Balancing branches

It is fairly reasonable to say that Emperor Palpatine is an untrustworthy fellow. He is Gollum without the calming influence of Smeagol, Sauron and Melkor[1] combined, Vorgons if they were evil, a Bond villain that manages to triumph. Palpatine ain't no friend of yours or mine[2].

I mention this because I've read some of the 'journey to Force Awakens' comic books and Chuck Wendig's Star Wars Aftermath in preparation of the forthcoming film. I am a little excited, it is a film I'm looking forward too, and the comic books and book appeal to what I think is Star Wars, my expectations and experience.

The chance to speculate on possible themes also appeals. Upon finishing the fourth issue of Shattered Empire it occurred to me I had seen the tending to a garden training method elsewhere. In fact, it's in one of my favourite comic books, Usagi Yojimbo, in which our hero confesses to his training master that he couldn't tend his garden. His master then says the test wasn't about gardening, the seeds had been boiled, but to see whether Usagi would cheat or confess his weakness.

Shattered Empire climaxes with a high-security laboratory being broken into by Luke Skywalker and Shara Bey[3] to recover trees Palpatine had stolen from the Jedi. Luke is surprised there are two trees, and they agree to look after one tree each. Bey gets to keep one because "it should go to a good *home*." Fairly simple instruction, and yet...

The massive narrative[4] of Star Wars up until now has been binary. Jedi and Sith, light side and dark side[5], "do or do not", even when the films have touched the muddy grey-area that is closer to life it has been on good/bad terms. Binary does not work if one eliminates 1 or 0.

So, what if the two trees are binary. What if Luke knows, through the 'magical powers afforded to him through the Force', that one tree is tainted, like Usagi's seeds, never to grow properly? If Shara Bey is given a tree because her future, her home, is good; by extension Luke's future, Luke's home, is bad. And bad in this binary universe means Sith.

Aftermath deals with the Empire's 'long game' and doesn't feature any gardening (sadly). What it does feature is interesting characters that Chuck Wendig has put a lot of care into. The characters are believable, they hurt and make mistakes, they drink to forget. And not 'shoot the wrong being' mistakes, mistakes in interpersonal relationships. In this universe relationships happen, and they go wrong, just like human relationships.

There is a line in The Big Bang Theory's theme about how we attempt to unravel all the mystery with mathematics, science, and history. Culture helps us solve these mysteries; when the boy dies at the end of the book, when the singer sings about architecture, when nuclear war results in a comic book about law and order in overcrowded mega cities, all of these narratives create space for us to examine more than just what is in front of us.

A science fiction western movie, heavily based on an earlier Japanese film allows this space, just in the same way and to the same extent that a restoration comedy does. To deny one over the other is to give into the dark side.

That mystery is simple to ask and so, so complex to answer. Are my seeds tainted, or will they grow, and how can I know for certain before I plant them?

Notes
1 - I will now paraphrase Kent Brockman, 'it's in the Silmarillion, people.'
2 - 'BB-8's going to be one of the greats, it's a fact he buys rounds for all of his mates', I could keep up the Star Wars themed rhyming couplets until Arthur Dent gets his cup of tea.
3 - Bey being mother to Poe Dameron.
4 - That was a typo but I might stick with it, expect micro narrative and macro narrative to appear some time. Soon.
5 - 'You make me cry,' to paraphrase Glasgow's Urusei Yatsura.