RSS209: The Saga Continues
Title: This is a reference back to the title for strip #1 “The Saga Begins”, itself borrowed from the title of the Star Wars parody song by “Weird Al” Yankovic. We figured it would be an appropriate way to start the next movie, after the two-year break the players had.
GM: Right, the old team reassembled. Good to see you again, Annie.
Annie: Thanks. I kind of missed you guys and the game. Sally, you’ve really grown.
Sally: I like your earrings.
Annie: Thanks. Hi, Jim. Pete.
Jim: Hi! It’s been, what, two years?
— The two-year time skip was always planned, but this is the first time that readers would have been made aware of it, making it potentially surprising. We also reveal here that the others haven’t seen Annie for those two years.
Pete: I’m only here because you said it would be a new campaign.
GM: Yes, that fantasy one is done.
Pete: Thank god.
[...]
Ben: You can be dismembered by laser sword, if necessary.
Pete: Not given your recent attempts at swordsmanship.
— We also introduce the fact that the players have been playing a different, fantasy game in the interim. And Pete wasn’t happy with it, and Ben had some incident involving poor form with a sword. It’s not really possible to tell anything more about this fantasy game at this point, but more hints will be dropped throughout Episode II. This is a deliberate puzzle that we set for the readers to try to figure out what the fantasy campaign was as more clues are slowly revealed.
Opening Crawl: The title of the episode in the crawl is “The Silence of the Clones”, which is a reference to The Silence of the Lambs. Besides changing the episode title, there is one small additional change in the opening crawl: adding a circumflex accent to the name of Count Dooku to render it as “Count Dookû”. We made this change to his name to emphasise his “Space French” characterisation.
210: Poetry in Demotion
Title: Pun on the idiom “poetry in motion”, a phrase used to describe something graceful or pleasing to watch. “Demotion” refers to Padmé’s change from being Queen to merely being a Senator—something the GM thought up to limit Padmé’s power to something more appropriate to a PC in the game. The original idiom is ironic, because the actions of Padmé in this strip are perverting the GM’s intent and almost certainly leading to disaster.
R2-D2: Oh great, royalty again.
— This line can be read two ways: as Pete being annoyed that Jim’s character is a Queen again, or that something untoward involving royalty occurred during the fantasy campaign they played in the two-year break from this campaign. The latter is true, and another clue to the fantasy campaign’s identity.
211: Landing Platform Game
Title: Melange of “landing platform” and “platform game”. “Landing platform” is the literal description of the platform the ship lands on. The platform game element refers to (a) the fact that they’re playing a game, (b) the fact that Padmé effectively gets an “extra life” here, a common trope in video games.
Captain Typho: It was a trap!
— A forward reference to Admiral Ackbar’s famous “It’s a trap!” line in Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi.
GM: ... Okay, Padmé’s decoy was fatally injured in the explosion. I’d prefer you to at least make it off the landing platform alive.
— The GM is acting deliberately to keep Padmé alive by any means, since he knows that she is in possession of the Japor snippet, and so cannot die. Rather than have her survive the obviously unsurvivable explosion, he pulls the retcon of having the explosion hit a decoy.
R2-D2: That’d be a change.
GM: Are you still annoyed about—
R2-D2: Drop it.
— Another hint about the interstitial fantasy campaign. This is a hint that Pete played a character who died.
212: Duty is in the Eye of the Beholder
Title: Pun on “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, a common idiom meaning that different people prefer different things.
213: Forcing the Issue
Title: An idiom meaning to force someone to do something or to make a decision about something, also playing on the Star Wars meaning of the Force.
Padmé: We should have kept the old Chancellor. He really knew how to get things done.
— Recall the previous Chancellor was a raving loony, and Padmé was the one who effectively deposed him as Chancellor in the first place (#139), although Jim wasn’t playing Padmé at that stage.
214: It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses a Moon
Title: Variant of “it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye”, a phrase used to warn people against playing roughly, because an accident might happen.
215: Rebel Without a Cause, Yet
Title: Play on the film Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean. This is a reference to Bail Organa’s appearance in this strip. He is (later) one of the founding members of the Rebellion in the canonical story. Bail Organa’s lines are all taken from various rebellious characters in classic movies:
Bail Organa: Are you lookin’ at me?
— A variant of Robert DeNiro’s “Are you talkin’ to me?” tirade in Taxi Driver.
Bail Organa: I don’t want no trouble.
— Verbatim James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause.
Bail Organa: I coulda been the Chancellor. I coulda been somebody, instead of a Senator, which is what I am, let’s face it.
— Paraphrase of Marlon Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” speech from On the Waterfront.
Bail Organa: You’re tearin’ me apart!
— Verbatim James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause.
216: Home on Lagrange
Title: Pun on “Home on the Range”, an American folk song sometimes used to evoke a rural feeling. “Lagrange” refers to Joseph-Louis Lagrange, discoverer of the Lagrangian points—places where a smaller body can be placed in a stable gravitational position compared to to larger bodies in orbit. “Range” and “Lagrange” are not rhymes, but the spelling similarity was enough for us to consider this pun worthwhile.
Padmé: Or you could put it at the L1 Lagrangian point and block all—
— The idea of putting the Peace Moon at the L1 Lagrangian point is that (if it were big enough) it could entirely block the sun from shining on a planet. It would need to be a very large moon, or a system with a dwarf sun and a planet orbiting close to it, for this to actually work—a moon the size of Earth’s moon at Earth’s L1 point would not block much light. But this is beside the point.
217: The Girl From Ipanema
Title: The song “The Girl From Ipanema” is considered the canonical piece of elevator music—appropriate since Obi-Wan and Anakin spend this entire strip in an elevator. It also carries an air of mystery surrounding a “girl”, which is a reference to Annie and what she’s been doing in the past two years.
Jar Jar: What’s a gundark?
Padmé: It’s a big boat used to transport teddy bears.
— Playing on the soft toy manufacturer Gund, and the standard meaning of “ark”.
218: I’m Very Well Acquainted, Too, with Matters Senatorial
Title: This is a spoof of a line from Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Major-General’s Song” from The Pirates of Penzance. It has the context of being something Sally might be saying—the joke being that Sally actually has no idea what a Senator is or what they do; she is just claiming to be a Senator because she heard that Padmé is one.
219: There is an Awkward Moment
Title: Straightforward description of what happens in this scene.
220: Sage Advice
Title: “Sage advice” is a common phrase used to refer to advice given by someone wise and experienced. Which is clearly not what is happening in this strip. The title also references the pun committed (accidentally?) by Jim calling Bail Organa “Basil Oregano”, with sage, basil, and oregano all being common herbs. This pun is also continued in the annotation, with “thyme”.
Padmé: We’ll trawl for rumours at the tavern.
— A reference back to strip #16.
Padmé: Why? Didn’t I save everyone in the last game?
R2-D2: Ahem.
— Jim is referring to the interstitial fantasy campaign. Pete takes offence because Jim most definitely did not save everyone, in particular not Pete’s character.
221: Perchance to Dream
Title: From Shakespeare’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Hamlet. This is a deliberate echo of the Hamlet reference in the title of #197, the strip in which Qui-Gon dies. He died as an indirect result of not having slept since Tatooine (see #196), and in this strip Padmé (Jim’s new character) accepts that going to sleep would be a good idea. And of course, “perchance to dream” is just part of the quote: To sleep, perchance to dream.
222: Backstab Backstory
Title: Consonance on the themes of backstabbing and presenting some of the backstory of the fantasy campaign events that happened between the two Star Wars adventures.
Pete gives Sally a lot more details about the interstitial fantasy campaign. Pete’s character died, possibly due to something that Pete interpreted as being backstabbed (whether literally or metaphorically is not clear), and was not resurrected. And there was a “persistent bad guy”.
223: Two Hundred Odd Feet of Doom
Title: Variant of 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, the name of Russell Crowe’s former band. Two hundred refers to the number of feet on two centipedes—legendarily supposed to have 100 feet. The “odd” is both a way of saying “approximately 200 feet” and a reference to the odd choice of an assassination weapon. And “of Doom” is both a literal reference to the centipedes being used as a murder weapon and the “of doom!” trope previously referenced (#145).
R2-D2: Not unless I make a Spot check.
— A “Spot check” is a common term in roleplaying games for a dice roll check to see if the character spots or notices something.
224: Spot No Evil, Sense No Evil, Detect No Evil
Title: Variant of the phrase “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”, which is often presented as a visual proverb in the form of three wise monkeys. It is sometimes used to describe someone who doesn’t want to get involved in something, ignoring signs that they should take action. This is a reference to R2’s actions here. We replace the verbs with jargon verbs used in RPG situations to sense things.
225: The Shortest Path Between Two Points
Title: Part of the proverb “The shortest path between two points is a straight line”, originally stated by Archimedes in a geometry context. Refers here to Obi-Wan’s choice to go after the droid by diving directly at it, through the window, without regard to the danger from cutting himself on the glass or falling to certain doom.
226: End of the Line
Title: An idiom simply meaning an ending or cessation of something. It derives literally from railway lines: When you reach the end of the line, you have to get off the train, because there’s nowhere further for it to go. This transportation metaphor applies here, as Obi-Wan reaches a point on his droid flight where he is going to have to get off. This title makes a stronger connection to the comic when combined with the title of the next strip.
Obi-Wan: Cutting back to the chase: Can I see where the droid is headed?
— From the idiom “cut to the chase”, meaning to cut short a digression and return to the main action, which comes from a literal use in films where a scene would be cut and the next scene would be in the middle of a chase sequence. Here Ben is playing with this by using the phrase both in the metaphorical and a literal sense.
227: Watch That First Step, It’s a Doozy
Title: Modification of a quote from various sources, including the classic Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoons (e.g. “Look out for that first step. It’s a lulu.” — Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk, 1943, and “"Watch out for that first step, Mac. It’s a lulu.” — No Parking Hare, 1954), the movie Groundhog Day (“Watch out for that first step! It’s a doozy!”, 1993), and Space Jam (“Look out for that first step, doc, it’s a real lulu.”, 1996). Used for humorous understatement when someone is faced with an unexpectedly long fall. It is also a reference to warnings to “watch your step” in places such as railway stations when alighting from a train. So it ties into the title of the previous strip (“End of the Line”, which can be read as the end of a rail journey).
228: Shotgun!
Title: Calling “Shotgun!” is a traditional method used to claim the front passenger seat of a car when a group of people drive somewhere. This is hopefully an obvious reference to Obi-Wan landing in the (front) seat of the hovercar.
229: Do Hovercars Dream of Electric Eels?
Title: This title references three things: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a novel by Philip K. Dick, which was the basis for the movie Blade Runner, and the “lower” parts of Coruscant seen in the chase scene have a strong resemblance to the city seen in Blade Runner. The Monty Python sketch “Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook” contains the notable phrase “My hovercraft is full of eels”, which has come to be iconic of poor language translations. And electric eels use electrical discharges to stun their prey and predators, as the assassin does here.
Obi-Wan: Go around! It’s a shortcut!
Anakin: A shortcut?
Obi-Wan: If it worked for the Trade Federation on Naboo, it’ll work for us.
— This defies any logic, since a tunnel is almost by definition a shortcut itself. In the movie, this lack of logic also occurs, but it is Anakin who says that he knows a shortcut. Here, Anakin questions the idea, but Obi-Wan points out that in their previous experience (#37) the Trade Federation apparently took a shortcut despite the Jedi having taken the fastest way to their destination. (Although this was later explained by the GM in #184.)
230: Sense and Sensitivity
Title: Pun on the Jane Austen novel Sense and Sensibility. The last word is changed to “sensitivity” to match the Force sensitivity power used in the strip. The “sense” refers to Obi-Wan’s last line, in which he reveals that he was having fun not having to be sensible.
