#Starfighters of Adumar

[incorrectstarwarslegendsquotes]

Wes Janson: I like to act like I can't understand something very simple when someone is explaining something to me so I can see how dumb they think I am Tomer Darpin: That's called deception Wes Janson: What do you mean? Tomer Darpin: It's a form of dishonesty that people use for self gain or amusement Wes Janson: Sorry, I don't get it???

[from-a-legends-pov]

Star Wars Legends Highlight of the Week: X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar by Aaron Allston

In this feature, a fan will share one thing they love from Star Wars Legends — a book, a comic, an author, a character, an event, or anything else they want to highlight — and tell us more about it.

If you, too, love Legends, follow @from-a-legends-pov and check out our upcoming Star Wars Legends fanfiction event, From a Legends Point of View, HERE. Signups open THIS SUNDAY, April 28, 2024 — please encourage your favorite Star Wars writers to participate!

Today’s Legends highlight is X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar by Aaron Allston, a 1999 Legends novel, and we’re talking with @alwaysstarwars.

Tell us about your Legends highlight. What is it, and why is it a highlight for you?

X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar is technically the 9th book of the X-Wing series, but it functions as a standalone novel. Set in 13 ABY (about nine years after Return of the Jedi), the book focuses on Wedge Antilles and his friends and fellow pilots Tycho Celchu, Hobbie Klivian, and Wes Janson, as they travel to the neutral world of Adumar and try to negotiate its admittance to the New Republic. The plot itself is relatively straightforward, but it’s really just an excuse to get Wedge, Hobbie, Tycho and Wes out on a mission together. And that quartet is the reason the book is so good. The four of them had been featured heavily in the previous X-Wing books, but there were always other characters and a larger plot with which to be concerned. This book gets rid of all that and just gives the reader Wedge, Tycho, Hobbie, and Wes getting up to assorted hijinks, pulling pranks, and being generally hilarious. It’s a buddy comedy in book form and it’s just fun. Aaron Allston is great at capturing the spirit and humor of Star Wars that some authors struggle with, and Starfighters of Adumar is a delight because of it. All of the X-Wing series is great and worth a read, but this is by far the most flat-out entertaining.

Any favorite moments or quotations to share?

A lot of the humor is context-specific, but this quote gives a good sense of the irreverent tone of the whole book and the fantastic relationships among the four main characters:

“Leader, this is Three. Are you crazy? Acknowledge.” “Three, Leader. That’s affirmative.” — Wes and Wedge

To learn more….

If you’d like to read more about X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar, you can check out its page on Wookieepedia or find the novel at your local library, new through a few outlets, or used through independent booksellers or your favorite used bookstore.

And be sure to check out @from-a-legends-pov and our From a Legends Point of View fanfiction event; signups open April 28, 2024!

[magnetarbeam]

To be fair, if I saw an entire city decorated in honor of Wedge Antilles, I'd probably also assume it was his idea.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Boys are Back in Town

Most of the X-Wing series focused on either Wraith or Rogue squadron in their full capacities and on standard missions. That is NOT this book. This book focuses on Wedge Antillies, Wes Janson, Tycho Celchu, and Derek "Hobbie" Klivian as they slide inexorably from a diplomatic mission to something that Padme Amidala would unquestionably describe as "aggressive negotiations." Let's talk Starfighters of Adumar.

When you have a planet that has evolved outside of either imperial or republic influence that reveres pilots to an arguably unhealthy degree and you can't drag Luke Skywalker out of whatever he is currently doing, you get Wedge "I blew up two Death Stars, you don't scare me" Antilles. Wedge then puts together a crack team of his three best pilot buddies to hammer out a treaty between Adumar and the New Republic (I'd be LYING if I told you I was picturing anything other than Adam Sandler casting his best friends and taking them on epic vacations and incidentally making a movie for this bit).

As per usual, things go pear-shaped basically before they even get boots down on Adumar, because among its other problems, Adumar loves the HELL out of dueling. To the death. Usually with starfighters. Some asshole decides to try to increase his personal clout by shooting Wedge down as they fly in. This doesn't work, but hot damn does it set the tone...

The toxic dueling culture is not limited to snubfighters, however. Cheriss ke Hanadi (the undisputed queen of duels with blastswords) guides Red Squadron through the twists and turns of Adumari culture. That does not stop Wes from getting in a duel at the diplomatic reception, though. This duel is incredible because it's Wes giving an object lesson in how to humiliate the living hell out of an overly cocky opponent with a blastsword while functionally unarmed. This fight is glorious, and it's a beautiful follow-up to the "getting ready for the ball" scene our boys get to have where Wes lights up like a kid at Christmas when he discovers that blastswords are basically "blaster[s] that you have to hit people with."

