Autism Resource Page

Matt Spradling

Holiday Gift Guide

Matt Spradling

Well well well, if it isn't holiday season, when people shop, and buy things, and, order items, and purchase the gifts. As a red-blooded American, I approve of and appreciate these traditions wholeheartedly, and would like to offer what personal help I can in these trying times (times to try).

I work neither wood nor loom; I hammer neither steel nor stone. I am more of a gathering type, and thus do I brave for your sake the haunted woods of deepest darkest instagram advertisements for mercantile variety.

Any such exotic benefaction is sure to elicit wonder and gratitude from your dearest and also merely somewhat dear. Try to use this power for good, but your secret is safe with me.

I FOUND SOME STAR WARS RANKINGS IN THE TRASH BEHIND WOK 'N EXPRESS ON 45TH AND GUAD

Matt Spradling

Do we still care about this? Has everyone kind of collectively taken a break from Star Wars in this intrinsic sort of offseason or has that just been me?

Nonetheless, it's almost December, which kind of feels like Star Wars season after almost a decade of new movies coming out during the holiday season. I think some of the recent sequels etc. were originally slated as May releases and got delayed to all being in December anyway, which felt just as well.

The most hyped I've ever been for Star Wars (which is saying a lot because the older stuff was the backbone of my childhood) was the 2015 leadup to Episode VII, the first new film in a decade and the start of a new era with Disney that surely couldn't get messed up that badly, right? It was a magical time: new books that were actually pretty good, a return of the Battlefront game series (though EA's first try from 2015 is bizarrely horrible in retrospect), and, because of the assumption that the powers that be had actually put any thought and planning into writing what would be some of the biggest movies of all time, ample speculating and picking apart details in trailers and that sort of thing. I celebrated the season with my brother and friends by marathoning the six existing installments over a week or so, culminating with the late-night premier. It was in that equally magical time after classes end but before traveling home or whatever for the holidays, when college fridges typically look like this:

Anyway, you'll see how that ultimately turned out later in the list, but I still have a fondness for some Star Wars action this time of year as it gets dark and cold(ish) outside, and thus I feel the holy spirit (not the force – that's different and not god-honoring) moving me towards such content as this.

Also I spent the other day listening to coworkers debate their rankings but I was too braindead and wiped out from being just a lad in an office all week to be able to speak coherently, much less interact, so I just sort of let it sweatily wash over me in my cubicle fugue state and then gestate into motivation to make this, so, bone apple tea...

.

1. Star Wars (Ep. IV - 1977)

The blueprint in all the obvious ways. Typically interchangeable for my #1 with The Empire Strikes Back, but I'm currently using the "if I could only watch one of them forever" test and this one just has that bit more fun and completeness for me, plus it is essentially the foundation for my earliest childhood memories – the other originals too, but primarily this one, because I understandably had a short attention span and never got very far.

It's sort of apples-and-oranges to compare them, or Alien-and-Aliens. And I actually prefer the former in each of those too. Does that mean something? I don't actually care.

One thing I appreciate in later years is the worldbuilding being…uncontaminated? Like they could just throw out lines about random shit like the clone wars and the galactic senate and your imagination goes to work on making those things in the context and style of only what that film has shown up to that point which is a grittier and more grounded world than what would be painstakingly over-examined over the coming decades, by and large. Fast forward 25 years and the jedi are boring space police who exclusively wear Alec Guinness's brown desert hermit rags, and Coruscant feels like the most plastic CGI planet to ever CGI until Andor.

2. The Empire Strikes Back (Ep. V - 1980)

Like the first but better-looking, darker, more mature, more expansive. You don't need me to tell you all this. Maybe this is one of those lists where the best are the least interesting. I like snow. I like space. I like bounty hunters. Best music. Pew pew. Idk.

One of the most important things the first got right was the characters' chemistry, and here that's fleshed out more thoroughly, and the expanding worldbuilding is still tight, creative, diverse, and stylish.

I don't know if it's fair to take this into account, but it feels like it has the fewest annoying retroactive Lucas edits? Maybe I'm just not remembering, but that in and of itself is telling.

3. Andor (1+ seasons - 2022)

This might be surprising if you haven't watched it, but the crazy thing is that if anything it should be higher? Being purely objective, this show might actually be the best Star Wars media ever made, and isn't passing the other two based mostly on nostalgia, age, and influence.

I don't have it in me currently to do a proper breakdown and review, but I would summarize it as sort of being a tight, premium HBO-style cold war thriller that just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe, which is the kind of thing a lot of people have been jonesing for for a long time, except even that isn't fair because it still manages to weave a fundamental Star-Wars-y-ness into its style and themes, it just does so in a way that isn't jarring or overdone or stilted in the ways we're used to. It does its own thing so well that it elevates Star Wars in the process. It doesn't pull punches, devolve into childish shenanigans, or fall back on there being surprise new sith and jedi or whatever, which I don't know how anyone still gets interested in these days to be honest, sort of like superhero fatigue.

Diego Luna leads excellently, but for me scenes are frequently stolen by Denise Gough's imperial intelligence officer, Andy Serkis's prisoner, and Stellan fucking Skarsgård's…whatever he is. The good guys are satisfyingly not that pure. The bad guys are satisfyingly either calculating or viscerally cringy (see red-pill Han Solo). We get to see a side of things we've known must be there in the world but just haven't really gotten examined.

It has a limited, specific run planned as necessitated by the timeline (see Rogue One) so it is less likely to plod along aimlessly until it loses most of its welcome (looking at you Mandalorian), but we'll see how the second and final season turns out next year. Things sound promising.

The music is also great? It's unique and excellent sci-fi and not typical Star Wars at all.

4. Rogue One: A sTaR wArS sToRy (2016)

This one felt clunky at first but has aged well for me, probably in comparison to the huge mess the rest of Disney's tenure would turn out to be. Basically it came out while standards were still very high. I think it has a lot going for it, it just suffered a bit from changing hands and getting late rewrites and reshoots and ended up a little disjointed, but overall it's solid enough if you ignore things like characters having somewhat unearned changes of heart in the transition between acts and certain sequences and characters going underutilized.

