#ANYWAYS…read rebel rising & the rogue one novelization

[bisexualwintermoon]

but its like. why do Some People in this fandom love characters like anakin & crosshair and excuse all his crimes but hate saw and say that his death is “satisfying” bc he “killed tech” and call him “worse than the empire.” why is that. like i mean i know why.

[jyndor]

It’s just me or it was so weird that Jyn was almost raised like a daughter by Ashkaya, used her daughter’s name and clothes and all and then Revis made her date the dead girl’s brother 😭 idk they could have done the romance without making all these references to Tanith it felt so awkward to read (or maybe it’s just me because I don’t like the author’s works lol)

truly so many things could be different about rebel rising lmfao fairly certain that hadder just existed so that jyn didn't die without fucking or something lol as if she didn't live her life from seventeen to 21 just before she got hauled off to wobani like im all for headcanoning however we all want to and trust me as a demisexual bisexual bitch myself ace jyn is valid as hell but To Me jyn fucks (if cassian gets to have a cutie on space miami - two cuties including rue we said bi rights - than so does jyn lol)

but yeah it's a bit :\ the only parts of that book worth anything are the saw chapters, the maia bits and jyn in prison. also jyn is very clearly queer as hell in that book i mean shes queer as hell everywhere but like the way she Notices women as a girl lol im just saying idryssa was her first crush (the way jyn stared at how the blue glitter made her skin look lol), maia was her first girlfriend, etc. so those parts have rights.

but i'd be willing to retcon the whole thing if they would just do a jyn mini series or something lol age her ass up like they did with cassian and tell a good story about a child soldier who is left behind and has to figure out living on her own in the margins for the next several years

also is the book saying that jyn thinks cassian looks like hadder there because she thinks he looks familiar? lol idk it could be a play on the 'face of a friend' thing or *conspiracy theory* they've met before but thats just me.

im a bit of a hypocrite for being all >:( about them retconning whatever the books say about cassian but totally game for retconning jyn's background from rebel rising because like as much as i think hadder deserves respect for being jyn's first love (allegedly im still not buying that she wasn't in love with maia) im sorry its a bit :///// like you don't need jyn to pretend to be his sister for them to have a cute teen romance, in fact i would argue it makes it significantly less cute for her to be assuming his dead sister's identity lmfao like ????

i just want my teenage/early twenties dirtbag jyn erso show let felicity play her againnnn lol if we're to believe diego is playing a guy twenty years younger than he is we can believe felicity is playing some late teens/early twenties girlie, let her hook up with cuties of all species and genders, let her beat the shit out of fascists, let her feed stray tookas, let her rage at her dads, let her rage at her mother, let her get into a bar fight with cassian andor (he's undercover and she's got a wig on so its fine), let her have flashbacks to her time with saw because we should have seen that, let her have nightmares about orson krennic (naur), let my girl be a messy bitch in leather and kohl-lined eyes I WANT TO SEE IT

all this because they killed them off at the end of rogue one and didn't let us have rogue two

yeah anyway the rogue one novelization >>>>>> rebel rising because all of the novelization is great (even the part where cassian doesn't shoot galen because he has jyn's eyes which i find lmfao no. maybe that plays a part in him realizing that if he kills galen he kills the spark of hope he's found in jyn and therefore - because they're mirrors - he'd be killing something in himself, but the novel doesn't go into it).

[ponett]

i was finally able to see the bad star war that everyone said was bad. as it turns out, it was bad. here’s a read more post with my thoughts on it so that i don’t spam my twitter with spoiler tweets

for a baseline: i like the original trilogy, but i don’t think any of those movies are perfect. i think the prequels had some good ideas but i were mostly terrible. i love the clone wars (both versions) and rebels. while i admit that tfa was extremely similar to a new hope, i thought it was executed great and had a wonderful new cast that showed a ton of promise. i liked rogue one, although i found its first act really sloppy. and i have some quibbles about tlj, but it had an incredibly strong vision and actual themes, and i’d consider it my favorite in the series

i’m exactly the kind of person who was always going to hate the rise of skywalker, because it’s basically a bad fanfic written by someone who didn’t like tlj and wanted to “fix” the story. like that bizarre story treatment jenny nicholson read for this movie. the bad one. it was like that

it wasn’t all bad i guess. here are the small things i liked:

some of the new environments were cool. there was cool imagery and practical effects work

i appreciated that the moon of endor where the death star wreckage was wasn’t just the one with the ewoks, and thought the vibe there was cool

zorii bliss’s armor was really cool

the image of the fleet of star destroyers all lined up was striking

i liked that the ghost showed up for the final battle

i liked that ahsoka was one of the jedi voices rey heard, even though that kind of implies that ahsoka is, uh... dead?

while extremely fucking trite and dumb, i’ll admit the closing scene on tatooine got me. yeah, rey has no real connection to this place and it’s just a nostalgic throwback, but i’m a sucker for full circle endings like that

uh. that’s about it

this movie kicks off in the middle of an action scene and just kind of keeps jumping to new setpieces nonstop until it’s over. new characters and locations get introduced and then moved past in the blink of an eye. there’s no time to let any of it sink in. it feels like abrams crammed two movies worth of shit into this one to make up for the the fact that some people didn’t like tlj, and as a result none of it resonates. i just felt so empty throughout most of the film. events were happening on screen and none of it mattered

thoughts about individual elements:

LEIA

putting the scenes with the recycled footage of carrie fisher at the beginning of the film completely took me out of it. it was so obvious that she wasn’t really responding to what was being said, and the conversations had just been built around the limited leia lines they could use

the dialogue scenes with leia felt like a space ghost interview

C-3PO

was in this movie a lot for some reason? i guess abrams wanted to make up for how little c-3po there was in the last two movies. they tried to have that emotional moment where his memory is wiped, but then they just turned his memory loss into a big joke?? and then he got most of his memories back anyway

in general, the movie is afraid to let the audience be uncomfortable for long. 3po’s memory loss. the supposed deaths of chewbacca and babu frik, that sort of thing. you’re not allowed to be sad. after tlj so effectively built tension throughout the film and really pushed the heroes to the brink, this is a disappointment

LANDO

is here because he needed to show up, and because it’s a throwback to have him pilot the falcon again. he’s just kind of there with little to do and no arc

FINN, POE, AND ROSE

before the movie came out, i had low expectations. all i really wanted was to get one last fun adventure with the new characters. when i started to hear about the spoilers, my expectations sank even lower. but maybe i would still get this

nah! rose gets like two minutes of screentime because redditors hated her, and finn and poe are barely even characters. they don’t have arcs in this film, they’re just sidekicks on rey’s journey

finn really hurts. prior to tfa’s release, finn was framed as the new star. this was, of course, a bait and switch, as rey was really the new jedi. (finn apparently IS force sensitive according to this one, but hey! we can only have one big jedi hero, so like leia before him, i guess we’ve gotta wait for some EU novel to give finn a lightsaber)

but finn was still a central character in the last two films, and he had so much potential. he was a stormtrooper who defected! that’s something new! that’s interesting! it complicates the black and white morality of the series. but no. that’s been all but abandoned at this point

many have complained about how tfa establishes that basically all the stormtroopers are people who were kidnapped as children and brainwashed by the first order... but then they still have no qualms about gleefully killing them. in the first two movies i was like “yeah, it sucks that they have to kill those guys, but if it’s to prevent genocide, it’s understandable. that’s just war. maybe they’ll touch on it in the last movie.” so in this one, they kept reminding the audience that the stormtroopers were enslaved as children. jannah is even introduced as another stormtrooper who defected like finn. but then... it goes nowhere. finn doesn’t get any first order troops to defect. they don’t care about the other stormtroopers. how many hundreds of thousands of enslaved soldiers did they kill when they blew up those star destroyers

it was nice to see finn and poe take the charge as leaders in the end, but it also feels like they didn’t take the lessons from tlj to heart. the whole point of that story was that one-in-a-million shot heroic suicide missions aren’t worth it, and that they’re more useful to the resistance alive than they are as martyrs. but then in the climax of this film they take like 30 ships to go fight a fleet of a hundred fucking star destroyers

on the subject of that final battle: i thought that the ending of tlj was so powerful. the resistance was decimated, but they still had hope, because they knew there were others out there who could help. people like rey, or the broom boy, who came from nothing but had good hearts. in this one, though, they say that apparently nobody responded to the leia’s call for help in the entire year since the last film. everyone only shows up during the climax after lando’s like “no, but for real guys, we need help”

and i did think that that sequence was cool. and i did like seeing the ghost among the ships. it was fun. the message that fascists like the first order rule by making people feel isolated, and that they’re defeated by realizing that good people are never alone? that was good. i thought that was a strong message. but it’s such a minor footnote on a movie that’s so bad in so many other ways

oh and they made the latino dude a drug dealer. okay. thanks for that

KYLO REN

i hate that they redeemed kylo and i hate the way they did it

yes, him being coerced to turn to the dark side by snoke (who was apparently just a puppet controlled by palpatine all along (UGH)) as a kid was tragic. but that doesn’t excuse his actions. kylo was given infinite second chances throughout the trilogy, and every time he responded with violence. he killed so many people himself, and willingly took part in a fascist regime that killed billions. yes, his story is sad, but he’s not some poor little boy, he’s thirty fucking years old and he vents his trauma by slaughtering innocent people

literally the entire main trio of the original trilogy died because of this asshole. han tried to talk to him in the first movie, and got stabbed and dropped into a pit. luke died astral projecting to face him in tlj. and now leia just kind of arbitrarily died to flip the switch in his brain from bad to good from across the galaxy. it’s literally as simple as that. he doesn’t have a personal journey here. he just stops being evil because his mom made him through the force

like, again. all those enslaved stormtrooper grunts who had been brainwashed since they were kids? gunned down. but giving kylo endless second chances is the most important thing in the world

and then they end the movie by having this creepy abusive stalker genocidal asshole sadboy kiss rey, retroactively framing their dynamic as a romantic one. just, gross as hell. even in this one, for most of the film, all he does is threaten rey and boss her around

i dunno. i thought the first order were interesting as antagonists. yeah, they were just the empire 2.0. but i thought it was appropriate! the idea was that just because palpatine was dead and gone didn’t mean that fascism was gone. there were still hateful people who wanted to rule the galaxy via genocide. like how we still have nazis in the 21st century. except, oops! palpatine was actually alive and pulling the strings the entire time, so now that theme’s out the window. we just have to kill him again FOR REAL this time and now the galaxy will actually be safe

people wondered where the first order would go after snoke died in tlj. but it was so obvious to me? kylo was in charge. kylo was always the most interesting bad guy. just let him call the shots and be the final adversary. but no. that wasn’t good enough. we had to bring back palpatine as the jrpg final boss to have an epic conclusion

REY

oh, poor rey. youtube critics got mad that a girl could be a strong jedi without being related to some other powerful force user from the old movies, so now she’s stuck being a palpatine forever

i will admit, the protagonist of the new movies being related to palpatine but still being a good person in spite of her heritage... that could have been something. but it’s so clearly not what they had in mind from the start, and it spits in the face of the last movie’s themes. it turns out greatness CAN’T come from anywhere. it has to come from one of these select few Special Bloodlines

oh! and this ALSO reframes rey’s parents abandoning her and selling her into slavery as an act of kindness, because they had to hide her from her spooky evil grandpa. so THAT’S fun. (edit: OH! and luke and leia knew about rey the whole time!!! and didn’t go out and look for her!!!!)

it’s just. it’s so bad what they did to rey. i don’t know if i even have much to elaborate on there, everyone’s already said how stupid it is

