Club Jade

In today’s look inside J.W. Rinzler’s Making of Return of the Jedi
over at The Huffington Post, George Lucas talks about his plans for the prequels with Lawrence Kasdan, director Richard Marquand and producer Howard Kazanjian.

Sorry, no threesome fic.

There’s a long history of fans monetizing their fanfic – but generally they do it by filing off the serial numbers, changing the names, and repurposing it as ‘original’ work. Fifty Shades of Grey may be the most infamous example, but it’s hardly the first.

Now Amazon wants to cut out all that work to get your fanfic published: They’ve launched Kindle Worlds, “the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so.”

How are they not getting their asses sued? Well, they’re actually licensing the stuff. First up is Alloy Entertainment, the Warner-Bros. owned book packager responsible for such book-series-turned-TV as Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diaries. Not your bag of blood? They plan “to announce more licenses soon.” (For what it’s worth, I really doubt that Lucasfilm or Disney would sign on to something like this – at least not this early on.)

Naturally, they’re not allowing porn or crossovers, which disincludes plenty of fandom right from the start, but it’s still pretty troubling – and something that could end up very disturbing precedent.

The first and only rule of fanfic fandom is you don’t sell your stuff. I firmly believe that the line between fanfic and profic is something that should only be crossed very carefully and with great caution. And, let’s face it – most fanfic is awful, porn or no porn.

The idea of actually monetizing fanfic is no real surprise – it’s been tried, and failed, a dozen times over, and the runaway success of 50 Shades made this nigh-inevitable. To have the Powers-That-Be actively involved in fanfic has a real potential to change this very specific fandom activity – and not for the better. Part of the point of fanfic, to my mind, is the complete lack of tether. It rarely pays off, but when it does, those are the moments that make the whole enterprise worth it.

This alone is no great shakes – Alloy and a couple of writers making a couple bucks off some PG smolderfests is not going to change the whole landscape of fandom. But it’s a very dangerous first step that could lead to more corporate policing in the fanfic realm, the making such a thing mundane – and that’s something I am not in the least comfortable with.

UPDATE: Scalzi looks at the fine print… He raises a few good questions, but for our purposes: What does it mean for the ‘official’ tie-ins?

Last week’s best tweets bled over into Monday, because I’m sure you don’t want to wait a whole week for the Rebels stuff, right? Also: We saw Star Trek Into Darkness, the first week of Star Wars Weekends is a thing that happened, and Artoos invaded Lucasfilm. All that and more under the cut.

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This is from last week, but it’s not like anyone actually watches Leno. Mark’s episode of Criminal Minds, the two-parter season finale, airs tonight.

Director Kyle Newman gathers famous fans to talk about Return of the Jedi.

A pair of bleached Levis worn by Mark Hamill in the original Star Wars are at auction today. They’re currently going for $36,000 with just over an hour to go.

I’ll let you make your own jokes.

HuffPo’s Mike Ryan has the first look at the book trailer for The Making of Return of the Jedi as well as an interview with author J.W. Rinzler. It starts off with Ewok sex, of course.

In other bookish news, there’s a chat with Dawn of the Jedi and Legacy writer John Ostrander on the Star Wars Books Facebook page this afternoon, while Into the Void author Tim Lebbon will do the same on Wednesday.

With all the movie and TV news coming out, it’s easy to get caught up in the future.  Because the future, as a wise man once said, is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.  But if you’ve got an even passing interest in the past, you should definitely check out Kitbashed.

Writer and designer Michael Heilemann has been on our radar for years, but with Kitbashed he’s delving deep into the origins of Star Wars – not the saga, not the franchise, but the movie.  Heilemann connects Star Wars to everything from famous documentaries to Star Trek to a baffling magazine ad.  He’s also especially good at analyzing George Lucas’ student films and early works.

Even when his observations are relatively familiar, Heilemann presents them in a novel way.  For example, don’t miss his spellbinding video on the war movies which influenced the Death Star trench run.  Citations are included for further reading, and the site itself is gloriously easy on the eyes, clean and straightforward and uncluttered.  Kitbashed is an absolute joy.

Out right now – I missed it last week – is Star Wars Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy by J.W. Rinzler.

Meanwhile, Wednesday brings the conclusion of Dawn of the Jedi‘s second arc in Prisoner of Bogan #5 as well as Legacy #3.

Our forthcoming slate includes Aaron Allston’s X-Wing: Mercy Kill in paperback (June 25,) William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher (July 2) and Troy Denning’s Crucible (July 9.)

Well, here’s your new animated series: Star Wars: Rebels, set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope just as heavily speculated. It’s helmed by Dave Filoni, Greg Weisman and Simon Kinberg and will be coming in Fall 2014.

The action-filled series is set between the events of Episode III and IV — an era spanning almost two decades never-before explored on-screen. Star Wars Rebels takes place in a time where the Empire is securing its grip on the galaxy and hunting down the last of the Jedi Knights as a fledgling rebellion against the Empire is taking shape. Details about the show are a closely guarded secret at this point.

The show will debut with an hour-long special on the Disney Channel before moving to Disney XD for the duration.

Fans will get a first look at the show at Celebration Europe.