Posted on by Dunc

The fandom minute: Space cowboys, art, alignments, cakes, devalued collectibles and Gonk

Scum and villainy.Yippee-ki-yay. Star Wars is SpaceWestern.com’s #1 most influential space western. Please spare us all the argument about how it’s totally not a space western; It’s an amalgam, silly. (Also, while I don’t think anyone can deny Firefly, isn’t it a bit early to rank it quite so high on a list that’s supposed to be about influence? Far as I can tell, the only thing that it’s inspired so far is a funny clip of Castle and Fox renewing Dollhouse.)

Art or something like it. io9 collects the greatest velvet paintings of science fiction. (As Wookieepedia is to Cracked, Google Image Search is to io9.) Giant Samurai Vader was a big hit on Twitter, and the official site gives us another peek at Visions featuring some of Club Jade’s favorite things (non-alcoholic division.) Dude, we get it: It’s a Star Wars fine art book, right? Enough teasing already.

Contain your shock. Darth Vader is Lawful Evil. No!

Baked-good corner. Two extremely well-made Star Wars cakes – Jabba and Darth Maul – from L.A.’s Rosebud Cakes. For the 30-year-old child party moll in all of us. As for something we can all achieve, take a cue from the sarlacc bundt cake.

Collecting. The ten most embarrassingly collectible Star Wars toys of the 90’s. Why didn’t I sell my Special Edition Luke when it was actually worth something? WHY?

At random. Power Droid gots to get his money.

3 Replies to “The fandom minute: Space cowboys, art, alignments, cakes, devalued collectibles and Gonk”

  2. Thanks you for being the first person to note that the list was about influence. I’ve had any number of comments that Firefly should have ranked higher and that I forgot to mention Outland. In its brief time, Firefly has been pretty influential: it popularized the concept of an unapologetic Space Western. It has also been pretty influential in terms of the camera work and digital effects, which found their way into other Science Fiction shows like the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. It’s also the originating point for a number of other Science Fiction Western works. It’s highly unlikely that works like High Plains Invaders or the upcoming Cowboys and Aliens movie would have been green-lighted by “the suits” if Firefly hadn’t existed.

  3. Oh, internets.

    Thanks for the insight! I was thinking of influence in broader strokes –Star Wars style, I guess – which really is kind of boneheaded now that I think about it.

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