---

overall, i still wouldn’t say it’s the WORST star wars movie. it’s more watchable than the phantom menace, that’s for damn sure. the actors put in effort. the sets and practical effects are nice. it’s just so... empty

tros possibly feels the closest to how i imagined the new trilogy would be when it was first announced, but in a bad way. a movie built entirely on established ideas of What Star Wars Is with nothing new to bring to the table. it’s like a bad eu novel. just recycled imagery, cameos from characters we already know, palpatine coming back from the dead, that sort of thing. it’s a movie made by committee to appease reddit. it’s nothing

now i gotta use that free trial of disney plus to watch the mandalorian and wash the taste out of my mouth i guess

[littlebitwriter]

12 DAYS OF STAR WARS: AN ORIGINAL FANBOY-DRIVEN BLOG SERIES “EPISODE 7: SOME OF MY FAVORITE STAR WARS EU CHARACTERS”

Here is a list not ranked of some of my favorite characters in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Both canon and non-canon. *Specifically not gigantically main characters in the mainline saga films and ones who often have extensive material in tie-in media.*

GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN

In terms of comparing Star Wars characters to archetypes, Grand Admiral Thrawn is the evil Sherlock Holmes of the Star Wars galaxy. The smartest, most tactical, perhaps the most shocking Star Wars villain is Grand Admiral Thrawn. A character with a unique philosophy and battle strategy. He looks at the art of a civilization or planet in the beginning of Heir To The Empire where he can tell/figure out something about that civilization/species through their art which is fascinating. He is a unique, evenly tempered character and listens to what people have to say if they have good ideas. Thrawn is a character who is evil who also has control of his emotions. He isn’t like Kylo Ren who flips out on his macbook pro or is like “Fire Everything!” Thrawn is ultimately the antithesis of that. He is the antithesis to Darth Vader and The Emperor in terms of their philosophy which is perhaps scarier and his philosophy is ‘don’t let your emotions consume you’ and is as level-headed as Darth Vader and is very much all about power. He is an incredibly unique character and villain unlike any other in Star Wars lore. There is so much rich Thrawn material out there, from the various novels by Timothy Zahn such as the original Thrawn Trilogy: Heir To The Empire, Dark Force Rising & The Last Command. As well as the Modern Thrawn Trilogy (set before the events of his appearance in Star Wars Rebels) Thrawn, Alliances and Treason. As well as many, many others I have not mentioned.

MARA JADE

She is a great character who starts from a very interesting place in Heir To The Empire who started out as a Force-sensitive Imperial assassin who is easily next to Thrawn, both are the best characters Timothy Zahn created in the Star Wars EU lore. She much like a lot of characters I will be talking about, are all truly authentic Star Wars characters. They all have the makings of a great iconic Star Wars character who went on an exciting redemptive journey across the EU from being an Imperial assassin who Palpatine wanted to kill Luke Skywalker to eventually become the wife of Luke Skywalker and mother of Ben Skywalker as a Jedi master. There was a lot that happened to her with the Yuuzhan Vong but everything about that outside of Mara Jade gives me a gigantic headache. Anyway she is a great character who should be integrated into the new canon and should be established to have been married to Luke. (In my personal headcanon Luke was married to Mara Jade in the gap between ROTJ and TFA) She just has one of the best character arcs in all of Star Wars and is a phenomenal character.

QUINLAN VOS

One of my favorite characters in the Expanded Universe is Quinlan Vos who has stories in the comics that came out during the time of The Clone Wars comics of the early aughts written by John Ostrander. The story of him really goes across The Clone Wars. He is an incredible character who is ultimately an exploration of the ideas of the Dark Side and the Light Side and the temptation of the Dark Side and he kind of rides that line between the two. He is very much a rogue Jedi and kind of goes with the dark and dabbles towards it but ultimately is a good guy. His story in the Clone Wars from Ostrander is very pivotal to his character. Also Dark Disciple is another Quinlan Vos story that is in canon that is based on unused scripts of the modern Clone Wars episodes and that is as well a good Quinlan Vos story with his unique relationship with Asajj Ventress.

CADE SKYWALKER

The main character of perhaps the best Star Wars things next to The Original Trilogy which is John Ostrander and Jaan Dursuma’s Legacy. He ultimately much like Quinlan Vos is an extremely fascinating character. He is a bounty hunter who has all but rejected his Jedi teachings and he does Death Sticks. He really dances on the line between Dark Side and Light Side in such an interesting way where there are things he does for good but he’s using Dark Side powers and bringing people back from the dead which is quote Palpatine in Revenge of The Sith “Unnatural…” He is a unique conflicted character and he is very much one of my favorite characters in Star Wars lore. He is very much like Quinlan Vos the archetypal John Ostrander dark Jedi character in a good way.

BOBA FETT

I love Boba Fett. He’s got a bad reputation now especially with a show about a super competent Mandalorian who is ‘The Mandalorian’ who is clearly not Boba Fett because of a thing that he does at the end of the pilot episode that Boba Fett would never do. Boba Fett ultimately unknown to the general mainstream public truly is not just a bum/incompetant clone/bounty hunter that ended up in Sarlacc Pit. He was once a and almost had a solo-novel written by Karen Traviss (A great Star Wars writer who wrote many great books such as The Republic Commando series, also has an obsession with Mandalorians) However in-canon as of now, Boba Fett died in Sarlacc Pit and ultimately the badass Boba Fett pre-1999 EU is now alive and well in The Mandalorian.

DARTH MAUL

One of the boldest creative decisions in all of Star Wars was in the fourth season of the modern Clone Wars TV Show which was a moment I remember seeing on television for the first time which is… The Return of Darth Maul. This led to what I call the “Maul Resurgence” where after I watched that story arc in television I was obsessed with Maul and had a connection to Maul outside of the double-bladed lightsaber and the spiky horns I was fascinated by his rivalry, connection and hatred of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I read the novel by Michael Reaves that was a prequel to Phantom Menace which was Shadow Hunter. Which established his backstory as being raised by Palpatine and was inflicted with Sith tattoos and was originally a Zabrak (which changed due to The Clone Wars he is now a…Dathomir. He is ultimately an assassin told he’s a Sith, not really a proper Dark Force user, he was a mad dog on Palpatine’s leash that became used everywhere. He is very much the prequel’s Boba Fett where he looks super cool and most of the public doesn't know he survived after his initial cheap death where they got a comeback and more development. In The Clone Wars He spent years in shame and squalor and when he gets power back and gains composure you see he learned the lessons Sidious/Palpatine taught him and that’s what makes his duel with him, Oppress and Sidious/Palpatine so impressive is that you can make the argument that Maul was legitimately a threat to Sidious. He is capable of being a thrilling and terrifying threat. As a Maul fan My favorite scene in Solo: A Star Wars Story is when you learn he is the head of the criminal organization of Crimson Dawn and the idea of him being a crime lord is genius. His story is ultimately perfectly wrapped up in Rebels in perhaps my favorite and in my opinion the most epic lightsaber fight in all of Star Wars which is his last battle with Kenobi. It’s an old-school epic samurai fight with such ambience and power and perfectly ends Maul story and captures the evolution of Obi-Wan and Maul’s relationship.

THE CHILD

The social media phenomenon himself gets what he / she deserves and is perhaps my favorite youngling in Star Wars lore (sorry, no disrespect to characters like Ashoka). It may seem like I’m hopping on the bandwagon but I really am not, outside of Yoda and Yaddle I believe, there is one other character who is of the same species who fans often mention and even casual or non fans mention a lot who is The Child. There is ultimately I think going to be a solid reason as to why he is such a phenomenon. Much like these other characters this is something about The Child that is distinctive and unique in that all of these characters are wholly their own and go on their own journeys and I’m sure The Child will be one of them. He is young for his species only fifty years old and has a long, long life ahead of him in a galaxy far, far away…

-LilBitWriter (12/19/19)

[takerfoxx]

The Rise of Skywalker Review

All right, new year, new decade, and all that jazz. Now, I do have a few things I wanna say about reflecting back on where I was and where I am now, personal growth and all that, but first, I have some major I need to get out of my system, something that’s been eating at my mind all week, something I really need to sit down and dissect to properly suss out my thoughts and feelings.

And that thing is this: what the fuck happened with The Rise of Skywalker?!

Now, just for the record, I’m that lapsed Star Wars fan who grew up with the original trilogy, who had a full shelf of EU novels that I read and reread over and over until their covers fell off, who spent untold hours replaying both of the Knights of the Old Republic games, was majorly let down by the prequels and became disillusioned by the franchise as a result, who reacted to the news of Disney’s acquisition of the franchise with cyncisim, who thought that The Force Awakens was decent but otherwise substance-less knock-off of A New Hope, who was bored to tears by Rogue One, who skipped Solo entirely, but who actually was surprising engaged and receptive to the subversive themes and new places that The Last Jedi took the franchise even if it was very flawed structurally and thought that it was the best Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi.

And hell, let’s just state my reasons right now. The Last Jedi came out at a time when I was just so tired of people trying to recapture lightning in a bottle with once-great franchises that had lived on long past their expiration date with trying to pass off clearly inferior knock-offs to their original installments as sequels. I mean, it can work, sure. Both of the Creed movies followed the Rocky movie formula pretty closely but were still great, and even if it didn’t click with me the way it did with other people, Fury Road was a fantastic film. The thing is though, both of those movies were still being handled by their original creators, specifically Sylvester Stallone and George Miller, while my beloved Star Wars and Jurassic Park had become divorced from their daddies and were now being handled by people who just. Didn’t. Get it.

And then The Last Jedi came along and was all, “Shut up about bloodlines, they don’t matter! Your main character is not the descendant of some already established character, she’s just some rando Force-sensitive that caught up in all this and decided to answer the call, so let her stand on her own! The Jedi were a well-meaning but immensely flawed, so leave them in the annuals of history and stop venerating them! Same with your heroes! Also, your Resistance has its hands dirty too because it’s a fucking war and war makes monsters of everybody while the little people suffer, sometimes you need to listen to the people in charge instead of being a hothead bucking the system, and the intimidating villains in black are in truth a bunch of insecure man-children playing dress-up to make them feel better about themselves and are pretty pathetic until they take that last step and become actual threats because that is how fascism works!”

Do you realize just how refreshing all of that was? Oh my God, is the Star Wars franchise actually…moving forward? Are we getting new stuff that’s not hampered by George Lucas’s unbearably hackneyed writing?

Yes, the whole Finn and Rose sidequest contributed nothing to the plot and ultimately went nowhere. Yes, the whole Poe vs. Admiral Holdo had the looming question of “Why doesn’t she just tell Poe that she’s got a plan instead of doing everything to set the team rebel off?” which undercut its message. These are major problems, I acknowledge that. The thing is, they are easily fixable problems that would have been smoothed out by a few more script treatments. It sucks that they weren’t, but as for me, they were roadbumps, not dealbreakers. I noticed them, I saw that they were major problems, but they didn’t make me angry, and I liked what they were trying to say enough for me to still be with it. And I felt that all the Luke/Rey/Kylo stuff was gangbusters (yes, I loved cranky, disillusioned old Luke. I know Mark Hamill didn’t care for it, but that’s fine, it worked great for me), so I ultimately left feeling pleasantly surprised. As if in, it was a flawed but very refreshing experience, one that said things I had been feeling for a long time and took things to interesting places that I actually wanted to see play out. I even got choked up when Luke let himself fade away when feeling absolutely nothing when Han died the previous film.

Unfortunately, that seemed to be a minority opinion, with many other Star Wars fan outright detesting it, sometimes to a pretty gross level (you know what I’m talking about). So when JJ Abrams was brought back on board to try to salvage things for the final installment, my reaction was, “I’m going to hate it, aren’t I?”

Still, I knew I was going to see it anyway, just to say that I did. And…welp.

…

Dafuq was that?

