#but my favorite book are the thrawn books and they mean a lot to me

[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.

[twodragonsflying]

We don’t talk about how unhinged the original thrawn trilogy is nearly enough. I mean we don’t talk about it enough just in general, but specifically the crazy parts. 

I mean, obviously you have Mara Jade’s Luke Skywalker obsession where she’s trying to talk, her self and everyone else into believing she genuinely wants to kill him.  Like, it’s so funny to me how she’s trying to convince herself that something she’s genuinely wants to do and it isn’t just probing from Palpatine. But what’s even funnier is that Luke basically just said “nuh uh.”

Then, of course you have the whole lady Vader thing. Most everything about that is just wild.  Leia is on the verge of being kidnapped and the guy just smells her and he’s like “oh my gosh you smell just like Darth Vader. You must be his kid” and she just rolls with it. I never would’ve thought a book would have me questioning what Vader and Leia smell like, but here we are. 

Not to mention the scene where a very pregnant Leia and Chewbacca hide underneath a table. Thrawn is just there in the room and they are in there the entire time. And I was just thinking he’s going to find them, and then he doesn’t. There’s a 7 foot tall Wookie, a whole human princess, and a gold droid in the room, and he does not notice any of them. Absurd. 

And, of course, my favorite scene is when Mara raw dogs trying to strangle Thrawn. Then, when she tries to force choke him, the effort causes her to lose her breath and give up. Meanwhile, he’s just scolding her like she’s an unruly toddler the entire time. 

This doesn’t even begin to get in everything about Jorouus C’boath. He’s insane, he controls entire armies in his mind, he cloned Luke, because reasons he was obsessed with kidnapping Leia. He pissed off Thrawn multiple times. He’s a lot to deal with. 

This list does not even scratch the surface. Fantastic books, 10 out of 10, no notes. 

[thrawns-backrest]

Listen, what do you think about how the fandom perceives Ronan? This may be a strange question, but I saw post here about how Thrawn is an ambiguous character, he does both good and bad things, he is not an innocent kitten, etc. And I completely agree with this. But it seems to me that in relation to Ronan, the opposite situation very often manifests itself. If Thrawn is sometimes too idealized by the fandom, although he is a more complex person, then Ronan often appears as some kind of universal evil in posts and fanfiction. And…I don't know, it just doesn't seem right to me. He has a adverse nature, that's true, and his loyalty to Krennic sometimes pushes him to do not the best things, but there are enough moments in the canon that show his good traits too. At least he is really loyal man and not as stupid as he might seem. I just saw your post recently where you talked about him, so I was interested to ask your opinion!

Thank you for your attention and sorry if I disturbed you :c

please don't apologize, I love asks like this!!! If anything I should probably apologize because this is about to become ridiculously long :D I really like Ronan as a character, he's one of my favorites from Treason. He's entertaining, competent, somewhat churlish and has that posh attitude where you really want to ruffle his feathers to see what he'll do.

Those last two are part of the reason why it's fun to make him the butt of the joke and why the fandom does it so often. But having said that... you're absolutely right. I've also noticed that the fandom tends to be excessively antagonistic towards him (as it is with some other similar characters but more on that later).

And you're right to bring up Thrawn because he's the golden child here, him and Eli, and any character that disagrees with or doesn't like him automatically gets blacklisted. Which is odd to me since Thrawn is supposed to be controversial and Zahn does a good job of portraying that by giving us different characters' perspectives and reasons for liking/disliking him.

Sadly for Ronan he's very unfriendly towards Thrawn and Eli and ends up making a decision that goes against Thrawn's goals which now garners him a lot of hate. An interesting development given that Thrawn himself doesn't begrudge him for it in the books and even trusts him enough to send him to the Chiss. Which honestly means so much coming from Thrawn? It's as close to a stamp of approval as you can get from him, be it of Ronan's trustworthiness or simply his skills.

So if people really hold Thrawn in such high esteem, they shouldn't forget that his own assessment of Ronan was ultimately positive. No matter what role he plans for Ronan to play in the Ascendancy (even if that role is for Ronan to come to specific conclusions he can then take back to the Empire, ie feeding him some kind of information) Thrawn trusts him enough to, again, send him to his own people. People with lost of secrets that make them vulnerable.

And it's honestly a shame because as you say, Ronan has so much going for him as a character. The very idea of someone who's loyal to the Empire while being critical of Palpatine is so cool. It's literally something that can get him killed yet he's ready to face that danger if it means adhering to his principles.

Of course loyalty to the wrong party makes him pretty culpable but regardless, there is a good basis for him to grow as a character. As already mentioned he's loyal, he's competent, he disapproves of Palpatine and all the petty political games that dominate the Empire's higher echelons. He feels guilty for tricking Eli despite believing that he's a traitor. He even comes to respect Thrawn's skills by the end and modifies his answer when reporting to Tarkin so as to ensure Thrawn isn't accused of treason.

So very good foundation to build from. There's still his loyalty to Krennic (who is a pretty damn morally corrupt guy from what I've read) but an overzealous attitude like Ronan's understandably makes him liable to blind idolization so we can't really say for sure that he has a nasty motif for admiring Krennic.

From what Zahn tells us, Ronan seems to admire Krennic for his, quote, leadership, competence and brilliance and he does so to an excessive degree. He sounds pretty starry eyed is what I'm trying to say. Enough to cloud his better judgement perhaps.

Moral or immoral though, he's still a pretty cool character. Which is the same thing you can say about Thrawn. Funnily enough they're almost parallels of each other - Thrawn has honorable end goals that he pursues through corrupt means and Ronan (unwittingly or not) works toward a corrupt end goal but is pretty morally upright in the way he does it.

And come on you can't tell me he doesn't have one of the coolest descriptions (like Savit noting his eyes look older than he does) or some of the coolest inner monologue (like the "half a victory is still half a defeat" line). I also love how he hates politics yet ironically those political mental gymnastics are exactly what he's good at.

But I digress. My point is that you hit the nail on the head when you said the fandom idolizes Thrawn to the point of having a skewed perception.

Another character that I personally like a lot and whose standing in the fandom is very similar is Thurfian. Thurfian doesn't do anything overtly evil in the books and yet he's very often demonized as some kind of villain. Which I bet you is because he's in opposition to Thrawn and other fan favorites like Thalias (something that annoys me because people tend to victimize Thalias so much in their dynamic when she's actually a very brave and resourceful character. Who once held Thurfian at gunpoint might I add).

The thing is, people need to stop the whole pigeonholing characters into 'good' and 'bad' categories. Because especially with Zahn, things are rarely so black and white. Our prejudices as readers can be influenced by both limited and omniscient povs.

In Ronan's case, seeing him from the pov of beloved characters who he opposes is what paints him in an overly negative light. In Thurfian's we forget that these characters don't have the same insight into Thrawn's motives and logic as we do and that Thurfian is perfectly justified in thinking that Thrawn will one day overthink and overplan to the detriment of many. And if those words sound familiar it's because that's what Ar'alani herself says to Thrawn at the end of the book.

