Month: March 2015

Game Over Return of Fanon

If you’ve ever visited a wiki site other than Wikipedia, it was probably run by Wikia, a site that  allows anyone to create and run their own full Wikipedia-style site, for good or for ill. Perhaps their best-known spinoff is Wookieepedia, a Star Wars wiki that is by far the most complete and comprehensive source of Star Wars information outside of Lucasfilm itself, with 117,811 articles as of this writing. And it’s not just huge, lore-filled franchises either; Wikia’s 335,281 (and counting) communities range from a Wallace and Gromit wiki, to a wiki for the Oscars, to a wiki about buffalo nickels. “The 1913 Type 1 (or variety 1) Buffalo Nickel is the first pereoid of 1913,” proclaims this wiki. “This video may also tell you bits and pieses of the 1913 type 1 Buffalo Nickel.”

(fun fact: while looking through the Wikia movies hub I found an inexplicable description of/advertisement for a condo community in Florida that some confused soul had thought would be a good addition to a wiki about movie wikis)

But, like any content-focused Internet community that combines enthusiasm, the ability of anyone whomsoever to join, and a complete lack of moderation of any sort, Wikia gets more and more perplexing the deeper you go in. Take, for example, the fanon wikis.

Continue reading

Review: NPR Star Wars radio drama (1981)

I’ve had to do more driving than usual lately, so I’ve been on the lookout for good listening material to keep my mind occupied while going back and forth along scenic Interstate 5. So far, my weapon of choice has been podcasts (my latest favorite is the incomparable Citation Needed), but something I’d always been curious about was the radio dramatization of Star Wars that  NPR produced in the early 80s. I love CBS Mystery Theater-type audio entertainment and, of course, Star Wars, and I kept seeing information from the radio version used to answer long-standing fan questions, so it seemed like a good thing to dive into. I wasn’t disappointed.

Continue reading