whenever they announce new star wars anthologies, on some level i am always thinking of the festivals in ancient greece that had poetry competitions, and you'd have a bunch of different bards coming into town and telling homeric stories. those rhapsodes would get to stand on stage and perform in front of an assembled crowd at a sanctioned community event, so their version of the story would have credibility and authority (unless they tell it 'wrong' enough that the audience doesn't like it). everybody who was there and heard the story now shares that story, so it's a common cultural token inside the community.
but there are of course hundreds and thousands of times that average people would tell homeric stories, while they were weaving, or around the campfire, or while on a ship, or any sort of small group. we know that at least some people would even roleplay as homeric figures in bed (looking @ you, alexander), and so would be telling stories just to and with their intimate partners. all of these private, inter-personal, non-authoritative stories are all homeric, but they're not the homer that survived, not the homer that was stamped with approval and given circulation by local authorities.
the question of who control the narrative of star wars is interesting when thinking about modern corporate, extractive intellectual property law. the corporation hosts the festival and ensures all the stories are based on a cohesive set of intellectual property assets. their relative authority is granted by being the stories that can generate profit, and so the 'real' ones, becoming circulated community tokens by virtue of this central authority. the corporation control the bards that get on stage, and so control the story that way.
but as a private citizen and fan of the star wars corpus writ large, i can listen to these stories and enjoy them, but they don't have the same authority to me that they might hold to other people. they're just telling one version of the story, with a louder mic and a bigger stage, but at this point imho they're no closer to homer (lucas in this case lol) than many amateur bards. if a rhapsode told a story about odysseus that had him doing something that you personally don't think odysseus would do, you can go on living, knowing that everyone else is familiar with the 'wrong' version, and tell it yourself, your way, to your friends.
so seeing new anthologies drop, i'm excited to go to the festival and see the bards tell the new stories and appreciate how those stories are nested inside a dense web of context and lore that adds more and more referential, inter-textual meaning. but if one of the stories feels like it doesn't 'fit' inside the mesh of star wars in my mind, i'm pretty comfy just letting it exist beside and around me, accepting that it's authoritative to most of the community, but not to me and my murmured stories at night lol
snowghoul
annaxmalina
theartofmadeline
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