231: The Thin Blue Laser Sword
Title: Variant of “the thin blue line”, a cliché used to refer to police forces. In the strip, many police clichés are used. The ending is changed to “laser sword”, a reference to Anakin’s blue laser sword.
Zam Wessel: Thank goodness I shook those Jedi off. The money from this job will finally pay for my son’s splanch transplant.
— “Splanch” is an invented name for an internal organ. It’s actually a reference to Irregular Webcomic!: #1695 and #1707. The alien splanch organ went on to play a more significant role in both Irregular Webcomic! and Darths & Droids.
Zam Wessel: Ah, poodoo.
— A curse word the GM introduced in #95 in Subulba’s speech.
Police or cop show clichés used in the strip: “You’re under arrest”, “Set the vehicle down, sir!”, “You’ll never take me”, “You’re just making it harder on yourself”, “Cherchez la femme”, “spill the beans”, “Why’d you do it?”, and “Just the facts, ma’am”. The last one is a tag line from the police show Dragnet.
232: Think of the Poor Little Dice
Title: This is essentially like an additional punchline for the strip.
Anakin: What? Aren’t there rules for grappling in this game?
Anakin: Why is everyone covering their dice?
— Although it’s not expicitly explained in the comic, the established players in this group (i.e. not Annie) seem to have a superstition or ritual involving covering their dice whenever anyone mentions grappling or grappling rules.
233: Flipping Out
Title: Simple pun on the page-flipping sound effects as the GM flips through the grappling rule book. Double meaning: “to flip out” is colloquial for “to go crazy/mad”, which describes loosely what the GM does as he struggles with the grappling rules, and finally gives up in disgust and simply declares that the car crashes so he doesn’t have to deal with it.
234: Yakety Sax
Title: “Yakety Sax” is the title of a piece of music most famously used as the theme tune of The Benny Hill Show. It is used and commonly associated with humorous chase sequences or other slapstick comedy. (An example of the music applied to Star Wars can be seen in this YouTube video.) We're not trying to imply the chase scene depicted here is slapstick—the title is merely meant to be incongruous and funny.
235: Two Jedi Walk into a Bar
Title: Variant of the classic joke set-up where various numbers of men—sometimes of specific nationalities or occupations—animals, or things walk into a bar. The punchline to this set-up is given in the last line of the annotation: The barkeep says, “Sorry, we don’t serve cheese here.” (Referring back to Jim’s habit of referring to Jedi as Cheddar Monks.)
Obi-Wan: I go to this bar all the time.
R2-D2: {aside} Alcoholic again, huh?
— This is another snarky comment from Pete about the interstitial fantasy campaign. We can deduce that Ben played a character who drank alcohol at some point.
Obi-Wan: What's the word?
— Obi-Wan asks the barkeep for rumours, a classic action in games such as Dungeons & Dragons.
236: Mind Over Natter
Title: Pun on “mind over matter”, a phrase referring to paranormal psychic abilities. “Natter” is slang for gossip or mindless chatter. The pun can therefore be interpreted as referring to the power of mental abilities over trivial conversations—which is precisely what happens in this strip.
237: Handy with a Laser Sword
Title: A simple pun using the word “hand” as a reference to Obi-Wan cutting off Zam Wessel’s hand with his laser sword.
Bar Patron: Yeesh! Remind me never to do business with the Jedi.
— This bar patron is played by Anthony Daniels, who plays C-3PO. Ironically, C-3PO does have a lot to do with Jedi in the future. We wanted a more obviously C-3PO-ish line for him, but this was the closest we could manage while still serving as a punchline.
238: The Short Arm of the Criminal
Title: Variant of “the long arm of the law”, an idiom referring to the idea that criminals must always be on guard because the police and justice systems will always be after them, and have large resources. Our version is a reference to Zam Wessel having a shorter arm than usual, since Obi-Wan cut off her hand.
239: An Underhanded Move
Title: A description of a sneaky or morally questionable action, which refers to Anakin’s use of Zam as a human shield here. It’s also a pun on the reference to Zam’s cut-off hand, which is reprised for the punchline of this strip (following the previous strip).
240: To Cut a Long Story Short
Title: An idiom with quite a literal meaning: to summarise, or to come to the main point quickly. Here it has another meaning in that the GM had prepared an extensive backstory for the character of Zam Wessel, and now her life has been cut short by the actions of Anakin. The GM’s intention was that the players should have talked with Zam and discovered her backstory, which would have led them deeper into the adventure plot.
241: Rap Sheet
Title: “Rap sheet” is a colloquial name for “Record of Arrest and Prosecution”, essentially a criminal record system used in the USA. There is no additional pun or reference here.
Yoda: Cut off her hand, you did—
Obi-Wan: I'll try not to make a habit of it.
— A forward reference to Obi-Wan cutting off several other extremeties in later episodes.
242: The Long View
Title: From the idiom “to take the long view”, meaning to plan ahead for the future, rather than to think only about immediate concerns. This has a triple meaning here, since it can refer to the literal view out the office window, or to Anakin looking forward to the mission, or his setting up of Palpatine here for some future purpose.
This strip ends with a sort of silent mutual understanding between Palpatine and Anakin, or is it misunderstanding? Something is going on between these two, but it’s hard to be sure exactly what at this stage of the story.
243: Shifty Characters
Title: “Shifty” has a double meaning here: it refers to slightly underhanded or immoral people, which could potentially apply to one or both of Anakin and Palpatine here. It’s also a pun reference to shapeshifters, mentioned in this strip.
Anakin: You are the most gifted politician I have ever met.
— This line is verbatim from the movie, although the context is different. In the movie Anakin is sincere, but here it is deliberate flattery with an ulterior motive.
244: Darts and Droids
Title: Simple pun on “Darths and Droids”, since this strip involves Obi-Wan asking droids to investigate the dart he recovered from Zam Wessel’s body.
245: Sergeant Yoda’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Title: Variant of the Beatles album title, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Yoda is acting like a stereotypical police sergeant, in various movies where he will hint to a suspended officer that “someone” should investigate the case, intending to turn a blind eye to the officer violating his suspension. The “lonely hearts” is a reference to the GM playing NPC dialogue with himself, since nobody seems to be following his hints at this point in the adventure.
246: Spit the Dummy
Title: This is an Australian colloquialism meaning to throw a tantrum. It comes from the tendency for babies to spit out their dummies (known as pacifiers in American English) when throwing tantrums, but is also used to refer to adults. Sally here is “spitting the dummy”.
Jar Jar: Can’t we do something else?
Padmé: Like what?
Jar Jar: Play Monopoly.
— The game of Monopoly is a deliberately ironic choice by us, since Monopoly is regarded amongst most serious modern-day gamers as a particularly poor game, which is boring and a waste of time to play.
GM: Um... we’re roleplaying. What do you want Jar Jar to do?
Jar Jar: Jump under a bus.
— While straightforwardly suicidal and a humorous way for Sally to rid herself of Jar Jar the character, this is also a reference to the fiction trope Put On A Bus, referring to characters who leave a series for some reason, but ambiguously in the story, so there’s the chance that they may possibly return some time later.
247: Chords and Discord
Title: A simple rhyme made from “chords”—referring here to musical chords as played on a guitar, matching Sally’s playing of the video game Guitar Hero—and “discord”—referring to the disharmony in the playing group as they try to decide what to do next.
248: Dressed for Success Rolls
Title: Combination of two phrases: “Dressed for success” is an idiom referring to someone who dresses in stylish clothes for the purposes of making a positive impression (often in a business context). Used for the popular song “Dressed for Success” by Roxette. “Success rolls” are dice rolls made in RPGs to determine how successful a character is at a task.
249: Atomic Space Non-Sequitur
Title: This is a play on the trope mentioned in the annotation, of merely adding “space” (or some other technological sounding futuristic word) to something to make it sound science fictiony. “Atomic” is another such word (although more often used in 1950s era science fiction). And the non-sequitur part is a reference to the odd things Jim mentions in this strip—a bus, pirate ninjas, refugees—none of which make any real sense.
250: And Your Little Droid Too
Title: Variant of “And your little dog too!” - a line spoken by the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, when she threatens to kill Dorothy. Refers here to R2-D2 being forced to tag along with one of two sub-groups, neither of whom he really wants to associate with.
251: Split Decision
Title: A phrase used to refer to a non-unanimous vote, caused by competing options each getting some votes. In the strip, it alludes to the decision of the characters to split up, and the decision Pete has to make about which group to go with (when he’d rather not go with Jim or Ben).
Padmé: Don’t worry, we’ve got R2 with us.
Anakin: Suddenly I’m afraid.
— These lines are from the movie, except reversed:
Padmé: Suddenly I’m afraid.
Anakin: Don’t worry, we’ve got R2 with us.
252: Dex Role
Title: Pun on “dex roll”, which is short for “dexterity roll”—a type of dice roll often used in RPGs to test if a character is agile enough to do something. Here, “Dex” of course refers to the name of the diner owner. “Role” is a reference to Sally assuming the role of Dex.
Sally leaps in and takes creative control over Dex and his diner, to the consternation of the GM. But at the end the GM reluctantly acquiesces to her descriptions. This is the beginning of a progression in the GM’s attitude to Sally’s creativity that will change radically in the next several strips (see notes below for strips #253, #263, and #271).
253: Four-Armed is Forewarned
Title: Reversal of the idiom “forewarned is forearmed”. The original means that being warned in advance about something is valuable, since it allows you to be prepared. This reversal is a pun on the fact that Dex has four arms.
This is the next stage in the GM’s reactions to Sally’s disruptive creativity, and echoes the sequence of the previous strip. Here Sally invents important story details, rather than just cosmetic touches. Again the GM is reluctant, but eventually gives in to Sally’s enthusiasm.
254: Shhhhhhh!
Title: The hushing noise typically made by people wanting others to keep quiet, stereotypically used by librarians. Especially strict librarians.
Jocasta Nu: Tough luck! All the books about planets were eaten by dogs.
— Originally this was just intended to be a funny throwaway line, but it later became important to the background plot elements. Within the player setting, this happened because the GM took Sally’s idea and built some of his villain’s plans around it.
255: Fashion Sense
Title: Double meaning on the phrase “fashion sense”, usually referring to the ability to dress well. Here it references Jim’s trying on Padmé’s different clothes in an attempt to find the best armour, and him asking Anakin to sense which provides the best defence bonuses.
Jim (as Padmé) is trying a classic trick used by many players over the years to determine if some item found during a game has any unusual protective qualities. In Dungeons & Dragons games, for example, some players may want to test magical armour by trying it on and having allies try to hit them with a weapon. According to the rules, this is not supposed to work, but many players try it anyway.
256: The Things that are Important
Title: This is just a simple reference to Annie and Jim each discussing what they think is important, and being completely at odds with one another.
Padmé: You haven’t even visited your mother?
Anakin: I’ve called, but she insists it’s unsafe to visit. I’m still wanted over that misunderstanding with the Rodian boy, Greedo.
— This addresses a strange thing that is never adequately explained in the movies: Why in ten years has Anakin not gone back to Tatooine to visit his mother?
257: Who Let the Dogs Out?
Title: From “Who Let the Dogs Out” by Baha Men.
Sally again inserts her own creative ideas into the campaign. The GM’s reaction is progressing from reluctance to resignation.
258: A Dingo Ate My Marbles
Title: Allusion to “A dingo ate my baby”, a misquote related to the notorious Azaria Chamberlain disappearance case. A dingo is a type of dog, and the marble part refers to the “memory marble” Ben invents in this strip as a means of salvaging some of the information which Sally’s imagination would otherwise have destroyed.