It does have its moments of fan service, and awkward bits of posthumous CGI actor recreation, but its extensive action never feels excessive or cartoonish and I think for the most part it adds to the original film it leads directly into rather than stepping on its toes, which you might say is its ultimate goal and a pretty tricky line to find.

When watching the films in canon order, this comes after the prequels, and as such it is massively refreshing to see things that are beautiful to see and feel an emotion that is actually there to feel. Maybe in the future, if watched after Andor, this won't be quite as effective. (God going straight from the prequels to Andor is jarring; maybe that's the upside to things like Solo and Kenobi.)

On another day it could easily take the #4 spot, especially in terms of what I'd actually most feel like watching at the moment. Also it sort of gave us Andor, so, points for that. Actually yeah, up to #4 it goes. This is my ranking and I get to be blasphemous if I want to.

5. Return of the Jedi (Ep. VI - 1983)

I can't help but feel like there's a lot of racetrack between here and the other originals. It's a fine conclusion – compare this space battle with the first and it's miles more dynamic, and cutting between the three climactic sequences is pulled off well – but the tone has always felt off to me, coming off the darker turn in Empire. It's very…Spielbergy? Which isn't bad, just not quite to taste. Take Ewoks – feels like the first in a long line of compromises for the sake of pandering to children who do not require pandering, which should have been evident based on how popular Star Wars was at that point off the back of its darkest installment.

The opening third is a desert and pretty much a diversion irrelevant to the rest, and then the final half is mostly very clearly a nice day out in the California Redwoods. The big bad thing is just that the same thing from the first movie came back suddenly? That's pretty lazy but I'm sure it won't set a precedent for the future. Just a little unserious.

Also, overall the writing and climax and everything is solid, but a lot of it is founded on the tension of whether or not Luke would be tempted to the dark side or not, and, I don't know, maybe it felt different to first-time viewers upon release, but Mark Hamill's Luke simply doesn't evoke any darkness whatsoever. I don't care that they changed his outfit to black, that just made him more fashion-forward.

6. The Mandalorian (3+ seasons - 2019-2023)

Season 1 was obviously great and injected some much-needed life into the franchise right before the stillbirth of Episode XI arrived, and, standalone, would be higher. It hasn't kept up the pace though for me.

It might be imagined, but something I notice a lot of shows (or franchises) doing is finding success initially by doing something unique and specific, gaining a strong following, and then before you know it, it feels like the new seasons coming out were written with one eye on the fan discourse and memes rather than keeping both eyes on the original ball, and the results feel self-conscious and cheesy and self-referential. Maybe harsh but that's how I came to feel about What We Do In The Shadows, for example.

Anyway, it feels like this is basically the trajectory this show has taken. First season: tight and original. Subsequent seasons: diminishing returns and not going anywhere fast enough to feel right or keep interest. The season 2 finale, despite being potentially the most fan-service-y moment of all time, hit a fun emotional high and glossed over some of the weaker stuff leading up to it, but when this turn of events was treated as basically inconsequential afterwards, along with a still-growing sense of "what are we actually doing here," well, in retrospect it feels like a bit of a band-aid and I haven't been eager to revisit.

7. The Phantom Menace (Ep. I - 1999)

I guess I've become a bit of an apologist for Episode I as time has gone on. For a while it was pretty universally accepted as the worst prequel and pretty much everything that was wrong with Star Wars (pre-sequels). I get it – you could ignore it and start with a slightly revised Episode II and not actually miss anything vital; Jar-Jar is a huge misfire; child acting is child acting; there's a ton of whiplash between the overly childish tone and the story heavily featuring government economics; midichlorians.

And yet, it's hard for me to ignore that new car smell. This is pure nostalgia talking – at 6 years old I went with my family to see it in theaters seemingly every week that summer – but it's…kinda fun? It's adventurous, it's fun to see the new locales, even if the at-the-time-groundbreaking CGI isn't great to look at. For some reason I like its slight stand-alone-ness. The (very long) (very uncut) podracing sequence is something you either love or hate, and I loved it as a kid (I was the kind of kid who loved the Lord of the Rings movies but found myself wishing there was a movie that was just pure battle sequence without all the pesky plot and character development breaking up the fun). Darth Maul is cool, though underused, and the duel of the fates (both the scene and the score) is iconic. Also Qui-Gon is the best.

I saw it in theaters this year and it was a fun time, and that's more than you can say for some of these. Most of this really is down to me being the perfect age when it came out, but hey, all of this is subjective anyway.

Oh most of the aliens are hella racist though. 

¯ \_ (ツ)_/¯

8. Revenge of the Sith (Ep. III - 2005)

The opposite trajectory of Episode I, this was long considered the default best prequel, but I remember in my most recent watch feeling it'd become a slow, frustrating dirge.

The pros are that it's dark and we all seem to equate darkness with goodness, there's a good lightsaber duel, and a lot of war action. That's good for selling toys, but isn't necessarily enough to keep it afloat.

The plot just isn't convincing or satisfying. It's all about building up to this big turn with Anakin/Vader that we all know is coming and 1. It just really doesn't earn it, and 2. The fact that we all know what's coming the whole time just makes it feel more boring and slow as we twiddle our thumbs wishing almost every scene would pick up the pace and get it over with. The ways it leads into Episode IV at the end are forced at best and sometimes nonsensical. It feels like Padme is the only reasonable character by the end and then she just gives up the will to live, which, I guess you can't blame her.

It's the best-looking prequel, which is a low bar, and some of the music is wonderful. The feeling I'm left with is that in terms of legacy the film is riding the coattails of Battlefront 2 (2005) rather than the other way around.

9. Attack of the Clones (Ep. II - 2002)

And then there's this son of a gun. I don't know man. On another day it could be 8th. It's just a bit ridiculous. This one perhaps more than the others feels like there is the potential for a great story there underneath it all, they just repeatedly whiff on the execution.