All right, all right, now before I continue, I need to acknowledge something. First of all, I have nothing against JJ Abrams as a person or even really as an artist. From all accounts he’s a cool guy who’s been taking all the backlash he’s been getting with a commendable amount of maturity, and he was placed in a very unenviable position by taking the reins in the midst of a very volatile situation. Plus, he had set a ton of things up in TFA that TLJ burned to the ground. Granted, it was a bonfire that I thoroughly enjoyed, but as the person watching his ideas just get cut off, that must have been frustrating watch. Like, what was he supposed to work with once he was brought back on after Colin Trevorrow had gotten the boot? And on a side-note, they really need to stop bringing Colin Trevorrow into big blockbuster franchises.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, we had the tragic passing of Carrie Fisher, which, in addition to being a terrible loss in general because she was a wonderful person that we’re all the poorer without, this movie was supposed to in some way revolve thematically around her, much like the TFA did with Han and TLJ did with Luke. But with her gone, they were just left with footage and recorded dialogue from deleted scenes from the first two films, which is next to nothing to go off of. Now there’s a debate to be had about whether or not it would be appropriate to CG her face onto a different actress, and I do get them feeling that doing so would be ghoulish…but they kinda already did that to bring Tarkin back in Rogue One, so…

Even so, that really sucks, and as awkward as the Princess Leia scenes are as a result, it isn’t their fault, so I’ll leave it at that.

And finally, it must also be acknowledged that a lot of the things I’m going to criticize them for were present in the original trilogy, and were just as awkward then. The OG movies weren’t perfect, folks. We’ve come to accept these flaws, but they were just as clumsy asspulls back then as they are now.

All right, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I actually want to start off on a positive note, specifically talking about the stuff I liked.

Let’s begin with the thing that I consider to not only be good, but actually kind of great: the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren. Their weird Force-link in TLJ was one of the few new ideas that everyone seemed to like, especially since neither of them could really control it and were equally befuddled by it. It’s just a cool idea, a new aspect of the Force we haven’t seen before, and it’s slowly built upon, actually affects both the plot and the characters, and leads to some great scenes between the two of them.

And you know what? I was actually surprised by how much I liked these two together. After the wooden pile of bleh that was Anakin and Padme, I was bracing myself for more of the same. But as it turns out, Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver have an incredible amount of chemistry, and Adam especially was able to pull off the whole tortured bad boy who’s trying to be a villain but feels endlessly conflicted in a way that Hayden Christensen never could (though to be fair, Adam had way more to work with). So giving them that weird link where they’re forced to interact at different points despite being galaxies across from one another is a fantastic idea.

And I was happy to see that not only was this idea not walked back on, they actually built on it. Without giving too much away, there’s an amazing scene where they actually have a lightsaber fight despite being in two completely different locations and not really knowing where the other is, with the camera jumping back and forth from each other’s perspective and items from each other’s surroundings keep getting thrown into the other’s area and it’s honestly really great.

There were also a lot of visuals that were pretty great. The whole indoor lightning of the Sith Planet was neat, as was the flying stormtroopers, and that festival was pretty cool, and…

Actually, come to think of it, most of the scenes in this movie are, when viewed in isolation, pretty good, and could have worked if they had been buffeted by, you know, proper buildup, actual pacing, and taking the time to let events have weight.

But that leads us to this movie’s biggest failing, the problem that bring the whole thing crashing down. And that is it will just. Not. Slow. Down!

Seriously, don’t take a bathroom break, because if you do, you’ll come back to find everybody on a totally different planet doing something completely different, and the plot point you left on is completely in the rearview. It’s exhausting how quickly this movie jumps around from place to place, where we get a look at a setting and characters that might have been interesting if we got to spend actual time with them, only to drop it and we’re onto the next part. This isn’t a story, it’s a list of bullet points! It’s a three hour highlight reel of a whole-ass fourth trilogy, one that could have been cool to watch if they had chopped it up into three parts and fleshed them out into three movies. Hell, I’ll tell you where to end each one: Rey vs. Kylo on the Star Destroyer, Rey vs. Kylo on the wreckage of the Death Star, and the actual finale. Expand on the stuff in between, flesh things out with actual, you know, character development and consequences instead of zipping around, trying to come up with as many places as they can to cram into Star Tours’ randomizer.

And that’s what this basically is, an overly long Star Tours ride! Now I like Star Tours just fine, because it visits places that hold actual meaning due to being properly developed in actual movies, but these places just left me feeling hollow. And while we’re on the subject, did we really need another desert planet, ice planet, and forest planet combo? Spice things the fuck up! Say what you want about the prequels, but at least they tried to take us to cool new places.

And you know what? I’m going to say it. This movie is actually worse than the prequels. Not because it’s nearly as clumsily written and woodenly acted, or because it’s dragged down by dumb attempts at comedy; it’s none of those things. But at least the prequels were trying! George Lucas might be totally inept as a writer and should not have been given free reign, but there were attempts at things like proper plot and character development, pacing, plot twists, mystery, building things up and paying them off. Just go read the novelization of Revenge of the Sith. It’s fantastic! Same plot, same events happening, same conversations, but the dialogue is reworked to give the characters actual personality and it’s narratively told in an awesome and creative way and it’s overall just a great book. So George Lucas’s movies had the framework of a good story, he just wasn’t the right person to tell it.

In contrast, this movie has actual good acting, and the dialogue isn’t anywhere nearly as corny, but it’s just so unbelievably basic. It’s surface level writing, with barely a hint of cleverness and very little personality other than what the actors are about to wrangle out through their performances. But structure-wise, other than to expand it into a full trilogy, I don’t see how anyone can turn this mess into an engaging, single-movie narrative. So much happens, and it just feels so empty.

And…okay. Let’s address the Bantha in the room. Let’s talk about Palpatine.

Why is he back? Why? Just…why? He doesn’t need to be back! He doesn’t! It’s stupid, it’s hackneyed, it’s not even explained! I mean, there’s an offhand mention of cloning, so yeah, it’s feasible, it just makes no narrative sense! Hell, the fucking opening title crawl just plain says, “Yeah, he’s back. No reason, he just is” and goes on from that. And apparently he’s been behind everything that’s happened, like Snoke and Vader’s voice in Kylo Ren’s head and stuff, because things just can’t happen without being masterminded by someone I guess.

Really? This is the best they could come up with? I know TLJ cut off a lot of their plot branches, but goddamn it, this is the best you’ve got? Resurrect Palpatine? They do remember that the first two movies from the trilogy barely had the emperor as a presence, right? Vader carried them all just fine! Just run with that! Have Kylo Ren be the main antagonist! Have this be able his ascension to actual mega threat instead of Darth Vader cosplayer. If you want Ian McDiarmid to ham it up in the robes one last time (and hey, who wouldn’t?) just give him a cameo! Like, a holographic message to any potential successors Kylo Ren is looking for. Have him be the devil on Kylo’s shoulder in a is-he-real-is-he-just-a-hallucination sort of way. Make him something tempting Kylo Ren to fully embrace being the new Sith Lord, something Kylo has to overcome if he wants redemption. But don’t bring him fucking back! That’s just so, so stupid.

And Rey being Palpatine’s granddaughter kind of pisses me off. Her being revealed as a nobody from nowhere in the last film was great! I loved that idea! But no, let’s just retcon that whole business because we’re trying to apologize for the only one of these movies that had any balls and everybody has to be the descendant of someone important. Even fucking Lando gets a long-lost daughter in this! No, I’m not joking, he totally does.

Now, could Rey’s Sith heritage have worked? Sure! In of itself, it’s a rad idea, one that could have been used to explore all sorts of awesome themes…if that had been their plan from the beginning instead of a cheap attempt to replicate Empire’s big plot twist. But let’s face it: they threw it in as a desperate attempt to placate the fans. There never was any sort of plan. Abrams made the first movie with the sole intention of trying to recapture that nostalgic feel and fucked off, Rian Johnson took over with no notes and decided to do what he wanted, Trevorrow got fired, and Abrams got brought back for PR reasons because hey, people liked his movie, and he had to scramble to piece something together! Damn it, Disney! You literally have infinite resources! Hire someone with actual creative talent!

Oh wait, you did, and people hated it. Fuck.

So yeah. Rey’s parentage? Total waste, raises more questions than it answers. Chewie’s apparent death? Total waste, because he was actually on another ship! Though you could Force sense these things, Rey! Dark Side Rey in the trailer? Total waste, just a Force vision. That whole bit with C-3PO potentially sacrificing his entire identity? Total waste. No one seems to care, he gets no say, and after his memory gets wiped it’s treated as comic relief. Yeah, one last look at your friends indeed, Threepio. Some friends you have there. Oh, except Artoo’s got your memory backed up, so it doesn’t matter, just like everything else.

Oh yeah, and fuck Chewie’s medal! Who was really asking for that?

What a mess. What a disjointed, soulless, pandering mess. What a waste of potential, squandered on nothing. Bleh.

Oh well, at least we still have the Mandalorian. I’ve started watching that and it’s really cool so far.

[derkastellan]

BattleTech: The Star League - an exercise in advanced Fridge Logic

“I’ve considered “BattleTech: Star League” an all-time great sourcebook. It tells the origin story of the whole BattleTech universe up until the First Succession War. It also explains the full story behind General Kerensky’s Exodus, a major plot point repeatedly referred to in books, finally detailed. 

Back then when I got the book originally in the 90s I might not have really known that this was a setup to follow up with the Clan Invasion era of BattleTech. Or maybe I personally got it after that had already been launched. When it was released in 1988 the timeline shifted into the Fourth Succession War and there had been release referring to that mythical Star League.

Some books don’t fare as well when being re-read decades later, and “The Star League” is not an exception, though I have to admit I might be applying impossibly high standards...

Don’t think about it too hard

One talks of “fridge logic” when you set a piece of fiction aside, go to the fridge, and realize that the inner logic of the work does not quite add up. The point of fridge logic is that it is sufficiently convincing to keep you absorbing a piece of fiction but you might end up taking it apart later.

I’ve also been re-reading the Warrior Trilogy by Michael A. Stackpole and reminiscing about “Heir of the Dragon”. While Stackpole’s novels about the Fourth Succession War lay out a template for other BT novels, they also skew the setting heavily, completely upend its balance. “Heir to the Dragon” contrives as hard as it can to construe a War of 3039 that restore the setting balance long enough for it to persist until the events of 3050 - the Clan Invasion. In hindsight that book is full of fridge logic it seems unfair to call out “The Star League” but here I am.

It’s any author’s prerogative to time situations to maximize drama, to have events happen in a convenient way, to maximize the impact of a work of fiction. If there is too much of that with events happening all-too-convenient, we talk about a “deus ex machina.” The authors of “The Star League” (SL from now on) were trying hard to avoid that and to have a string of logical-seeming events follow like pearls on a chain. But when you look too close, it all comes apart...

Setting and world design can often become subservient to requirements of the plot. As I said, SL tries hard to avoid that, but it doesn’t quite accomplish it. The events I will focus on are the Periphery Uprising and the Amaris Coup (also names of chapter headings). These are part of the climax and are supposed to explain the downfall of the marvelous Star League itself.

What is needed?

The SL was the most advanced golden age of mankind, but the standard setting of BT in the 80s was an era of technological decline and petty scuffles. The challenge for the authors was to explain not only the rise of such a realm but describe its fall in a way that the downward spiral seems inevitable.

The original realm at the heart of human-occupied space, the Terran Hegemony, had to vanish through the course of events because the map of 3025 existed long before the map of 2781. For this to happen it was not enough to let a line of royal succession end, a whole realm had to collapse. Also, the end of the SL had already been blamed vaguely on treachery and so the story of that treachery had to be set up.

Furthermore, the fall from glory was a great opportunity for memorable drama, the end of a golden age, after all, and the preclude for centuries of war. 