Yoda: By the way, save the marble from the dogs, how did you?
Obi-Wan: Alimentary.
— Obi-Wan implies that he had to wait for the marble to be passed out of the dog’s digestive system, but this is also a pun on Sherlock Holmes’ famous line, “Elementary,” and there is another reference to Sherlock Holmes in the annotation (the bit about eliminating the impossible).
259: Blockbuster
Title: Literal reference to the blowing up of Mace Windu’s apartment block in this strip, and a figurative reference to movie blockbusters.
260: Memory Like a Mixmaster
Title: Variant on the idiom “memory like a sieve”, which refers to someone forgetful (since a sieve has holes in it, so lets things leak out). “Mixmaster” is a brand of electric kitchen mixing machine by Sunbeam Products, so this variation alludes to a memory where things are not forgotten, but rather scrambled up.
Jim and Pete give more information on the interstitial fantasy campaign that they played in between Episodes I and II. Some of it matches what actually happened and is useful for deciphering the inspiration, but Jim gets a bit confused recalling the details.
R2-D2: You idiot! You’re mixing it up with Lord of the Rings!
R2-D2: That would have been a fun campaign in comparison!
— This is an ironic reference to the webcomic DM of the Rings (the original inspiration for Darths & Droids). In that comic the players were having a miserable time playing a campaign they all hated.
261: Resurrecting the Past
Title: A rather literal title, referring to Jim bringing up (“resurrecting”) events of the past fantasy campaign until Pete loses his patience and launches into a rant. Resurrection also plays a part in the fantasy campaign events that Pete mentions.
262: Speculation Bubble
Title: Pun on the phrase “speculation bubble” (equivalent to “economic bubble”), with reference to Jim’s consistent calling of Sio Bibble by the name “Bubble”. Jim (as Padmé) is also speculating wildly with theories about how Bibble is responsible for the stolen Peace Moon plans.
Sio Bibble: I’ve been a loyal servant of Naboo for over ten years. And hopefully for many more to come.
Padmé: Over my dead body!
— Deliberate irony referring to future events: Bibble attends Padmé’s funeral at the end of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.
263: A Tall Order
Title: A “tall order” is an idiom meaning something that is difficult to achieve. As a double meaning here, the “tall” refers to Sally’s giraffe aliens, while “order” refers to Sally effectively ordering the GM to let her play Taun We.
The GM is getting more used to Sally taking control of creative aspects of the campaign setting. While the GM is still a bit reluctant here, his attitude will come full circle in a few strips’ time.
264: Inferior Decorator
Title: Pun on “interior decorator”, the name of the profession of a person who designs building interiors. The implication is that Ben is less good at this than Sally, thus inferior.
265: Getting Familiar
Title: A pun on the word “familiar”, which is used in the usual context of becoming familiar— i.e. getting to know someone better—which is the theme of this strip. It is also relevant in its secondary meaning of “having to do with family”, since Padmé’s family is mentioned.
GM: They’re not henchmen. They’re your family.
— In the context of Dungeons & Dragons, the word “henchman” is used to refer to a loyal retainer of a PC, usually an NPC, who accompanies the party on adventures and takes on some of the important jobs and duties in the group.
266: Sock Puppetry
Title: A “sock puppet” is a puppet made from a sock. It also refers to the use of fake IDs or accounts in places where weight of numbers can be used to make an argument or achieve a victory. They are used in places like net forums or votes, where people may create “sock puppet” accounts to make it look like more people support their position.
Each of the family members’ initial names invented by Jim (Solly, Judy, Reuben) are close to the canonical character names (Sola, Jobal, Ruwee), which they mutate into as Jim continues to refer to them, getting the very names he himself thought of incorrect along the way.
267: Luncheon Judy
Title: Pun on the traditional puppet show Punch and Judy, a reference to the opening line of the strip.
Ruwee: Come on, I’ll show you around. And the, uh... car in the garage too. I’m hotting it up.
— This is an awkward attempt by Jim to appeal to Annie’s love of cars (as seen in strip #104 among others). At this point in the story, Jim is definitely interested in pursuing a closer relationship with Annie but his awkwardness—combined with the weirdness of playing Padmé opposite her Anakin—is getting in the way.
268: The Head of the Iceberg
Title: A mixed metaphor which uses the other parts of Jim’s mixed metaphor in the final line of the strip: “head of the conspiracy” mixed with “tip of the iceberg”. Also, “iceberg” is a type of lettuce, and the usual term for a lettuce is a “head of lettuce”, so “head of the iceberg” should conjure up an image of a lettuce.
Anakin: You’ve taken your first step into a larger world.
— A quote from Obi-Wan in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.
269: Would You Like Fries with That?
Title: A stereotypical phrase that originated with fast food servers, who prompt customers if they also want fries with their order, in an attempt to get them to make a larger purchase. Idiomatically, it now refers to having as much as you want (or more) and still seemingly not having enough from some point of view.
Lama Su: Of course, poison darts don’t kill people; assassins kill people.
— A variant of the slogan “Guns don't kill people, people kill people” popularised by the National Rifle Association of the United States.
270: Did the Earth Move for You?
Title: Stereotypical line used after a sexual encounter to ask the other participant if they enjoyed it. In this context, it could apply after Anakin kisses Padmé. In a more literal sense, it refers to the discussion in this strip about geology and the changes in the landscape caused by the missing moon of Naboo.
R2-D2: Do we have to hear about the kissing part?
— A quote from The Princess Bride, also serving as an additional clue to the identity of the fantasy campaign that was played between Episodes I and II.
271: Triumph of the Will
Title: Title of the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, which includes shots of massed groups of people rallying to the Nazi cause, similar to the massed shots of clones in this sequence from the film. This also refers to the triumph of Sally’s peculiar child-like will in getting to describe part of the GM’s world in her own terms, as requested by the GM himself.
This is the first instance of the GM specifically asking Sally to help in doing some of the worldbuilding for the campaign. In our story, the GM has slowly come around the the fact that Sally loves inventing details and inserting them into the game, and here he finally embraces this openly. This sort of asking players to come up with campaign details is not typically used in Dungeons & Dragons or closely related games, but it is an explicit feature of some roleplaying games, such as Blades in the Dark or Kids on Bikes, and it can fairly easily be adapted into games that don’t use it.
We don’t actually hear Sally’s description as text in the comic, but have to imagine her describing the scenes we can see in the screenshots. We used this technique before with the GM’s own descriptions (#135).
272: Cookie Cutter
Title: A cookie cutter is used to stamp out identically shaped cookies from a sheet of dough, and is used as a metaphor for any process that creates identical copies of things. This is a reference to the clones, and the GM’s process of using the same stats for them as NPCs.
Taun We: But first... the dinosaur cloning room!
— A reference to Jurassic Park. Also, Sally is still interested in dinosaurs.
273: Degriefing
Title: Pun on “debriefing”, the process used to interview and gain information from someone about an important event they’ve been through. It applies here as this is Annie trying to understand why Jim was playing Padmé so imperiously earlier in the game. It’s also a process of “degriefing” - explaining the grief Padmé caused to the other players during that phase of the game.
274: Jumping the Shaak
Title: Pun on “jumping the shark”, a phrase used to refer to the moment when a fiction series becomes silly and loses its original appeal. The creatures in this scene are canonically named shaaks. And this scene in the movies is commonly quoted as one of the worst in the entire Star Wars series.
Padmé: You idiot! With two critical failures you could have been killed!
— As happened to Qui-Gon in strips #195 and #196.
275: At Last, We Meet Again
Title: This is a variant on a clichéd line used by criminal masterminds when meeting their arch-enemies for the first time: “At last, we meet.” The title was originally proposed as “At Last, We Meet Again for the First Time”, which is self-contradictory and therefore funny, but somehow in discussions we dropped the last bit. So the result is perhaps less funny as a stand-alone title now.
Although Jango Fett has a reason for his unexpectedly hostile behaviour here, it’s not at all clear to Obi-Wan (or Ben), and will only be revealed several strips later.
276: Gloat ’n’ Free
Title: Combination of the words “gloat”—which is what Jango does in this strip—and “free”—referring to Jango allowing Obi-Wan to go free for 10 minutes before initiating his evil revenge. Together, these words make a pun on the term “gluten free”, used to refer to food not containing the wheat protein gluten.
Boba Fett: {to Jango} Why couldn’t you just shoot him?
Jango Fett: What sort of criminal mastermind would I be if I did that?
— This is a reference to the common fiction trope of villains refusing to simply kill the hero when they have them at their mercy. Young Boba states the simple solution, only for Jango to reject it.
277: I’ve Got a Luverly Bunch of Space Pears
Title: Variant of the title of the comedy song “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts”. The “space pears” refers to the fact that they are clearly shown eating a pear in this scene, despite the fact that Earth (and so presumably Earth fruit) doesn’t exist in the setting. So it must be pears in space!
Early on we had the idea to see if we could manage to make a strip entirely without dialogue, yet still make it both an important part of the story and funny. We were very pleased with the result for this scene. it relies on the context set up by the previous few strips between Padmé and Anakin, and in the player space Jim and Annie.
278: No, This Isn’t Awkward At All
Title: Simply an amusingly euphemistic phrase, denying that this conversation between Annie and Jim is awkward (when it really is!).
279: Unagi-tetsubishi
Title: Japanese: “unagi” means “eel”; “tetsubishi” means caltrop/s, metal spikes used as traps. Together, this is essentially “an eel-based trap”, matching what Obi-Wan searches for in the last panel. There’s no real reason this is in Japanese—we just liked the sound of it.
R4-P17: {GM} Uh... nipa-bing whree... ziku kabading.
R2-D2: What? Your hovercraft is full of eels?
— Another reference to Monty Python’s “Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook” sketch. The GM tries to make sounds similar to Pete’s droid beep language, but comes up with something that makes no sense. It just happens to be interpretable as this iconic phrase, as Pete points out.
280: Army of One
Title: Both an old US Army recruiting slogan from 2001-2006 and the US title of an action movie (in which one guy, played by Dolph Lundgren, takes on an army of gangsters). It’s also the title of a few songs and an episode of The Sopranos. In the strip, it’s a reference to Obi-Wan being alone against the clone army.
Obi-Wan: {to Yoda and Mace Windu, over radio} ... nefarious master plan. And that’s the situation here.
— We cut into the scene with Obi-Wan ending his recap of what’s happened on Kamino to the Jedi Council. This is done deliberately to avoid retelling everything to the readers, who already know what’s happened.
281: Chasing a Dream
Title: An idiom referring to pursuing one’s desires. In this case it applies literally, since they decide to head to Tatooine based on Anakin’s dream.
Anakin: I had a nightmare, about my mother. I fear she is in terrible danger.
Padmé: Wow. If she’s in danger, it must be really bad. We could go and help her.
— Jim is remembering how he thought that Shmi was a mob boss (#70 and #96).
282:
Title: The title for this strip is (besides the episode number) an empty string. This is a reference to the piece of music 4’33” by John Cage, which consists of nothing but silence. The title of this piece is referenced in the strip, as the amount of time Jango is still giving Obi-Wan before he takes action against him.
Jango Fett: Oh, that’s sweet. Maybe I’ll spare one planet.
Jango Fett: Let’s see... Alderaan.
— This is the first mention of Alderaan in the comic. At this point in the story, readers would think Jango’s choice of a planet to spare was ironic, as this is the planet destroyed by The Empire in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, so the only planet he spares would be destined for destruction anyway. However, by the time we go to Episode IV in the writing, we took a different direction.