The spine of it is sort of a Flash Gordon detective deal, which is cool, but it all ends up feeling muddled. And so much of it hinges on Count Dooku, and like, I love Christopher Lee, but that character has simply never once been cool or interesting to me the way it was done.

Seeing different parts of Coruscant? Cool. Big ol' clone battle at the end? Cool. But probably the biggest thing is that it is hard to overstate how much time is spent on the romance that is genuinely, actually painful to witness and simply can't be ignored. Not criticizing the actors, there's not much you can do with writing and directing like that. Also CGI Yoda bouncing off the walls is just not something even Young Matt wanted in his life.

10. The Last Jedi (Ep. VIII - 2017)

I think if I was being totally fair this would be under VII in terms of actual watchability, but jesus christ at least it's trying.

Whether it's the fault of Abrams, the Disney committee, or both, VII and IX end up being the most bland, generic, uninspired films possible. They risk nothing and achieve nothing. I feel like the fact that I'm using language like risk is down to how tangible and unignorable it is that these films are Disney down to their DNA and that means it's all about corporate image. Say what you will about Lucas's late tenure, but we never had any reason to think about the shareholders or whatever.

VIII still feels restrained within this inoffensive straightjacket, but it's clear Rian Jonson was trying to take things in a new and specific direction. So at least there's that. The execution was so poor at most turns that it's not worth much, but it's something. Like with some of the prequels, I'm left feeling, "huh, this COULD have been really cool. Shame it wasn't."

I think I really tried to find the good in it early on, but looking at it now, the Luke that Johnson wrote in this movie is simply character assassination. It's just nonsense. And it's okay for movies to have nonsense writing sometimes, but when it's for some reason intentionally fucking with multiple generations' actual bonafide childhood hero? A moment ago I said I was trying to find the good in something. Know where one might learn to do something like that?

Luke is the purest soul in the galaxy and the idea that at the first sign of hardship he would abandon his dearly beloved friends and students and the republic and not care to be there for them? To be a dick about an orphan seeking help from him? What the fuck dude? There's a fun way to see a goody-two-shoes lighten up and be Old in retirement, but getting from Luke A to Luke B in this case would require a stroke and head trauma and maybe decades of drug use.

Also what the fuck is up with the lineage of Padme > Luke & Leia > Ben/Kylo, at least one of whom is supposed to be one of the most powerful people in history, just vaguely dying of vaguely using the force too hard for vague reasons? It sucks that the sequels just sequentially and shittily kill off your childhood heroes, and it sucks that Han is done so early that they never get to reunite, but at least his was clear.

Painful: the casino planet, the Benecio fucking del Toro character somehow, Hux as usual, Phasma, the weird manufactured drama of everyone in the resistance refusing to communicate and being hostile towards each other, not touching Rose because there's painfulness there but not her fault etc., Leia getting severely and awkwardly underused, etc. etc.

Rey and Kylo teaming up was sick though. Even if extremely brief. There was a lot of cool stuff between them built up. Shame it wasn't, you know, actually explored or explained.

11. The Force Awakens (Ep. VII - 2015)

We rightfully shit on IX for the "somehow Palpatine has returned" plot but that is essentially what VII pulled with the empire (First Order) just…being there. A big part of the appeal of all the post-1983 book serieseses back in the day was getting to examine the galaxy in New Republic control, but here from the off they're "the resistance." What? It's bad enough that this just isn't explained, at least in the film, but the inference there is necessarily that everyone is just incompetent and did nothing at all effective in the intervening 30 years. Which, given current events, sure, maybe that's more realistic than we'd like it to be. I don't give them enough credit to believe this was done intentionally as a critique of flaccid liberal centrism and appeasement or something though. Plus it doesn't even work as a statement about democracy being hard to maintain or whatever because this is Star Wars and before the last 60 years there were literal millennia of a healthy, mostly peaceful, powerful galactic republic.

It's more than just getting to see that world though, or at least it's more than loyalty to old books or whatever. That's so important because that's, in a way, the entire point of the originals. It was the story of war heroes doing heroic things to make the galaxy a better place. And they did it! Yay! And then all this time later, returning to what comes next, just unceremoniously making it all "yeah so everything is actually the same as it was before that war and nothing the heroes did mattered and the heroes themselves have actually gone on to mostly be total personal failures too by the way. Here are placeholder characters in all those roles so we can do the same exact thing again except this time you don't have any reason to care except for the few scant bits of organic character development that happened accidentally and we're actually going to end up punishing you for trying to care about those" is just about the worst possible way it could have been approached. Next time you watch the originals think about how Han eventually just abandons Leia to be a deadbeat. Awesome, thanks for that, chief.

There was a lot of anxiety at the time about whether this endeavor could shake off the stink of the prequels and return to form, so I guess I don't completely fault them for taking a safe approach in some regards, but whether it's down to Abrams or Disney as a whole, they really took it to such an extreme that it's just flooring. And to just not have any plan whatsoever for the trilogy as a whole? Genuinely how does that happen?

Have I talked about JJ Abrams yet? I do not like this man's directing or writing. It is bad. It has the look and depth of a theme park ride. It uses the sugar high of mysteries that get set up for no reason in order to gain a sense of intrigue and drama, AND THEN THERE WERE NEVER EVEN ANY ANSWERS TO ANY OF THOSE QUESTIONS. It is truly absurd. Glad he won't be back again in a later episode.

To be clear, I love the actors and most of the new characters. That just makes it more sad that they got wasted.

12. Anything and Everything Else

Solo? Fun I guess. Feels profoundly unimportant. Kenobi? I love Ewan McGregor. Probably would've been better off unmade. Ahsoka? I watched it. Acolyte? Some cool stuff but I mostly found it very boringly written (sorry Marina). Cartoons? It's fine, they're cartoons. I hear Rebels ended pretty well. I hear Bad Batch is a cartoon. I watched the end of Clone Wars and it was good. Remember the Samurai Jack-style Clone Wars anime that came first? Now that was good stuff. Droids (from the 80s)? Blockbuster rental mainstay. Don't remember a goddamn thing about it. Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy? Good fun. Jenny Nicholson's experience at the Disney Starcruiser Resort is a work of journalistic art. If I'm forgetting any others I can only assume they deserve it. Oh, Book of Boba Fett. Correct.

