May the Fourth be with you!

Happy Star Wars Day! Sorry I've been missing from this blog for a few weeks now. Today marks the last day of classes for this semester...and hopefully forever, for me. By the end of this semester (finals are next week), I will have fulfilled all my class requirements for a degree, but there is still a chance that I'll be convinced to take another class in the future, if it will help my research. But for now it's at least my semi-official Last Day of Class.

Back to Star Wars. Warning: this is a rambling post.

Since my embarrassing lack of Star Wars-themed clothing on last December's Wear Star Wars/Share Star Wars in Support of Katie Day, I have acquired two Star Wars-related t-shirts. One is the I Can Haz Force tee from TeeFury. I've worn it twice so far and have received quite a few compliments. The other is the Daddy's Little Girl t-shirt I just got from Her Universe. It's adorable, and it's on sale! Today is a perfect occasion for me to debut the shirt. See the photo of me proudly modeling it!

There was recently a little bit of a fuss about this article tangentially related to Star Wars. It's basically a complaint about how 1) hot actresses so often feel the need to prove their geekiness on talk shows to pander to the nerds, and 2) this proof so often comes in the form of loving Star Wars, even though the movies are very popular and already "culturally validated." As for the first point, it's not only hot actresses who sometimes wind up showing off their geek bona fides on talk shows. Stephen Colbert discussed Balrogs and spouted a bit of Quenya on Conan O'Brien a few years ago. Was he pandering to the nerds? Or was he just a genuine nerd talking about something he loves to talk about? I think that's how most people saw it. But if so, why are the actresses who do the same thing not perceived the same way? I think there's still a bit of reluctance to believe that a woman as "cool" as a hot actress could like something geeky. Thus, whenever one is seen gushing about geeky interests, she must be pandering to the nerd crowd. It may be that an actress promoting a geeky franchise might fake geekiness to pander to the geeks, but an actor in the same situation does the same thing. Don't take it out on the hot actresses. The world needs to accept the fact that women, even pretty ones, can like geeky things just as genuinely as anyone else.

Regarding the second point, it's true that having seen Star Wars and liked it does not make a person geeky. But love for Star Wars can still make you a qualified geek (if we're at the point people need to qualify to be in the geek club). Have you read the novels? Held Star Wars marathons? Do you own a lightsaber? Can you name the aliens in the Mos Eisley Cantina? Can you spell Kashyyyk? Even if someone has merely seen all the movies a half dozen times and quotes Yoda seriously, I'm willing to accept them as a Star Wars geek. Do these actresses have to prove to the writer of that article why they're a geek for loving Star Wars, rather than merely someone who saw the movies and thought they were fun? The writer was just criticizing the fact that they were sharing their geeky interests in the first place. Give them a break.

In any case, this geek welcomes actresses and actors to talk about their geeky interests on talk shows. After all, I find it far more interesting than when they talk about how well their favorite sports teams are doing this year. Silly pandering to the sports fans in the audience ;)

Sorry, now for less rant-y Star Wars news:

I'm continually becoming more and more excited about BioWare's upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). I'd grown up in a Star Wars-loving family--we had Star Wars-themed birthday parties and played Star Wars monopoly and things like that--but it was really when I played BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) that I became a true Star Wars fan. I guess I just wanted to be a Jedi.

I've been following developments in the game on the SWTOR website, but this recent video is the first one I've seen that gave a really good idea of what the gameplay will be like. And I am psyched.


Video on the website here.

Let me just wrap up this rambling Star Wars post with a little anecdote from my morning. The Housemate and I were walking to school, and it being Hawaii, it suddenly started to rain. We pulled out our umbrellas and noted how deploying them was a bit like activating a lightsaber. We swung them around a bit (in extended but still-tied form) imitating the lightsaber sound effect. Then I started to try to deflect the raindrops with my umbrella-lightsaber.

"Do you think Jedi can vaporize raindrops with their lightsabers?"

My boyfriend assured me that they probably could. I'm so glad I have a boyfriend who supports my love of Star Wars, like that other time when I was holding out my hand, trying to summon my water bottle with the Force and he hid from view and tossed it to me. *Sigh*. My wish for this Star Wars Day: May everyone find a friend who helps them pretend they can use the Force.

And May the Fourth be with you!