283: It’s Raining, Ben
Title: Pun on the song “It’s Raining Men” by The Weather Girls. Reference to the fact that it’s raining during this fight, and Ben, Obi-Wan’s player’s name. It can also be read as a metaphorical reference to the fact that Ben is learning something dreadful here.
284: Maul-toll Kombat
Title: Pun on the video game Mortal Kombat. This strip shows a combat, the justification of which is that Jango is fighting for revenge for the death of Darth Maul (the Maul-toll, as in “death toll”). Also, the panel with Obi-Wan kicking Jango Fett looks very much like a screenshot from Mortal Kombat.
285: The Butler Did It
Title: A clichéd phrase referring to the supposed tendency of the butler to be the culprit in classic murder mystery stories. Also a reference to the text in this strip, with Qui-Gon assuming a droid is a butler.
The second flashback here is actually a flashback to the flashback in Darth Maul’s speech in #181. This finally reveals explicitly that the glowing purple thing on the bridge in that shot was indeed the Lost Orb of Phanastacoria.
286: Flashdance
Title: Title of the movie Flashdance. Appropriate here since combat is often described metaphorically as a “dance”, and there is a huge flash of lightning in the panel after Jango headbutts Obi-Wan. Also, the two best known songs from the movie Flashdance are “Maniac”—which describes Jango’s personality here—and “Flashdance... What a Feeling”—which has some appropriate lyrics for Jango’s mindset:
First, when there’s nothing but a slow glowing dream
That your fear seems to hide deep inside your mind
All alone I have cried silent tears full of pride
In a world made of steel, made of stone.
The strip opens with another flashback to Darth Maul’s flashback, from #185. We learn here that the seemingly ridiculous question by TC-14 in that scene was actually a code phrase used to tell Darth Maul about the Lost Orb. Unfortunately, Palpatine didn’t understand the message and ordered Maul to chase the Jedi. Jango also reveals more about the coercion of Captain Tarpals (see #191) and how the Federation reacted by planning to destroy the moon.
287: The Painful Truth
Title: A phrase used to refer to learning something which causes personal discomfort. It’s a reference to R2 learning that that his incredible skill in blowing up the Trade Federation HQ was simply luck, based on the fact that Jango had disabled the ship’s defence systems.
288: Stringin’ in the Rain
Title: Pun on the movie (and title song) Singin’ in the Rain. It’s raining, and in this strip Ben gets tangled in Jango’s cable, or string.
289: It Isn’t Fair
Title: A cliché phrase used when people complain about being blamed for something which is not their fault. It’s also a repeated line from the chorus of the song “What About Me” by Moving Pictures:
What about me, it isn’t fair.
I’ve had enough now I want my share.
Can’t you see? I wanna live.
But you just take more than you give.
290: What About Shmi?
Title: A pun to complete the reference to the song “What About Me” from the previous strip.
291: Scrutiny on the Bounty
Title: Pun on Mutiny on the Bounty, referring to the famous mutiny against Captain William Bligh on his ship, Bounty. Here, the bounty is more literal, and Anakin makes scrutinising questions about it.
This strip’s title was originally “It’s Nice to be Wanted”. However, we noticed after publication that we’d used the same title for strip #116. So we changed it after publication.
292: Making Him Sweat
Title: To “make someone sweat” is to intimidate them into giving you what you want. “Sweat” also comes in literally with Padmé’s punchline.
Padmé: It’s that kind of health spa where they collect your sweat and process it into energy drinks.
— Jim’s explanation was inspired by the existence of Pocari Sweat, a Japanese sports drink infamous for its English name.
293: Nuisance Caller
Title: A phrase used to describe someone who telephones or otherwise calls (e.g. in person), while not wanted. This is a reference to Obi-Wan trying to talk to Jango, but him refusing to “accept the call”.
{the mine explodes silently}
Obi-Wan: This is ridiculous. I need a way to talk to him...
Obi-Wan: Can I shoot at him in Morse code?
[SFX]: BWANGGGG! {the mine makes a huge noise}
— The mine explodes silently, with the sound effect only appearing in the next panel, after Obi-Wan has had time to speak. This is a reference to the unusual sound effect used in the film for this bomb: it explodes and there is silence for a few seconds before hearing the noise. (Of course sound doesn’t travel in space, but that’s another issue.)
Obi-Wan: R4, open a channel so I can talk to him.
R4-P17: Bleep biddle ping.
— This translates to “create speak query”.
GM: Your ship has no guns.
Obi-Wan: Of course it doesn't. How silly of me.
— A running gag about ships being unarmed, referring back to #30, #45, #56, #122.
294: Just Plane Ridiculous
Title: Pun on the phrase “just plain ridiculous”, which is not a cliché, but would not be unusual in everyday speech. We replace “plain” with “plane” in reference to the sonic mines exploding in a planar fashion.
295: Everyone’s a Whiner, Baby
Title: Pun on the chorus lyric of the song “Every 1’s a Winner” by Hot Chocolate. Every PC in this strip (Ben and Pete) is whining about something.
[SFX]: Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!
...
R2-D2: The odds of that many misses in a row are 16,383 to one for anyone halfway competent.
— Pete gives the odds expression for a probability of 1 in 16,384. This number is (1/2)14, which matches Pete’s statement that those are the odds of that many misses in a row for anyone halfway competent (implying a 50% chance of hitting with each shot), and the fact that there are 14 “Pew!” sound effects at the top of the strip.
R2-D2: Nobody ever fudges the dice to keep me alive.
— This is another reference back to the ill-fated fantasy campaign in which Pete died (see #261).
Jango Fett: He also betrayed your mother. She died because of his failure.
Boba Fett: Nooo! That’s not possible!
Obi-Wan: His mother?... Oh...
Obi-Wan: That wasn’t my fault! It was Anakin!
— Jango reveals to Boba, and incidentally to Obi-Wan, that Obi-Wan was responsible (though perhaps not directly) for the death of Boba’s mother. Jango says Obi-Wan betrayed Boba’s mother. This refers back to when Obi-Wan promised Zam Wessel immunity, but Anakin then used her as a living shield, in #239. So we learn here that Zam Wessel is Boba’s mother, and so Boba is presumably the son she mentioned (#238).
296: Mono a Monoculture
Title: A play on the phrase “mano a mano”, a phrase borrowed from Spanish and referring in English to intense one-on-one combat. In this sense, it is a reference to Pete’s final line referring to the fighting between clones. We corrupt the phrase to use “mono” instead of “mano”—“mono” being a Greek prefix meaning “one” or “singular”. This leads to the word monoculture, which is the practice of using a single type of crop plant, potentially clones of one another. A group of cloned people could also be described as a monoculture.
297: You Say Topology, I Say Topography
Title: Variant on “You say tomato, I say tomato”, the most famous line from the song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” by George and Ira Gershwin. We replace the two pronunciations of “tomato” with topology—the mathematical study of geometric shapes—and topography—the study of the surface features of a planet. This is a reference to the idea that knowing the form of the rings around a planet can provide information about the surface features of the planet, as described by Jim in this strip.
298: Smoke Gets in Your Ions
Title: Pun on “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, a classic 1930s show tune, most famously recorded by The Platters in the 1950s.
299: The Replicanterbury Tales: The Protocol Droid’s Tale
Title: A reference to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and its style of naming individual tales within the collection. The word “Canterbury” is corrupted into “Replicanterbury”, which is a reference to replicants from the movie Blade Runner. The Canterbury Tales is a series of stories told by characters in a framing story. The implication here is that C-3PO is a character with his own story to tell. The reference to Blade Runner refers to Jim’s dialogue in this strip.
[SFX]: < squee ding boppy bang dip > {R2-D2 heads back to the ship}
— No translation is given, but this translates to: “y’all organic-lifeforms try vacuum next”, or more formally “You humans wait until you’re exposed to vacuum”.
Padmé: Wait. Say, "robot", imagine you're in a desert.
C-3PO: Um... {wide shot, showing the featureless desert extending in all directions around the farm}
Padmé: You look down and see a tortoise...
— Padmé attempts to determine if this is really a robot or a human in disguise, using the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner. A version of the test, as applied in the movie, consists of the following question:
You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down... You look down and see a tortoise, Leon. It’s crawling toward you... You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back, Leon. ... The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping. ... Why is that, Leon?
As explained in the movie, the test is “designed to provoke an emotional response” (the actual answer to the question is unimportant; the test judges how the subject reacts non-verbally).
300: Dances with Droids
Title: Variant of Dances with Wolves.
301: Cliegg, the Extraordinary Gentleman
Title: Pun on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, using Cliegg’s name since he is introduced in this strip.
The image of the Lars homestead shown in the first panel was created by us by stitching together a number of movie frames taken from a vertical panning shot. The resulting image (right) is about twice as tall as a single movie frame.
302: So, Can I Borrow the Car?
Title: Stereotypical line used by teenagers to their parents. The suggestion is that as soon as Anakin finds out that Cliegg Lars is his stepfather, the first thing he might want to do is borrow the car. (Except in Star Wars this makes little sense.)
303: Karmageddon
Title: Pun combination of karma and Armageddon, two concepts interwoven in this strip.
Owen Lars: Yes. They used to be a peaceful, meditative race, until about ten years ago, when they mysteriously acquired weapons and started shooting at pod races.
— Referring to the events described in strips #98 and #100.
304: Twoshadowing
Title: Pun on “foreshadowing”, replacing the “fore” (“four”) with “two”, to refer to the two shadows in the middle panel. This is the 96th strip of Episode II, and the 96th strip of Episode I was named “Oneshadowing”, so this is a reference to that strip as well.
305: 01010011 01110101 01101110 01110011 01100101 01110100
Title: This is the ASCII binary encoding for the word “Sunset”. This makes the title a wordplay for the phrase “binary sunset”, which is the name of the version of the Force Theme played in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope when Luke exits the Lars farm to watch the binary suns of Tatooine set over the desert. We see a sunset with those same suns in this strip.
Jawa: Sand People? They’re camped in the Jundland Wastes, through Beggar’s Canyon, on the other side of the Dune Sea, beyond the Valley of the Wind, which is across the Great Mesa Plat—
— The places mentioned by the jawa are all canonical place names on Tatooine in the region around the Lars farm: Jundland Wastes, Beggar’s Canyon, Dune Sea, Valley of the Winds, Great Mesra Plateau. Although the last one is now listed as “Great Mesra Plateau” in Wookieepedia, there is an old sourcebook that lists the spelling as “Great Mesa Plateau”, which was most likely the inspiration for the comic.
The Tatooine scenery shown in the first panel was created by us by stitching together a number of movie frames taken from a vertical panning shot. The resulting image (right) is about 1.2 times taller than a single movie frame.
306: Spy vs Spire
Title: Pun on Spy vs Spy, a comic featured for many years in Mad Magazine.
The spire shown in the large vertical panel was created by us by stitching together a number of movie frames taken from a vertical panning shot. The resulting image (right) is about six times taller than a single movie frame.
307: A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi
Title: An idiom in English which borrows from the French “je ne sais quoi” (literally: I don’t know what). The English idiomatic meaning is similar to the French idiom, and similar to “a certain something”, meaning an undefinable or elusive quality that makes something intriguing.
308: The Council of El Ronco
Title: Pun on The Council of Elrond from The Lord of the Rings. “Elrond” is corrupted into the Spanish term “El Ronco”, which has various meanings related to harsh vocalisations, such as snoring, grunting, and hoarseness of voice, somewhat alluding to the GM making a mess of altering his voice into different “language” accents.
San Hill: Nu, I’d meke-a a better leeder. Hurty flurty schnipp schnipp!
— This line is based on the speech mannerisms of the Swedish Chef, from The Muppets.
Wat Tambor: You fools! It shall be I!