24. The Rise of Skywalker (Ep. IX - 2019)

I really, genuinely struggle to find anything positive here. I guess the ten seconds of Ben Solo were fun, but it's so little so late it just leaves you wondering what could have been in a luckier timeline.

To give Abrams a little benefit of the doubt, I read a bunch of unconfirmed stuff that Disney came in extra hard on fucking around with this one until the final product did not resemble much of what he thought he was making and he was reportedly very sad about it, and that is a bummer. Still though, it's hard to see the worthwhile vestigial bones in there when you go digging.

At this point, fucking this trilogy up so aggressively actually feels like some type of abstract artistic achievement, so perhaps it can maintain some cultural importance as a sort of late-stage capitalistic cautionary tale of, as it were, epic proportions. We're always teaching lessons, whether it's the ones we aim to or not.

A (Stoned) Case for Star Wars

Marina Martinez

There's a lot of reasons to like Star Wars: The original trilogy was formulated as a critique of the Vietnam War. The main story and characters are extremely reminiscent of a lot of classic stories, ranging from Arthurian mythology to the Flash Gordon serials. The Jedi Order is based on a variety of religions and philosophies, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and Gnosticism, and the Jedi Knights themselves are essentially a fusion of samurais - valuing discipline and meditation - and knights - valuing chivalry and protecting nobility. Jazz is called jizz for some reason. All of these real world analogues were blended together and set a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away and badabing badaboom you have yourself a successful franchise about space wizards with laser swords and you can keep making up different planets and species and conflicts because we'll eat that shit up. This is what Disney thought smugly as they bought the IP and then proceeded to milk it for all it was worth and then started complaining that they were 'running out of ideas' because 'the main draw is nostalgia' and I'm gonna cut off my rant about capitalism ruining art because I want to talk about how wrong they are and how good Star Wars is instead (for now).

Star Wars' real strength doesn't come from the Force or the Jedis or Sith or any of that (very cool) shit. Star Wars, at its heart, is an excellent sandbox that can and should be used for confronting our world as it exists today through the lens of a sci-fi setting that couldn't possibly exist.

(And now here's the part of the article where I talk about games and shows I like that none of my friends have experienced but I need to yap about them so I'm sorry but also I have great taste so you're welcome.)

Most people's concept of Star Wars is limited to the nine main movies, also referred to as 'The Skywalker Saga.' There's the original trilogy that came out in the 70s/80s, the prequel trilogy that came out during our formative years (early 00s), and then the sequel trilogy that we all remember but some of us are still trying to forget. (I've still never actually seen the last one, I've only played that level in Lego Star Wars and read a lot of fan fiction. No spoilers!) In the last 20ish years, there have also been a number of novels, tv shows, video games, and movie tie-ins that are meant to expand on the Star Wars universe, but trying to keep track of everything gets complicated, especially since Disney got the rights to everything and declared certain stories 'Legacy' material since it interfered with the sequel trilogy. This is dumb, and I'm choosing to accept everything as 'historical fact' - Star Wars did, of course, take place a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, so who's to say what's true and what's not? Not a corporation, that's for damn sure.

And though we certainly could've done without some of the Star Wars properties produced in the last couple of decades, the franchise has produced some excellent - and timely - stories that I really, really wish were more accessible to everyone and not hidden behind a Disney+ subscription or behind a $70 game price tag.

*We here at the Newsletter do not, as a legal or eldritch entity, support any form of piracy. Nor do I, for legal purposes, in this written article with my legal name attached being published to a public website, condone sharing login information to various streaming services or downloading games from third party sources. However, you do you.*

I'm struggling to articulate my thoughts, so here's my argument as to why you should be giving Star Wars a chance past whatever preconceived notions you have of the franchise:

Star Wars protagonists are not happy people. Celebrities, they're just like us! They are, in every case, doomed by the narrative. If you're a notable character in a Star Wars property, you are, unfortunately, destined for 'infinite sadness' (RIP my man Kenobi). The fun part is that this doomed destiny is applicable to both 'good' and 'bad' guys, and the thing that's even MORE fun is that almost none of these guys are entirely good or bad - just like in real life! If you close your eyes and point to a Star Wars character, you're gonna find someone you have probably met in a Wal-Mart. People can be secret Rodians, you can't prove they're not.

The whole prequel trilogy is about how the Jedi Order - the goodest of the good guys - were so prideful and strict about their history and traditions that their closed-mindedness literally brought about their own downfall. Season 1 of Andor - a prequel to the movie Rogue One, which itself is a prequel to A New Hope (...I know) - did a fantastic job of showing how 'normal' living under a fascist regime can look, and the ways it can change people, for better or worse. The Acolyte went further back to the Old Republic setting (about 100 years before the prequel trilogy) to further illustrate the systemic failures of the Jedi and also humanize/rationalize other kinds of Force users, going so far as to imply that they wouldn't exist if not for the rigidity and hubris of the Jedi.

The Skywalker Saga has always done an excellent job of following a pretty simple narrative structure: the good guys are gonna win in the end, but it's gonna suck to get to that happy ending and a lot of people are going to lose their hands in the process and also clones and droids will be involved. The expanded Star Wars universe, for all its faults, is what (for me, at least) gives Star Wars life, and Outlaws in particular did a pretty good job at this.