There was only one problem: the SLDF.

The Star League Defense Forces were not only the most advanced but also basically the biggest fighting force in the BT history, led by brilliant General Kerensky. You cannot set that up and then hand-wave your way out of that setup. But the authors kind of did.

The basic plot points of the Periphery Uprising

The Periphery realms are exploited by the Inner Sphere lords and businesses for their own gain, resentment builds.

The ruler of the SL dies, orphaning his son. General Kerensky is named Protector of the Realm and the young lord his ward, but circumstances pretty much prevent the general from executing any of these duties.

Stefan Amaris, the leader of the Rim Worlds, conspires with other Periphery governments to ultimately achieve independence.

He befriends the future lord of the SL, a lonely minor and orphan. He proceeds to manipulate the young lord and gain influence over him.

A tense stand-off between the SLDF and Periphery rebels develops, including terrorism against the SLDF.

Suddenly 50 full mech divisions of fighting force appear that have been secretly built up and end up destroying almost as many divisions of SLDF forces scattered throughout the periphery. (There’s roughly 100 divisions of the SLDF in the periphery according to the book.) Where they cannot defeat the SLDF directly they drop prohibited nuclear bombs and move on.

[EDIT: To put this number into context: “ At its peak prior to the Clan Invasion, the AFFC represented the largest single military since General Aleksandr Kerensky took most of the Star League Defense Force beyond the Periphery, with over 268 BattleMech regiments.” (from: sarna.net) In the BT universe, according to the same source, a division is made up of 3 brigades, and a brigade of 3 regiments. Even if we assume that only 1 out of 3 brigades in a division is a mech brigade - after all a tank division does not consist entirely of tanks! - we still might be contemplating 150 mech regiments - a bit less than the Draconis Combine at the beginning of the First Succession War. Supposedly the Draconis Combine was involved in providing those mechs. Would they supply as many as they have themselves out of pure greed??]

Meanwhile Amaris’ Rim Worlds are suspiciously peaceful and the young lord calls in Amaris’ troups to protect the Hegemony as more and more troops of the SLDF leave it to fight in the Periphery Uprising.

In the final act, Amaris personally murders the young ruler, abusing his trust, and lets his troops enact a coup, almost completely overcoming the unsuspecting local forces (which they outnumber 2:1).

These are the events that earned Amaris the “honorific” the Ursurper and the events that follow see the destruction of the Hegemony in the liberation campaign, ending with a drive for freeing Earth itself and killing Amaris.

Why it doesn’t work

The bigger a conspiracy is the more likely it is that somebody talks. Supposedly the conspiracy involved...

the governments of all four periphery realms,

the members of dozens of independence movements spread over 1,000s of light years,

the militias and their many thousands or more members,

the personnel of half a dozen major merchant companies,

most of the military of the Rim worlds,

the members of those 50 divisions, and

their mercenary company trainers.

We are supposed to believe that the SL intelligence services were not capable to undermine a conspiracy numbering in the millions, that nobody went rogue, nobody talked. None of the Rim Worlds soldiers ever got drunk and said too much to a local during a night of debauchery of any kind. Nobody ever went to the authorities.

Not only that, all these people either enlisted in the plan or kept quiet for money. 

The SL is concerned where certain shipments of battlemechs are going but cannot squeeze it out of a single crew member even though they know who handled the shipments.

Amaris explicitly betrays a major independence movement but everyone else sticks to the plan.

There is enough black money moved around to fund not only the independence movements, but 50 divisions of battlemechs and more. The equipment is bought, so is the silence of those transporting it, and finally these people are trained in the Deep Periphery for years - which means building bases to host them on unsettled worlds beyond realm borders, requiring a constant stream of resources to sustain them.

Nothing of that left a trail for SL intelligence to follow?

We’re talking sums of money probably equivalent to the budget for the SLDF because these troops have to be created anew. In other words, vast amounts. How do the governments change their spending unnoticed? The SL does not do basic accounting? [EDIT: According to sarna.net the SLDF at its peak fielded 125 battle mech divisions. This is the result of 1 1/2 centuries of military spending. The Periphery governments are supposedly capable of creating 40% of that force on-the-fly with a training program hosted by a few mercenary units. How can you effectively train so many soldiers, especially to fight as large formations, without having an organization to match the SLDF or a major house military? It’s doubtful any Inner Sphere lord could match this feet - because they never have. If this was easily possible, why not double your own forces “in secret?”]

And here’s the worst part: It is established that the periphery is actually being exploited by the Inner Sphere for their own gain, so this major spending comes while essentially massive amounts of riches are funneled away anyway, in times of exploitation.

Does this really make sense? Do people take part in a scheme that takes a decade to unfold, including five years of separation from loved ones for many of them? Can the personnel of 50 divisions really be hidden in the ranks of staff of half a dozen transporting companies? 

(Also: Take for example the American War of Independence. Roughly a third of the people of the Colonies were Loyalists. Even in occupied populaces resenting their occupiers you would have some people actively collaborating with their oppressors. Even more - many periphery worlds owe the SL for either being settle-able or for making their lives a lot easier through things like cheap water purification technology...)

More fridge logic

Other facts that have been established:

The SL has entrenched its troops in fortifications in the periphery.

The SL doctrine for fortifications is to enable troops to strike from hidden exits, not to lock itself in or simply concentrate its forces.

The prime fortifications of the SL, “Castles Brian”, are under mountains and underground with many tunnels and hidden exits.

So, can the rebels simply drop nuclear bombs on these guys “and move on?” 

They can’t. These devices don’t raze mountains. Also you need a delivery vehicle. These fortifications should have had anti-air defenses, but even if not or if ineffective against the chosen delivery vehicle, they are still hidden behind tons and tons of rock.

The popular image of nuclear bombs is of an all-destroying force but this is not accurate. Militarily the stopping power of a nuclear bomb has been established and for use against armored forces like tank divisions the actual kill zone is rather small - like a third of a mile in diameter if I remember correctly. Take then into account that battlemechs are better armored and secured also against radiation than modern armored vehicles and they can even be made to operate in the vacuum of space. (And space and radiation go together...)

Furthermore, given that terrorist strikes have been an tactic mentioned within the same pages I’m covering here, including suicide attacks and a localized nuclear strike, which SLDF commander would not spread his or her forces to the best of their abilities to avoid vulnerability?

Thinking this further, the SLDF is operating in enemy territory - these people are bombing their own land. So they just blow up a few megatons next to their own population centers? Ignore the fallout on civilians that are entirely their own population?? 

It quickly becomes clear that this “tactic” is more a plot device than anything. These rebels are so unscrupulous and amoral, they can resort to things the SLDF wouldn’t do and therefore best it easily. This supposedly explains away all the advantages the SLDF enjoy - their stockpiles, technological superiority, fortifications, advanced training and doctrines, even the many years of actual combat experience.

The same plot device is used in how Amaris’ Rim Worlds troops eliminate resistance in the Hegemony. Now there’s less inhibition to use such weaponry given these are not their home worlds. But the other conditions still apply - especially since many of the Hegemony worlds explicitly have Castles Brian, and many several. 

And regular plot convenience

Other things like the automated defense systems of the Hegemony were simple plot convenience, there to be ironically used against those that hoped to enjoy their protection. This helps explain the bloody and protracted campaign need to win the Hegemony back.

The Amaris Coup’s basic design depends on many things - including...

the greed of the Inner Sphere lords completely clouding their self-preservation. After all they sell materiel to staff 50 mech divisions when originally the presence of a single mech battalion in one periphery realm was almost a casus belli. 

the continued cooperation and secrecy of all participants during the decade where Amaris unfolds his plan to win Richard Cameron’s confidence. What was the backup plan if that wasn’t possible?

the complete lack of anyone else caring even a little about Richard Cameron, like Kerensky doing his actual duties during this time period, especially given the fact that he’s supposedly meticulous, dutiful, and virtuous without measure.

the administration of the Hegemony not developing the least of initiative.

that the Kerensky reforms made the SLDF so dependent on his leadership he couldn’t delegate this duty to anyone else. What kind of genius makes themselves unreplaceable and traps themselves in a situation where they cannot serve their duties?

that nobody notices Amaris deploys double as many soldiers to the Hegemony than he originally stated. So nobody noticed the extra beds, extra meals, extra vehicles, extra battlemechs? Did half of them hide in the toilets and get their half-meals shoved under the door? These troops were housed on Hegemony territory and supplied by the Hegemony administration. How do you pull off such a sleight-of-hand?

We’re actually closing in on “deus ex machina” quick. Yes, such big plots are often contrived. But there is a measure, and if you look closely, this book does not come together as well as it seems.

Conclusion

Just as Kerensky’s Exodus, it’s best not to think too hard about how all of this is even possible or all unravels. It’s both disillusioning and concerning that this is still one of the best setting books I have ever read. For all its flaws it creates really a lot of good lore and has an engaging plot.

This is kind of what to expect when the broad strokes are already made and somebody has to fill them in. Kerensky’s Exodus or the sudden fall of the SL were outlined, and filling in the gaps makes kind of clear that this was a tall order. The book mostly succeeds, even. It just has to perform a few sleights of hand too many to get there...

[PS and foot note: I’m currently reading also bits of “BattleTech: Explorer Corps”. When reading about ComStar Primus Simms’ visions I noticed that in the BT universe if somebody has visions they are usually accurate and plot-relevant, linking plot elements without apparent cause. In “The Star League” one Cameron predicts the end of the Terran Hegemony, for example. Such visions usually revolve around elements whose meaning is clear in hindsight, like Simms’ seeing “visions of monsters” who really are the symbols or emblems of invading Clans. If we add Stackpole’s foray into a mystical duel between mech warriors defying scientific explanation (in the Warrior Trilogy between Yorinaga Kurita and both Kell brothers, Patrick and Morgan). From this we can conclude that deep down the BT universe has a supernatural element.]

[sweusource]

ESSENTIAL STAR WARS LEGENDS/EXPANDED UNIVERSE BOOKS. 

Many people have asked for that, so I decided to do a list with the essential novels and comics of the EU/Legends. This is my personal opinion and I have a very bad memory too so I guess, I haven’t included many others, so if you think there’s a book or any other EU content that should be on this list too, please, just let me know and I’ll put them on this list.

Obviously, I haven’t read all the books of the EU and tbh I’m not a fan of anything related to Rise of the Empire era, prequels, and The Clone Wars. All my favorite content is from Rebellion Era and post-ROTJ.

Anyway, here it’s my list of the most important novels and comics of the EU.

The EU books are divided into different eras.

Before the Republic Era - 37,000 BBY to 25,000 BBY

Old Republic Era - 5000 BBY (years before the Battle of Yavin to 1000 BBY)

Rise of the Empire Era - 1000 BBY to 22 BBY

Clone Wars Era - 22 BBY to 19 BBY

Imperial Era - 19 BBY to 0 BBY

Rebellion Era - 0 BBY to 4 ABY (4 years after the Battle of Yavin)

New Republic Era - 5.5 ABY to 22 ABY

New Jedi Order Era - 24.5 ABY to 36 ABY

Legacy Era - 40 ABY to 139 ABY

BEFORE THE REPUBLIC ERA

Dawn of the Jedi: Into The Void   

Dawn of the Jedi 

Force Storm

The Prisoner of Bogan

Force War

OLD REPUBLIC ERA

Tales of the Jedi

The Golden Age of the Sith

The Fall of the Sith Empire

Ulic Qel-Droma and the Beast Wars of Onderon

The Saga of Nomi Sunrider

The Freedon Nadd Uprising

Dark Lords of the Sith

The Sith War

Redemption 

Crosscurrent 

 Knights of The Old Republic (Comics)

Crossroads

Commencement

Flashpoint 

Reunion

Days of Fear

Nights of Anger

Daze of Hate

Knights of Suffering

Vector

Exalted

Turnabout

Vindication

Prophet Motive

Faithful Execution

Dueling Ambitions

Masks

The Reaping

Destroyer

Demon 

War

The Old Republic Novels

Fatal Alliance

Deceived

Revan 

Annihilation

Knight Errant

Aflame

Deluge

Escape

Darth Bane Trilogy

Path of Destruction 

Rule of Two

Dynasty of Evil 

RISE OF THE EMPIRE ERA

Legacy of the Jedi 

Part 1 (chapter 1 onward) takes place during 89 BBY. 