— This line is a foreshadowing hint that this cyborg-like alien is in fact another guise of Chancellor Valorum, partway through his cyborg conversion into General Grievous. Grievous repeats the line verbatim in strip #466.
309: That’d be Space Yquem
Title: This refers to the wine Count Dookû mentions near the end of the strip, and Pete’s “Space French” line back in #307. Presumably the wine is not actually Château d’Yquem from Earth, but some sort of “Space Yquem”.
310: Criminal In Tent
Title: Pun on “criminal intent”, a phrase used to describe the intention of a suspect to commit a crime in a criminal trial, and also part of the title of the TV show Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The story allusion is the continuing idea of Jim’s that Shmi is a mob boss—a criminal—and that she is inside the tent.
311: Fancy Legwork
Title: A modification of the idiom “fancy footwork”, referring to clever manipulation of a situation. This refers to the behind-the-scenes planning between Annie and the GM. More literally, it’s also a reference to the fact that Anakin arranged for Cliegg Lars’ leg to be cut off as part of the intimidation to free Shmi.
312: Jedipus Complex
Title: Pun on Oedipus complex. This is not meant to imply that Anakin and Shmi share anything other than normal filial love—we just thought it was a funny sounding title.
313: Just Desserts
Title: Pun on an English idiom “just deserts”. We change “deserts” to “desserts”, which is pronounced identically, but has a completely different meaning, referring to a sweet dish served after a meal. This is a reference to Sally’s use of “passionfruit jelly” in the strip. The original meaning “just deserts” is a reference to the idea that Anakin is currently performing some sort of bad action (which Yoda and Mace Windu sense), which may come back to haunt him or the people around him later.
Mace Windu: You know. It goes fear, anger, passionfruit, jelly...
— Sally “reminds” Jim of the path to the Dark Side, as listed in strip #137. It actually went fear, anger, passion, jealousy... but Sally—through youth and inexperience with concepts such as passion and jealousy—corrupts the third and fourth into “passionfruit” and “jelly”.
Mace Windu: Yeah. Passionfruit jelly to calm everyone down.
— Because we are Australian, we use “jelly” to refer to the gelatin-based dessert best known to Americans by the brand name Jell-O. We don’t mean a spread you put on toast.
314: Lost Tin Translation
Title: Pun on “lost in translation”, an idiom referring to the loss of meaning that occurs when something is either translated for the benefit of someone who can’t understand the original, or conveyed via an intermediary who reproduces the message less than faithfully. Changing the middle word to “tin” is done to refer to R2-D2. As a droid, he’s made of metal, not literally tin, but “tin” is often used in English as a derogatory simile for any form of metal.
[SFX]: < doop bebebloop >
— Translated from Pete’s beep speech, this means “I suck at this”.
[SFX]: < squee whirr ping beedle bloop ding >
— Translated from Pete’s beep speech, this means “What do you want, you worthless piece of organic lifeform?”
315: Breaking Up is R2-D2
Title: Pun on the song “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” by Neil Sedaka. Here we allude to the other meaning of “breaking up”, as in an interruption to a radio transmission, rather than a relationship.
316: She Ain’t Heavy
Title: Reference to the song title “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, originally recorded by Kelly Gordon, but better known for version by The Hollies and Neil Diamond. The implied rhyming completion is “She ain’t heavy, she’s my mother”, referring to Anakin carrying his mother’s body.
R2-D2: She’s dead, Jim.
— A reference to Dr McCoy’s oft-used tag line in Star Trek.
Padmé: What about that Miracle Man?
R2-D2: Wrong campaign, doofus.
— Another clue to the interstitial fantasy campaign being The Princess Bride. This time it is a reference to the character of Miracle Max.
317: Passionfruit Jelly
Title: This follows on from Sally’s childish error in #313, where she replaced passion and jealousy (from #137) with passionfruit and jelly. It’s relevant to this strip because Anakin displays both passion and jealousy in this strip.
318: Even Less Awkward
Title: A reference back to #278 “No, This Isn’t Awkward At All”. This strip continues the theme of Jim talking himself into a corner by stumbling over trying not to express his emerging feelings about Annie.
319: The Twilight Zone
Title: The Twilight Zone was a TV series presenting weird science fiction and fantasy stories, often with twist endings. The phrase “twilight zone” has come to mean any place or circumstance where strange things happen. In this strip we get the strange (from Pete’s point of view) circumstance of holding a funeral for an NPC (Shmi), and the weirdness of Jim waxing lyrical about love and death. This title is also a reference to Twilight, the series of young adult vampire novels, which is an allusion to both Jim’s speech about love and death being intertwined and Pete’s mention of the roleplaying game Vampire: the Masquerade, a game of angsty love and death based around vampires.
320: You’ll Need to Have this Bigger Fish in Your Ear
Title: This is almost a verbatim quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the book), modified only by the inclusion of “bigger”. It occurs in the scene where Ford Prefect puts a fish in Arthur Dent’s ear in order to allow Arthur to understand an alien language. (The fish in the book translates languages.) The “bigger” insert is of course a reference to the “summon bigger fish” running gag in the comic.
[SFX]: < squee bloop ding pating blip ding whir beep >
— This untranslated line in the strip translates to: “Hey meatbags, that loser Obi-Wan has sent a message. He needs help or something.”
[SFX]: < bepaboodle >
— This untranslated line in the strip translates to: “Large flying poop.”
321: Please Leave a Message After the Biddle Bip Blip Ding
Title: Stereotypical phone answering machine message “please leave a message after the beep”, with the “beep” replaced with a typical R2-D2 noise as generated by Pete. “Biddle Bip Blip Ding” translates to “noise now, stupid lifeform”.
322: History is Written by the Victor
Title: Slight alteration of a quote “History is written by the victors” of uncertain origin. It is often attributed to Winston Churchill, but no authoritative source confirms this. In the context of the strip, it’s a phrasing of the idea that the GM is the last word on what happens in the game, so he has the power to write the history of what happens or has happened in the game.
323: Mace Windu, Where Are You!
Title: A reference to the classic TV cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You! “Mace Windu” rhymes with “Scooby Doo” (if you stress the syllables to match). Scooby Doo was about a group of young people who apparently wander the country randomly and solve various mysteries (that usually appear supernatural in nature, but always turn out to be conventionally explicable). This is a reference to the mystery Yoda mentions in this strip. The title also alludes to Mace Windu’s scatterbrained personality.
324: Magmatic Attraction
Title: Pun on “magnetic attraction”, an idiom used to refer to a strong sense of emotional attraction to a person or subject. In this strip, Jim is attracted to the idea of investigating cool geological features. Magma is molten rock, one of the features he is being attracted to.
325: This Job Calls for a Genius
Title: This merely refers to the idea that Jar Jar takes charge of this situation, playing on our earlier calling of Jar Jar a “genius” in #122.
Bail Organa: {aside} The man’s right on. You gotta be some sort of rebel to try that.
— Bail continues his “rebel without a cause” schtick.
326: Le Spectateur Captif
Title: The best French translation we could come up with for “The Captive Audience”. “Captive audience” is an English idiom for people who listen or watch someone not because they want to, but because they have to. It also applies more literally here, since Obi-Wan is actually a captive. The word “audience” also has another meaning, referring to a meeting between important people, which can also apply to this scene. The title is rendered in French as a play on Count Dookû’s bad French accent.
Obi-Wan: It was part of the adventure background! We heard it at the beginning.
GM: You paid attention to the background??
Obi-Wan: I know that normally that’s a good way to keep something secret, but this is me you’re reckoning with.
— A common lament of gamemasters is that they prepare large amounts of detailed setting and adventure background material, which players never bother learning or interacting with. This is a product of the nature of roleplaying games, which require the GM to have more information ready at hand than players might reasonably explore so as to give them different options, and also the fact that many GMs enjoy and are invested in their own worldbuilding more than their players are.
327: Moon Unity...
Title: This is a direct literal reference to the dialogue in the strip, and also a reference to Moon Unit Zappa, a daughter of Frank Zappa.
328: ... Zapper!
Title: Continues the “Moon Unit Zappa” reference begun in the previous title. “Zapper” is also appropriate since in this strip Dookû claims the Peace Moon will have a gigantic laser capable of destroying a planet.
Padmé: ... Okay, so we’ve established that if we have two extra moons at the L4 and L5 points... we can slingshot—
— Jim continues his speculation about how “easy” it would be to crash a moon into a planet (begun at the end of the previous strip). The implication here is that we’ve skipped a detailed description of the physics involved and are approaching Jim’s conclusion.
329: And is That a Goatee?
Title: In this strip Obi-Wan lists multiple stereotypical indications that Dookû is a bad guy and not to be trusted. The title is a reference to another, and also references back to #39 and subsequent mentions of a goatee being an indicator of evil.
330: Palpitations
Title: Wordplay on “Palpatine”, and the fact that Jar Jar manages to give Palpatine a shock (and perhaps palpitations) in this strip.
331: A Delegation
Title: “Delegation” has two meanings: A representative of a body who travel to meet with others; and the act of assigning a job to a subordinate. Both meanings apply here.
Yoda: Old and frail, I am. Adventure, excitement, I crave not these things.
— A reference to Yoda’s advice to Luke in Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back: “Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things.”
332: Venting
Title: Double reference, to the geothermal vents mentioned by the GM, and to the venting of anger by the players at the GM.
Anakin: Uh. Pete? I thought you were still upset at Jim for abandoning your thief character.
— Another clue about the interstitial fantasy campaign. Pete apparently played some sort of “thief”.
333: Initial Arrival of Primary Adventuring Group in Geonosis Preliminary Assembly Zone
Title: A change in title style to a long, descriptive format. This is indicative of the fact that Pete is filling in as the Gamemaster for a while. The description is verbose and somewhat redundant, the sort of style Pete might give to adventure summary titles.
The GM’s speech rectangles and NPC bubbles are coloured yellow to indicate his special role in the game and the character group. Here Pete takes over as Gamemaster, so he gets to use the rectangular descriptive boxes, but they are still coloured white to show the difference compared to the actual GM speaking.
334: Initial Foray into Level 1 Entry Corridor
Title: The titles remain purely descriptive and verbose while Pete acts as the Gamemaster.
Anakin: I have a really bad feeling about this.
— The famous line repeated several times in the movies by various characters, and echoing Obi-Wan in strip #1.
335: Further Progress Through Level 1 Entry Corridor
Title: The titles remain purely descriptive and verbose while Pete acts as the Gamemaster.
Pete: You’re in a long, dark corridor, 10 feet wide, lined with shadowy recesses and slimy, organic-looking remains.
— Dungeon corridors in classic Dungeons & Dragons are typically 10 feet wide.
336: Initial Encounter with Denizens of Level 1 Entry Corridor
Title: Another descriptive Pete-as-Gamemaster title.
337: Initial Discovery of Multi-Level Droid Manufacturing Facility
Title: Another descriptive Pete-as-Gamemaster title.
Anakin: What are those pieces?
Pete: Crushers...
— The droid factory evokes the feeling of the board game RoboRally, which we deliberately play up here by showing conveyor belts and referring to crushers, both of which feature strongly in the game.
338: Progression to Level 2 of Multi-Level Droid Manufacturing Facility
Title: Another Pete-style title. “Progression to level 2” is a joke on the fact that Padmé falls into the factory, thus descending inadvertently to a lower level. This is a reference to classic Dungeons & Dragons “dungeon levels” terminology, in which higher numbered, deeper levels tended to be more dangerous.
In this strip Pete cuts off any means of escape from the factory and triggers the retracting platform trap, making sure to give the players little time to react. This is in contrast to the usual method of giving players plenty of thinking time in fast action situations, such as shown in #167.