Most Star Wars shows and games and books are told from the perspective of someone tangential to the main story, so they're either a Jedi or a Rebel or an Imperial or a Sith. Those are the 4 genders in Star Wars. As much as I love the recent Jedi games - and believe me, I love them a whole bunch - Cal Kestis's story is (at least for now) super tied up in the Skywalker Saga. Darth Vader literally shows up in both games, there is no escape from that guy (and usually I'm grateful for that because I love him). And yeah, both Fallen Order and Survivor show a very compelling, canon-compliant perspective of the post-prequel Star Wars setting, and introduce a lot of cool lore and compelling characters and tell the ever-interesting story of a Jedi's struggle with balancing the Light and Dark side of the Force and trying to reestablish a problematic 'peacekeeping' order that made him and hundreds of others serve as child soldiers in the Clone Wars. And it's great! But it's very clearly a fictional story.

Outlaws is the result of somebody asking the question 'what if we threw Assassin's Creed and RDR2 in a blender and set it in the SW Universe?'. I'm so glad somebody asked, because as a normal video game it's great and I like it a lot and I'm on my 2nd replay. But as a Star Wars video game, it's the greatest. I did not have high hopes for Outlaws. I didn't even believe it'd be released until I was actually halfway through the tutorial level. And then I got through the game and of COURSE I was hooked on the awkward protagonist who had a codependent relationship with her space cat. Oh, she has abandonment issues too? Cool! And then I finished the main storyline of the game and was so, so grateful I still had a ton of side quests and DLC to look forward to. The game isn't perfect, by any means, and there were some things that I thought were clunky and some things I wish had been fleshed out a bit, and it's even Skywalker adjacent (but I think Matt might play it so I won't say anything but AHH). But it is firmly in my top 10 favorite overall games now, so disregard the two articles I've written about my top favorite games. I'd update the full list but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

I admit that I'm slightly biased; I've established many times in this Newsletter that I'm a huge slut for the found family trope. Once again, we don't need to examine WHY I like it so much, we can all just agree that strangers meeting each other and changing each other for the better and forming intimate life-long bonds is just a fun trope in media. But even if that's part of it, Outlaws has a normal person as the protagonist. Kay Vess isn't one of the 4 genders! She's the secret 5th gender, Scoundrel, like Han Solo. I'd say the 5th gender is pansexuality, but ain't nobody straight out there in the stars. Hardly anybody's straight here, and you're gonna tell me there are heterosexuals in space? Be so for real.

(If you're not a Jedi or a Rebel or a Sith or an Imperial, you're a Scoundrel. Or a farmer, I guess. But 'scoundrel' is just Galactic Basic for 'person just doing what they have to do in order to get by in life and maybe even have some fun.' And fun is illegal under the Empire so they're all criminals. But the point stands - I love learning about normal people in sci-fi and fantasy settings! People in fiction are just trying to survive, but sometimes they're called selfish for only looking out for themselves, or cowards for not fighting against corrupt powers. But like…isn't that what most of us do? I don't go to protests every day. I'm not in any politician's office fighting for or against the government. I'm just going to work, getting underpaid, going home to my cat, and trying to hold on to the life that I have. I certainly don't LIKE the government or anything they do, and I'm vocally against most of what they do and will vote in local and presidential elections for as long as that's legally how we do things, but I do technically work for a government organization, so…I guess I'm an Imperial. Like, realistically, we're only the discovery of Hyperspace and the existence of the Force away from the reality in Star Wars being ours. What gender would YOU be in a fascist regime? Luckily, we can just play this out in a game and keep that fun thought exercise contained safely within a console.)

Anyway, no straights in space and Kay Vess is a scoundrel. Throughout the game, she works with 4 different crime syndicates and shows equal contempt for both the Rebellion and the Empire. At some point, she refers to the Rebellion as 'just another syndicate,' because from her perspective, they all just use people. 'They can't help it,' she said, and then I had to pause the game and say 'so true, bestie' and then Toad knocked her water bowl over. But like yeah, that's good character awareness of the world they're in! From her perspective as a scoundrel, she gets hired by different factions when they need something from her, and other than those contracts they do not care about her. And those are the only interactions she's come to expect from other people: everything is professional and transactional, and other people are only tools or pawns in these circumstances. These factions, good or bad, only care about their organization and their cause. The Rebellion and the Empire, at least, both say they care about the future of the galaxy, and that joining with them serves everyone, but to the Average Space Joe, what difference does it make? Yeah, most people agree the current government is bad and kinda fascist, but if you keep your head down you can probably get through life relatively unscathed. Only Rebels really get in trouble for defying the government, even though you know that they're right and it'd be better for everybody in the long run. But is it really worth the effort? It's a lot easier to just keep yourself afloat, help other people if/when you can, and leave the fighting to those more capable. Maybe morals are only for people who can afford them.

Okay well my gummies are kicking in and I'm making myself sad so uhhh here's Marina's Incomplete Yet Definitive Star Wars Video Game Tier List, good luck arguing with correct opinions!

S - Outlaws, Jedi: Survivor

A - Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Battlefront II

B - Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Jedi: Fallen Order

C - The Old Republic (MMO), The Force Unleashed, Bounty Hunter

D - Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, The Force Unleashed II

F - Jedi Knight: Outcast (bc you play as a guy called Kyle)

My Opinions About Star Wars Are So Stupid Matt Yelled At Me and Called Me Names

Andrew Piotrowski

"ANDREW." Matt approaches my desk in a huff, arms full of manila folders and loose papers like a man with a lot of business to attend to. He's wearing the sort of face where he knows all too well what I've done wrong and is livid that he's the one who has to inform me about it.

A "yes, boss?" starts to escape from my whimpering mouth but I'm cut off at the pass. "Can it, Piotrowski. Let's talk about your latest figures and then you can try and weasel your way out of it."

He yanks a paper out of one of his manila folders. The arrow on it is going WAY down, and I know that it corresponds to business being bad. If it was good, the arrow would be going up, just like Matt's heart rate any time he has to talk to me about my pathetic spreadsheet numbers. With a spreadsheet arrow THAT low, I had to think fast to get out of this predicament. But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

I work at Newsletter, the hottest site on the internet for the latest articles about subjects. When business was good, we were pumping out articles like a hot machine that pumps out articles. But when business was bad, arrows went down and the usually-closed door to my boss's office would slam open. Fast forward to now, at my desk, with Matt.

