not people; they're monsters. When you humanize the monsters by making them a player-race or by making them equal or similar to humans in mind or spirit, they cease to feel like monsters. I want monsters to be the things that go bump in the night. They are the things that hunt us. They lurk off the edges of the map. If you can play a monster (i.e. kobolt or goblin or half-orc player character), then monsters aren't monstrous; They're just exotic people. It trivializes what it means to be a monster. I want my fantasy monsters to resemble the monsters of the horror genre. You can't have a setting where monsters can be both monsters like in a horror genre but also exotic people like in modern kitchen-sink high fantasy. The exception is if you want to reestablish what is considered a "normal" race, but for me, this exception still spoils monsters because there is this imaginary line that distinguishes humans from monsters, and every exception blurs that line and diminishes the certainty of the distinction.

Second, it's about tone. Modern D&D feels like playing A Very Muppet Fantasy. I've heard and read criticisms that refer to 5e D&D as kitchen-sink fantasy because, like the kitchen sink, there's a little bit of everything. It lacks cohesion and consistency, like macaroni and glue on the Mona Lisa. There isn't a regard of how things fit or consideration for whether it belongs there or not, and the audience has to adjust their suspension of disbelief to accommodate it. In the last 5e gaming group I was in, I felt like Eddie Valiant in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but I would have rather felt like a character in Lord of the Rings or Berserk. In case you don't know, Eddie was the straight man in the sense of a straight-man silly-man dynamic, among a cast of silly-men. My experience with 5e is that the monsters as player races make the game feel cartoony. The cartoony-ness spoils the tone I would like. I didn't like it. It wasn't to my taste.

Speaking of tone, what is it? It's the mood or atmosphere. Think about the difference at a kid's birthday party vs a party for adults with depression. They have different moods. Some things don't mix. You shouldn't mix Lord of the Rings with Rick and Morty, for instance. The tone of Rick and Morty spoils the tone of Lord of the Rings. Tonally, they don't mix. Generic fantasy permits you to mix Peanut Butter and Pepperoni (I call it peanut-pepper butter-oni) and dip it in olive oil. One thing spoils the other thing.

Don't be insulted but kitchen-sink fantasy is plebeian fantasy because it is fantasy for everyone without discerning taste and people who don't know about the craft of acting or drama or of history. It tries to satisfy as many people as it can all at the same time. It's generic as opposed to specific. By generic, I mean it is "of the genre" in the broadest sense of the word genre, permitting everything under the fantasy category; but by specific fantasy I mean something curated and intended to create a more specific aesthetic, sensation, mood, theme, and style. Specific fantasy appeals to a narrower audience, not necessarily an audience with superior tastes but with specific tastes.

The definition of fantasy as a genre is "fiction plus magic or supernatural elements". That's it. Nothing about what kind of magic stuff or how much of it. So, imagine fantasy as a dial or slider. At the lowest setting of 1, you might get something like Liar, Liar with Jim Carry where a boy makes a wish on a birthday cake so that his dad can't lie. Crank it up to 2 and you might get Legend of King Arthur, where the quantity of magical elements is few and uncommon. There's one magic sword, one wizard, one lady of the lake, and one holy relic to find. There are no dragons and no potions of gaseous form. At the highest setting of 10, you might get Baldur's Gate 3 where you start off on an illithid spaceship and end up visiting hell, and one of your companions is a half-elf vampire. It's a mess and I don't like it.

Expectations are the hardest thing to establish for an TTRPG, and I think kitchen-sink fantasy makes this more challenging because not there's too many options. If I invite you to play in a game with me, I have no idea what your experience with fantasy is, and I have no idea what kind of fantasy you like. This is why D&D classically had an Appendix N which referred you to the works of fiction that inspired D&D.  If I tell you I'm running a low fantasy game, are you thinking that it's fantasy with the slider on a low setting, or are you thinking it's low fantasy as in the sub-genre low fantasy which has a more specific definition than fantasy. If I tell you I'm running a game using 5e D&D, then I think your expectations might immediately go to Baldur's Gate 3 even if I tell you "LOW, LOW fantasy". Are you thinking about a fantasy equivalent of the Marvel Avengers? Are you thinking about Adventure Time? Are you hoping for a western or a gangster movie? Appendix N may help you narrow people's expectations down.

Now let's break the fantasy elements down into their own sliders. Fantasy is a slider, magic is a slider, monsters is a slider. Lord of the Rings is high fantasy because it is set in its own fantastic, non-Earth setting with its own history and mythos, but on the magic slider it's low because only wizards can do magic and there's like five of them. Furthermore, on the monster slider, there might be a massive army of orcs, but the variety of monsters is limited; you can't put a 300-page monster manual together based on the monsters of Lord of the Rings, so, let's say it's in the middle. Lord of the Rings has epic stakes: the fate of Middle Earth. That's usually a feature of high fantasy. With low fantasy, the stakes tend to be more grounded. In Conan the Barbarian for example, the stakes are very local.

The last thing I want to give you is the concept of a hypothetical master checklist of all fantasy concepts. I'll call it the master fantasy checklist. It's got everything on there from magic wands that shoot jets of colored light to dragon shouts to magic gemstones made of condensed ether that let you cast spells to sticking bits of metal in your tummy and getting powers based on the type of metal. When you define your specific setting, you check off items include it in the setting. Let's say if you check off 75% or more of the boxes, that's kitchen sink territory. This is because the list is so massive. If you check off 10% or less, that's focused, specific, or niche. It likely qualifies as a dedicated subgenre. If you check off 30% - 49% (meaning you're excluding more than half of the list), that's a curated Variety Fantasy. I think you should aim for Variety Fantasy on any regular day. Less is more and keep it simple stupid are axiomatic; you might believe that getting rid of excess (bloat) leads to greater satisfaction, or you may believe that restrictions breed creativity. Maybe you agree?