Pete: [...] It’s magnetically sealed.
— Quote from Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, when Luke shouts at Han after Han tries to shoot their way out of the Death Star garbage compactor.
339: Initial Round of Droid Assembly Line Automation Encounter
Title: Another descriptive Pete-as-Gamemaster title.
Pete: I’m just doing it slowly the first time so you can learn the crusher sequence.
— Another playing up of the resemblance of the droid factory to a game of RoboRally. In the board game, multiple crushers and other dangerous bits of machinery activate in a strictly ordered sequence, allowing players to time the movement of their robots through the machinery or—often the case—to anticipate in advance that their programmed motions will inevitably lead to disaster.
340: Subsequent Rounds of Droid Assembly Line Automation Encounter
Title: Another descriptive Pete-as-Gamemaster title.
This strip takes the visual style of the previous strip with multiple small rectangular panels arranged in a grid and gives it a sense of dynamism and unease by tilting the grid relative to the comic edges.
341: Initial Appearance of Protagonist in Multi-Level Droid Manufacturing Facility
Title: Another descriptive Pete-as-Gamemaster title. The titular “protagonist”, or primary hero, is R2-D2, Pete’s own player character.
[SFX]: < squee zik-jang bip >
— These untranslated beeps translate to: “Let’s get this show on the road.”
342: Demonstration of Perfectly Sensible Ability Possessed by Protagonist All Along
Title: Another descriptive Pete-as-Gamemaster title.
R2-D2: This is so amazingly cool you all get a +1 morale bonus just for watching it.
— A morale bonus is a gaming term for a bonus to dice rolls caused by characters having some inspirational event occur which inspires them to try harder. Pete is implying that his showing off is inspirational.
343: In Which the Intricacies and Details of Complex Combat Situations are Handled Masterfully
Title: This is a double reference. If read as Pete saying the title, he is referring to his “masterful” handling of the complex grappling rules. Pete is proud of his ability to understand and use the most complex rules in the game. But in this strip we also see a masterful display of RPG combat by Annie, who applies a relatively simple rule correctly and then rolls dice well to achieve a good combat outcome.
This strip again uses tilted panel borders for dynamism in the combat encounters.
344: Further Masterful and Comprehensive Utilisation of Combat System (Modified)
Title: The theme of the previous title continues, with Pete demonstrating his mastery of the complex grappling rules. The trailing “(Modified)” implies that not only has Pete mastered the rules, but he has also introduced some modifications to the system. Experienced GMs often introduce “house rule” modifications to RPG rules, to try to make them more realistic in some sense. Pete of course, has done so.
345: Demonstration of Character Integrity in Difficult and Dangerous Circumstances
Title: Pete wants to point out here that R2-D2’s actions are honourable, and that he remains honourable even under adverse conditions.
Pete: Despite the situation being hopeless and Padmé facing certain and horrible death, R2-D2 does not abandon his compatriots.
— This is a passive-aggressive jab at the behaviour of Pete’s fellow players in the interstitial fantasy campaign, in which they abandoned his character to death.
Pete: You’ll note that I’ve constrained R2’s actions using a behavioural simulator on my PDA, to avoid any accusations of bias.
— Darths & Droids began in 2007, the same year that Apple launched the iPhone, the world’s first smartphone. We decided that Pete would be the sort of person who would stick to his trusty PDA rather than adopt a new technology so early, wanting to see how it pans out before making the change. By the time this strip was published it was December 2009, and we’d incorporated a two-year time skip into the in-story time. By this time Apple had released the iPhone 3G and 3GS, which firmly established the technology. We considered upgrading Pete’s PDA to a smartphone in the story, but decided it would be more interesting to have him cling to the old technology a bit longer. He did eventually make the switch, probably some time between Episodes III and IV, as mentioned in strip #712 (published in 2012, and set six years after the opening of the story).
346: Execution of Rapid Character Development (Stage 1)
Title: A small pun on the word “execution”, with the double meaning referring to C-3PO’s head being chopped off in this strip. Otherwise another straightforward Pete-style title.
347: Execution of Rapid Character Development (Stage 2)
Title: Part two of the above title.
348: Straightforward Warm-Up Tactical Scenario (Anakin, phase 1)
Title: Another Pete-style title downplaying the difficulty of the factory scene.
We continue the use of tilted panel borders to indicate a dynamic combat scene.
349: Consequences of Suboptimal Outcome of Previous Combat Sequence
Title: Fairly standard Pete-style title. This refers to both the consequences of Padmé failing in her grappling combat and falling into the crucible, and to the (in Pete’s mind) poor outcome of the combat encounters in the previous fantasy campaign, in which Pete’s character died.
Pete begins with a rant to his now literally captive audience, on the virtues of loyalty and not abandoning fellow PCs to the hands of a “pirate ninja” - referring again back to the fantasy campaign which was played between Episodes I and II, based on The Princess Bride. This time Jim argues back, stating that the pirate ninja (Westley) was the good guy. Pete counters that the Prince hired the PCs to do a job, implying that (in Pete’s mind) doing the job you’re hired to do is more important than making moral judgements on NPC motivations. This reveals that Pete sees RPGs in a very black and white way: you are given a mission and you do the mission. Jim argues back that the Prince couldn’t have been very good if he wanted them to do something so sneaky as fake the kidnapping of a princess. Pete blames Jim for actually kidnapping the princess—this reveals another one of Jim’s “brilliant” plans that was actually extremely ridiculous. The main point Pete makes is that he thought Jim was his friend, and friends always stick by one another, no matter what. Jim didn’t see it that way, since it was just an in-game situation, and the right thing to do was join the good guy and fight against the Prince (revealed to be the bad guy). This is a case where Jim makes the distinction between in- and out-of-character successfully, but Pete doesn’t even see any distinction. Pete prepares to inflict some sort of revenge on Jim by killing Padmé. After a moment of thought, Jim apologises. This could be motivated either by Jim finally realising he has really hurt Pete’s feelings (although inadvertently) and deciding an apology is in order, or by Jim realising that an apology is the only possible way of saving Padmé from this situation—which is true is deliberately ambiguous.
350: Protagonist Faces Agonising Dilemma, Heroically Saves the Day
Title: The dilemma is which one of Padmé or Anakin to save.
[SFX]: < bloop ding bleep doop pating doop oop >
— This translates directly to “stupid organic-lifeform program me say me cool”, which Pete interprets as his algorithm telling him to say R2-D2 rules.
351: PC on Conveyor 12 Struggles Against Inevitable Doom
Title: Another descriptive Pete-as-Gamemaster title.
352: Disappointing Denouement of Initial Combat Encounter Sequence
Title: The “disappointing” part could refer to either disappointment on the part of the PCs that they have been captured, or Pete’s disappointment that Anakin survived the guillotine blades of the previous strip.
353: Session Wrap-Up
Title: This simply implies that this is the end of the game session with Pete as the Gamemaster.
Pete: Well done. One or two rounds quicker and you even would have made it to the second level.
— This may come across as sarcastic, but Pete probably means it sincerely; he thinks that everyone actually surviving his factory level was in fact a pretty good performance.
Pete: Even when your hand was trapped you simply could have switched on your laser sword to free yourself!
— This hangs a lampshade on why Anakin didn’t just do this in the movie to free his arm, justifying it in our story by having Annie simply not think of it amidst the complexities of Pete’s ridiculous combat scenario.
354: It Got Better
Title: Returning to the relatively short and not-so-straightforward titles to signify the return of the regular GM. This is the opposite of It Got Worse. It’s also a reference to the famous witch scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “She turned me into a newt... I got better.”
355: Missed It by That Much
Title: A repeated quote from the TV series Get Smart, in which Maxwell Smart uses this line frequently when referring to something that failed spectacularly, but only because someone missed an opportunity to save themselves by a tiny amount.
Padmé: Sure. I’ll tell Puppeteen to mention it at the next sitting.
Jango Fett: See? They’re working with Palpatine. I told you.
Padmé: We sure are!
— It appears Dookû wants to give the Peace Moon plans to the PCs as long as they expose the plans to the Senate. But Padmé butts in and mentions that she will take them straight to Palpatine - which is exactly what Dookû doesn’t want. This is an ironic echo of what Pete had been complaining about in terms of Jim’s behaviour in the fantasy campaign. Pete thinks the most important thing is to stay loyal to the person who gave you your mission initially. In this case, Jim is staying loyal to Palpatine’s mission, despite being presented with possible evidence that Palpatine is up to no good, and this choice may not be the best decision at this point of the adventure.
356: Trial and Error
Title: “Trial and error” is an idiom referring to a method of doing something by trying something that looks like it might work, failing, then trying something different, until you succeed. This is a double pun on both the words “trial”, which also refers to a criminal trial (seen in the strip) and “error”, a reference to the misguided defence speech Padmé tries.
Padmé: To begin with, this case should never have come to trial.
— This is one of the most famous lines from both book and film versions of To Kill a Mockingbird, as Atticus Finch begins his closing argument in trial.
Padmé: You want my statement? You can't handle my statement!
— A parody of Jack Nicholson’s famous line from the courtroom drama A Few Good Men: “The truth! You can’t handle the truth!”
357: Sentence and Insensibility
Title: A pun on the title of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility. The “sentence” refers to the judge pronouncing sentence on Padmé and Anakin, and the “insensibility” refers to Jim’s continued messing up of the situation, making it even worse for them.
Poggle the Lesser: You are making a mockery of my courtroom and I’m not going to allow it.
— A quote from another courtroom drama, Primal Fear.
Poggle the Lesser: You are sentenced to death by firing squad.
Nute Gunray: See?
Padmé: No, you’re sentenced to death by firing squad!
— This is a play on the exchange “Mr. Kirkland you are out of order,” “You’re out of order!” from yet another courtroom drama, ...And Justice for All.
358: Chariot of Choir
Title: Pun on the film title Chariots of Fire.
Anakin: This is the end, beautiful friend. The end.
— Lyric from “The End” by The Doors.
Anakin: {no eye contact} It’s a struggle, it’s a war; And there’s nothing that anyone’s giving.
Padmé: Don’t give up! You still have us.
Anakin: One last day standing about, what is it for?
Padmé: Don’t give up. We don’t need much of anything.
Anakin: One last day to be living.
Padmé: Don’t give up, ’cause out there I’ve a plan that can’t go wrong.
— Anakin’s lines are lyrics from “At The End of the Day” from the musical Les Misérables. Padmé’s lines are lyrics from “Don’t Give Up” by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. Jim is quoting the female part, as appropriate for Padmé.
Anakin: Do we hear the people sing?
Padmé: Is it the song of angry bugs?
— Lyrics from “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Misérables, modified to refer to “bugs” (the Geonosians) rather than “men”.
359: Unchained Felony
Title: Pun on the song “Unchained Melody”, originally recorded by Todd Duncan but best known for the version by The Righteous Brothers.
360: Degrees of Freedom
Title: Refers to the various types of degrees of freedom in sciences. Also a pun based on this being strip 360, since 360 degrees is the number of degrees in a circle. Within the strip, this is a reference to Obi-Wan’s multiple attempts to get free of his restraints; in this sense referring to another meaning of “degree”, as a small amount or step.
361: A Cerodon, a Sliver, and an Atog walk into an Arena
Title: A play on the common “bar joke”, the common formula for which involves three people of different ethnicities or professions walking into a bar (e.g. “An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman walk into a bar”). The participants in this case are names of creatures from the card game Magic: The Gathering: a cerodon, a sliver, and an atog, which the three arena creatures resemble to some degree. Additionally, Arena is also the name of a Magic: The Gathering card.
