A young adept with no training in the Force. A bounty hunter in love with his bounty. A kleptomaniac Ewok eyeing an ancient score. A Padawan who survived Order 66, only to experiment with the Dark Side of the Force. And a medical droid that thinks it is human, traumatized after performing horrific procedures.
These characters are clearly from the Star Wars universe, but they aren’t from any movie you’ve watched or comic you’ve read. These are the player characters in my most recent Star Wars tabletop roleplaying game, and though the game is on hiatus as the moment, they are just as important to me as the heroes (and villains) we all know and love.
There is something unique about flexing your creative skills in an already-established world, particularly one you are a huge fan of, that makes you feel even more connected to the canon material you love. The tamest version of this is the head-canon, in which one simply makes conclusions about a story that aren’t explicit (or explicitly contradicted) in a text. Hermione being black is a great example of this; even though Emma Watson is white, the books never define Hermione’s skin color, and so her ethnicity is up for debate. And while you could imagine Hermione as any race, the references to her curly hair fit well with this head-canon.
Harry Potter is flush with opportunities for head-canons. Another great one is the idea that Neville’s lack of magical skill in the earlier books is due to his using his father’s wand, rather than a wand that chose him. Thus, when we see him as the badass resistance leader in The Deathly Hallows, he has not only gained in confidence and skill, but he is more capable because he is wielding a wand made for him (after his father’s wand was broken at the end of Order of the Phoenix). This head-canon adds additional depth to Neville’s characterization as someone overlooked and neglected, even by Harry (as we discuss in our Friendship in Harry Potter episode).
When fans move even farther than discussing these head-canons, however, really amazing art can be made. Fan fiction is a great example of this, though I can’t honestly say I’ve read much of it. But by the number of stories in the Archive of Our Own, it’s clear that there is a desire for more stories about our favorite characters and worlds, and plenty of fans willing to write them. What I have been extremely impressed by, however, is all the fanart you can find online.
Taking head-canons one step further, fan art provides visual representations of aspects of your character that you would never see in movies. Whether it’s a couple you ‘ship that never got together in the series (looking at you, Pokemon’s Jessie and James) or a scene that happened in the background (I’d love to see Leia’s reaction to Luke’s plan to rescue Han in Return of the Jedi), seeing it in cartoon or comic form helps make it real. Die hard fans even mae fan films, where you can see the relationship between the Marauders and Snape when they were students, or even watch Batman fight the Predator and a xenomorph from Alien.
Funnily enough, though, for me the act of collaboratively creating stories about characters who don’t exist at all in the original makes the text so much more vibrant than even fan art and films can. I have been lucky enough to participate in two Star Wars role playing systems, and I have listened to a few more (our patrons can find one in this month’s recommendations!). And I can honestly say that outside of our monthly analysis on the podcast, I have never been as engaged and passionate about the series as I felt during those sessions.
Part of it is the collaborative nature of tabletop games. You build the world and story together, with different character motivations interacting with the luck of the dice to see how your party affects the world around them. And so while one character tries to heal a traumatized clone trooper, another sees him only as a threat to the family they are trying to protect. Having these conflicts play out in real time gives so much opportunity for character development and growth that isn’t constrained by the need to sell tickets or the run time of a typical movie.
Beyond the collaboration, though, I think there is something special about figuring out how the world (or galaxy, in the case of Star Wars) would react to a character’s actions, or how the themes and conflicts the characters face would bare fruit in that setting. The best example of this I’ve seen is with DG-HR, the medical droid who is searching to find out if it has a soul, or if it can touch the Force. Those are questions that Star Wars doesn’t really answer, at least not in a limiting way. And so while I have some ideas, playing together and exploring the galaxy to find answers has been so fulfilling, and when I think about agency or personhood for droids in Star Wars, my first thought is always of DG-HR.
Plus, there’s nothing like being able to build a character and describe what you want them to do without the constraints of a movie or video game. If you want to use the Force to wield lightsabers without using your hands, go for it! If you want to ride a rancor into battle, have fun! And if you choose to convince your opponent that the device your holding is a thermal detonator to get them to back off, good luck! It’s truly your imagination that limits how you can play with the toys in the sandbox given to us by the films, books, and shows we love so much.
So if you are looking for a new way to engage with your favorite stories, or to add representation that you wished you saw, or even just to explore the universe a bit, use your creativity and play in the sandbox. If you do, send whatever you create over our way – I’d love to see what you come up with!
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