But to cut a long story short, I don't think Ronan deserves the hate he's getting. He's a very interesting guy - he's got a good foundation of principles, a quick mind and an amusing personality. Sure, he's prone to extreme bias, both positive (Krennic) and negative (Thrawn, Eli) that can cloud his judgement but barring that he's displayed an impressive amount of competence. Impressive enough to catch Thrawn's eye and we know Thrawn has a good sense for these things.

So basically love Ronan y'all, he's really neat. Even if he's not some paragon for moral goodness which honestly few of Zahn's characters really are.

(Thank you for this ask, I had a lot of fun answering it! If I get my act together, I'll hopefully finish my fic about Ronan where I plan to explore more of his motivations and how he could potentially find a place for himself in the Ascendancy. So fingers crossed for that!)

[heyclickadee]

For the Send Me a Fandom: Star Wars Rebels!

Hi! Thank you so much for the ask! Sorry it’s taken forever to get to it. But this is a fun one! So:

The first character I first fell in love with: Kanan. He was my favorite character for the first three seasons.

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Ezra. I always liked him, I really did, but he was kind of my least favorite member of the Ghost crew for a long time. Everyone else on the Ghost is just so cool; you’ve got the wayward jedi with the tragic backstory, the hot-shot pilot and freedom fighter with a tragic backstory, the snarky jackass (with a tragic backstory), the hyper-competent Mandalorian artist (ditto on that tragic backstory) who likes to blow things up, the murder droid (who also! has a tragic backstory!), and then…Ezra. Who isn’t cool. And who never really becomes cool.

Ezra is kind of a dork. And, honestly, his general dorkiness is incredibly endearing, but, starting out, Ezra is kind of a lot. He’s selfish, self-centered, mouthy, a massive try-hard, goes out of his way to pretend like he’s much cooler than he is—or, in other words, a teenager. A teenager who’s been through some shit and has had to fend for himself for years, and that’s made him prickly and standoffish even though he’s a good kid at heart. And, to be honest, that’s kind of what started to endear him to me. He starts out a total mess. He really does want to help people, but he’s angry and terrified. And he grows so, so much over the course of the show. I think partway through season four was when he overtook Kanan and Hera as my favorite character on the show.

The character everyone else loves that I don’t: I don’t think I have one—I like all of them as characters, at least.  

The character I love that everyone else hates: So…probably not exactly what this question means, but…I…really like Thrawn as the villain in the second half of Rebels for a variety of reasons and, in my opinion, most of the discrepancy between Rebels Thrawn and the new canon books Thrawn has to do with the perspective through which each of those are told; the canon Thrawn books are largely written from Thrawn’s perspective, while Rebels is largely written from the perspective of the kid who ends up going against Thrawn in order to free his homeworld from imperial forces.

The character I used to love but don’t any longer: Okay, I still love Kallus, and I love that he got a redemption arc, and that he got to live through it; I just think that a bit of the middle part of his arc was a little clunky.

The character I would totally smooch: I’m tucking all of them into comfy beds and smooching them platonically on the forehead

The character I’d want to be like: Hera. Hera. So much Hera.

The character I’d slap: Azmorigan.

A pairing that I love: I mean, Kanan and Hera. The original space married couple.

A pairing that I despise: I don’t think I have any. I mean, I prefer Ezra and Sabine as siblings, but I don’t have anything against the Sabezra ship, necessarily. I’m honestly not involved in the shipping part of the fandom to know what all the ships are.

[thewriterowl]

What is even happening with canon sw right now? -_- I am not even invested in them anymore (not even in the mandalorian, which is a shame because it used to be my everything... but man where is the story even going now)

I'll just stay peacefully in the fanon works among awesome clan of three (or more) contents where it's about din being a dad to grogu with luke who isn't being actively erased out of his own franchise :)

Honestly, I am not sure. I mean, I have been aware of this weird anti-Luke sensation within Lucasfilm/Disney for awhile. And i know a lot of things are coming from a sense of a combination of misrepresentation/push for women (and POC, but within Lucasfilm, over Disney, it's the women) which has its perks--but it does mean that many things originally written for characters like Luke are now, potentially, being given to female characters (i.e. Thrawn and Heir to the Empire to Ahsoka). There are great positives and intense negatives to these things within these new shows and it can come down to personal feelings, bias on favorite characters/what is "law" within this fictional universe, and if there is an overreach for profit vs. an actual care for representation (i.e. while Kathleen Kennedy is not great, I feel like her pursuit of female representation has a more positive intent (though can be very exclusive and white-washed) than some of the decisions Disney is making with live-action remakes and just swapping out races (again, there are positives--but there is a lot of profit grubbing and intense laziness to it that feels more like they are trying to appear they are doing something without putting true effort in)).

I will be the first to admit, I am 100% character bias. I adore Luke. I think this should've been his story as the book was intended. I wouldn't have been thrilled if we got him and Mara Jade together--but seeing more of him and being part of a story that is really, really well loved in the SW book community would've made me cry. But, I have to understand Ahsoka is like that for others and this show is going to do the same thing for them--I just really wished she would be getting her own new, creative storyline and that it doesn't seem that Kathleen and Dave hate Luke with a weird passion.

My not as personal, but what I feel is actually a flaw, is the writing. there just feels to be an intense corporate layer to it that is sucking out the stories and characters to sell things.

It started with Book of Boba Fett--there was no need for Din to be included and for it to all of a sudden became The Mandalorian 2.5 when the vast majority wanted a Boba focus story. The bits with Din should've been the first half of season 3, at least, with the series focused just on Boba and his pursuit of Tatooine and self-redemption. But, they wanted the cash of Din and Grogu and the whole series fell apart.

Then Obi-Wan Kenobi. This series was so close to being perfect. But it was too short. It felt like it was actually written and plotted to be 8-10 episodes long (as the Mandalorian) but then all of a sudden they were told "nah, despite this being the MOST asked for character driven piece of media within the franchise, we want the budget and focus elsewhere" and so it just fell a bit short because it wasn't allowed to breathe as it felt like it was supposed to be.

Andor, miraculously, was perfect. But, it didn't feel like was pushed or loved enough. It came after two series that were not as universally loved as predicted (overlooking the said problems that would've fixed them). I am happy we are gonna get the season 2, but I fear executives will try to say any poor numbers are based on the writing for it...while not doing the same for others.

Season 3 of the Mandalorian....it has great parts! There is a lot of fun and lovely things (and i loved Lizzo's and Jack Black's cameos) but it feels like it is a push for theme rides and toys. Everything we have had slowly simmering has just been "oh yeah, this happened".

Like, Bo getting the Dark-saber is FINE. I can see that being the best choice overall. That execution? Not really. Or the helmet and how Bo is accepted but a massive subplot of Din's story was who he was and what he was as a Mandalorian and within his place as the tribe. That is such a beautiful and great character arc that was just...dismissed? And to have him bathe in episode, what, 2? Almost every big or subtle interesting plot within the first two seasons are just being overlooked or handled without any sort of true thought or care, like we as the viewers are fine with basically starting over in the third season.

I am gonna wait to see the whole season to see it together, but it feels choppy and feels lazy and feels like they are trying to sweep Din aside for Bo-Katan to take over, pretend it was the plan all along, without any sort of real and true build up.

I just wish that there wasn't such a intense legal and protective battle to write and publish Star Wars books because I would be using so much energy to have more Luke stories out in the world cause the poor guy needs them at this point.