362: Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Dice
Title: Variant of “do not taunt happy fun ball”, a phrase which originated with a parody advertisement series on the American TV show Saturday Night Live. Replacing “ball” with “dice” references the dice customs mentioned in the strip, and Obi-Wan’s taunting of the beasts.
Obi-Wan: The Force is generated by midi-chlorians, right? The pillar is only about an order of magnitude bigger than me. But they’re already affecting things 6 or 7 orders larger than themselves. So the size shouldn’t matter.
— This is a reference to Yoda’s line in Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back: “Size matters not” when attempting to levitate objects using the Force. Ben here comes up with a logical argument as to why size shouldn’t matter much in this application.
363: Happy Feat
Title: Pun on Happy Feet, a movie which involves penguins (referred to by Jim). The “happy feat” is Ben’s attempt to escape his chains by having the acklay snap them.
Obi-Wan: Ixnay on the acklay of owledgenay...
— Ben uses Pig Latin, treating the name of the acklay monster as Pig Latin for the word “lack” and building a sentence around it.
364: This Is A Spinal Trap
Title: Pun on the movie This is Spinal Tap. In this case the “spinal” refers to spikes (rather than a backbone) which form a trap for anyone unwise enough to jump on the nexu.
Padmé: Is it exhaling? That might help hold me up.
GM: Just good enough.
— This is an example of the GM deliberately acting to keep Padmé alive, because she is in possession of the Japor snippet, which magically prevents the holder from dying.
365: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
Title: This is the title of a work of art by Damien Hirst, comprised of a shark in a tank of formaldehyde. This is a punning reference to the recall of the shaak in this strip’s flashback, as well as Jim’s use of the word “landshark” to describe it. It’s also a reference to the apparent impossibility of Jim remembering anything correctly, specifically the fact that Anakin “almost died” when he wasn’t injured at all.
GM: It rips the chain free from the pillar. Do you have Riding skill?
Anakin: Yes, I practised it back on Naboo.
Padmé: Yeah, when we fought that landshark.
— Annie refers back to the shaak-riding incident on Naboo (from #274) and we see a brief flashback to the scene. Jim recalls it incorrectly, as a fight against a “landshark”. This is a reference to the Dungeons & Dragons monster called the bulette, which is nicknamed a landshark.
366: Children’s Crusade
Title: Reference to the Children’s Crusade of medieval history, and to this strip setting up Boba to hate Obi-Wan and engage in a long campaign of revenge against him.
367: Abridged Too Far
Title: Pun on A Bridge Too Far. We’ve referred to this before, in the title to #11. This time the words are modified to make “abridged”, meaning shortened or cut off.
Jango Fett: When your mother got divorced, I realised oaths are insufficiently binding. I built a failsafe into the—
Obi-Wan: {ending the flashback} Oh look, don’t bother.
— Obi-Wan unfortunately cuts off this revelatory flashback right before the revelation that the army of Jango Fett clones have a failsafe built into them: the Silence of the Clones. As eventually explained in #381, this failsafe would activate if Jango ever died, instantly terminating the life force of the midi-chlorians in the clones in an attempt to kill them and prevent the army from falling into anyone else’s hands.
368: I Am Not a Crook!
Title: Paraphrase of a famous quote by US President Richard Nixon when denying he’d done anything wrong while in office. This references Jim’s use of the word Nixon as a misnomer for Nexu, as well as the fact that the PCs are being treated as criminals in this scene—something they would probably deny.
Anakin: This is such a drag.
— This punning quip is stolen from the groanworthy pun used by C-3PO in the movie in a similar scene coming up soon, in strip #377.
Padmé: One of us! One of us!
— A quote from the classic 1932 movie Freaks, referring to the circus freaks of the film accepting someone into their society, parallelling how the guys are accepting Annie into their fraternity of gamers who make bad puns.
369: The Regal Has Landed
Title: Pun on The Eagle Has Landed, best known as a film, and also the phrase used by Neil Armstrong to announce that the Apollo 11 lunar module had landed on the moon. In this version, the “regal” refers to Padmé (a former queen) landing on the reek.
370: Second Windu
Title: Pun on “second wind”, a name for the phenomenon of getting a renewed burst of energy after being tired or weak, originally in the context of physical exertion, but also used as a metaphor in similar cases of renewed vigour. The metaphor applies here because the arrival of Mace Windu provides a “second wind” for the fighting of the Jedi after they are surrounded by droids.
371: Dire Hire, Robes on Fire
Title: Pun on “Liar Liar Pants On Fire”, a phrase used by children when accusing other children of lying. Here, Mace’s attempt to hire Jango Fett is a “dire hire”—a poor attempt at hiring someone—and the result is that Jango sets Mace’s robes on fire with his flamethrower.
372: Aggressive Negotiations
Title: This is a quote from the film, first mentioned by Anakin early on when talking to Padmé; he explains that “aggressive negotiations” is “negotiations with a laser sword”. This quote is reprised during the arena combat, when Padmé mentions it back to Anakin in a moment intended to be humorous. Here, Mace Windu is showing outright aggression, while the others are discussing or negotiating their opinions about Pete. The humorous sense of the movie quote also applies.
Mace Windu: Fight! Fight!
Mace Windu: Fight! Fight!
Mace Windu: Fight! Fight!
— Sally is channeling school children everywhere, who get excited and chant when any of their peers get into a fight.
373: With Friends Like These, Who Needs A Nemesis?
Title: Pun on the saying “with friends like these, who needs enemies?”, an old proverb referring to the idea that sometimes your friends can be liabilities. The change refers to Jango Fett being Obi-Wan’s nemesis, a character set up specifically to be Obi-Wan’s enemy. But he ends up killed here by Obi-Wan’s friend Mace Windu, which could be seen as a narratively unsatisfying conclusion to the nemesis relationship.
374: Jedi and Monsters and Droids, Oh My
Title: Reference to the line “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” from The Wizard of Oz.
375: Half Time
Title: Continues the metaphor of the arena fight as a sporting event, as set up in the previous strip, by referring to the half-time break in sporting events. It also refers to the player-level break in the roleplaying game caused by ending a gaming session in this strip.
This strip was the subject of a major Accidental Innuendo. Readers in the forums, having trouble understanding exactly what Jim and Annie’s obviously awkward conversation was about, proposed the following theory:
Well, we have a woman (played by a guy) suggesting that the guy (played by a girl) she’s awkwardly attracted to should use his extendable sword to find tunnels...
[...] burrowing under the sand could be seen as a reference to just making love right there.
The actual intent was much more innocent:
- Jim proposes a ridiculous sounding idea.
- Annie starts to say how silly that is, but then stops herself because she doesn’t want to hurt Jim’s feelings.
- Jim understands Annie’s hesitation and tries to put her at ease by saying it’s okay, and explaining the deeper meaning behind his plan.
- Annie starts to apologise, then realises she can’t apologise without saying what she’s apologising for (i.e. thinking Jim was suggesting something stupid).
- Jim starts to say he didn’t mean to embarrass Annie over that, but stops.
- They both get tongue tied and aren’t quite sure what either of them are saying any more.
376: The Prodigal Robot
Title: Reference to the Parable of the Prodigal Son. “Prodigal” refers to the titular son’s tendency to spend and waste his resources extravagantly, which describes Pete’s reaction to being given the authority to run the game for a session. He squandered his opportunity with an overly flamboyant session adventure, causing the other players (apart from Jim) to despise him. But now, as in the parable, the wastrel Pete returns.
377: Re-pair-ations
Title: Pun based on “reparations” and “repair”. Pete makes reparations to Sally by repairing C-3PO.
378: Sämisch versus Nimzowitsch
Title: This is a reference to the Immortal Zugzwang Game, a 1923 chess game characterised by the ending in which Friedrich Sämisch, playing against Aron Nimzowitsch, ended up in a position in which any move he made would lead to his doom. (The best option would have been to do nothing and skip his turn, but this is not allowed in chess.) This refers to the position the characters find themselves in in this strip: any move they make will kill them.
Mace Windu: {aside} I’ll never kill again.
— Sally’s slowly developing horror at Mace Windu accidentally killing Jango Fett in #373 culminates in this declaration, which may be interpreted by readers as foreshadowing of his failure to kill Palpatine in Episode III.
[SFX]: < squee bzzt doop pop po-bak-jang >
— These untranslated R2 beeps translate to: “You could bite my shiny metal ass”, a tagline of the robot Bender in the TV series Futurama.
379: Siege Mentality
Title: “Siege mentality” is an idiom referring to groups of people who share a feeling of victimisation or defensivness. The term is derived from the experiences of people undergoing actual military sieges, similar to what is portrayed in this strip.
R2-D2: I still reckon the laser sword diffraction grating should have worked.
— Although unexplained in the strip, our idea here was based on the physics of diffraction gratings, which split light into multiple beams travelling in different directions. Presumably Pete’S idea was to make a grating by holding multiple laser sword blades in parellel close together, then firing a blaster shot at the arrangement, splitting it into several blaster beams that could take out multiple enemies with a single shot.
380: Sulk Addiction
Title: A pun on the movie title Pulp Fiction. By this point, it appears that Mace Windu, as played by Sally, is addicted to sulking about his situation. The movie is also relevant due to the quotations explained below.
Mace Windu: I can’t do this any more. I’ll just walk the Galaxy.
Padmé: What do you mean, walk the Galaxy?
Mace Windu: You know, walk the Galaxy, meet aliens.
— Modification of lines from Pulp Fiction, noting that Jules is played by Samuel L. Jackson, who also plays Mace Windu:
Jules: I’ll just walk the earth.
Vincent: What’cha mean walk the earth?
Jules: You know, walk the earth, meet people...
GM: No more Mace Windu. This part is over.
— A slight modification of a line by Mace Windu in the movie when he first arrives in the arena: “This party’s over.”
Mace Windu: Okay. From here on in you can consider Mace retired.
— Pun on another line by Jules from Pulp Fiction: “From here on in you can consider my ass retired.”
381: Send in the Clones
Title: Pun on the song “Send In the Clowns” written by Stephen Sondheim, from his musical A Little Night Music.
GM: If he died, millions of clones would suddenly hear a lone voice cry out in terror... and be silenced.
— Reference to the line by Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope: “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”
This strip explains the concept of “The Silence of the Clones” that we used as the title for our version of Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, but without explicitly naming it. The name “Silence of the Clones” would not appear explicitly until strip #854 in our Episode IV: A New Generation.
382: The Wonderful Jedi of Oz
Title: Modification of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the original novel by L. Frank Baum. Also a reference to the fact that Yoda is played by Frank Oz.
Yoda: Now go! Fly, my pretties!
— “Fly, my pretties!” is an oft-cited misquote from The Wizard of Oz, the film version of Baum’s novel.
383: Fly, You Fools
Title: A line said by Gandalf in both the novel and film versions of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Slightly more literal here in that the heroes are escaping by air, rather than simply running.
384: Death Is Underlined
Title: A pun on “Death is on the line”, a partial quote from The Princess Bride, by the character Vizzini. The full quote is:
You only think I guessed wrong! That’s what’s so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders—the most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia”—but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line”! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha...
R2-D2: Abandoned again.
R2-D2: Right when a nice big land war is starting.
— Pete alludes to the same line and what happened to his character (Vizzini) in the interstitial fantasy campaign based on The Princess Bride.
385: With Sugar on Top
Title: Part of the phrase “pretty please with sugar on top”, the next logical extension of how much pleading Sally is demanding of Ben in this strip.
386: Legends of the Fall
Title: Title of the 1994 western film Legends of the Fall. Here referring to the legends of the Sith as a fallen group of Jedi.
Anakin: I’ve deduced vital information. I think Dookû might be a Sith Lord.