Part 2, "Dooku and Qui-Gon Jinn" (chapter 7 onward) takes place during 76 BBY. 

Part 3 "Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi" (chapter 14 onward) takes place during 44 BBY. 

Part 4 "Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker" (chapter 20 onward) takes place during 22 BBY

Darth Plagueis 

 Jedi: The Dark Side

Jedi Apprentice

The Rising Force

The Dark Rival

The Hidden Past

The Mark of the Crown

The Defenders of the Dead

The Uncertain Path

The Captive Temple

The Day of Reckoning

The Fight for Truth

The Shattered Peace

The Deadly Hunter

The Evil Experiment

The Dangerous Rescue

The Ties That Bind

The Death of Hope

The Call to Vengeance

The Only Witness

The Threat Within

Secrets of the Jedi

The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader

Cloak of Deception

Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Novelization)

Republic

Prelude to Rebellion

Vow of Justice

Outlander

Emissaries to Malastare

Twilight

Infinity's End

The Hunt for Aurra Sing

Darkness

The Stark Hyperspace War

The Devaronian Version

Rite of Passage

Honor and Duty

The New Face of War

The Battle of Jabiim

Show of Force

Dreadnaughts of Rendili

Trackdown

Siege of Saleucami

Into the Unknown

Hidden Enemy

Jedi Quest

Path to Truth

The Way of the Apprentice

The Trail of the Jedi

The Dangerous Games

The Master of Disguise

The School of Fear

The Shadow Trap

The Moment of Truth

The Changing of the Guard

The False Peace

The Final Showdown

Outbound Flight 

The Approaching Storm

Episode II Attack of the Clones (Novelization)

The Cestus Deception

Jedi Trial

Episode III Revenge of the Sith  (Novelization)

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

Kenobi

The Cestus Deception

Darth Vader and the Lost Command

Coruscant Nights

Mace Windu

Shaak Ti 

Aayla Secura  

Count Dooku 

Yoda

Darth Vader and the Ninth Assassin

Jedi 

Jedi Twilight

Street of Shadows

Patterns of Force

 The Last of the Jedi

The Desperate Mission

Dark Warning

Underworld

Death on Naboo

A Tangled Web

Return of the Dark Side

Secret Weapon

Against the Empire

Master of Deception

Reckoning

The Last Jedi 

Darth Vader and the Cry of Shadows

A New Hope: The Life of Luke Skywalker

Rebel Dawn

Death Star

The Han Solo Adventures

Han Solo at Stars' End

Han Solo's Revenge

Han Solo and the Lost Legacy

Dark Forces (Novellas)  

Soldier for the Empire

Rebel Agent

Jedi Knight

Han Solo Trilogy

The Paradise Snare 

The Hutt Gambit

Rebel Dawn

The Lando Calrissian Adventures

Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu

Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon

Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka

REBELLION ERA

Episode IV: A New Hope  (Novelization)

The Fight for Justice

Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina

Scoundrels

Rebel Force 

Target

Hostage

Renegade

Firefight

Trapped

Uprising 

Allegiance 

Choices of One

Empire and Rebellion

Razor's Edge

Honor Among Thieves

Splinter of the Mind's Eye (The first Expanded Universe novel)

Episode V The Empire Strikes Back (Novelization)

Shadows of the Empire 

Mara Jade. By The Emperor’s Hand

Mara Jade: A Night on the Town

Tales from Jabba's Palace

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Novelization)

The Truce at Bakura

NEW REPUBLIC ERA

Jedi Prince

The Glove of Darth Vader

The Lost City of the Jedi

Zorba the Hutt's Revenge

Mission from Mount Yoda

Queen of the Empire

Prophets of the Dark Side

Tales from the New Republic

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor 

X-Wing (Different eras and timelines) (from 6.5 ABY to 44  ABY)

Rogue Squadron

Wedge's Gamble

The Krytos Trap

The Bacta War

Wraith Squadron

Iron Fist

Solo Command

Isard's Revenge

Starfighters of Adumar

Mercy Kill

The Courtship of Princess Leia

Tatooine Ghost 

The Thrawn Trilogy (Novels and Comics)

Heir to the Empire

Dark Force Rising 

The Last Command

Dark Empire 

Vol I

Vol II

Empire’s End 

The Jedi Academy Trilogy 

Jedi Search

Dark Apprentice

Champions of the Force

I, Jedi

Children of the Jedi

Darksaber 

Planet of Twilight 

The Crystal Star

The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy 

Before the Storm

Shield of Lies

Tyrant’s Test

The New Rebellion

The Corellian Trilogy 

Ambush at Corellia

Assault at Selonia

Showdown at Centerpoint

The Hand of Thrawn Duology

Specter of the Past

Vision of the Future

Union 

Judge's Call (Short Story)

Scourge

Junior Jedi Knights

The Golden Globe

Lyric's World

Promises

Anakin's Quest

Vader's Fortress

Kenobi's Blade

Survivor’s Quest

Young Jedi Knights

The Rise of the Shadow Academy

Heirs of the Force 

Shadow Academy

The Lost Ones

Lightsabers

Darkest Knight

Jedi Under Siege

The Fall of the Diversity Alliance

Shards of Alderaan

Diversity Alliance

Delusions of Grandeur

Jedi Bounty

The Emperor's Plague

Under Black Sun

Return to Ord Mantell

Trouble on Cloud City

Crisis at Crystal Reef

NEW JEDI ORDER ERA

The New Jedi Order (NJO)

Vector Prime

Dark Tide Duology (Onslaught and Ruin)

Agents of Chaos Duology (Hero's Trial and Jedi Eclipse)

Balance Point 

Recovery

Edge of Victory Duology (Conquest and Rebirth)

Star by Star

Dark Journey

Enemy Lines Duology (Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand)

Traitor

Destiny's Way

Ylesia

Force Heretic Trilogy (Remnant, Refugee and Reunion)

The Final Prophecy

The Unifying Force 

Dark Nest

The Joiner King

The Unseen Queen

The Swarm War

LEGACY ERA

Legacy Of The Force

Betrayal

Bloodlines

Tempest

Exile

Sacrifice

Inferno 

Fury 

Revelation 

Invincible

Fate Of The Jedi

Outcast 

Omen

Abyss 

Backlash

Allies

Vortex

Conviction

Ascension

Apocalypse

Crucible

Legacy (Comics) (50 Issues/10 Volumes)

Book I

Book II

Book III

[cromulentbookreview]

It Can Definitely Happen Here

Or: Internment by Samira Ahmed!

This will be a likely be a short review for the following reasons:

I’m lazy.

I only just finished the book

I had the ARC for months and only just got to it, see #1.

No one reads this, this blog is literally just me screaming into the black void that is the internet letting it know that I exist.

The book is out today and, once again, I have missed the point of an “advanced review.” Advanced meaning “in advance of the publication date.” Meaning “probably not the day the damn book comes out.”

Note: It has come to my attention that the book actually comes out on March 19, 2019. So...I actually got this review done on time. Ha. Aha. Ahahahahahahahaha.

Also, this book takes on a whole new meaning after the recent terrorist attack in New Zealand. I went back and reread some scenes and cried even more than I did already.

And now back to my regularly scheduled review.

Layla Amin is a regular American teenager. Only the America she lives in is under the control of a bunch of racist pieces of shit. Ahmed never gives names to these assholes in power - you can guess - but they don’t even really need names. It’s depressingly easy to imagine just who these people are. Anyway, the people in power are doing whatever they want. So they’ve declared all Muslims enemies of the state. Because of course they would. 

Unfortunately, Layla comes from a Desi family who are Muslim. They’re not super religious or anything, but that doesn’t matter. Rather than checking the “no religion” box on the census, the Amins refused to hide who they are, so they put down that they are Muslim. And now the Administration is using that data to round up all Muslim Americans and put them in internment camps.

Sound familiar? Yeah, because we’ve totally done it before. The Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII might feel like distant history, but it seriously wasn’t that long ago. Like, for serious serious not that long ago. 77 years is not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. People who were in those internment camps are still around. Like American Treasure and Mr. Sulu, George Takei who was just a kid when he was interred, first in Rohwer, Arkansas then at Tule Lake in California. As you can imagine, the internment camps for Japanese Americans were put in places that were less than hospitable. Like the middle of the desert. Because humanity can really be the worst sometimes.

Anyway, back to Layla. One night she breaks the nation-wide curfew to go and see her boyfriend, David, as teens are wont to do. Soon after she gets home, though, men with guns show up at her house and give her and her parents 10 minutes to pack up what they need. They’re taken to L.A. where they’re put on a train then put onto buses to a camp called Mobius somewhere outside Independence, California. Just a hop, skip and a jump from Manzanar! So...the desert. And no, this Mobius isn’t anything like the famous Möbius strip, either. This is a cross between a FEMA camp like you’d see after a natural disaster combined with a prison camp. Sure, they have food, water, and adequate shelter. It’s still a goddamn prison camp, though, run by the sadistic Director, whose actual name is never given but you can really picture who this guy looks like. Layla’s parents are, naturally, terrified by the whole situation and just want to keep their heads down and survive. Not Layla, though. She is going to resist, goddamn it! Plus, there’s a guard who is totally on her side. Or is he?

So, Internment - overall I thought the book was OK, but then again, I’m pretty biased towards stories that feature magic and dragons and steampunk. 15-minutes-into-the-future dystopias are less my thing at the moment. Probably because we live in one, but still. The writing was good, especially the descriptions of the yucky dusty desert. I’m a Pacific Northwesterner to my core - give me rain and trees, not desert. Let’s just ignore the fact that a huge portion of my home state is desert. I did like how Ahmed didn’t condemn Layla’s parents for wanting to keep their heads down and endure. Lots of YA novels tend to dismiss or ignore the fears and worries of parents in favor of the teen perspective, so it was nice to see a YA novel that acknowledges the parents’ fears. The main villain, the Director, was a mite cartoonish - but then again, if you watch Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage and think the Nazis in that movie are cartoonish, just remember they used actual court transcripts of Sophie Scholl’s trial for that movie. Evil can be pretty cartoony - doesn’t make it less scary. 

However, my favorite part of the whole book is Laya’s friend Ayesha. Ayesha is the best. Why? Because she loves Star Wars and also Riz Ahmed. Because, seriously, how can you not love both Star Wars and Riz Ahmed. I mean, come on:

He’s just so damn gorgeous.

I mean, come on, just look at him.

How much more proof do you need? Because I can look at gifs of Riz Ahmed all day.

Seriously, and yes this is an unpopular opinion alert, but Rogue One might just be my favorite Star Wars movie because I loved all the characters so much and every time I watch it I bawl my eyes out. I seriously wish Rogue One could’ve been a 10-part miniseries so we could’ve gotten to know the characters better. Like Cassian and K2-SO. And Bodhi - I want to know everything about his life and what he’s been up to. The novelization of the movie only offers so much! And I definitely could use a whole trilogy of Baze and Chirrut’s adventures.