Cheriss gets done a wee bit dirty by this book, because she basically develops a crush on Wedge, and when she finds out that he and Iella have gotten together, she sets herself up to get murdered by fighting a stupid number of duels in a row. The rest of Red Squardon steps in though, and as an added bonus, the New Republic medics give her a medication for her chronic vertigo to allow Cheriss to become a pilot. This series literally is not here for anyone who isn't a New Republic pilot, so I don't love Cheriss's arc, but honestly it could have been a lot worse, so I'm not complaining too hard.

The draw for this book though, is unquestionably the character work in our four protagonist pilots. The plot of the novel is pretty simple, all things considered, so Allston takes the opportunity to really dig into character for our boys, and getting to follow them on a somewhat nontraditional mission and using their skills as best they can is just FUN. As a friend says, this book is delicious candy fluff, and the characters are the candies.

Even when the mission goes directly to hell and Red Squadron has to run the gauntlet for their lives, the choices and twists and turns are largely character-driven. That makes what could have been a run-of-the-mill climactic escape into a really tense, well-constructed series of choices and consequences that are just FUN because of the characters who have been dropped into the situation.

There's objectively not too much substance to this book, but it ties Wraith Squadron as my favorite X-Wing book because of the character work and focus on the top four New Republic pilots. Plus, it's a little adorable that this is where Wedge and Iella really get together, and I am HERE for legends continuity legacy families.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[iron-crakka]

gonna stake out a middle ground position and say andor isn't the best star wars since rogue one, or since empire: it's the best star wars since starfighters of adumar

[jbk405]

It's a special feeling when you're reading a book and the Villainous Character makes a valid point. Not in the sense of "This author thinks they're showing them as Bad but actually I'm in favor", but instead "He may be Evil, but he literally tried to offer advice before and you shooed him away, and now you're angry that he didn't clue you in?"

Tomer Darpen is ultimately the closest that Starfighters of Adumar will have to a Main Villain (The others being either misguided/tragic cultural holdovers or generic Imperials), but in the first party at the Perator's palace Wedge explicitly excludes him from his huddle with Red Flight. Tomer steps forward, says he is here to offer explanations in case Wedge needs information, and Wedge says no. Then when Wedge unintentionally tells his teenage local guide to start a duel to the death, Wedge is furious that Tomer didn't warn him what he was getting into.

Wedge, I'm normally on your side, but you can't blame Tomer for this one. You don't know he's The Bad Guy yet, so you don't have any excuse here. It's all on you.

[incorrectstarwarslegendsquotes]

[As Wes Janson beats an Adumari diplomat with his bare hands]

Tomer Darpin: Stop fisting him!

Wedge Antilles: Stop phrasing it like that!

[from-a-legends-pov]

Star Wars Legends: Poll of the Week - Crimes of Fashion

Which of these fashion crimes from a Star Wars Legends property is your favorite?

The rejected designs for Mara Jade’s wedding dress, which included a computer-generated dress, a “traditional” design from a Hutt, a neo-Imperial design with a black cape and hood (Leia: “Yes, but the bride doesn’t want to look like the father of the groom”), and one design that was simply a thong and a large bow, which Mara refused to try on (Star Wars: Union comic)

Wes Janson’s cape that he had specially made for him on Adumar, adorned with flatscreen panels that played a holo of “a line of Jansons, arms linked, doing high kicks like a dancing chorus” (X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar)

Leia Organa’s Kabray dress – which, due to a luggage mixup, was the only dress she had to wear to an important diplomatic banquet – after a group of enthusiastic Zeltrons “fixed” it (read: cut it to pieces and added glitter) to make it more in keeping with Zeltros fashion and to hide the stains on it (Star Wars #95, original Marvel comics)

Prince Isolder of Hapes’ outfit when presenting the Hapan Consortium’s 62 gifts (plus himself, gift #63) to Leia Organa on Coruscant: “He wore a silver circlet that held a black veil in front of his face, and his long, blond hair fell down around his shoulders. The man was bare-chested except for a small silk half-cloak fastened with silver straps…” (The Courtship of Princess Leia)

The disguises for “Yokel Group” (Wedge Antilles, Myn Donos, and Face Loran) of Wraith Squadron, who for a mission dressed up as a group of stereotypical backwater tourists who had traveled from Agamar looking for brides, wearing shirts with loud prints, clashing shorts, and mismatched hats. “Sir, permission to kill Face?” “Granted. But keep your hat, like Face says” (X-Wing: Wraith Squadron)

Hobbie Klivian’s dress outfit to meet the perator of Cartann, “a riot of lines and angles…every hem of every garment was decorated with trim of eye-hurting yellow, making it almost a dizzying experience to look at him walk.” As Hobbie said: “There are three types of dress clothing…the type that offends the wearer, the type that offends the viewers, and the type that offends everybody. I’m going for the third type” (X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar)

Hungry for more Star Wars Legends content? Follow @from-a-legends-pov and check out our upcoming Star Wars Legends fanfiction event, From a Legends Point of View, HERE. Signups open April 28 — please encourage your favorite Star Wars writers to participate!

