I'm a big Star Wars fan. There's tons of anti imperialism and I love the visual aesthetic, but I always felt we should see the empire doing some actual imperialism, with actual atrocities and the effects of financial imperialism like america does today. I wanted to try my hand at world building so I began writing a story that I felt scratched that itch with a 21st century understanding of technology. So andor comes out and I'm three episodes in and it's exactly what I wanted from the franchise so far.
I hardly felt like my story was going anywhere in terms of publishing or anything. I'm not a great writer, my allegories aren't elegant, and I'm sure it's unintentionally full of liberalism. Plus, like I said, it's almost Star Wars fanfiction. But I'm enjoying writing it and I would like to try to publish it since it's kind of written for bazinga brained libs to try to get them to look this stuff in the face, but I fear it's just going to be called derivative or compared to Andor.
I don't know, I'm going to keep at it. Worst case scenario I'll post it online. This was mostly a vent about losing my inspiration in a way.
Edit: I should be clear, it is not set in the star wars cannon, I'm just worried about it being compared to star wars and losing my own ambition.
“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”
This Terry Pratchet quote pretty much restructured how I thought about writing fantasy or sci fi- you'll always be compared to Star Wars or Star Trek or Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones all you can do is pick the path which will lead to the best story for you to tell.
Why are you assuming Andor isn't gonna massively shat the bed with a GIGANTIC liberalism?
The kind of liberalism that makes you almost pass out and leaves you trembling on the floor
All we've got left is the finale now. I'm getting cautiously optimistic that they won't lib it up at this point, especially after the last arc
Idk mate, I didn't watch Andor nor Rogue One, but look at the Bioshock saga and tell me they wont try
I should be clear, it is not set in the star wars cannon, I’m just worried about it being compared to star wars and losing my own ambition.
Listen comrade...if you're seriously worried about losing your ambition because its being compared to star wars than I would advise you to not only stop writing your story, but indeed to stop writing science fiction altogether, LOL.
Also: everyone knows Kurosawa's influence on Lucas but also look up Buck Rogers, John Carter, and Jack Kirby's 4th world. Like Picasso said: "Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." Every storyteller going back to the beginning of civilization is building off of what those inspired them left them with. Hell Lucas wanted to do Buck Rogers but he couldn't get the rights for it which basically jump started his need to world build his own space opera. I think people would be suprised to learn how many original scifi books/comics/film/etc started out as a fan project and then sort of spins out to take a life of its own.
On the flipside: don't feel bad for losing steam or interest in cases like this either. I too have had many moments where I thought I maybe had a clever take or spin on something only to see myself get beat too it...and often in a way that's significantly less interesting then what I had intended.
Tons of cool stuff started as a fan project and transformed into its own thing. It's not impossible to switch out some names and references to take it out of Star Wars and into its own distinct setting and canon.
EDIT: you could also think of what taking it out of the SW setting could allow you to do, as in the new opportunities for characters and story beats that wouldn't work or make sense if it was still SW.
I should be clear, it's not actually set in the star wars cannon, just inspired by it. I'm just worried that it'll come off with people thinking I'm just trying to rip off star wars.
So is there some significant thematic or stylistic difference you could try to emphasize to set it apart? Some significant wrinkle in the lore or world-mechanics that you could focus on?
Eeh, hopefully. Largely, I kind of reject the force in my story, making (my version of) it into an allegory for Christianity and missionaries role in imperialism. But it is still mystical religion for guiding the protagonist so I'm not sure.
IMO it's fine for a work to be directly in conversation with another work. The Rainbow Rowell book Carry On pretty explicitly turns Harry Potter on its head in a direct reaction to its insufficiencies.