Seriously, what were those two up to the whole time? How did they meet? How long have they been adventuring together? What was their life like before the Empire? What were they up to back when they were Guardians of the Whills? What kind of mischief did Chirrut get up to that Baze had to rescue him from? THIS IS INFORMATION THAT I NEED.

The tie-in novels only tell us so much, damn it! Though Rebel Rising was quite good (fuck yeah, Beth Revis!). Why can’t all of the Rogue One crew get spin-off novels? There were a few comics featuring the origin story of Cassian and K2, but I need a whole epic YA novel of their adventures. And Bodhi’s. And Baze and Chirrut’s. All they got was a middle grade novel. It wasn’t even an origin story! It was still good, though. I just want more. MORE, DAMN IT.

Huh, I knew I said this was going to be short review of Samira Ahmed’s Internment, but instead I got into a major Star Wars/Riz Ahmed spiral, there. Sometimes I just can’t help myself. I’ve gotta look at some more Riz Ahmed gifs.

God, he’s gorgeous.

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone looking for some scary “it could definitely happen here” YA fiction.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Racists.

RATING: 3.5/5

RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019. So. Uh. Today.  Actually, it comes out March 19, 2019. For some reason I got the two dates confused. So I was actually a week ahead here? I...I made a deadline? What...what is this feeling....is it...accomplishment of some sort?

Nah, this is a tumblr blog for wasting time, not an accomplishment.

RIZ AHMED:

[callioope]

So I’m just a little less than halfway through Rebel Rising...

...and just at the point where a rebel, Reece Tallent, betrayed Saw and was about to reveal Jyn’s identity before Saw took him out. Saw just commanded Jyn to go into the bunker and took off.

So far, it’s not as bad as I was expecting. The writing style definitely feels more YA, and it’s really a fast read. I mean, I got halfway through during an evening and I was taking notes. It’s strange though because the author goes out of her way to keep Jyn’s hands clean--Jyn is not a “murderer”--but then elements are quite violent. For instance, Saw grapples with Reece and there’s a line about how he was cutting his face as if he was going to skin it. Yikes! There are also horrible flechette weapons used to mass-slaughter innocents and Imperials, but the Reece thing really got me. Not because it’s super gorey (I’ve read and watched Game of Thrones/ASoIaF, obviously), but it just stands out a little with the tone of the rest of the book. 

Also, it is kind of boring that Jyn really spends year 8 - 14 in Saw’s cadre just at his base on the planet Wrea. She never leaves, just trains and forges docs. I do really like how clever they’ve made her, how she enjoys that work to exercise her mind, but we only get a handful of missions, and that is definitely something I would have wanted (I was aware this would happen based on reviews I read, and still disappointed we couldn’t have had more). 

There is a scene where Jyn is instructed to assassinate an Imperial (she even gets a blaster rifle with a sniper scope attachment), and I think this is supposed to be the incident that was referred to in the Rogue One novelization (during the Eadu fight, when Jyn accuses Cassian of following orders like a stormtrooper, she briefly remembers a mission that Saw sent her on but the novel doesn’t say the details before she shakes off the memory). Except that even though Jyn does pull the trigger, it’s made super clear that the target was killed by land mine traps that Saw’s men had also set up (she was just ‘back up insurance’). Given the guilt she felt about that memory, however brief a line it was, I was expected it to go horribly wrong somehow. But she is just ‘equally horrified and relieved’ that she wasn’t responsible. Seemed a little bit like a cop out, but, idk. Should Jyn have been darker? Not sure. Kind of on the fence about it.

We’ll see how the rest of the book goes! I wanted to read it for the post Saw years, so here we go. I know there’s a romance between Hadder Ponta and I’ve heard it’s not great (I mean, there’s a dialogue snippet on Wookiepedia that was pretty horrible). 

I’m absolutely unopposed to the idea of Jyn having a love interest besides Cassian; in fact, I prefer back stories that give them some experience (however awkward or brief it might be) over the idea of them being each other’s first relationship experience. I think first relationships are really difficult to navigate; it’s hard to predict what you’ll be like with another person and you learn a lot about yourself when you engage in that kind of commitment. And Cassian and Jyn have enough going against them in terms of diving into a relationship that for them to be completely in unnavigated waters seems like a lot.

Anyways, I’m not opposed to them being each other’s first, just prefer they’re not. But it has to be executed well.

It’s bed time for now; 50/50 chance I stay home tomorrow because if I can’t talk I probably shouldn’t go to work, and if I do stay home I bet I’m finishing this!

[the-music-keeper]

My Reading List During Winter Break

Not much, but in my defense, the holidays have been going on, and personally, I don’t think a book a week is a bad rate. And these are books I’ve had since last Christmas that I have had no time to read. None. Whatsoever. Not that I have to explain myself.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the list:

Star Wars: Bloodline by Claudia Gray

With few exceptions, I will like any Star Wars novel I read. Bloodline, however, is especially great because it’s a worldbuilder – it gives the reader an inside glimpse into galactic politics during the New Republic era. Plus you’ve got Leia doing some Sherlock Holmes detective work, and I love it.

(It was also nice to have one of my headcanons made canon. Before I read the book, I didn’t think Leia would easily forgive her father for the atrocities he committed. The book confirmed this – Leia still hates Vader. With a passion. And honestly, who can blame her?)

Star Wars: Rebel Rising by Beth Revis

This book is absolute gold. It’s basically a backstory fanfiction for Jyn Erso, and I love it. It makes so much sense, and it ties in so well with Rogue One. And it just makes you love Jyn so much more and cry all the harder when she didn’t get the happy ending she deserved.

Jyn is all of us in this book. She’s just trying her best, and sometimes she doesn’t know what the best thing is. But she’s trying, and that’s all she can do.

And it breaks my heart. I really, really wish she’d gotten a happy ending with Cassian.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

I tried and failed to finish Carry On three times. This time I finally finished it, and I liked it a lot. But here’s the thing – this book is like a Crock-pot. It is a slow, slow burn, especially for someone like me, a reader who’s not big on mysteries or wizardry (no, I never read the Harry Potter series). Now, granted, the ending is very satisfying because the answers to all the mysteries going on tie into one another and all the loose ends are tied up. But I don’t recommend this story if you don’t like slow burns.

[blue-mint-winter]

So I read this article about the problems with biographical novels in new EU and I have some thoughts on the subject...

The main criticism of this kind of novels is that they span a long time and tell the life story of the main character, instead of concentrating on specific important event or just one interesting time in their life. Filling up all gaps in just one book is going to limit new stories we can get about the character.

The article doesn’t consider why this is happening. In my opinion, there are two reasons - there are no plans for more big stories about the character, because they are relatively minor (example: Galen and Lyra Erso in Catalyst) or the book is actually a backstory of a character (example: Thrawn) and there is a big possibility of stories about their future adventures.

Anyway, the article’s criticism can be debunked easily, because these novels leave a lot of gaps for future stories.

Rebel Rising - Jyn’s time in Saw’s partisans wasn’t documented day by day, there’s a room for more missions. Jyn’s time as a drifter for a few years was also skimmed over, giving room for more adventures.

Catalyst - actually, I doubt we’d get any more stories about Galen and/or Lyra in this novel’s timeframe. It’s a prequel and backstory for their opening scene in Rogue One. But there’s room for more Krennic appearances during Clone Wars and Empire era as he had a life outside of hovering over Galen.

Tarkin - backstory of Tarkin which I doubt we would have gotten anywhere else + one adventure about getting the rebels that stole his ship. Still gives lots of room for more appearances during his time in Judicials, Clone Wars, and Empire era.

Thrawn - the story of how he became admiral and got involved with Lothal issues. Still doesn’t tell us anything about his days in Chiss Ascendancy, meeting Anakin during Clone Wars and there’s definitely room for more stories with Thrawn in the Imperial ranks.

In conclusion, I think the article greatly underestimates the ability of SW storytellers to make up more stuff and fill the gaps. Of course if there’s actually interest in characters mentioned to get more stories. At the very least we can count on some cameos. These characters don’t always have to be in the spotlight, they can appear in someone else’s stories too as supporting or background cast.

[jyndor]

I’m the Bixcassian anon and it’s no bait. And I’m not saying she and Jyn would be rivals, I’m simply stating that I think Cassian never stopped loving Bix and thought about her on his last moments, what’s the problem on that? I have nothing against Jyn, I think she’s not very interesting but I don’t hate on her. And I think Cassian loved Bix until his last day because she’s the love of his life

lol that's literally just your opinion anon, I'm happy it makes you feel better to think that cassian "you're not the only one who's lost everything" andor is disappointed and heartbroken and experiencing no second chances at love in his last days and last moments. hope that brings you comfort, but also know it's literally just your headcanon. in that it's not based on actual canon but hey I am part of the rogue one fandom, we have all kinds of delusional headcanons so welcome to the club. for instance cassian opens his eyes in the last second so obviously a ship comes and saves them and he notices it and they live.

in all seriousness if you haven't read the rogue one novelization it may actually give you a new appreciation for all of the characters in rogue one because it does a lot of work to make up for what the reshoots likely did to a lot of these characters. the novel was written like years and years ago so it mentions cassian's old backstory but I'm sincerely recommending it for some good character work. I think there are a lot of people in the andor fandom who didn't spend much time in the rogue one fandom and I highly recommend reading the rogue one novels (catalyst, rebel rising even though it's not my favorite it fleshes out saw and jyn's relationship, ofc the novelization) because they're really helpful to understanding the characters a bit better. especially since cassian is so different in andor.

I'm gonna give you some advice on fandom etiquette: telling someone who ships something that their ship is dumb and not as good as your ship is kind of weird. the reason I think you may be baiting me is like first off there's been a dickhead going around harassing queer wlw who ship rebelcaptain and saying things about how melshi is cassian's true love and jyn blows lol WHICH OKAYY i guess we all have hobbies, and also I've been in fandom for a long ass time. ive seen how trolls behave. I didn't grow up in the atla fandom to not be able to smell ship war baiting a mile away.

I'm not trying to argue about b*xcassian because who cares what i have to say about them since I don't like their dynamic as a ship in the show. lol go find some fellow shippers to talk about how bland jyn is and how much, despite all evidence to the contrary, cassian has no interest in her.

it's one thing to go to someone and say "hey let's talk about x ship we disagree on and what you don't like" but don't be shocked that people might think you're a troll when you come at them with a ship they've explained that they don't like and also saying their otp doesn't actually mean anything lol

luckily this stuff just makes me laugh but no anon, I have no way of knowing you're sincere. you go on anon and you forfeit the right to be shocked when people don't take you at your word on things. that's the trade off for being able to communicate anonymously.

anyway I live on trolly anons so if you are trolling please feed me seymour feed me now, if you are sincere do just try to avoid doing this to other people in the future because some people find it hurtful.

[kaelinaloveslomaris]

Hey there :) how are you? I wanted to ask you what star wars books you own?

Haha, want a picture of my Star Wars bookshelf?

The top shelf is new canon, plus some of my reference books that were too tall/didn’t fit in the main shelf. The other two shelves are all EU Legends, except the six tall books on the left of the middle shelf, which are the rest of my reference (except my cross-section and blueprint books, which are on a different shelf and not pictured here).

The books are in chronological order, to the best of my ability. (The exceptions are the anthology-type books, like The Rise of the Empire in new canon, which has Tarkin and A New Dawn in it. Thrawn technically takes place between them, but I can’t exactly put that book in the middle of the anthology, lolz. Same with my novelizations of the PT and OT movies. I have them in anthology collections instead of separate books, so those just kinda sit between the reference and the rest of the EU.)

Complete list/breakdown of the books I own under the cut, if you’re really interested.

