Designer’s Notes - Some funny Ideas you can get from head canon

Designer’s Notes - Some funny Ideas you can get from head canon

 WARNING Big big dollops of Space Fantasy Heartbreaker on this one. With Sprinkles.

If you are looking for insightful analysis or useful materials this post may likely not be for you.  Imma just going to blather.  I hope it’s faint shades of entertaining.

 

I was trying to describe a particular NPC’s appearance – she’s a humanoid alien (one of the Myricor in Galaxy Black terms) and came ultimately to describe her “species” (after repeated questions)  as “functionally a human ethno-type that we just have not seen yet on Earth.” 

Which say, rather like all the aliens in original Star Tre[1]k.

Which brings me to the head canon. 

When I was first super into Traveller (this was original LBB Traveller c. 1984)  a major difference I found between my friends who played it and my own conception was that in my head the age of Earth’s First Contact, which see, the First Imperium, looked an awful lot like TOS Star Trek (and I mean…an AWFUL LOT).  The whole idea of humans making first contact with…..other humans is basically on brand for how the aliens (most of them) appeared and acted – central casting and exiting stock characters & costumes is a good way to save money on an expensive drekking sci fi show in the mid- 660s  after all.

 

Fun fact, this tiny piece of ancient head canon (not terribly contradicted by GURPS Interstellar Wars, which I thought was a fine book and VERY on brand for OUT Trav) was plucked like a delicate cherry for ingredients when I was figuring out the history and rationale for the sample/default universe as depicted in Galaxy Black.  In the Empress Imperium the “first Empire” is thought of in quasi-Arthurian terms, but someone from our 2021 Earth would notice mostly how everyone has these colour coded uniforms……

Lots of little things like that accumulate when you are weird kid who absorbs and internalizes and dissects all media she encounters as a juve. After a certain point it becomes accurate to say that the setting in Galaxy Black, most especially as it’s depicted in the Judge’s guide and it’s companion the Space Girl’s guide could pretty accurately be described as

Gwen’s Great Big Head Canon Universe of Things

(which of course you know better as – in marketing terms – THE COLLAPSING UNIVERSE) 

DAMN Count Baltar was a sexy Klingon[2]

 

When I watch the Mandalorian, especially the fist season, I often get the sense that much of the initial concept of he show came from John Favreau’s head canon of what all of Boba Fett’s doodads did when he was a kid.  I don’t know that this is true but regardless I feel a strangely deep kinship with this guy I’m never likely to meet on this basis – the ability to realize important symbols and images we played with as a child as an adult in one’s work is joyful and powerful and you can do some amazing things with it.  

 

Or putting it another way….I have the SRD up against the wall and we’re making out and oo….. (I’ll stop)  Like I said, great big dollops of Space Fantasy Heartbreaker on this one. With Sprinkles, chocolate and peanut butter chips, little mints, a banana and a whole mess of cherries.

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[1] Well all of the remaining pulp fiction racist stereotypes and caricatures anyway.  I mean TOS Klingons are basically invaders from the Planet of Yellow Peril FFS.  Just like their fictional ancestor Ming the Merciless who is let’s face it Space Fu Manchu. 

[2] Said yes with full awareness that yellow face is just as horrible as blackface. Both are abhorrent & disgusting.  This is NOT an endorsement of any kind, simply awareness. Like a lot/most of early SF tit’s problematic af.  Being mindful and aware of facts never requires you to not talk about something, however. My statement about John Colicos’  Klingon-ness stands.   HAWT.  More so on DS9 in full proper makeup.