At least we do have fantastic fan fiction!

[seikilos-stele]

This is one of those questions that I want to ask a lot of authors, because I curious how many answers will be the same (if any)

The the basic premise is Do You Control Fic or Does it Control You?

What I mean by this is broken down into a few sub questions

Do you watch a show or read a book & fic ideas just pop into your head?

Are you watching/reading something and you are unsatisfied with the plot, but love the characters, therefore, set out to fix it?

Do you intend to write fic from the start, so you go in search of inspiration?

Have you ever completely lost interest in the canon, but still love the characters/fic (therefore, no longer revisit the original source of the fic?)

As is usual, this is just a guide. Answer any which way you would like - long answers are always welcome!

Wow, I think all of the above, multiple times!

The first type, where fic ideas just pop into my head — that’s the most difficult to write. I mean, it’s the most difficult to follow through 😆 sometimes I’ll write the ideas down, but once I’ve moved on to the next episode or book, I lose interest. So out of all these, statistically, this is the one you’d see the least.

#2 — setting out to fix it. Of course! I’ve probably written like, hundreds of post-Bilbringi fics and fics set in-between the Legends Thrawn trilogy, where I wished there was more character development with Thrawn and Pellaeon.

#3 — intending to write fic from the start, going in search of inspiration. This, probably more than anything else. When I first started writing on AO3, I made a kind of arbitrary goal to write a fic for everything I read or watched. Luckily when the stakes are that low you can basically just open a blank document and write whatever comes to mind, and it turns out okay — you’re like, “This ain’t my fandom, I’m just strolling through.” You don’t care if people even read it, so you don’t stress about prose or characterization 😆 it’s very nice!

I do this for fandoms I actually like too, because I usually want to write every day, but don’t always have a current idea. So I keep lists of interesting prompts and ideas, that way I never run out of material. Some of them get so stale that I never end up using them, but it’s still nice to have them there!

#4 — this happened with Once Upon a Time. I thought it was a bad show straight from Episode 1, but I loved Robert Carlyle’s character, so I watched it for him. All the way up until Season 3! At that point, Mr. Gold’s character arc was taking too many exhausting dips and turns, and the show wasn’t up to the task of explaining why. I stopped watching, but I kept up to date with the show’s shenanigans, read tons of fics, and wrote somewhere around 40 or 50 myself.

(It’s funny — I did write a few tiny fics BEFORE the show went bad; but it’s only the fics I wrote AFTER that I saved)

There are some great fix-its for that fandom btw 😆 I was also a huge fan of SwanQueen (main character Emma Swan x main villain Regina Mills) but in S3 they introduced a straight romance for Emma that I couldn’t STAND, so I read lots of fix-its for them too. My own fics weren’t really fix-its; they were AUs, almost always hurt/comfort. The show offered us plenty of material for that!

* * *

Maybe also worth mentioning:

1) when you’re reading a nonfiction book, but you’re thinking so hard about your favorite show that you end up with 7 plot bunnies all stemming from that single nonfiction piece that has nothing to do with Star Trek or Gargoyles or—

2) the private fanfics that you never bother to write down but replay in your head with minor tweaks each night before you go to bed. All of them are write-able! Many people would probably like to read them! But they seem somehow off-limits to me 😆 like, no, I’m only allowed to write fics based off stuff I think of in the shower, or at my desk — in bed??? That’s blasphemy

[rachelkolar]

2022 wasn't as killer a year for books as 2021, but I don't know how it could be; 2021 was my introduction to Clive Barker, Livia Llewellyn, and especially the Kushiel books, which made me wail "Where have you been?!" like Molly Grue. I still had no trouble putting together my top ten first-time reads and a couple of honorable mentions. There are so many good books, y’all!

Alphabetical by author:

Watership Down by Richard Adams, read by Peter Capaldi. This was technically a reread, but it didn't click for me at all when I read it in eighth grade. Boy howdy, it clicked this time. It's a classic for a reason, and Capaldi nails the narration.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. This is the only time I ever finished a book, flipped back to the beginning, and immediately read it again. I was crying at the end without quite knowing why. Just gorgeous and moving and wonderful.

Die by Kieron Gillen. Basically a hard R graphic novel of the 80s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon with some fascinating meditation on TTRPGS in general. It disappears up its own butt a bit, but it's still terrific.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is everything I wanted AI: Artificial Intelligence to be.

Curse of Dracula by Kathryn Ann Kingsley. This is sort of the catch-all for my discovering Kingsley this year; I read *eight* of her books. She's my exact horror romance sweet spot for when I want a bit of creepiness and a lot of swoon. Sometimes you just want Phantom of the Opera where Eric gets the girl, okay? (Although that's more Impossible Julian Strande than Dracula, but how am I supposed to say no to well-done vampire smut?)

Boys Life by Robert McCammon. I did a trivia special about the Stoker Awards in October, so I read a *lot* of Stoker winners this year, and this was the best. Bradbury-like dark fantasy dripping with nostalgia. I cried twice. (CW: a dog and a child die)

The Call by Peadar O'Guilin. I freaking loved this book. Body horror plus the Wild Hunt? Yes please! Also, while this is coming from someone whose only physical disability is terrible eyesight, Nessa is possibly the best disabled character I've ever read. She has polio, and the book is crystal clear on two points: this *doesn't* mean the Wild Hunt is going to kill her immediately, but it's *horrible* for her chances. We never get any "if she works hard, then by cracky, she may as well not be disabled at all!", but it's always clear that she has a chance and anyone who says otherwise can kiss off.

Kings Rising by C.S. Pacat. When I was on a heavy Thrawn kick last winter, I asked r/romancebooks to recommend a book with a Thrawn-like love interest, and some saint mentioned this. Laurent isn't quite Thrawn–imagine Thrawn's angry teenage brother–but whew, he's close enough. The whole trilogy is good, but the power dynamics are so delicious in the third one that it wins the day. (CW: the first book has noncon, and there's repeated mention of childhood sexual abuse, although none on screen. The villain is into that sort of thing.)

Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse. Black Sun was one of my favorite reads of 2020, and this is a worthy sequel. It even made me like Naranpa!

The Hidden Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. Just…gorgeous. I loved this one.

Honorable mentions: Starless by Jacqueline Carey (speaking of great disabled characters), Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser (the true story of Little House on the Prairie), NPCs by Drew Hayes (just a blast), Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne (a fun, spicy modernization that had me laughing out loud), and Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare (a gory romp that dares to ask: what if there were a clown in a cornfield?).

[laurabwrites]

Heya! If I wanted some context for your writing, what do I watch? Will the clone war series do? I only know the main movies and the mandalorian!

Oh boy. Uh... this is complex. The answer for 'what do you need to see for context to my fanfiction writing' is... Fanon.

Where is my favorite ship from? The Clone Wars. Have I watched The Clone Wars? NO Do I know multiple plot lines from the series? YES

Have I read the Jedi Apprentice book series? NO Do I have the plot and story- and meta-analysis of Obi-Wan's time on Meliaa/Daan in my head anyway? YES.

Did I at one point read the entirety of what was then called the Extended Universe? Yes. Does it inform my writing? No, because I don't use those characters or the time period really. I could still tell you who Corran Horn, Thrawn, and Wedge Antilles were (up to a point).

