Why "Moon over Endor"

It’s been a while since there has been any news, so I thought I’d write that post to try and explain why I named the blog “Moon over Endor”.

Let me first get out of the way that it is not because of the Ewoks. If anything, it’s more despite the Ewoks. I used to like them well enough when I was young (which, I guess, was their point), but they have very little to do with my choice for a title.

To explain the title perhaps first a little background is in order. “Endor” is used as a name for several things. “Endor” is the name of a planet, a gas giant (called “Tana” by the Ewoks). Around this planet a number of moons orbit, one of which is a forest moon (the “forest moon of Endor”). Seeing as living on the planet is impossible and living on the moon is (as it is where the Ewoks live) and considering the central role the moon plays in the last Star Wars movie people often refer to the forest moon as “Endor” as well. And together they’re in the Endor System (named after the planet).

So “Endor” is really the name of the planet, but it is often used to refer to the moon. And that gives me some nice duality to play with.

After all, if both can be “Endor” then which is the moon over Endor? Technically speaking the moon is the forest moon, as that’s the only true moon. But one could also say that if you are on Endor then the gas giant would look mightily like a moon (and, indeed, it does).

When you relate this to the development of the game (Star Wars: The Old Republic) one could say that the gas giant is the game (it’s still nebulous, it’s uninhabitable, etc) and the forest moon is where we, the community, live. So we can look at this moon over where we live and make all kinds of speculations about it, perhaps convince ourselves that we know what it is like. Thus “Moon over Endor” is us looking from a distance at an incomplete something that might seem substantial to us, giving us the feeling that we know what it is like.

But at the same time it’s also the other way around. “Moon over Endor” also refers to the forest moon, that place away from the real thing, orbiting the game, the community. And I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we’re all Ewoks, but for the most part we have a similar level of technological sophistication with the universe around us, the world that isn’t completely formed yet. We’re all looking up at the sky and dreaming about what might be.

Of course, I also just like the whole moon symbolism in general and I must say that a large reason for me picking the name is because I simply thought that it sounded nice. But there is at least a little more thought behind it; the forest moon is the community, orbiting a gas giant of a game, still insubstantial even if it looks solid enough from the limited picture we’re getting of it.

Thus “Moon over Endor” refers both to the community surrounding Star Wars: The Old Republic and to the process of us looking into the sky and think we know what the ‘moon’ (or game in this case) is like because the image we see seems clear enough.

And yes, I probably put way too much thought into that and should’ve just said “I like how it sounds”.