— This (false) assertion by Anakin was included to set up the otherwise potentially troublesome naming of Count Dooku as a Sith Lord in the opening crawl for Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.
Mace Windu: Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.
— A quote by the character Michael Corleone in The Godfather.
387: Food Fight
Title: A term for a chaotic form of fight in which items of food are thrown at other participants. Here referring to the fact that the GM and players use items of food as proxy miniatures to represent the battle.
388: When Push Comes to Shove
Title: An idiom meaning that when a situation has become critical or urgent, then it is time for action, even if the action is difficult. Applying here both literally and idiomatically to Anakin pushing Padmé out of the ship.
389: Desert Desertion Dissertation
Title: Alliteration providing a somewhat literal description of the action in the strip.
390: Pick Up Lines
Title: A pick-up line is a line used to initiate a conversation with someone with the intent of pursuing a romantic encounter. Here it applies more literally, in that Padmé needs to be physically picked up from the desert.
391: See the Violence Inherent in the System
Title: A quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
392: Hot Hearts and Cool Heads
Title: An inversion of part of a quote by American evangelist Billy Graham: “Hot heads and cold hearts never solved anything.”
Count Dookû: Your mother was a womp rat and your father smells of sweesonberries!
— Variant of the line “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!” spoken by a French soldier in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Womp rats are large vermin mentioned by Luke in Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, and sweesonberries are a type of berry from Star Wars Expanded Universe sources.
393: Rapier Wit
Title: An idiom referring to the ability to make witty or “cutting” remarks, often directed at an opponent, drawing parallels between being attacked verbally and by a sword. Here Dookû and Obi-Wan engage in such verbal sparring while also literally fighting with swords.
Count Dookû: You seem ze decent fellow. Ah ’ate to kill you.
Obi-Wan: You seem a decadent fool. I hate to disappoint you.
— Modifications of lines from The Princess Bride, during the sword fight between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black: “You seem a decent fellow... I hate to kill you.” “You seem a decent fellow... I hate to die.”
Count Dookû: You fight like ze moisture farmer.
Obi-Wan: How appropriate. You fight like a damp cloth.
— Modifications of dialogue used in the video game The Secret of Monkey Island during sword fighting duels: “You fight like a dairy farmer.” “How appropriate. You fight like a cow.”
Count Dookû: Do you zink zis is wise, boy? Crossing blades with ze Master?
Obi-Wan: You zapped my Padawan.
Count Dookû: Only ze little.
— Modifications of lines from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, during a sword fight between Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner: “You think this wise, boy... crossing blades with a pirate?” “You threatened Miss Swann.” “Only a little.”
Count Dookû: You are using ze repeated ’ack and slash attack against moi, ah?
Obi-Wan: I thought it fitting, given the +1 terrain modifier.
— Modifications of further lines from The Princess Bride, again during the sword fight between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black: “You are using Bonetti’s Defence against me, ah?” “I thought it fitting considering the rocky terrain.”
394: Duned to Failure
Title: Pun on “doomed to failure”, reflecting the chances of Padmé's scheme working. The change to “Duned” refers both simply to the sand dunes, and also specifically to the novel Dune, which features giant sand worms that characters ride in a manner similar to what Padmé is suggesting (but which the GM dismisses as “just silly”).
Clone Trooper: Well, that’s a complicated question, but according to my databanks, cloning pod number 1138 on Kamino.
— A reference to the number 1138, which features several times in Star Wars movies and other media, inspired by George Lucas’s first feature film, THX 1138.
395: Mostly Dead
Title: Part of a line spoken by Miracle Max in The Princess Bride: “Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.”
The Kid: Hold it. Hold it, grandpa...
The Kid: You read that wrong. She doesn’t run through the desert. The clone trooper calls in a ship to pick them up. I’m just sure of it.
The Kid: If she dies running through the desert it wouldn’t be fair.
Grandfather: Well, who says life is fair? Where is that written? Life isn’t always fair.
The Kid: I’m telling you you’re messing up the story, now get it right!
Grandfather: Do you want me to go on with this?
The Kid: Yes.
Grandfather: All right, then. No more interruptions.
[...]
The Kid: See? Didn’t I tell you she’d never die in the desert?
Grandfather: Yes, you’re very smart. Shut up.
— This sequence is modified from dialogue in The Princess Bride:
The Kid: Hold it. Hold it, Grandpa. You read that wrong. She doesn’t marry Humperdinck. She marries Westley. I’m just sure of it. After all that Westley did for her, if she didn’t marry him, it wouldn’t be fair.
Grandfather: Well, who says life is fair? Where is that written? Life isn’t always fair.
The Kid: I’m telling you you’re messing up the story, now get it right!
Grandfather: Do you want me to go on with this?
The Kid: Yes.
Grandfather: All right, then. No more interruptions.
[...]
The Kid: See? Didn’t I tell you she’d never marry that rotten Humperdinck?
Grandfather: Yes, you’re very smart. Shut up.
These lines are also illustrated with screen captures from the relevant scene in The Princess Bride, rather than captures from Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones. This strip was published on 1 April, 2010, causing some readers to assume that it is an April Fool’s Day joke strip and not canonical within our story. However, our stance is that this strip is a canonical part of the story, and that the dialogue between the Kid and the Grandfather are a hallucination that Padmé experiences while lying deliriously in the sand.
396: Chopping List
Title: Pun on “shopping list”.
Anakin: I have another French term for you. En passant!
En passant means “in passing”, and is used in chess terminology to refer to a move in which an enemy pawn may capture another pawn that has used its initial move to advance two squares, skipping over the square threatened by the enemy pawn. The intention here is that Anakin is announcing a somewhat unexpected move against Dookû (although in chess any experienced player would typically not be surprised by an en passant capture).
397: One Sword, Two Sword, Red Sword, Blue Sword
Title: Reference to the title of the Dr Seuss book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
Anakin: Don’t condescend to me, you damn dirty Sith.
— Modification of a line from Planet of the Apes (1968): “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”
398: Like Hands Through the Hourglass
Title: Modification of part of the opening credits narration for the American soap opera series Days of Our Lives: “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives.” The “Hands” refers to Anakin losing one in this strip, and the soap opera references the uncertain romantic plotline expressed in the strip.
399: Honour Role
Title: Spelling modification of “honour roll”, in American usage a list of students who perform with academic honours at an educational institution.
Count Dookû: Whah did Ah bother with diplomacy? Ah should zhust go capture Palpatine and force ’is testimony.
— This sets up the opening for Episode III: Revelation of the Sith.
400: A Big Enough Lever
Title: A reference to a quotation attributed to Archimedes, the English translation of which is often rendered: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Which Yoda kind of does here.
401: Lightning in a Battle
Title: Pun on “lightning in a bottle”, an idiom referring to a difficult or challenging feat, so difficult that it is “like trying to catch lightning in a bottle”.
402: Going Ballistic
Title: To “go ballistic” is an idiom meaning to become very angry. “Ballistic” also refers literally to objects flying through the air, such as the dice that Sally excitedly rolls during this encounter.
This scene was the original inspiration for the broken, angular panel border style we adopted for all laser sword duelling scenes. The original concept art for this scene (right) was made in October 2007, when we were still in the very early stages of Episode I. We decided the style was so cool that we started using it from the first sword fight in that movie.
403: Corbel Punishment
Title: A pun on “corporal punishment”, meaning a type of punishment intended to inflict physical pain on the person being punished. A corbel is an architectural feature where a piece of wall material projects out from the wall to provide a support for some other feature (such as a ledge or balcony) resting on top of the corbel. We use the pun here to generally imply being physically punished by architecture, as Obi-Wan is in danger of being injured in the strip.
404: Not Found
Title: “404 Not Found” is a common error message displayed in web browsers when a URL does not resolve to an existing web page, with 404 being the associated numerical HTTP error code. The “not found” part refers loosely to Padmé arriving too late to take action against the fleeing Count Dookû, which was enough for us to attach it to the strip number to make this title.
405: Diplomatic Truancy
Title: A reference to diplomatic immunity, the legal principle that government officials have some level of legal immunity from the jurisdiction of other countries. Modified here to refer to truancy, reflecting the fact that Count Dookû is absent from Padmé’s attempted diplomatic negotiation (which is surprisingly sensible for Jim, but unfortunately not followed up on by anybody else).
Padmé: It was tough. I had some weird hallucinations. About a sick kid.
Padmé: He gets upset and demands his own way... but learns humility and it all works out in the end. Or something.
— These lines further indicate that Padmé’s hallucination seen in #395 was a canonical part of our story, not merely an April Fool’s Day joke.
406: In Which Vital and Surprising Information About the Previous Campaign is Revealed
Title: A matter-of-fact verbose title in the style of the long chapter titles seen in some old novels.
R2-D2: I know every page of this backwards, and I'm telling you, there is no such thing as immunity to iocane powder!
— The final, most explicit clue that the mysterious interstitial fantasy campaign was based on The Princess Bride, mentioning the exact poison named in that movie.
407: Peace and War
Title: Reversal of the novel title War and Peace.
Mace Windu: Er, if it’s clones fighting droids, shouldn’t it be The Droid Wars?
— We go to some pains here to avoid using the name “The Clone Wars” as canonically used in the movies, for humorous purposes and also out of the general desire to avoid simply copying too much verbatim from the source material.
408: Tying a Knot in the Loose Ends
Title: A mixed metaphor, combining the ideas of “tying the knot”—referring to marriage—and “loose ends”—referring to elements of a story plot that have not yet been resolved.
This strip was another case of the ongoing “XP” versus “XPs” argument between the writers (see Director’s Commentary notes for strip #51). In this case the argument was over whether Padmé’s final line should be “This is going to be worth so many XP.” versus “This is going to be worth so much XP.” The lead writer advocated for the former, based on the concept that experience points are countable objects and that “XP” is an abbreviation for “experience points”: i.e. “This is going to be worth so many experience points.” Most other writers argued that the concept of experience is treated as a continuous object by players (possibly of video games, where experience is tracked by the computer as a progress bar and the player is less aware of individual points), such that experience is an uncountable continuum and that “XP” is an abbreviation for “experience”: i.e. “This is going to be worth so much experience.” Again, the lead writer exerted final authority, but the argument remains unresolved.
409: Mawwiage
Title: Misspelling of “marriage”, matching the humorous pronunciation used by the character of The Impressive Clergyman in The Princess Bride, during the (aborted) wedding of Prince Humperdinck and Buttercup. This episode simply could not have enough The Princess Bride references.
410: Let Me Explain... No, There is Too Much. Let Me Sum Up
Title: Another line from The Princess Bride, spoken by Inigo Montoya when describing what has happened while Westley has been mostly dead.
If the hints in the story weren’t enough, this outline of the GM’s original adventure plan for the fantasy campaign provides plenty of details to allow anyone to work it out with a little research.
411: Elementary, My Dear Obi-Wan
Title: Alteration of the oft-cited misquote from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories: “Elementary, my dear Watson”.
412: An Old Friend
Title: A straightforward title describing how the miniature figure the GM is using to represent Count Dookû looks familiar to Ben.
Obi-Wan: He was a member of an order of good wizards until the main bad guy corrupted him with promises of power.
Obi-Wan: He turned Lawful Evil, then tried to bring us over to his side in a bit of deceptive double play.
Obi-Wan: Turned out the main baddie was using him to build up an army all along. We figured it out and faced off with him as a minor boss.
Obi-Wan: It was all a bit of a cliché really.
— This description is deliberately crafted to fit both Count Dookû himself, and also the character of Saruman from The Lord of the Rings. Both of these characters were played by the actor Christopher Lee—thus the resulting similarity in appearance in the miniatures representing them.