Of the new canon, I have Catalyst, Ahsoka, Lords of the Sith, Tarkin, A New Dawn, Thrawn, Lost Stars, the Rogue One novelization, Heir to the Jedi, Battlefront: Twilight Company, and the Force Awakens novelization. I’m planning on pre-ordering Battlefront II: Inferno Squad, though I might actually wait until it comes out in paperback. I haven’t decided yet.

It should be noted that I haven’t actually read all of these books yet, not by half. Of the new canon, I’ve read Catalyst and Heir to the Jedi, though I’ve perused the Rogue One novelization, and I’ve listened to the audiobooks of Aftermath and Aftermath: Life Debt.

The reference books on the top shelf are a combination of EU and new canon reference (they are EU unless otherwise noted), and include the four “handbook” type things (Imperial Handbook, Book of Sith, The Jedi Path, and The Bounty Hunter Code), Sword Fighting in the Star Wars Universe (which is not so much an in-verse reference as a kind of making-of, talking about where the lightsaber fighting styles and the Jedi culture/religion came from/were adapted from), The Essential Reader’s Companion for the EU books (which I just picked up yesterday, actually), the Rogue One Rebel Dossier (new canon), the Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide (new canon), The Essential Atlas, and the Complete Locations.

The reference books on the second shelf are all EU Legends. I have the New Essential Guides to Droids, Vehicles & Vessels, Weapons & Technology, and Alien Species, Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force, and the Essential Guide to Warfare.

Then finally, moving on to the sprawling mess that is the EU. I have the Prequel Trilogy novelizations in one book, then the Dark Lord Trilogy, which includes Labyrinth of Evil, Revenge of the Sith (again, I have two copies of this, but it was cheaper to buy the anthology versions, so *shrug*), and Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, then the Original Trilogy novelizations in one book. Like I said earlier, these aren’t in chronological order because of how they were set up, so it was easier to just stick them at the front and put the rest in order without them. Plus they’re the only ones not mass market paperback, so… They wouldn’t really fit with how I have the others laid out anyways.

So. Legends. I have, in stack one, Outbound Flight, another separate copy of the TPM novelization (because I bought it before I realized it would be cheaper to get the anthologies, and it has an extra short story from Darth Maul’s POV in it, so I kept it), Kenobi, the Han Solo Trilogy (The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, and Rebel Dawn), the Han Solo Adventures, Scoundrels, Shadows of the Empire, and The Truce at Bakura.

Stack two: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor (this one is honestly one of my favorites), the first part of the X-wing series (Rogue Squadron, Wedge’s Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War, Wraith Squadron, Iron Fist, and Solo Command), The Courtship of Princess Leia, and Tatooine Ghost.

Stack three: the Thrawn trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command), X-wing: Isard’s Revenge, X-wing: Starfighters of Adumar, the Hand of Thrawn duology (Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future), and Survivor’s Quest.

Of these, I have read Kenobi, the first two books of the Han Solo trilogy, SotE, Bakura, Mindor, and the first three books of the X-wing series. I’m currently reading The Bacta War. I’m trying to work through these somewhat chronologically, so I haven’t read any from the third shelf yet.

Speaking of… shelf three. I have the entire New Jedi Order series except Star by Star, which I just haven’t acquired yet. I keep waiting for it to show up at this used book store near my house that sells mass market paperbacks like this for half the price. They have a ton of EU books, but I’ve never seen that one there. I also keep an eye on it on Amazon, and if it ever drops below $6, I’ll grab it there. But, since I’m reading chronologically, I’m not too worried about needing it any time soon. :)

Then I have the entire Legacy of the Force series, the Dark Nest trilogy (The Joiner King, The Unseen Queen, and The Swarm War), and all the Fate of the Jedi books except Apocalypse for the same reason I don’t yet have Star by Star. Then X-wing: Mercy Kill and Crucible. I also have a separate novelization of ANH, for the same reason as TPM, but I still have it because I got it from Amazon, and it would have cost me more that the cost of the book to ship it back. So I just kept it.

Anyways. That’s my crazy collection of Star Wars books. I also want to get the Art of Rogue One, but I’m hoping to find that at my book store too, because even if it’s not half price (only the mass market paperbacks are fully half price), it’ll probably be cheaper there than anywhere else.

[fymeetrasurik]

Rebel Rising

I got the new book about Jyn! Funny story, I knew this was a junior novel, but in my mind i thought that meant teen. So i was in my bookstore looking for a good long while. I eventually asked and it was in the kids section, like little kids. So 1, i felt like a jerk lol, and 2, that’s super weird to me. Cause given what i know about Jyn and this very book, it’s weird to me it’s in the kids section.

Anyway, I’m very excited to read it. I’ve read till chapter 3 and so far i’m totally into it. Little Jyn is great and this is exactly the story i wanted to see. Her between Krennic arriving to her home and the movie. Other funny story, i started writing a fic about this very topic until i heard this book was being made. (Which btw, my aftermath between Galen and Orson is almost exactly what it was in the rogue one novelization before i read it lol)

So i’ll read this and give a round up of thoughts i guess when I’m done, so yeah!

[thebookbeard-blog]

December is for Star Wars.

At least that's what I decided at the end of 2015 after watching The Force Awakens, a movie that re-kindled a love and passion that had been dormant since my teenage years. I went back to the theater three more times. I left each showing feeling like a kid, in the best of ways. I was, at almost thirty years old, Star Wars trash once again -- a label that I happily and readily accepted. I began to consume more SW-related pop culture. I started watching Star Wars Rebels, which in time I came to realize captures the spirit of the original trilogy better than almost anything else. I started reading some of the comics being put out by Marvel at the time, chiefly Kieron Gillen's Darth Vader run, a brilliant piece of storytelling on its own. Then I started to explore some of the books set in the Star Wars universe. 

The trash of the thing.

The first SW book I ever read was Claudia Gray's Lost Stars. My expectations were low: Star Wars is such a visually rich setting, after all, and I had doubts as to how well it would translate to the written word. If anything, I only expected a fun romp through the Star Wars universe. I certainly didn't expect it to be an arresting and heart-wrenching piece of fiction. But it turned out to be both. I loved it enough that it was the first book I picked as a favorite read for last year. And I loved Gray's writing enough that I would eagerly pick up whatever she wrote for the expanded universe next. The fact that this happened to be a story that focused on Leia increased my interested only by a hell of a lot.

Bloodline features and older, wiser, slightly weary Leia, still serving in her function as a Senator for the New Republic. At the beginning of the story, tired of all the ceremony and hypocrisy of politics, she's determined to retire from it all, but not before engaging in one last diplomatic mission which she hopes will do some actual, genuine good for the galaxy -- not to mention serve as one final adventure. That this adventure should prove to uncover a vast and deep conspiracy that threatens not only her personal safety and reputation but the fate of the entire galaxy should really come as no big surprise -- this is a Star Wars story, after all.

Gray's portrayal of Leia is beautifully nuanced, and balances the political and personal aspects of the character with grace and aplomb. This is a Leia that is a brilliant and savvy politician, as well as a bad-ass who knows how to handle a blaster and is ready to throw down at a moment’s notice.

Leia lifted her blaster, losing her sights on Rinnrivin’s guard — and targeting the central strut of the tunnel support directly overhead. One bolt held the entire thing together. That bolt was no larger than a child’s fist. At this range, in semi-darkness, perhaps one shot in a thousand might be capable of destroying that bolt. But Leia made the shot.

In short, the very same Leia that we all know and love. The same Leia that the late, great Carrie Fisher brought to life. Gray's capable prose does her more than enough justice.

The story is made all the more interesting by the fact that it deals heavily with politics, something that the prequels tried to do with very mixed and muddy results. It’s one of the more fascinating aspects in Bloodline however, and the intrigue and West Wing-like drama of it all carries the story through. That the political landscape of the novel happens to look very much like our own just adds a more surreal and slightly ominous layer to it all. 

Gray has gone on record to say that Bloodline wasn’t written as commentary, but it's pretty hard, especially after the events of last November, not to view the story as a reflection of our current reality. Part of the reason that Leia wants to retire has to do with the Senate devolving into a two-party system -- parties that are themselves fragmented into conflicting fractions. She laments how "every debate on the Senate floor turns into an endless argument over ‘tone’ or ‘form’ and never about issues of substance." And try to read this bit of dialogue and tell me it doesn't sound like something you’d find on a recent think piece.

“Surely you won’t deny the New Republic is committing mistakes of its own.”

“Not the evils of tyranny and control.”

“No. The evils of absence and neglect.”

And, of course, there’s the now viral quote at the close of the book that has gained new relevance in light of yesterday's marches:

“The sun is setting on the New Republic," Leia said. "It's time for the Resistance to rise.”

Indeed. 

Bloodline is both a brilliant character portrait and relevant social commentary. Claudia Gray can write Star Wars like no other and I will read anything she writes in this universe.

After dealing with the heady but heavy themes of Bloodline however, I figured I was due some for some warmth and comfort. At which point I usually turn to a Rainbow Rowell book.

I love Rainbow Rowell. I love her quirky and clever and passionate writing (if there was a book equivalent to Gilmore Girls, it would be a Rowell book). I love her amazing and uncanny ability to make you fall for a character in almost no time at all.

This same talent is brilliantly showcased in Kindred Spirits, a slim novella that, over the course of sixty-two pages, manages to have more character development than most sprawling, brick-sized novels.

It's an unfair gift, really.

This is a story about three Star Wars geeks camping out in desolate line in front of an Omaha theater for the premiere of The Force Awakens. It is lovely, and it is charming, and it is so wonderful. I finished the story in one sitting, desperately wishing there was a full-length novel featuring these characters that I could immediately pick up. Heartwarming and beautiful.

And so December rolled around once more, and with it another Star Wars film, because Disney will never be stopped.

But of course I loved almost everything about Rogue One: I loved its beautiful and beautifully diverse cast, I loved its relentless and brutal pace, I even dug its CGI missteps. It's a dark, dark film, to be sure, but it also seems very apt and timely. Rebellions are built on hope, etc.

I picked up the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story novelization by Alexander Freed because I kept coming across good reviews. I was skeptical -- I had tried to read Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of The Force Awakens and found the writing style so tedious that I couldn't get past the first chapter. Thankfully though Freed doesn't seem to suffer from this: his writing style is relatively spartan and straightforward, which serves this kind of story well. Even so I was still very much surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this, and even more surprised at how much more depth it managed to add to the story. 

One of the main criticisms about the film is that we don't spend enough individual time with the characters too feel much of anything when they meet their ultimate fate. Which is fair: movie's are all about the external after all, whereas in books and comics you can delve more into the character's feelings and motivations -- literally get inside their heads. This is what Freed does in the novelization, and to great effect. We get so many details regarding each character's background, personality, and motivation.

Cassian stashed his paranoia in the back of his brain -- out of the way but within easy reach.

Jyn knew the sounds of occupation well. They were the sounds of home.

Baze did not limit his targets to those who might spot the blind man, but he kept Chirrut under observation nonetheless; where the Force would fail Chirrut, Baze would not.

And it does affect how you feel about the characters as the plot happens to them. This is made most evident in K-2SO's final scene, an already heartbreaking moment in the film, but here Freed adds one last final touch that makes is all the more tragic and all the more beautiful. Totally evil stuff, but good nonetheless.

This device isn't limited to the characters either: for the more technical aspects of the plot we get things like communiques and log entries interspersed throughout the story, and they are also used to great effect. In a particularly brilliant entry, we get to find out just how Galen Erso, with the help of sheer bureaucratic nonsense, ensures the flaw he engineered in the Death Star reactor remains in place. A detail that is both morbidly hilarious and also incredibly realistic.

I do think that one of the things that makes the movie such a visceral experience gets totally lost in the translation, however, and that is much of the action. Freed does a serviceable job, but the action still very much slows down and lack urgency and tension. Darth Vader’s big scene is an absolute show-stopper in the movie, for example, whereas here it reads as very much anticlimactic. 