Have I played any of the video games? NOPE. And yet, I still know who Cal Kestis is and the basics of his storyline.

The comics? Not read. And yet I know that Vader snapped Fox's neck and Sabé works as an Imperial agent for a while because she trusts Padmé's judgement (major side-eye from me there Sabé).

Most of this comes from reading a lot fiction on AO3. Some of this comes from excellent metanalysis by blogs like @gffa (waves in lurker). Some of it is just... osmosis.

Things I have consumed myself, with my own eyeballs: All 9 mainline movies Rogue One The Mandalorian The Bad Batch

Things I plan to eventually see myself: Andor The Clone Wars maybe Rebels? maybe the new Ahsoka Tano live action show?

In all honesty, you've seen the movies. You're probably good. for like 70? 80? % of my fanfiction. That's 70–80% inside pieces of fanfiction, not 70–80% of my fanfiction pieces.

If you mean my original writing? If I haven't written it well enough for someone to come at it cold, I need to do another draft.

[ketchup-monthly]

In terms of recreational reading? This is awful,but I think it's very reflective of how we as people are actually consuming media--that is to say only in tiny bite-sized pieces, and missing a lot of context. Recreational reading is to your own discretion. You don't want to read? Don't read. You do want to read and you have the time for it? Absolutely do it. No one is making you read for fun.

That being said........I am a graduate student in the humanities. I have to read so much every night and there are speed reading and skimming strategies I have to use so I can even keep up with my classwork. There are ways of speed reading books and getting all the information from it that you need in as little time/reading as possible. Those work for academic books, and research essays/speeches/collections. They do not work for literature, or books that have actual plots because individual lines are more important.

I won't sit here and preach to people about how to read. I, personally, like to read, and have since I was a kid because my parents fostered that love of learning when I was young and just learning how to read. I know people who don't like reading or have difficulty reading words but love listening to audiobooks. I've recently gotten into reading the Thrawn (2017) series and the Thrawn Ascendency series thanks to the audiobooks. Do I struggle to listen to them? Yes. But if I can't listen to it on a day, I just set it down and try to listen to it again later. Do I struggle reading physical books recreationally sometimes but have infinite energy for fanfiction? Yes. I get burned out by school easily. But no one forces me to read for fun. I choose to.

I won't tell people they can or can't read a certain way. But I will stand here, as someone with a degree and has had to read several dozen books over the course of my college career, and interacted with several types of readers through those classes. One in particular stands out, as one of my favorite classes I took and by far the best english lit class i took to get my english minor, with one of the best subjects. It was an American Horror lit class, and every novel we had focused on a different type of horror lit or a different demographic. It was my final semester, I was very invested in this discussion-based class, and about half the students were 16-17 years old and in high school dual enrollment students who did not do the readings, did not talk in class, and spent the entire time messing around on their laptops. It may have been that we had very different ways of looking at the classes we were taking. Maybe they didn't feel like reading. Maybe they just didn't want to talk in class. Maybe it was related to the fact that they were 4-5 years younger than me and still in high school but were taking college classes. I don't know. But what I do know is each of those books we read over the semester were interesting and yeah. There were some big paragraphs. But in reading those for a class where the deeper meaning is really important, those large paragraphs were necessary to get that.

I knew students from that same class who just read the SparkNotes and looked at the professors PowerPoint slides (that had paragraphs on it that we were reading more closely) ahead of time to get as much context as they could and filled in the blanks from my answers to questions and discussions as well as those from other students. They could get by, but they still missed a lot.

Sparknotes are easier to read. They get you the main big ideas but don't get you the proper meat and potatoes. Social media has moved our perceptions of how to consume information away from reading or watching long form media to quick 30 second snippets of information, through various platforms (cough cough tiktok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts). I'll admit I watch YouTube shorts or just watch a short YouTube video instead of longer TV shows or movies because they require less energy. I know that reading a short article on the presidential debate will get me some information but in reading it I missed a lot of what actually happened. Everything being easily accessible in short form has caused us to get impatient and not want to wait for however long it takes to read the novel, watch the show, listen to the debate, or even read the long paragraph. Learn patience. Practice patience. Sometimes the short form media works but a lot of time it means you miss out on something important.

This was a long winded way of saying that skimming and speed-reading work in some academic spaces, but if you're speed reading or skimming or skipping paragraphs when reading recreationally, then is it really reading recreationally?

Do they know that reading is not mandatory? Nobody is forcing them to read?

[jyndor]

I have not seen any good Star Wars media after the Rebels and Rogue One era until Andor and boy is it a breath of fucking fresh air. I want more of this writing going forward

so I do enjoy Mandalorian! it's a really solid show and I even enjoyed a lot about Kenobi (even though its a mess lol and not what anyone wanted from it) and the Tusken episodes from BOBF were great to me. BUT lol I mean I think its kind of weird that people are pearl clutching about people saying Andor is like good for tv not just good for SW tv? yeah guys 22 minute episodes make building characters difficult. they do, they're too fast. I think Rebels is alright I don't even think its great most of the time, but I respect what it offers and what it tries to do. Clone Wars suffers from the same thing for me but IMO it offers some inspired moments (especially that last season's finale episodes omg).

And everyone knows I love Rogue One, although I'll be the first to acknowledge how flawed it is at certain points (forget the fuckin bor gullet which I have to skip lol I cannot watch it, it really suffers in character development especially of its LEAD CHARACTER JYN to the point that the novel and Jyn books do some work to her more sympathetic but i digress). BTW if anyone hasn't yet watched Rogue One and gone directly into A New Hope, do it at some point. It's pretty seamless.

However I have to be honest I think Andor is working in ways that nothing else has done so far since the OT to me (I mean besides KOTOR and the Thrawn Trilogy). Empire is my favorite SW film and if Andor sticks the landing, it'll be right there and probably beat it on everything except like idk sentimental value of watching ESB with my mom a billion times LOL. Eh now that I'm writing that idk it's hard to beat Yoda on Dagobah, luminous beings are we, Vader and Luke on Bespin, etc. Hmm.

But it is different than the rest of SW tv at the least because it's not pulpy - and to some people the pulp is the point of SW although I can't relate, love some SW pulp but I don't need it. So I can understand people not vibing with it for their SW fix, but what about just like good fucking drama? Because it serves that.

Also there's this idea that Andor doesn't have the Force or SW-sy things. LOL you can interpret it that way but it's not conclusive. The focus on kyber and the Eye of Aldhani pointing Cassian in the direction to safety do give me Force-y vibes, idk. Not Jedi and not Sith, but the everyday connection to life and the galaxy that is so present in SW.

[not-the-tie-youre-looking-for]

Something that's been bugging me for years since the Legends finale. If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do you think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out? On the one hand, from Legends Thrawn's portrayal I imagine he would without a second of hesitation. On the other, Canon Thrawn has been much more... restrained? And on a third point, there's the fact that Legends and Canon Thrawn seem like they really could be the same person just at different points of time. cnt in next

...I'm just curious if anyone else was curious if Zhan agreed with that direction taken. Which, on that note, did Zhan ever say anything about his thoughts on how Rebels handled Thrawn? Both from a writing standpoint as well as an acting and musical one (Thrawn's various leitmotifs)?

