#and lars mikkelsen did an absolutely fantastic job

[ibrokeeverything]

What is this "long live the Empire" bullshit??? I'm sorry, but Thrawn would never? I mean, maybe if it was performative in front of a bunch of other imperials, but he was literally alone with a couple of nightsisters, some droids, and Enoch. These are absolutely not people he needs to convince of his loyalty.

One of the last things we saw of Thrawn (besides the finale of rebels) was him being, somewhat correctly I might add, accused of treason because he was too loyal to the Chiss Ascendency and broke Imperial protocol.

Where is that guy Dave??? Where did he go? And who is this Empire fanatic that couldn't care less about his home. And let me just remind you that, canonically, Thrawn's main motivation for serving the Empire is that he wants to protect the Ascendency from bigger threats and is using the Empire's power to do so.

[gffa]

Scattered Star Wars novels thoughts: - I have listened to an hour and a half of the Thrawn: Alliances audiobook, someone please tell me to stop torturing myself with this thing.  It’s not even that it’s a bad book imo, but that it wasted so much potential!  TELL ME TO NOT SPEND ANOTHER TWELVE HOURS ON THIS ONE. That said, re: the audiobook specifically, WHOA, Marc Thompson nailed Thrawn’s voice/Lars Mikkelsen impression, that is some spot on voice acting!  His Padme sounds pretty much like all his other female characters unfortunately and his Anakin sounds like a slightly softer version of his younger characters (I’m thinking especially of Temmin) and I really like that choice, it feels like it’s a little closer to Hayden!Anakin than Matt!Anakin (who does a fantastic job, but when that’s often times the ONLY version of Anakin we see in stuff anymore, I start getting really wistful about movie-based prequels stuff, like, no, TCW wasn’t the only good prequels stuff!) but it is still hard to put it together with the Anakin in my head.  And his Vader is surprisingly flat, like, I would have thought the barest special effects for that would have been easy?  But it’s just a deep voice impression! I feel like Thompson’s roles are often like that, it’s very hit and miss.  I love his book readings, he’s the go-to guy for a reason, but you know what I wish they’d do more often?  Get the various voice actors together for different roles.  I realize that’s probably a lot more work than they want to do, paying multiple people for the same book, but there was one I listened to recently (which I cannot remember for the life of me now) that got Thompson for his Han voice and January LaVoy for her Leia and it was FANTASTIC. I keep wishing that that’s what they’d do with this book--get LaVoy for Padme, get Thompson for Thrawn, get a different actor for Anakin, get some special effects for Vader, and it could be really great.  Though, I recognize that the audiobook versions probably aren’t as much of a priority, but still!  I want to treat them like audiodramas instead!  Cater to what I want, LucasFilm!  And while we’re at it, give me more animated TV series novelizations!  Of Rebels AND The Clone Wars!  AND A PONY!! - I finished Life Debt and I’m giving myself a little time to let it breathe before tackling Empire’s End--and maybe hoarding the last of it, because I’ve come to love these characters a lot.  ;__; That’s one of the really big downsides of the expanded universe stuff--there are all these incredible characters that I get really invested in and, so often, they’re just there for a brief time and we never know what happens beyond that.  I’m still sad that we haven’t gotten another book with Vi Moradi.  I’m still sad that we haven’t seen any sign of post-Rebels’ Ezra getting to tell us what happened.  I’m still sad that Eli Vanto was only in the one book so far.  I’m sad that Sinjir and Jas and Norra and Jom probably won’t be in any more novels after this, that I’m lucky to have gotten three of them!  I still want more of Iden Versio and we’ll probably never get much more than a cameo from her after this. I’ll keep reading and keep getting invested in these characters, the more there are, the more populated this galaxy feels, and some of them do keep showing up.  Like getting to see Sana in Last Shot was a lot of fun!  I have no doubt Rae will turn up in lots more things!  I just want more of these characters, too!  I know we already get, on average, like three or four books a month from all across Star Wars, but I WANT MORE, PLEASE. - One thing I realized about halfway through Life Debt is that, I CANNOT, for the LIFE of me, unsee Sinjir as Dorian Pavus.  The darker skin and accent definitely felt reminiscent of him, but then the second half of the book made several mentions of the very noticeable mustache and now it’s ALL I CAN SEE and I’m half wondering if that wasn’t the inspiration. - I liked the ending of the book a lot!  It reminded me of ESB in how much it felt like the middle piece of a trilogy, that it ended on such an explosive note and how much shit is going down.  I certainly didn’t expect everything to blow up the way it did in the last parts of the book! I’ve also really come around on Norra and I think a lot of that has to do with how much shit Temmin gives her that’s not really her fault, so it eases up the strain I was feeling on her in the early parts of the first book. I’m really enjoying the vague Rae - Leia counterparts-of-their-respective-organizations stuff, too!  Both are sort of the face of their side, but aren’t really the one at the head, both are feeling like outsiders in this fight that they’ve given everything to, that the organizations are going in directions that make them furious, because they both deeply believe they’re right. It makes me wonder how much this is meant to be negative images of each other or how much it’s meant to be a true parallel, that both of them are worthwhile people, but are putting forth some not-so-great ideas, Rae with the Empire and Leia with her inability to recognize that a government is different from a Rebellion. - I’m 4/5ths of the way through the Solo novelization and I think there’s a lot to be said about how I’m just not as invested in Han as a character, so the little details kind of slip by me.  But it’s also fairly light as a novelization (in comparison to my favorites, but also it’s not the lightest I’ve read, either!) and so I was dearly looking forward to some Qi’ra insight, but there’s not really that much?  The hints at what she went through are really interesting and I’m hoping that the climax of the story will give me more to work with, but this is definitely not going to be another TLJ novelization or even a Thrawn: Alliances level of I HAVE SO MANY THINGS TO SAY. I’m sad that it feels like the book never read Most Wanted, because the junior novelization had a mention of Tsuulo (so far that was the most notable thing about it, but I think I’m only like three chapters in, so that’s not much time yet) that absolutely DELIGHTED ME, but the adult one hasn’t mentioned him or much outside of what was already there in the movie, so it does feel kind of light and disconnected, but it’s still worth the read to me.  And I do think that the novelization’s version of the Imperial hearing scene was WAY funnier than the actual deleted scene, it nailed the timing of it in a way that not even the movie’s delightful acting could for me.