Istar the Dreamy Genie – Jeannie from the TV show I Dream of Jeannie, The Babylonian goddess Ishtar, and Istar from Dragonlance of Dungeons and Dragons
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Istar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dream_of_Jeannie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inanna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance
Istar the Dreamy Genie is one of my Top 10 all time favorite pop culture references from the Spiral. She sits at #6 just before the witches of Karamelle and the Cantina singing group in Santa Pollo of Cool Ranch,
Istar is Sultana Sharzad’s House Djinni. At the Sultana’s order, Istar treats your wizard as her master. She assists your wizard through many areas and encounters while you are in Mirage.
I Dream of Jeannie is an American fantasy sitcom television series, created by Sidney Sheldon that starred Barbara Eden as a sultry, 2,000-year-old genie and Larry Hagman, as an astronaut with whom she falls in love and eventually marries. Produced by Screen Gems, the show originally aired for 139 episodes over five seasons, from September 18, 1965, to May 26, 1970, on NBC.
The series was created and produced by Sidney Sheldon in response to the great success of rival network ABC’s Bewitched series, which had debuted in 1964 as the second-most watched program in the United States. Sheldon, inspired by the 1964 film The Brass Bottle, conceived of the idea for a beautiful female genie. Both I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched were Screen Gems productions.
When casting was opened for the role of Jeannie, producer Sidney Sheldon could not find an actress who could play the role the way that he had written it. He did have one specific rule: he did not want a blonde genie, because the similarity with the blonde witch on Bewitched would be too much. However, after many unsuccessful auditions, he called Barbara Eden’s agent. Eden had coincidently co-starred in The Brass Bottle as mortal Sylvia Kenton.
Inanna is the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. She is also associated with beauty, sex, divine law, and political power. Originally worshiped in Sumer, she was known by the Akkadian Empire, Babylonians, and Assyrians as Ishtar. Her primary title was “the Queen of Heaven”.
Istar is also a country in the Dungeons & Dragons shared universe of Dragonlance. The Dragonlance universe was created by Laura and Tracy Hickman, and expanded by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis under the direction of TSR, Inc. into a series of fantasy novels. The Hickmans conceived Dragonlance while driving in their car on the way to TSR for a job interview. Tracy Hickman met his future writing partner Margaret Weis at TSR, the then publisher of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.
The current list of all the (known) Mirage references can be found here.
Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.
Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages
Istar image is from Wizard101, and is copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment
I Dream of Jeanie image is copyright Screen Gems and Columbia Pictures.
Ishtar image is borrowed from Wikipedia and is shared under the CC BY 3.0 Creative Commons license.
Dragonlance image is copyright TSR / Hasbro
Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.
Master, if you’ve read this far you could “Like” the article. Commenting back would be a nice gesture as well.
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