"W-w-wow boss, that arrow sure looks bad. How can I help?" Playing dumb. Good. That's all I can do most of the time, so it hasn't let me down yet.

I jump as his fist slams into the surface of my desk, rattling the framed picture of my beautiful family. I can't lose this job. "S-sorry boss. I know this is about the Star Wars article."

He leans in close, his cigar wobbling just like a real businessman. "You're damn right it's about the Star Wars article. I asked you how much you knew about Star Wars, and you made it sound like you at least had the base level competence to make something up about how much you enjoy lightsabers or the cool hamster guys who live in that jungle."

I swallowed nervously and held up a finger. "To be f-f-air, boss, I said that I've seen 1, 7, 8, and Solo. I don't remember if the cool hamster guys were in any of those." What I hadn't mentioned was that in addition to these, I had even played a few of the games. I even finished one. Couldn't he tell by the depth of my writing? Regardless, this was the wrong time to interject and the wrong factoid to interrupt with. Matt's face grew several shades redder.

"Of COURSE the cool hamster guys were in SEVERAL of those! My God, Piotrowski, you dumb dummy, how can you justify what ended up on my desk?" He pulls out another folder. It has my name on it, accompanied by a big frownie face. He quickly thumbs to the back of the folder and pulls out the latest paper-clipped document: a pathetically thin sheaf of paper, my latest submission. He unceremoniously sweeps my current work to the side and slams the document on my desktop, again rattling the glass protecting my radiant wife and sons from the elements.

As I skim through my own words, I can't stop my mind from wandering as I realize how similar my story is to that of Anakin Sky Walker. He was just a guy trying to do his best until some asshole came along and made him do a bunch of stuff he didn't want to do. Just like him, I've got someone important to me. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what happened.

I return to the present to see my boss, Matt, staring at me expectantly. Shit, did he just say something? I had to speak my mind. "Listen, boss. I'm sorry that my numbers for Newsletter are down lately, but I stand by what I wrote for the Star Wars article. Anakin was really beginning to become a tragic hero, and then presumably some very important things happened and suddenly he was living on an island, alone. Isn't that such a resonant metaphor for life?"

[Author's note: it was here that the real-life Andrew actually had to stop and google the Phantom Menace to make sure he was remembering the general plotline correctly, then subsequently had to make an embarrassing revision to an earlier paragraph. This is not a joke.]

Matt looks stunned. I'm catching my breath, as I hadn't really meant to speak so passionately. I can still feel it in me now. It's like I can see the down-pointing business arrow for Newsletter from a different angle. It was as if in that moment, the real meaning of Star Wars had been inside of me all along.

"Andrew," Matt says, tears in his eyes. "I understand you now. It's like you had the real meaning of Star Wars inside you all along." Wait. He's reaching up to his hairline. Right before my eyes, my boss, Matt, unzips some hidden zipper underneath his beautiful curled hair. I cannot stop myself from gawping as his tasteful printed button-up and skinny chinos shake loose and succumb to gravity.

The Matt costume falls to the ground. George Lucas stands before me. I run into his arms. From where he dropped his manila folders and loose papers, all of the arrows look like they're pointing up.

I Found a Star Wars Video Games Tier List in the Creek by Flag-Mart on 45th and Duval

Matt Spradling

S-Tier Star Wars Game (Not necessarily the same thing as "S-Tier Game")

Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) – PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox, PlayStation Portable

I probably sank more hours into this game than any other until I discovered MMO addiction circa 2007. Like the first but shinier and darker and better music and more varied. Galactic conquest and the standard command post mode format are all you need and it is confusing that they did not continue with this formula later on. Space mode clunky but what are you gonna do. Heroes mode silly to just the right extent. Its sequel getting cancelled late in development is still one of the greatest tragedies in gaming.

Star Wars: Battlefront (2004) – PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox, Mac, Mobile Phone

A slightly more basic version of its GOAT successor, but in fairness actually has much better vehicle combat. Gunship on Geonosis? Tank things on Rhen Var Harbor? Trench warfare on Bespin Platforms? Pure goodness. A true revelation when it came out.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023) – Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

Silky smooth, pretty, thorough lightsaber cosmetic and fighting style customization, fun adventure story, hot space witch gf? Not the GOAT, but hard to ask for much more.

Star Wars Episode I: Racer (1999) – Windows, Mac, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color

As the Nintendo 64 was my first console, and this was my first Nintendo 64 game, this therefore was the first game I ever played that wasn't some frightening squinty 1990 windows hoparound like Commander Keen. By rights should probably be in the clunky category because jesus but there's something emphatically respectable about making a game where all you do is go a thousand mph on a map where it feels like you can't make out the pixels more than a few car lengths ahead of you and you literally explode if you touch anything. Eppur si muove.

A-Tier Star Wars Game (Maybe clunky but had the Magic)

Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) – PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One

Somehow got good despite mostly eschewing the simple foolproof modes of the original. Campaign isn't necessarily anything to write home about while still being good fun. There isn't a lot of Star Wars out there that feels like a polished shooter, and the ship flying in this game rules. The two worthwhile multiplayer modes are Starfighters (idk why but I'm a savant in a bomber even though I've never been competent on foot against other humans) and the co-op mode where it's you and three teammates burning through waves of enemies to control command posts together. Mowing down crowds as the heavy gun dude is quite the high. I never even play as heroes. Graphically wonderful to boot.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019) – Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Stadia, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

Not my preferred game type and I did a lot of getting lost and backtracking through mazey maps. Still, was a big breath of fresh air at the time. I liked that Cal felt like the protagonist of a golden-era, early 2000's Disney Channel movie.

Star Wars Outlaws (2024) – Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

I have played exactly two hours of this as of last weekend but so far it is a fun and promising Assassin's Creed: Star Wars that I am looking forward to continuing. Also kitty.