[magnetarbeam]

Jesus fucking christ. I hyperfocused my way through Starfighters of Adumar in about three hours, and I always need to reread things in order to fully process them, but it is making my brain do Things thinking about the writing. How the crazy piloting culture played into Wedge's concept of honor. How much I wish we'd seen Cheriss's POV on anything, and that I'm only now making the connection between her start in blastsword duels and the later references to her as having once been the head vibroblade instructor in NR/GA Starfighter Command.

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Wedge and Iella on Adumar by Chris Trevas

[potatoesandsunshine]

listening to AMCA talk about heir to the empire when i've only ever read the last command is so interesting. did you guys know stuff happened in that trilogy before the last command

[sparrowsabre7]

Reblogging this because it was dredged up and it still makes me angry and sad.

“Starfighters of Andrew-Marr” is a really good pun.

It’s a really fucking good pun, because it is silly, but still sounds almost exactly like the original title “Starfighters of Adumar”. 

But no one will get that, because the overlap of people who know/remember the X-Wing book series from like the 90s AND people aware of the British political commentator and journalist Andrew Marr is so fucking narrow. 

[lajulie24]

You write so many excellent Star Wars fics and I would please love to know what advice you have - especially for writing Luke, Han, Leia, and Wedge, as they're going to be centre stage in my various fics and I'm more than a little nervous. Any tips or recommended reading material would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Let me start by saying thank you for all the kind words — that’s so lovely to hear, and I appreciate it. And thank you, too, for giving me an excuse to talk about writing, because I love talking about writing with other people, especially writing about characters I enjoy. (This might also be a warning to buckle up because I’m about to get very chatty. I’ll try to stick a “read more” link in there for anyone who would prefer not to have to scroll through ALL my chattiness.)

It feels like your question is more about writing characters than it is writing in general, so I’ll mostly talk about that, but I’ll just mention a few things that really help me for writing in general, most of them blatantly cribbed from Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird: Thoughts About Writing and Life. Shitty first drafts. Write what you can see through a one-inch picture frame. Write something every day if you can. Perfection is the voice of the oppressor. Find a way to drown out / ignore KFKD (K-Fucked, the imaginary radio station in your head that is genuinely from hell). I’m happy to go into greater detail on any of these, and I also thoroughly recommend that book.

You mention that you’re a bit nervous, and I think my biggest advice in that realm is — the only way out is through. Meaning, the only way to get better at writing the characters and stories that you love is to let yourself be bad at it and keep writing. That’s why I mention shitty first drafts and perfection being the voice of the oppressor as being so helpful. Write a Han and Leia scene that is so awful that you’re like “who the hell are these pod people, they have no resemblance to the characters I actually like, WTF is this and why does it look nothing like the idea in my head.” And then write it again, or write a different scene, and maybe it will be just as bad, but maybe it will help you see what’s not quite hitting for you about what you’ve written. And you’ll write it again, or write another scene, and it will get better. Or you’ll write a whole fic and it will just be okay from your personal standards. But you learn from writing that fic and the next one will be better. I do regret to inform you that while your skill and comfort with writing these characters will improve the more you write them, each fic will still probably require at least one, if not many, shitty first drafts. The only way out is through.

Hey, looks like it’s time for that read more link! *waves to my followers*

So - specific to the characters that you’ve mentioned. I think there are a lot of different approaches to this, but for Luke, Han, and Leia, there is one very obvious source that you can consult: the original trilogy Star Wars movies, or just scenes from the movies. This is especially helpful for writing dialogue. Watch a few scenes with each of them and listen to how they talk. How casual or formal do they tend to be? What kinds of words do they use? How do they sound when they’re under stress? How do they sound when they’re joyful? How do they sound when they’re angry? What do you think they’re like when they’re not running for their lives or in the middle of a space battle? What do you see in the movies as their dynamic, and how do you imagine that changing when it’s just a boring night on base?