It could work as a deconstruction of the trope perhaps? If it isn’t already.
i'd suggest you keep going, even if Andor exists you seem to be getting enjoyment out of writing this and for that reason alone you should continue. who knows, you might introduce new ideas of how the world of star wars might be able to work through a marxist lens :stalin-approval:
Andor will always be held back by being shackled to the shambling Disneyfied monstrosity that is the entire rest of the Star Wars canon
You don't have to worry about that. You're free. You can make something much more meaningful and politically coherent while still drawing upon the themes and tone that you enjoyed from Andor. And besides, a piece of media having a similar vibe to another isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially when it's one that actually doesn't have a lot of others like it like Andor. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there enjoying it and being like 'god I want this but More'.
Star wars could be based, but capitalism makes it cringe.
There's not nearly enough anti-imperialist media. Andor being successful is (hopefully) going to open up that space for more successful stories, not crowd it out. Go for it!
:PSL:
Please keep writing and gradually make it so leftist that it makes Andor seem conservative. Just lead the reader down a path that starts lib but makes such undeniable sense so that they're blasting The Internationale before they even realize they've become communist.
:fidel-salute-big: Looking forward to it!
edit: If I may, really try to drive home the fact that social murder is violence. That seems to be the missing piece that libs have a hard time wrapping their head around. If you can nail that, then revolution is an act of self-defense.
That's a great idea! I'll do my best to make sure I get that right
The Star Wars Cantina Band launches in to a jizz version fo Bella Chao then the bartender pulls out and uzi and starts blasting imperials.
I applaud our bards and storytellers, people like you expand the richness of the universe and did so before people were able to read and write. Entertainment and treats do make pre revolutionary live more palatable and fun.
If it makes you feel better the takes I've been reading on :reddit-logo: is that the depiction of the empire in Andor is just like the soviet union.
There's so many dogwistles to fascism (by the bad guys) in that show I'm surprised they don't root for the empire
Comicbookresources had an unironic article about how the ISB is good because of how cutthroat everyone is and you want your intelligence agency to be 'the best of the best' so you don't get space 9/11'd or whatever
If you don't mind potentially dumb-ass suggestions from the peanut-gallery,
A lot of popular science fiction tries to do everything at once -- robots, faster-than-light travel, mind-uploading, holograms, "lazer-swords", oh my! But some really great science fiction was written on the basis of what couldn't be done. Dune exists in a future without computers. Expanse has no FTL.‡ Deciding what isn't possible upfront can give a narrative clear boundaries to work within, and a developmental logic to the magic-technology that is possible.
‡
I'm using this footnote to acknowledge the portal gates, haha, you can't correct me now!
If you don’t mind potentially dumb-ass suggestions from the peanut-gallery
I mean, that's all my book is in the first place lol
some really great science fiction was written on the basis of what couldn’t be done.
That's a really good point! I have some of that in the story already, but it's things that I personally don't ever see coming to fruition, such as FTL travel without wormholes or the like. I'll definitely keep that in mind as I write!
When I started watching Andor (within the first 2 episodes), I thought of it like The Wire in Star Wars. I think that's a pretty good way to look at it from a storytelling perspective, and it has been doing a pretty solid job of living up to that so far. If you are writing something at all similar, then I'd love to see you keep at it! There's not enough materialist sci fi!
It's usually either some type of allegory ( a la Star Trek) or it is just a fantasy-hybrid with technomagic. Having sci fi with a real historical materialist perspective on societies and political economy is really rare. The Expanse is fairly popular in the sci fi fandom because of how different it is from the normal slop. You are making something unique even if it gets compared to Andor, which should be viewed as a significant complement!
All art is derivative. I guarantee you the writers of Andor read some other book or watched some other show which did the concept “better” and then used it as inspiration for Andor. Don’t always worry about originality, because in it’s purest form it can only be lackluster. From my own perspective as an orchestral musician, there’s a lot of a avant-garde music that tries to be original and go against the grain, and almost all of it sounds like shit. Cliches exist for a reason; they work. So don’t worry if you find that someone else got to your idea before you, I guarantee you it would still be true even if you didn’t know. Just write what you want to write and the winds of time will decide the rest.