Star Wars: Republic Commando (2005) – Xbox, Windows

I never got super far in this because it's pretty difficult and I was a WIMP as a kid but I understand it to be very solid and it's very cool that a game like this got made. Remake would be swell.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) Windows, Xbox, Mac, iOS, Android

I know, I know. Look, I never played these as a kid for some reason, and then going in as an adult, especially already knowing the pivotal story twist, there's only so long you can maintain hype to play 3rd edition D&D with 2003 graphics. Remake would also be swell but seems like a myth at this point. Pour one out for the Bioware of old.

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998) Windows, Nintendo 64

A similar fundamental nostalgia factor as Racers but 1. That extra bit more difficult for its clunkiness and 2. Good god do not go back to it it does not look like what you remember it turns your screen into a jackson pollock as viewed on a nokia

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (2008) Windows, Mac OS, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Nintendo DS, iOS, N-Gage (service)

Sort of the prototype for Fallen Order I guess. I don't remember this being very fun to actually play, but the concept and story and everything were cool enough and new enough to carry the excitement even after falling to death on a trash planet for the 30th time. Did some batshit stuff with the lore in some ways, but hey, what better place to get weird with it. Oh also they made a Lego set of the ship which rules.

B-Tier Star Wars Game (Maybe solid but didn't have the Magic)

Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011) (MMORPG) Windows

Never quite clicked for me but I think I just had unfairly high expectations for MMOs. Also seems harder to do sci-fi than fantasy in this regard because grey steel floors and walls get hard to make diverse and interesting after a while. I've heard the writing in some of the class storylines is excellent. Maybe someday if I get rich and need to fill up a decade.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (2022): Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch

On one hand, I love almost everything about these. On the other hand, that "almost" is because I've never enjoyed any actual gameplay in Lego games, which is arguably one of the more important aspects of, you know, playing a game.

Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (2003) GameCube

https://youtu.be/n3U1JXoYl7E?si=C8csDIBis032N-mv

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (2010) Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS, iOS

Like the first, but moreso and also only like 6 hours long. So an A-Tier rental maybe. More fanfic-level lore. I kind of compare these to the Shadow of Mordor/War series for LOTR.

C-Tier Star Wars Game (I played it)

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (2002) – GameCube, PlayStation 2

For a game that is essentially nonstop button-mashing, they really made it pretty hard. I don't think I ever got past the first 2 planets of the 8 or so without cheat codes, but I replayed those like nobody's business. Good early job making you feel like a bounty hunter with a ship and everything, and maybe the first game I played where I discovered the joy of running around like a psychopath blasting everyone in sight.

Star Wars: Squadrons (2020) – Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

The intersection between the ship mode in Battlefront II (2017) and some sort of Rocket League-esque repetitive sport, this could have become the one true sweet spot for me. Unfortunately they forgot to make it any fun at all, and I'm not even sure how. It's EA and they didn't even release it at full price, so they knew too. It would be wonderful to get a much-improved sequel as with EA's Battlefronts but there's no sign of that happening.

Star Wars: Racer Arcade (2000) – Arcade

The magic of Racer but clunkier and on the big screen to embarrass yourself before god and everyone.

Star Wars Battlefront (2015) – PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One

There was immense pre-Episode-VII hype for this that helped gloss over some of the jank, but god, revisiting this after getting used to the 2017 sequel renders it truly unplayable. Looks horrendous, modes are mostly horrendous, spawning and points systems are horrendous. Calling it a rough draft would be generous. Still, I spent many a night drinking too much and managing to have fun in a couple modes, especially the one that came out in a DLC that was like escorting a moving command post or something. I can't shoot other human players to save my life but I at least bring some tactical nous to the table that all the presumably idiot savant children on the server lack.

F-Tier Star Wars Game (I was not capable of playing it)

Star Wars Episode I: Obi-Wan's Adventures (2000) – Game Boy Color

It was a Game Boy Color game and it meant it.

Star Wars: Yoda Stories (1997) – Windows

I'm surprised this is from as late as 97 because it feels like I was born with it. The art style has permanent real estate deep in my brain but I think it was sort of a puzzle game and I have doubts I would be able to play it well now let alone as a babe.

Star Wars Arcade (1993) – Arcade

I think this one hurt so much because it seemed like it SHOULD have been incredible, but god did it make you feel incompetent. I remember all the different levels and I remember not being able to make heads or tails of how to actually do any of them well. I choose not to blame myself for this.

5 things i wish i knew before committing arson: a really true story by someone who really did: from the future too

Match Spreading

There's no going back to who you were before

What did you think was going to happen? You'd step off into the night, give the wheel over to your dark passenger to taste bliss and then go back to your day job fat and happy and satisfied? The world doesn't work that way. Surge rates, fucko. You broke the seal and the old way is dead. Your old self is dead. You had kids. A life. I guess that doesn't matter. And yet you wouldn't be talking to yourself this way if it didn't matter. Who are you now that you're nowhere? In between? Neither the civilian nor the renegade, mired in the tepid purgatory of someone that doesn't understand their own actions? Are you capable of committing even if you decided to? Perhaps the only way forward is to start fresh. Except –

You can't get off without taking the life of a house

So you're somewhat locked in to the smoldering road. Well pedal to the metal baby, you've found a reason to live, and for that, the masses envy you. They wouldn't admit it of course. It's just because they're locked in to their own roads, decidedly less smoldering ones. Lackluster. Cooled. You can no longer imagine. You used to have such a powerful imagination. It used to consume you, rendering your reality moot. Now you've been there and, while it wasn't necessarily what you expected, it's taken hold in the way your mind could never conjure: physical, visceral, incessant. Is this life forever now? An ever-narrowing scope in which you ply your ever-narrowing trade that serves no one but yourself and even that ever-narrowingly temporarily? And what fate at yonder terminus lies? A rupture! Oh how it cracks and spews

To be frank, you get tons of ass

Who'd have thought? Anyone sane perhaps. That pursuing your pleasures, indulging your demons, leaning into the lusty breeze of life would shake the ashy snowglobe in such a way as to come good/come good? Well, duh. It's the world, and the world is just there, truly within reach, if only you'd reach. And you did. A dumb kid who can't resist grabbing the fire-poker to see if it's really hot, you enviable angelic moron. So it's not all so bad, right? Churning, gushing, jerking to and fro. A lot to handle, perhaps, but like you said, it was imaginary before and now it's real, gluttonous, spewing like an old-timey coal factory where they made coal to use coal to make more coal or whatever. It's a game and you're winning!!! So how dare you look so glum?