For Wedge, it’s slightly more challenging because you don’t get a lot of his dialogue in the movies, and it’s mostly battle talk, because he’s a side character. If you want reading material on Wedge, I would personally recommend the EU/Legends X-Wing series novels — in particular the ones by Aaron Allston (Wraith Squadron, Iron Fist, Solo Command, and Starfighters of Adumar). It’s a bit out of order because it’s the third in the Wraith series, but Solo Command in particular is really great character-wise for Wedge, and you even get some Wedge and Han interaction in that book.

Personally, I am a visual person but also love listening to music. A lot of my story ideas and scene ideas and character thoughts come to me when I’m listening to music and basically sort of envisioning music videos featuring my favorite characters. Sometimes those videos end up being whole scenes or moments that I write down later (don’t forget to write it down as soon as you can!), like some kind of movie trailer that I’m just transcribing. Sometimes they just lead me to thinking about the characters and what I think they’re like. If you find music helpful, try making a playlist for your characters and picking out songs that feel really them to you. Then take a walk or clean the house while listening to the playlist and see what it sparks for you. Think about a scene you’re stuck on and pick a song that might be playing on the soundtrack if it were a movie, and see where that takes you.

Different writers have different takes on how much they read fanfic while they are writing something. Some writers prefer to avoid it altogether to make sure they’re not inadvertently being influenced / taking ideas from other authors. Some folks will read fic but are more selective about what fic they will read while they’re writing something (e.g. not reading any new fic, or only reading fic about characters or situations that are very different from what they’re writing at the moment). My thought with regard to other people’s fanfic is that your past reading of fanfic can be useful for deciding what rings true for YOU about the characters, but that you should avoid any temptation to study those fics as if they were a guide to “how to write X character”.

Which brings me to another big point: the goal here is for you to write these characters in a way that rings true for you. Even if you tried, your Leia would not be precisely the Leia I write, just like the Leia I write isn’t precisely like the Leia written by @madame-alexandra or @otterandterrierwrites or @yoyomarules or @soloorganaas or @inelegantprose or @organanation or @walkawaytall. But I recognize those versions of Leia (and those versions of Leia and Han’s relationship) as ones that pretty consistently ring true to me. Or if there are bits about them that don’t, I don’t use those particular bits in what I write.

The way to use your past fanfic reading as character inspiration can be the things that stand out even when you don’t have the fic in front of you. Like “I really like how playful this scene was between Leia and Han, I could see them doing this” or “I like how this writer shows Leia and Luke’s friendship even before they knew they were related” or “here’s a point this author made about the similarities and contrasts between Wedge and Han that I think makes a lot of sense” or “I loved that we saw my faves being goofy and having fun together, I want to do that” or whatever. You can also use that past fanfic reading to tell you “yeah, this person had Luke do X and that felt kind of out of character for how I see him” or “that scene was well written, but I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing I really want to explore with these characters.”

I keep thinking about that Tumblr post that basically says “this is my blorbo and wow I’m gonna put him in so many situations” because that’s kind of what we do as writers. We take our blorbos and we put ‘em in some situations and see how they respond. Part of why I keep hammering on “you just have to keep writing and writing” is that honestly, after you start writing your characters for a while, if you pay attention your character will tell you what they would say or do next. (Anne Lamott calls this “listening to your broccoli.”)

For example, once I was writing a fic where the Rogues got caught making a hot tub on Hoth and Han was showing it to Leia before they had to dismantle it and send it back, and I’d gotten to Han trying to convince Leia to at least test out the hot tub before they sent it back, he’d never tell anyone, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. The scene could’ve been at a dead end. Except that all the sudden I was writing Leia daring Han to go in, like “I’ll go in if you will” and that was 100% not anything I was expecting her to do. But I had written her enough that when I listened, I knew my Leia was going to offer a dare when I put her into that situation, that part of what made her friendship and later relationship with Han work was that she was able to be boldly herself and challenge him to do the same. If someone else were writing her, they might have resolved that situation differently, or maybe their Han wouldn’t have invited Leia to the hot tub in the first place.