Oh man. Ohhhhhhhh maaaaan. My friend, you have asked exactly the right person this question, because not only have I wanted to talk about this multiple times before, but I also have ~receipts~. 👀

��️Spoiler warnings for Star Wars: Rebels, The Mandalorian, the canon Star Wars novels Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason, Thrawn Ascendency: Chaos Rising, and Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good, and the legends Star Wars novels Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, and Outbound Flight.⚠️

Oh man. Where to begin.

Lets start with who Thrawn is, because depending on who you ask, you're gonna get different answers—whether you're strictly a Legends fan, Dave Filoni, a guy who's only seen Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels, Timothy Zahn, or just a writer/artist fan like me.

To Timothy Zahn, the man behind our favorite chiss, Thrawn is a character that is constant in both attitude and personality throughout all of his content. In multiple interviews, ranging from Thrawn's debut in Rebels to the latest about the writing of the Ascendancy Trilogy, Zahn states that Thrawn in canon and Thrawn in Legends are indistinguishable.

And so I present the receipts:

In a 2017 interview with The Verge on writing the first canon Thrawn book Thrawn, Zahn is asked the following question and responds as such:

How do you navigate bringing back a character who already has an extensive backstory and audience expectations, with telling a new story that fits in the new continuity?

Actually, I didn’t find that to be a problem. I’d never written Thrawn in this part of the Star Wars timeline, so it was simply a matter of bringing him into the Empire and chronicling his rise through the ranks. It’s still the same character as in the 1990s books, just a decade or two younger and in a very different military and political environment.

In another interview with The Verge in 2018 (a few months after the finale of Rebels aired) about writing Thrawn: Alliances, he repeats this sentiment twice:

Thrawn feels like if it had been written before the canonization purge a couple of years ago, or if you squinted a bit, it would serve as a perfect setup for Heir to the Empire.

Oh, I don’t think you need to squint at all. I wrote him in these two books to fit in with everything else I’d done. So if someone at Lucasfilm snapped their fingers, and suddenly all of my other books were canon, and there would be no real retrofitting that would have to go in. It would all fit together.

Thrawn: Alliances feels more at home in the new canon, especially because Thrawn has been fleshed out a bit more in Rebels. Was there any adjustments for that?

Not really. I’m getting to play with more canon characters like Vader and Padmé and Anakin, but the character himself, I still see him as the same person. He’s got goals, and he won’t necessarily share them with you, but he as long as you’re going the same direction, he’s happy to cooperate and assist along the way.

...and this is referenced again in a 2020 interview with Polygon about writing Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising:

Along with Thrawn’s appearance in Rebels, Zahn would pen a new novel, Thrawn, that chronicled the character’s early days as an Imperial officer. Zahn didn’t have to change anything with the character, telling me in 2017 that “he’s like an old friend who I understand completely.” While Heir to the Empire was no longer canon, a reader could easily read Thrawn as a precursor to that classic novel. Thrawn went on to become a major presence in Rebels, and Zahn continued to explore his origins in Thrawn: Alliances and Thrawn: Treason.

The next day, an interview with IGN was published on the same subject:

Thrawn is an especially unique case because Zahn has been able to effectively continue the work he started way back in 1991 with Heir to the Empire. That novel may not be a part of official Star Wars lore any longer, but as Zahn explained, Thrawn himself is basically the same character regardless of continuity.

[....] The closest comparison between Chaos Rising and Zahn's earlier EU work is probably 2006's Outbound Flight, which is set during the Clone Wars and details the first encounter between Thrawn and the Galactic Republic (while also retroactively laying the groundwork for elements of Heir to the Empire). That novel is no longer canon, but Zahn told us he prefers to operate as if it were. He's making a concerted effort not to retread the same ground as Outbound Flight and to avoid contradicting the events of that novel as much as possible.

So yeah. In Zahn's opinion, Legends Thrawn is Canon Thrawn is Book Thrawn, and there is no difference whatsoever between Thrawns in, say, Outbound Flight, Heir to The Empire, Alliances, and Chaos Rising. I wholeheartedly disagree, but lets move on.

Now that the books are out of the way, its time for Rebels.

In July of 2016, after the trailer announcing Thrawn's canon debut aired, Dave Filoni had the following to say about Thrawn's character in regards to Timothy Zahn:

“I was pretty adamant with a couple of people saying, ‘Listen, we need to have Tim sign off on this. This is kind of a waste of time [otherwise],'” says Filoni. “We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns, but without Tim’s okay, what does it mean? That’s not going to be good. Once we had some stuff, we wanted to do what we thought was right and make the character. Then we brought him in. We had the production fully prepared. I said, ‘Look, if there’s something that Tim says that I think is really valuable, even if it changes something dynamically, we need to be ready for that and see what we can do.’ I wanted to make sure we did this right by everybody. We brought him in and we didn’t really tell him why. We just flew him up to Lucasfilm and sat him down in a theater and said, ‘Hey, we’re bringing Thrawn into the show.’ He was like, ‘Wow.’ and I said, ‘Yeah, wow. And I’m going to show him to you right now and you let me know what you think.'”

(Before we continue, keep that first highlighted sentence in mind for future reference. I'm going to come back to that later.)

Fortunately, Timothy Zahn was delighted at the show’s approach to the Empire’s imposing blue-skinned Chiss.

“We showed him some of the scenes with him,” Dave Filoni recalls. “He looked like a kid in a candy store. I think it meant a lot to him not just because it was his character, but because you have to imagine what he went through when it was announced that everything is Legends now, not Expanded Universe. I get that and I’ve always appreciated the work that goes into the Expanded Universe… For Tim, I think it was us saying, ‘No, no, no. We really like your character. We want him to be part of the real thing. The canon universe.'”

So in 2016, before we even saw Thrawn in action beyond a trailer, we were told that Zahn gave the OK, and he was chill with the way Thrawn was created in the show. In 2017, he gave a little more of the background of this process in an interview with FANgirl Blog:

The events of Thrawn dovetail closely with Rebels and shed light on some of Thrawn’s more seemingly surprising actions on the show, like when he appears to lose his temper and yell at Lieutenant Lyste. What was it like to see Thrawn come alive onscreen? Is he how you’ve pictured him in your head?

I don’t see my characters in terms of voice or appearance, but rather as personality or attitude. That said, I very much enjoyed the way the Rebels team brought him to life, in his appearance, voice, and actions.

I also appreciated the freedom I had to tweak certain incidents, such as the one you mentioned, and give additional or alternate explanations for the viewers who may have thought those were somewhat out of character for him.

He doesn't really elaborate on this, but we can assume he had SOME creative input on Thrawn's character, and he was overall pretty happy with the choices made in the show.

But then, we have this from that earlier 2017 the Verge article:

When did you learn that Dave Filoni was intending to bring Thrawn to Rebels, and did you have any input into how the character would be handled?

[...] I didn’t have any real input into how Thrawn was going to be handled, mainly because the lead time of an animated series is so long that much of season 3 had already been finished. But I trusted Dave and the team to do the character right. After all, why bring him into Rebels if you were going to drastically change him? Having seen the entire season now, I think we can agree that my trust was completely justified.