But that is admittedly a minor criticism that applies mostly to the third act, and I do think that the material and information that was added to the story more than makes up for it.

Highly recommend reading this before you watch Rogue One for the eight time.

It was raining. It didn’t rain in L.A. It was raining in L.A. and I was Princess Leia. I had never been Princess Leia before and now I would be her forever. I would never not be Princess Leia.

And then there's Carrie. Oh Carrie.

December was a particularly tough month in a particularly tough year. Too many artists I admired passed away, and then halfway through December I went a personal loss that left me dazed and numb. Then Carrie Fisher died, and it all struck me as once, and I was just sad for a long while.

I had downloaded The Princess Diarist shortly after finishing the Rogue One novelization. It seemed like an appropriate follow up, and I've been meaning to read Fisher's stuff for years anyway. It stayed unread on my tablet for a bit (the aforementioned personal loss took any desire I had to read much), but I picked it up immediately after learning of Carrie's death. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

The Princess Diarist is about Fisher looking back on diary entries she had penned in the late seventies, during the filming of Star Wars. It's a meditation on fame and growing up in Hollywood and being young and growing old. It's a wonderful read. Raunchy and hilarious and clever; whimsical and melancholy. Brutally honest and full of life truths. I highlighted a great many passages:

The crew was mostly men. That’s how it was and that’s pretty much how it still is. It’s a man’s world and show business is a man’s meal, with women generously sprinkled through it like overqualified spice.

I looked at her aghast, with much like the expression I used when shown the sketches of the metal bikini. The one I wore to kill Jabba (my favorite moment in my own personal film history), which I highly recommend your doing: find an equivalent of killing a giant space slug in your head and celebrate that.

Back then I was always looking ahead to who I wanted to be versus who I didn’t realize I already was, and the wished-for me was most likely based on who other people seemed to be and the desire to have the same effect on others that they had had on me.

I don’t just want you to like me, I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings that you’ve ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong.

Because what can you do with people that like you, except, of course, inevitably disappoint them?

I wish that I could leave myself alone. I wish that I could finally feel that I punished myself enough. That I deserved time off for all my bad behavior. Let myself off the hook, drag myself off the rack where I am both torturer and torturee.

I was sitting by myself the other night doing the usual things one does when spending time alone with yourselves. You know, making mountains out of molehills, hiking up to the top of the mountains, having a Hostess Twinkie and then throwing myself off the mountain. Stuff like that.

Trying relentlessly to make you love me, but I don’t want the love -- I quite prefer the quest for it. The challenge. I am always disappointed with someone who loves me -- how perfect can he be if he can’t see through me?

I call people sometimes hoping not only that they’ll verify the fact that I’m alive but that they’ll also, however indirectly, convince me that being alive is an appropriate state for me to be in.

I had feelings for him (at least five, but sometimes as many as seven).

Time shifts and your pity enables you to turn what was once, decades ago, an ordinary sort of pain or hurt, complicated by embarrassing self-pity, into what is now only a humiliating tale that you can share with others because, after almost four decades, it’s all in the past and who gives a shit?

This is a joy of a book, but it still made me sad. Sad that I never got to read and appreciate her written work while she was alive. Sad because the beautiful gem of a person who wrote these true beautiful things was now gone, drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra, and we'll never, ever see her like again.

“Carrie?” he asked. I knew my name. So I let him know I knew it. “Yeah,” I said in a voice very like mine.

Good night, Space Momma. Thank you for you voice. Thank you for being so unabashedly you.                                                                                           

[thebastardofgloucester]

More Thoughts on Rogue One

So I saw Rogue One again:

I don’t have any real revelations to expound upon - the first half is still a bit messy (though beyond the Krennic scene on Mustafar which we’re rather fond of I’m not really sure you can just cut out some of the planetary back and forth). The second half/last third really pulls the film together in some of the best action sequences I’ve seen in any war movie, Star Wars or no, but it also fails to resolve a lot of character arcs, which is...unsatisfying from a narrative nerd perspective but not really crippling to the film as a whole? In my opinion, anyway. 

- Jyn’s a flat character. I’m not sure if it’s that Felicity Jones is a bad fit for the part - they needed someone who did a lot of non-verbal acting and that ain’t her - but her character is choppily written at best, and wavers back and forth between passive and active in a way that just feels awkward when it abruptly switches. You have a bunch of character-establishing moments - trying to flee her rescuers, saving the little girl in Jedha, beating and gunning down stormtroopers, resenting Saw for abandoning her - and they just don’t fit together. At points, it seems like she’s a deer in the headlights, which makes some sense - she’s not a soldier, she’s not used to battle, to death striking suddenly and brutally - but it again swings back and forth and there’s no key determining factor beyond the immediate needs of the plot. And yet she knows her way around a blaster, she goes after that child (which is just wildly out of place and used as an excuse for Cassian to shoot one of Saw’s men, precipitating the group’s capture), she’s quite brave under fire. She’s established as initially cynical and apathetic about the Rebellion - for understandable reasons, though Cassian also rightly calls her out for wallowing in self-pity, which she clearly takes to heart.

Her transformation from reluctant accomplice to Rebel leader just doesn’t really follow.  A scene where she spoke with, say, Chirrut and Baze (maybe with Bodhi popping in) about their reasons for fighting the Empire, and she explicitly confronted her desperate need to redeem her father’s legacy and exonerate him from horrible crimes would have been a tremendous help, would have given Baze and Chirrut more depth (digging into their past service as guardians, their grief and Baze’s rage at the destruction of their home), and would have given some reason for the ‘little sister’ comment, which just feels so out of place because they don’t have that kind of relationship. I’m probably going to write this scene, honestly. At that point, speaking up about the need to strike Scarif makes more sense. Maybe another actress better conveys Jyn’s desperation and makes her sound less inexplicably confident. She’s not idealistic enough for that, change of heart or not. Fewer motivational speeches from her would have been a good idea. The one in the shuttle is the best fit - it’s full of desperation and anxious resolve. She’s addressing her men, not the leaders of the Rebellion. Basically, somebody else needs to back her case in front of the council. Hell, maybe Chirrut could have backed her up. That would have been another moment to establish their relationship. Jyn’s the primary protagonist, but she’s also not a conventional hero, and the film did not commit to that as it did with, say, Cassian. 

- Honestly, that’s the movie’s biggest flaw. It drags a bit, but I’m not sure what I would really cut. The trading port scene is vital to establish Cassian. The jailbreak was apparently largely a product of the reshoots, and that was absolutely a good call. The Jedha stuff needs to happen to launch the plot. The Eadu stuff needs to happen to raise the stakes, stage the Cassian/Jyn conflict, and kill off Galen. I *guess* the first Yavin 4 scene wasn’t entirely necessary, but it would be hard to do without it, and it does a lot of worldbuilding for the ANH-era Rebellion. 

- The movie isn’t terribly interested in preserving the scale of the GFFA - unless Eadu, Scarif, and Yavin 4 are within the same star cluster or something, the Rebel forces have at most a few hours travel time and that does’t make much sense. It’s not that Star Wars has ever cared about those kinds of logistics (save a few novels), but somehow the planet jumping makes it more obvious.

- The space battle is still astounding, and the Pacific Front-inspired beach scenes aren’t far behind. Just the perfect use of CGI, practical effects, and storytelling to create truly spectacular scenes. Also nice to see Rebel women pilots, though they pretty much all die.

- Bodhi has the most complete and coherent character arc, and given the time constraints, it’s actually a pretty good one. His sacrifice is poignant, even if his death is surprisingly pedestrian (which is by no means a bad thing - it adds a layer of realism to the combat that people just die). K2-SO has something resembling an arc. Cassian is the deepest character, even if a few more exchanges with Jyn or Bodhi or Chirrut could have helped make his inner conflicts more explicit. His relationship with Jyn actually worked better for me the second time around, but it has the overall vibe of ‘almost’ or ‘what if’ as it really should. 

- The movie does a lot of work in terms of world-building, and there’s loads of material for future films or EU media to take advantage of. I’m excited about the new in-between-the-OT Rebellion era. It might be a bit ponderous in the film, but it’s valuable yeoman’s work in the young new canon. 

- Krennic isn’t the most effective antagonist. That’s partially by design - he’s simply outclassed by the likes of Tarkin and Darth Vader. But in a moment where we might be able to explore his complexity with the reveal that his adversary is the daughter of his long-time friend and betrayer Galen he just...doesn’t really react beyond ‘generic Imperial villain’. That was a missed opportunity. More could have been done with him than having Cassian appear and shoot him while Jyn does her deer in the headlights thing again. There’s poetic justice in his being killed by his own life’s work, but it needs to be dwelt upon a bit.  

EDIT: my little brother suggests Jyn pointing out the Death Star rising above the horizon, as Krennic realizes that not only is Tarkin willing to sacrifice the entire base, but that he is expendable. Unlike Jyn, he is not ready for that brutal truth.

- In hindsight, the whole Vader in the corridor thing is a bit less fraught than I thought - the damn data tape is at the partially open exit the whole time, the dude with it just wants to escape. A better scene would be him desperately forcing the door open as his comrades try to slow Vader down, succeeding at the last minute before he’s cut down. All that would have been required is a few shots of the dude trying to force open the door, nothing really complicated. 

- It’s a bit weird that the Tantive IV, with Leia aboard, is waiting for ages inside the disabled Rebel flagship - presumably the data tapes take a while to transfer, but it seems like quite a risk. Plus there’s the ‘transmissions’ line in ANH which is now seemingly in error. Maybe the corvette is waiting on the fringes of the system, giving Leia plausible deniability? But that probably sacrifices the Vader scene, and I’m not sure any of us want that. It’s a hard problem to solve without retconning. 

- The Dr. Evazan/Ponda Baba cameo on Jedha is just not necessary. R2D2 and C3PO are acceptable - they’ve been in every damn movie and they have a reason to be there.  

- It’s a really good heist-cum-war movie, honestly. It’s got weaknesses in terms of characterization, because that’s not Gareth Edward’s real strength. It might not feel like ~Star Wars~ in terms of being magical space opera based on hero’s journey cliches and stronger characterization than plot, and might be missing the ‘magic’ or something, but it’s not supposed to be anything like The Force Awakens. I feel like a lot of the movie’s critics were just expecting ~something else~ and find the genre differences off-putting. I don’t. 

- Saw Gerrera deserved a bit more time - specifically, I think cutting his ‘what will you become’ speech was a mistake, though I’m not sure where it was supposed to fit? He’s a really really great character, honestly, and he’s vital in establishing that the Rebellion is a messy loose coalition of splinter groups who are at this stage very divided in terms of strategy, conviction, and morality. 

- Chirrut is definitely low-level Force sensitive. To an extent, fine, his sharpened sense of hearing explains his physical combat skills. But sensing Jyn’s kyber crystal, reading Bohdi and Jyn, dodging laser blasts, hitting stormtroopers on the beach - he’s not a Jedi, but he doesn’t really have to be. There’s another point of possible connection with Jyn - his faith in the Force would resonate with her memories of her mother. Again, just a handful of lines. Not a huge change. 

- I still think Chirrut and Baze’s relationship is easily interpreted as romantic, whether that was the result of the actors, Edwards, or Kathleen Kennedy, I don’t know. But it’s appreciated and extremely important. 

- Revised rating: 7.5/10. Could have been an 8.5, even a 9 with a more talented character writer and a more compelling primary protagonist. But it’s intensely watchable, really thrilling at points, fits seamlessly into the Star Wars universe, adds emotional impetus to A New Hope and the circuitous journey of the Death Star plans to Yavin 4, and Luke and Han’s subsequent heroism, and has a ton of interesting ideas percolating in the background.