You asked for any tips and tricks. As you’ve already read, my advice is to keep writing and writing and writing, and you’ll find yourself getting to know the characters and being happier with how you’re writing them. But a few other tips and tricks that have worked for me: 1) If you’re having trouble with plot or a specific scene or a conversation, find someone you can bounce things off of and try to explain to them what you want to happen and where you got stuck, e.g. “I’m trying to get Han and Luke to find out X information but it sounds weird”. Sometimes the act of having to explain something to another person makes it clearer in your own head what you’re trying to do and what the problem is; sometimes someone asking questions is all you need to solve your own problem. 2) Read your dialogue out loud. You can do it quietly, to yourself, but it will make it clearer when you’re written something that doesn’t sound like the character, or isn’t how people actually talk, and you’ll have a better sense of how to fix it. 3) Sometimes you have to cut your darlings. Sometimes you have a piece of phrasing that is absolutely lovely and perfect…and doesn’t fit any longer with where the story is going, or it’s wrong for the character. Or it’s too long and you need to get to the action. Cut it. Put it in another document to save for later if you need to. But cut it. No writing is ever wasted — sometimes that thing that was gorgeous but just didn’t fucking work was just the means to an end. Sometimes it will remain in your head (or that other document) to be repurposed in another fic. Sometimes it was the thing you needed to write to get to the REAL thing you were meant to write. 4) If a scene isn’t working, try something to make your brain think about it in a different way. E.g. try rewriting it from a different character’s point of view, or start the scene in the middle instead of giving a big leadup to the action, or tell scraps of it in flashback instead of writing the whole scene.

Phew! That was long. Hopefully some of it is helpful. Anyway, please feel free to chat more if you like — and I definitely encourage my fellow writers to add any of their own suggestions! Getting started is the hardest part, so just DO IT. Good luck!

[teagrl]

Reading Starfighters of Adumar makes my confidence in writing Burning Man...in Space rise 100%.

This is canon is not serious. I love it, but it's not serious.

[argentumcor]

I have a very silly, girly Star Wars Legends theory.

Cheriss Ke Hanadi was introduced in Starfighters of Adumar and clearly was intended to have a future somewhere down the line. She's a lower-class Adumari who came to glory by being a very good duelist with, uh, blaster swords. I like her. She had a crush on Wedge, then got over it under duress, then helped save her world from local (inept) tyranny and the Empire, then decided to leave and join the Republic to train as a pilot. A new Rogue! Never came to pass, alas.

Adumar is a weird place, cut off from the rest of the galaxy for a long time, with an odd warrior culture that strikes me as rather...French, very Three Musketeers, court intrigue, duels, assassins, fashion...it's a fun setting for the shenanigans that happen in Starfighters. She'd be a fun fish-out-of-water, and she can be very practical and capable in a crisis.

She's also about Kyp Durron's age. Kyp mentions at some point during NJO that he has a girlfriend (after he stops crushing on Jaina? Man, they really did not know what to do with Kyp). I think Cheriss was meant to be his love interest.

Cheriss is a killer, with a pretty high body count accumulated in public duels to the death, and is by galactic standards a barbarian. She has no awareness of Kyp's genocidal Sith rage episode starting out, didn't grow up knowing about the Sun Crusher. She'd be a good match for Kyp, who is also an outsider with a dark (not that Dark) side and a Dark (yes, that Dark) past that makes him...not someone with a normal future. If they wanted to do more with Kyp- and I think there was an intent to at some point- having this no-nonsense female French murder barbarian Rogue pilot to cut through his nonsense and snark would have been a fun balance. Him with a ligthsaber and her with her blastsword promised a lot of fun action scenes and sparring scenes.

If you were not going to narratively exile Kyp for the genocidal Sith rage episode, then he needed people who were not connected with it. I do think there's an interesting story to be told about Kyp having to find a way to be a Jedi who did horrible things. I don't mean he Force choked a guy or in his anger summoned Force Lightning or wore a scary black robe for a period of time or turned his lightsaber red (back in the day, BTW, red lightsabers were just red, they didn't mean anything; Leia's first lightsaber was ruby red because she liked the color). Kyp murdered millions of people using a superweapon that made suns go nova. This was the horrible thing Kyp did and now has to live with, and he did it in such a way as everyone knows about it. Luke accepted him back into the fold, but not everyone in the Order- Corran and Mara most prominently, pretty important people among the Jedi- agreed with this, and he will always be a cautionary tale among the New Jedi Order. That's an interesting story, but he is kind of...locked into place if all his relationships are with people who know his deal and operate by 'modern' ethics. What Kyp did is too far- and seriously, in the books it is brutal- to have him just be the Jedi's 'bad boy'.

You can see that in NJO. He's melodramatic, wears a black cloak, and is kind of treated as the 'bad boy', but it can't work. He didn't just, like, murder a camp of slavers or something in a rage, he murdered millions of people and wiped entire star systems off the map in a pretty calculated plan of revenge. Star Wars Legends is not the kind of setting where that can be dismissed as the actions of a 'bad boy', it's a very big deal! People still don't trust him in NJO and it's been decades and they aren't wrong.

So my theory is that there was plan to do more and more interesting things with Kyp and Cheriss and they were supposed to be a thing, too. Maybe I'll write it, I need to figure out what Kyp was doing at the time, which was probably being treated like a dangerous animal by all the other students at the Academy which, for some reason, Luke still kept on Yavin.