So... he didn't have "any real input," but was satisfied with it in the end? I guess? I don't know. We're getting into some contradictions now.

The last thing I've got in regards to Rebels is an interview Zahn did with the YouTube channel Star Wars Explained after the finale aired, where he responds to the following:

“So, maybe let's jump over to Rebels for a little bit. Now that it has wrapped up, how do you feel Thrawn was represented in Star Wars: Rebels?”

“They did a really good job—they not only understood the character and how to write for him, but they also understood the meta around how you defeat him. The only way to defeat Thrawn is to throw something at him he can't control, or can't anticipate. Given perfect knowledge and control, Thrawn will always find a way to win. But they understood, this is how you defeat him, these are the things we can use against him... so his portrayal in general, is very good; he's smart, he's anticipating, he's a step ahead of everybody, he's looking at clues and picking up on them, so I was very pleased with how the Rebels team handled the character."

I think these quotes answer many of your questions, so to answer your initial question: If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do I think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out?

Yes—but ONLY because at that point, the only established™️ Thrawn content was found in Legends, where Thrawn was a ruthless and calculating warlord.

However!

I do believe that if given the chance to re-write the Star Wars: Rebels finale using his now-canon novels as a solid background TODAY, Zahn would choose to not let Thrawn bombard Lothal's Capital City.

I believe this because he made one single very interesting creative choice when writing Thrawn that completely overwrote Thrawn's pre-established Rebels character: Thrawn was not responsible for the civilian deaths on Batonn—Pryce was.

And that's that on that.

A few months ago I would have ended it there, but today, Thrawn's story is no longer just contained in the novels and Rebels, but also in that of The Mandalorian.

This is where I will proudly say I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Before The Jedi aired, I was 100% sure that the next time we saw Thrawn, it would be nowhere NEAR the Empire, because Zahn was pretty adamant in the novels that Thrawn was only in the Empire to help. His. People.

So now he's apparently doing fuck-knows-what in fuck-knows-where and is STILL associated with the Seventh Fleet and Imperial Warlords???

Huh??? Despite the fact that he held no true loyalty to the Empire or to the Emperor??? It's been months and I'm still confused as fuck. Add to the fact that Zahn also doesn't know what the fuck is going on to the equation and we get a big fat question mark with one pretty clear answer that Filoni said himself that we have to keep in mind:

"We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns."

So I don't think Zahn has much control over Thrawn as we would all like to think. We can hope he gives us the crazy Thrawn and Ezra Space Adventure™️ novel all we want, but ultimately, Thrawn's fate does not rest in his hands.

If you guys have more to add please let me know!!! This is, obviously, a topic I am very passionate about, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[emperorsfoot]

Top 5 books/book series?

Ooh... this is a hard one... My favorites change every couple of months...

Hm...

Okay! The ones I keep coming back to most consistently are:

5.) The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop, this was my Twilight. When I was in high school, this was my supernatural romance centered around a Mary-sue who's main love interest was the most handsome and OP supernatural whatever-the-fuck in the land! It is by no means a "good" book. In fact, a lot of the themes and tropes in it kinda piss me off now. But it has definitely been one of the most influential books I've read and I can still see it's influence on me in my current writing today.

4.) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, I read this book during one of the lowest points in my life and what was supposed to be a terrifying dystopia sounded like the perfect world to me. Guaranteed housing, guaranteed employment, no slut-shaming, and if -for any reason- you weren't happy with your life, the government gave you free drugs to feel happy. Ten years ago when I was unemployed and living off my parent's charity, that sounded like a fucking utopia. I have different opinions of it now, but I still remember the way it made me feel back then and it's stayed with me.

3.) Star Wars: the Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command. Easily the best Star Wars expanded universe books ever written. Every Star Wars fans needs to read them. I'd even say people that aren't that big into Star Wars should read them. They're a fun outer space adventure, but also a political drama with the militant Rebellion trying to shift gears and form a democratic government. It's really, really good! Also, it's the first appearance of the best Stsar Wars character, Mara Jade! You should read it for her alone!

2.) The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, before Batman, before Zorro, the first "masked avenger" type character ever written was the Scarlet Pimpernel. A vigilante who rescued "innocent" noblemen from execution, sometimes mere minutes before they were lead to the guillotine. Adventure, romance, with a little bit of history as backdrop. A fun read, for anyone, but something I (personally) consider "required reading" for anyone who's a fan of the superhero genre in general. (Also, the Broadway soundtrack slaps!)

1.) Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, this was the first "queer" book I ever read, about a single-gender society where all adults have the option of both sex-organs and which one they are might change from cycle to cycle. Also, the world building was extremely detailed and immensely immersive, I really felt like I was there on planet Winter with Genry as he was narrating. This is one of the books I recommend to everyone. Everyone should read it at least once in their life!

[blackberry-gingham]

2, 8, 9, 15, 33

SORRY FOR SENDING TOO MUCH ASKS GDUYSGFJDKFHURJ G-

Ask list here! SLDLKDJSDKFJ NO YOU'RE GOOD!!! I love these 😭😭

2) Favorite character?

SKEJLDKSJDLJD AAAAAAAA IDK. I have a lot of faves tbh sksksk. but. If I had to pick like ONE character, and the rest and all their content were deleted from existence forever... I'd probably have to say Thrawn from the Star Wars universe 😭✋🏻

Of all my f/os, in a twist of irony, he's like the most normal, least problematic of them all. There's literally nothing wrong with him, like slslslsl everyone else I like is either a criminal, a murderer, annoying, or legit insane 😭🥴

He may be with the Empire the majority of the time, but if you're a sweaty nerd like me who reads all the books, you'll find out that he's actually only there to undermine it and repurpose their resources for his own devices, so don't @ me 😭✋🏻

8) Favorite fic from another author?

THE OF STRAYS AND SOMETHING ONE BY @efingart WITH KID WOODS AND THE DOG AND THE BOXING AAAAAAAA

9) Favorite fanfic author?

Oof, idk tbh 😅😅 Ironicly, I don't really read fanfiction like that. I may have a veeeeery few favorite fics here and there, but I don't really have enough that I could pinpoint one particular author that I like 😅 How about my beloved mutuals!!! Y'all are my favorite 😌

15) Do you ever delete works?

Veeeeery rarely. But usually no. Unless if I just know down to my soul that it suuuuucks hardcore, I don't delete fics. I mean hey, it could be someone's favorite, you know?

33) Do you receive hate for what you write?

I use to when I was writing for one... specific character ahem 👀🥴 But never before then and never since lol

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

I hope you get to read/listen to the thrawn prequel books. I'd love to hear your thoughts on them, I think it helps to bridge rebels thrawn with book thrawn in terms of understanding the character. Plus I found it fascinating to see a little bit of chiss culture. I really love how you characterize thrawn in your writing which is why I'd love to hear your thoughts on them. You are my favorite fanfic writer for thrawn. Of course your writing for every thing else is amazing and I like seeing you write what's currently interesting you at a given time. Have a great day!

The Thrawn prequel books are in my audible library, I just haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. I do have a trip coming up so that might be the perfect flight read. As soon as I finish them I will for sure share my thought. (And knowing me get back to writing fics for him).