Splinters from smoking chunks of wood

A bit on the nose admittedly but we can't always be expected to help what vices take root. You smoke. It smokes. We smoke. Plunder. Bounty. A successful kill. The first one tastes great but god then don't you know you're waking up to mornings when you can't sip the coffee without stinging something fierce, and that just isn't a quality start to the daily grind. At least it's probably less carcinogenic to inhale, depending on the year the insulation was laid and the drywall painted. You really had to go and put it right between your lips, you couldn't get close enough. Can you ever? How to get closer? Get more? If not possible through brute force then patience must be required. Commitment. Consistency. Acceptance. Evidently wasn't your strong suit before, but now, why not?

Best time to start is always yesterday

So you want to step your game up, make that big league chew, but you've already wasted so much time. Aren't we always killing time? The fact that it gnaws at you just shows that you care, and if you care, you should back yourself. They're always building more. The right one will come along. And a purpose is all you really needed. Something to build around, as it were; anchor you, something to commit to. You've never had commitments before. Have you? No, those don't count. Those were old. This is new. A fresh match struck, illuminating the night. It feels good. For now anyway. What did you think was going to happen?

Soup Szn

Sam Mohler

Sam's Umami Fusion Soup

Meats:

Beef neck

Spicy Italian sausage or Andouille

Shank steak (optional)

Mushrooms:

Shiitake or any kind you can get

Vegetables:

1 Soft gold potato, quartered

1 green cabbage cut into chunks

1 White onion, coarsely chopped

1 Purple onion, coarsely chopped

1 Japanese sweet potato, cut into chunks (optional)

Peeled and grated beet (optional)

Seasonings:

Roasted garlic

Fresh rosemary sprigs

Black pepper, paprika, thyme, and other herbs

Broth:

32 oz or more of vegetable broth

Prepare:

- Sear the meats: Brown the beef neck and sausage in a large pot or skillet to develop flavor. Set aside.

- Build the base: In the same pot, sauté the onions (both white and purple) in the rendered fat until softened and golden. Add roasted garlic and stir for 1-2 minutes.

- Layer the pot: In a crockpot or large soup pot, layer the browned meats, shiitake mushrooms, sweet potato, yellow potato, and cabbage.

- Season generously: Add rosemary, black pepper, paprika, thyme, and any other desired herbs.

- Add the liquid: Pour the vegetable broth over the ingredients until everything is submerged. Add water if needed to cover fully.

- Cook low and slow: Simmer on the stove for at least an hour, or for 4-6 hours in a crock pot. Stir occasionally.

Evil Ex-Boyfriend's Ham Soup

Meats:

A few handfulls of some leftover scraps of ham or coarsely chopped pre-packaged ham

A leftover hambone, or like a 6 inch span of pork neckbones

2 fresh ham hocks, not smoked

1/2lb to 3/4lb smoked andouille

Vegetables:

Mirepoix - a few carrots, a few ribs of celery, one large red onion

1 can of navy beans or kidney beans

1 can of butter beans

A bag of frozen sweet corn

Other:

Apple cider vinegar

Bouquet Garnis of various herbs and a bayleaf, tied with twine.

32 oz box of veal stock if you can find it, otherwise vegetable stock. Beef stock is too overpowering.

Prepare:

- Sweat the mirepoix until soft in some kind of rendered fat or oil with some salt, pepper and maybe dried thyme if you don't have fresh herbs around for the bouquet garnis

- Add vegetables to the crock pot with various meats, drained cans of beans, frozen corn

- Cover all with vegetable stock and top the pot off with a splash of vinegar and water

- Oh yeah, cook 6 hours on high or preferably 8 hours on low in crockpot

Matt's Final Lunch-Break Crisis

Matt Spradling

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Office Chart

Kay Vess, The Outlaw - Wilbert Roget, II

I was listening to this on a loop while writing about Star Wars and I've realized it sounds very similar to the title music from Tales to the Borderlands (which is another great game, look it up) and that game is actually like eerily similar to this one and now I have questions about copyright law. Oh, you wanted my musical opinion on the song I'm recommending here? Yeah, it's good. Sounds space western. Nice.  -Marina

reincarnated - Kendrick Lamar

This album is incredible and I'm not sure which track to go with so I'll go with the one he's written recontextualizing Satan's being cast out of heaven as the same struggle black artists have endured fighting their demons and culminating in himself striving to use his gift for good despite his will and ego and the destruction it's already caused. It's like a messiah complex, but, also the opposite?  -Matt

The Dread Wolf - Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe

I know this came out the day they stopped collecting data for Spotify Wrapped but I will not be surprised if this is on mine, anyway. Actually, nobody needs to see mine this year. This year is private. Also this song is good and I love the Dragon Age series also for almost the exact same reason I love Star Wars so much. May you dread the day I write an article about Dragon Age and call me Fen'Harel for how much you dread the chaos I may bring upon ye.  -Marina

In Twenty Years or So - Father John Misty

What's there to lose
For a ghost in a cheap rental suit
Clinging to a rock that is hurling through space?
-
And what's to regret
For a speck on a speck on a speck
Made more ridiculous the more serious he gets?
It's easy to forget
-
I read somewhere
That in twenty years
More or less
This human experiment will reach its violent end
-
But I look at you
As our second drinks arrive
The piano player's playing "This Must Be the Place"
And it's a miracle to be alive
One more time
-
There's nothing to fear
There's nothing to fear

Images

I don't know, man

Sam Mohler -- Instagram