Thank you so much for messaging me! It really means a lot and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate hearing that my characterization specifically come across well on page. It’s one of my number one worries when it comes to Thrawn.

I hope you have a wonderful day too. 😁

[popwasabi]

“The Mandalorian” S2 is a power fantasy with mini Star Wars trailers

The term “Plot armor” is often used by readers and viewers to describe the myriad of ways writers keep their heroes away from any real danger no matter what choices or actions they make in the narrative. It’s typically a derisive phrase for the way a writer’s hero seems to escape death no matter what is thrown at him for the sole purpose of moving the plot forward.

In Disney+’s “The Mandalorian” this term takes a far more literal description in the form of our main anti-hero, played by Pedro Pascal, in his beskar armor which seems to be, by all accounts the most indestructible material in the galaxy far, far away.

(I mean, it still looks really cool too, of course.)

The result of this narrative decision in this series is that action scenes often don’t have real tension to them. In another series you might be able to reasonably believe the hero might be in danger with blaster fire shooting all around them but with beskar it’s almost comically not the case at all. Stormtroopers fire laser blast after laser blast at The Mando and each time they bounce harmlessly off him as if he were fucking Superman. It makes scenes feel devoid of stakes and danger no matter what situation they are in.

The show thus becomes a power fantasy, as action scenes serve as extended highlight reels for the Mando. Where season 1 of the show mitigated the power of the Mando’s plot armor by putting him more often in situations where his beskar alone wasn’t enough to save the day, season 2 goes mostly full power fantasy as The Mando rarely runs into a situation he can’t just quite literally walk through.

(“Aim for his armor, men! That’s his weak point!”)

This isn’t to say the season wasn’t without its high moments or even that it wasn’t enjoyable plenty of times but the series’ devotion to fan servicey action and callbacks to “Hey remember ____” makes it a fairly shallow story. At least for myself.

Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” continues the story of Din and his small Yoda-like companion, The Child (later known officially as Grogu), as he looks to complete a quest to return the burgeoning Force wielder to the Jedi. As he seeks to reunite The Child with the ancient Order, he encounters other Mandalorians who are on a quest to retake Mandalore and right on their tail is the nefarious Grand Moff Gideon who is still bent on capturing Grogu for whatever it is he has planned for the Empire.

Let me start this review by saying power fantasies aren’t inherently bad to watch or read. They can be good, cathartic junk food for the soul and can also be compelling, artistic, or even deeply metaphorical in their own way. A movie series like “John Wick” for instance is a power fantasy that aims to reinvent the wheel in action film-making with Keanu Reeves performing perhaps the best gun kata of all-time onscreen. Another film like Paul Verhoueven’s “Total Recall” can satirize the power fantasy to show how ridiculous it is in concept.

So, making your hero an unstoppable killing machine isn’t necessarily always a bad thing if used properly.

(Seriously, this is one of the smartest action films ever made. Don’t @ me.)

Now that that’s established, however, “The Mandalorian” season 2, despite some strong moments here and there, is a power fantasy that lacks these elements for a more interesting narrative. If you believe killing dozens of stormtroopers onscreen while never suffering so much as a scratch for eight episodes equals compelling storytelling then boy does Disney have a series for you.

Through the first four-ish episodes, the new season is mostly just fine and even quite enjoyable. We have the Mando getting a fun side quest with Timothy Olyphant on Tatooine where they get to wrangle a sand worm in a callback to the Westerns that inspired much of the franchise’s aesthetic. The Mando gets to escort a frog lady to her home planet to give birth to some tadpoles and they run into some actual danger in this episode in the form of kyrnknas/space spiders. And we get the return of Bo Katan from Dave Filoni’s “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” cartoon series, with Katee Sackhoff herself reprising the role in a fun Mandalorian team-up episode.

(I’m just so happy to see my girl, Starbuck, again more than anything honestly ;_;)

But the wheels started officially falling off for me in the next episode.

Episode 5 marked the live-action debut of fan favorite Ahsoka Tano, played by Rosario Dawson, and she meets the Mando by getting the jump on him with her lightsabers. In virtually any other situation we have been told lightsabers can cut through virtually anything. Now, beskar has been shown to be plenty durable throughout the series so far but lightsabers? Surely not.

Well…

It is an overall good episode despite this but it marked the point for me where I badly wanted The Mando to just go the rest of the series without it. Obviously, the writers aren’t going to actually kill our hero, afterall The Mouse needs more money and he can’t have it unless we get 50 more Mandalorian episodes and spin-offs, but at some point I gotta feel like there’s a possibility at least that our hero might actually die or at least is in danger. It is actually super funny to me each time The Mando ducks or seeks cover in a shootout when I know, and the viewer damn well knows, he can literally walk right into the middle of it and shoot all these motherfuckers at his own leisure cause his actual plot armor is the stuff of adamantium and vibranium combined.

Episode 5 is mostly good though, it’s a nice callback to old school samurai flicks and for an old fan like myself it was enough to ignore beskar again saving the Mando’s ass.

(This was cool...This...was...cool.)

If episode 5 marked the point in which the wheels began to come off though, episode 6 is where the show really spun out into the ditch for me. Perhaps, this series worst episode, personally, episode 6 reintroduces fan favorite and series inspiration Boba Fett back officially into the fold and the result was perhaps the most self-indulgent entry of the series.

(I mean, it was directed by Robert Rodriguez so...)

Boba arrives to demand his beskar from The Mando who promptly tells him “no” before they are ambushed by a platoon of stormtroopers. Alongside Ming-Na Wen’s Fennec Shand, the three do battle with the stormtroopers with ridiculous ease. I’m aware that stormtroopers exist to be on the highlight reel of our heroes in this franchise and have a long history of not being able to hit the broad side of a bantha but again, I can only watch these guys die by the dozens onscreen over and over again while our heroes get away without suffering even a bruise before it starts feeling boring and repetitive.

It only gets worse once Boba actually puts on his armor. In a sequence that I would describe as “gratuitously” fan servicey, Boba wastes just about every last stormtrooper in this scene culminating with him destroying their two get-away vehicles in a single shot with a rocket. Considering he was killing them with ease just moments before with nothing more than a battle club and a bathrobe, it seemed almost hilariously needless that he donned his iconic armor.

(It would be tempting to say the stormtroopers fought as ineptly as the Putty Patrol here but even the Power Rangers have struggled a few times against these guys...)

I get that Boba is really important to a lot of fans, based on their perceptions of him in the original trilogy and subsequent books and graphic novels that came out in the following years, but here’s a hot take; this series didn’t need him in it. Maybe they didn’t need to keep him rotting in the Sarlacc Pit but this episode, alongside Ahsoka Tano’s feels more like marketing choices for the story rather than narrative ones. I’ll concede that there is a bit more substance to having Ahsoka there to commune with Grogu but their additions to the plot don’t actually show much of anything about the Mando outside physically helping him in a fight.

The way they tease, in both cases, stories that exist outside the internal narrative between Ahsoka’s search for Admiral Thrawn and Boba taking over Jabba’s palace at the end of the final episode, it feels like Disney threw in mini trailers for fans to nibble on at the expense of telling the Mando’s own story and letting it stand on its own like the first season.

The choice to have these characters shoved into this season again appears to be market driven not narrative. Once more, I get that these characters are important personally to many fans, but the appearance of these characters alone DO NOT equal good storytelling.

(Me when a fan tells me “But Boba was such a badass in *obscurely titled EU book that a handful of general audiences have read*! He deserves this moment!”)

The final episode of the season is truly encapsulating of all these issues “The Mandalorian” has, however. Moff Gideon, played by the always sharp Giancarlo Esposito, has Grogu imprisoned aboard his ship. The Mando and his friends plan a rescue mission to save him and, just like nearly every episode before, it is stupidly easy for our protagonists.

The crew of five, again, walk through every Imperial on the ship. I don’t mean this metaphorically by the way, I mean this literally as Cara, Fennec, Bo Katan and Koshka Reeves (played by WWE’s Sasha Banks) without a single moment of real adversity just blast through every stormtrooper on the ship and never get hit once in the process.

A good action scene needs an element of danger, a sense that our hero might actually not come out of this alive even though we all know they will. An action scene without this has no tension and without tension it becomes booooooooring.

(Even John fucking Wick is capable of bleeding, guys...)

The finale had a chance, however, to add real stakes and danger to the scene in the form of this season’s new enemy; The Dark Troopers. These Imperial battle droids were foreshadowed as these super soldiers at the end of episode 4 and seemed to be billed as a real dangerous match for our heroes to faceup against. When the Mando finally gets himself face to face with one he finds they are not as easy to kill as the nameless stormtroopers from before. To see The Mando briefly face real adversity for a change snapped me out of my cynical mood so sharply for a moment I thought I had turned on another series by accident.

But of course, danger never lasts long in this series as The Mando’s armor again saves him first from getting pummeled to death by the droid’s super fists then he uses his plot spear, cause of course he has one of those too, to finish the job.

Danger over.

Moff Gideon doesn’t fair much better in this episode. This villain who had been built up for two seasons as this calculative monster gets stopped rather easily with Mando and his friends barely breaking a sweat. This character feels wasted because of this, even though I’m sure Giancarlo Esposito will return in the next season. He just feels about as much like a pushover as the nameless stormtroopers in this series.

The episode had one more chance though to show these Dark Troopers meant business toward the end as we found the heroes cornered on the command deck with nowhere to run and a dozen of these droids ready to blast and pound them into the floorboards. But help arrives in the form of a Deus X-Wing Machina.

Without having to face even one Dark Trooper, Luke fucking Skywalker arrives on the ship and kills every droid without breaking a sweat. It plays as inspiring in the moment but again I just found myself bored and irritated. A chance to see the series heroes actually use their wits and show their creativity in a moment of true danger thwarted to please fan boys.

I get that Grogu called out to him in episode 6 but creatively this felt like an extremley lazy way to solve the heroes’ dilemna.

(“Hello my name is Jedi. I enjoy doing...*computes script* Jedi things.”)

This season wasn’t all bad. It certainly had nice production value that made each alien world pop and beautiful to look at. Every actor and actress played their parts expertly well, with what they were given, and made for interesting characters at times. There are also nice homages to both Western and Samurai cinema throughout the season that fans of both will appreciate. And Pedro Pascal is just so good on his own, especially in tender moments with Grogu, that you forget that his character is kind of a Gary Stu.

But the main crux of the issue here that I’m trying to get across is the reason you need to remove the plot armor of your heroes is not just because action scenes need tension and stakes, it’s that when faced with danger these scenes reveal who these characters are. I used to believe that the reason Mandalorians and Jedi had such a fierce rivalry in the lore despite the obvious advantages of wielding the Force was because these famed bounty hunters were just that fucking good at killing. That despite being, on paper, normal people they had great martial prowess, athletic skill, and the tactical wit to outsmart people who can literally sense their feelings. But now with beskar and the way this series is written, it appears the Mandalorians were challenging warriors just because they happened to harness the most OP armor building material in the galaxy.

It makes you wonder how the fuck they were conquered to begin with…

(Maybe they just needed more knee rockets...)

This takes away from the mysticism of the Mandalorians for me. It makes The Mando less interesting to me in the way he fights. Yea he can shoot really good too but really it’s the armor that makes him the fighter that he is and I find that kind of boring. We occasionally get this character to remove the armor during the series, including a whole episode that was easily one of the best of the season, and in every case he’s more interesting once the helmet comes off. I get that fans hold a lot of reverence for that armor, yea it still looks really cool, but making it this impenetrable super material doesn’t add anything to the story.

If anything, it takes away from it.

(Plus how could you not love Pedro Pascal when he’s out of armor? uWu)

I wouldn’t go as far as to say I hate season 2, even though I spent 2000 plus words just now lambasting it but I guess I just want to say I am unimpressed more than anything. I feel like I’ve seen better Star Wars be it in the movies, cartoons, books, video games, etc and I’ve certainly seen better action in the franchise as well.

Considering fan reaction so far appears to be overwhelmingly positive, I am definitely in the minority here and you are welcome to enjoy this series as much as you want in spite of how unimpressed I am with the season. But considering all I have seen of this fandom the last few years, regarding complaints about fan service (“Rogue One”), easily defeated/underdeveloped bad guys (“The Last Jedi”), and Mary Sues (The sequel trilogy in general), I have to ask again what is it actually that fans like or don’t like about new entries in the franchise? It’s not that there isn’t valid criticisms there and “The Mandalorian” is enjoyable in sincere ways too but it has many of the issues I hear commonly said of more divisive entries in the Disneyverse. So why does it get a pass?

I’ve been told it’s not worth my energy to talk too derisively about the fans in one of my earlier write-ups, so I’ll leave it at that but it does make me wonder.

(“Rogue One” admittedly has a simarily self-indulgent action sequence though haha...)

Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” isn’t the worst piece of Star Wars media ever created, far from it, and for most part its solid enjoyable Saturday morning cartoon theater but if the series wants to really take steps to become more compelling in the future it might be good to stop bubble wrapping their heroes in plot armor. Literally.

Until then this is the way…I guess…

Me getting ready for the backlash...

[doctorwenqing]

For the Star Wars Books asks! Coruscant (favorite canon book?), Atollon (one book/series you want to read), and Naboo (if you could write a book or series in Star Wars, what would it be?) :)

thank you for the ask!!

coruscant: favorite canon book(s)?

if you had asked me 6 months ago i would probably have said lost stars but i think now thrawn (2017) has beaten it out for top spot! (weird because i actually read thrawn before lost stars. but thrawn has grown on me like wild kudzu)

atollon: one book or series you want to read?

my whole bookshelf is basically a tbr 😅 i think top of my list is i’ve been meaning to read the aphra audio drama novelization for MONTHS now and just haven’t gotten around to it yet! (but tbh i’m rereading the canon thrawn books next and depending on how i feel i might read the legends thrawn books after that)

naboo: if you could write a star wars book or book series, what would it be?

there’s a lot of star wars books i WANT (an eli vanto series, a book about luke and leia visiting naboo, a master and apprentice sequel of some kind) but i want those to be written by good authors who are not me. probably if i was going to write one i would write about mari san tekka from the high republic because i think she’s so interesting and there would be a lot i could unpack there!