#wraith commander

[accidental-spice]

And thus began the greatest inside/running joke in the galaxy

[incorrectstarwarslegendsquotes]

Myn Donos: how do you stay silly, despite it all? Wes Janson: i must maintain my whimsy, lest i lose everything

[notasapleasure]

The greatest treasure in the Star Wars collection I finally have the space to unpack and store properly isn't my beloved giant Wedge and Biggs figures, nor is it my Ewan MacGregor autograph, nor even is it my precious MicroMachines set for Heir to the Empire. No, it is far and away the folder full of early '00s print-offs from Aaron Allston's website:

This is like....you can pinpoint the exact moment she discovered fandom!! You can see how floppy the paper was from the ink when I printed out the pictures :')

Yup, Aaron said 'Star Wars canon is whatever you want it to be'. He also changed Hobbie's hair colour though, so maybe he just had a thing about Hobbie.

He also hosted a bunch of fanart, which was my first exposure to the genre and which I utterly ADORED. Here are some by Jenny Kauer and Sixten because they include my blorbo Janson:

[tookarask]

listening to the new wraith squadron audiobooks and i forgot about the exchange between wedge and falynn where she accuses him of being 40 and he’s like ☹️☹️☹️ I’M TWENTY-EIGHT 😭😭😭

[draw-you-coward]

power level: how it started vs how it's going

[jkcorellia]

🚨RED ALERT🚨 THE ESSENTIAL LEGENDS COVER FOR SOLO COMMAND HAS SHALLA AND RUNT ON IT

finally a good, official image of Shalla Nelprin

[kollectorsrus]

[from-a-legends-pov]

Star Wars Legends: Poll of the Week

Sources:

“Yub yub, Commander.” (Wes Janson to Wedge Antilles, X-Wing: Wraith Squadron)

“Good luck, crazy human lady. It was fun destroying stuff with you.” (Aqualish pirate Andevid to Leia Organa, Razor’s Edge)

“Kiss my Wookiee!” (Han Solo to Imperial Warlord Zsinj, The Courtship of Princess Leia)

“But…it was so artistically done.” (Grand Admiral Thrawn to Rukh, The Last Command)

“Pretty. What do we blow up first?” (Myn Donos to the Wraiths, X-Wing: Solo Command)

Hungry for more Legends content? Follow @from-a-legends-pov and check out our upcoming Star Wars Legends fanfiction event, From a Legends Point of View, HERE!

[magnetarbeam]

This is exactly how I think it should always sound when Force-users try to describe what they feel in words.

Like, you can't do it without freaking people out at least a little.

[wr-n]

the temptation,,,,,

[edith-hyde]

I’m feeling inspired. Can’t promise it will update regularly, but I would like to start a new series. And while ultimately it is my choice, I wanna know what people would wanna read.

[incorrectstarwarslegendsquotes]

Edda Gast: You're lucky this time, porkchop.  Piggy:

[dickarchivist]

404th Roadtrip q&a 2024

Hello Friends!

In light of my very very stressful week this week, would you play a game with me to help keep me grounded?

Anon is on!

Send headcanons/assumptions/or questions you have about/for The 404th (Grave Squad, The Cold Command, or the Jedi!) And I'll answer them, maybe even in character!

This impromptu event will be tagged "404th roadtrip q&a 2024" and will go until August 1st!

Taglist:

@anxiouspineapple99 @wolffegirlsunite @wizardofrozz @eclec-tech @dystopicjumpsuit @clonethirstingisreal @wings-and-beskar @multi-fan-dom-madness @starrylothcat @n0vqni @sev-on-kamino @mythical-illustrator @523rdrebel @littlemissmanga @atomickidsoul @moonwreckd

[jbk405]

A few days ago I started re-reading the Wraith Squadron trilogy in the Star Wars X-Wing series. I last re-read them about five years ago (I know because I actually found some posts I made back in 2019), and I decided to revisit them because I was in the mood for a simple, White & Black Morality, Good vs. Evil story.

Warlord Zsinj is an evil despot who is trying to conquer the galaxy because of his own desire for power. That's it. There's no attempt to give him a sympathetic background or moral motivation. No backstory about growing up under a Brutal Dictator who oppressed his people and so Zsinj decided to become a Good Dictator and wound up being corrupted by the position. No looming outside threat which forces him to Take Charge For the Greater Good. Just personal ambition, like so many real-life warlords in any era.

He's still a fascinating, compelling character. He's smart enough to not fall to cliche "I will kill my own people at the slightest inconvenience and then act surprised when they turn against me" self-sabotage. He's pays his people well, and actually pays them when it's time. He even lets them actually retire once they've aged out of being useful. So he's a competent, scary threat that takes close to a half-dozen books to be defeated. But he's still A Villain, who the books NEVER try to position as "Maybe he's right after all...."

And I gotta say, it's refreshing to have simplicity like this in fiction every once in a while. I love a morally gray, emotionally complicated story as much as the next person, but eventually if that's all you read then it's easy to forget that sometimes things really are Black & White. And people sometimes get so fixated on "Maturity" or "Complexity" that they try and introduce moral ambiguity where there is none.

So, here it's nice and simple. He's a former officer in the Galactic Empire who struck out on his own after the death of the Emperor, and that's all he has to be.

The series does introduce moral ambiguity elsewhere in the story. Particularly with Gara Petothel/Lara Nostil, a former Imperial Intelligence operative who enlisted in the New Republic military with plans to betray them to Zsinj before realizing that she would rather stay there than return to the Empire. She does have the tragic backstory, and she is wracked by guilt over what he's done. But it's clear: What she did was Wrong, and now she's Making Up For It. The story still has Right and Wrong and she changed sides, there's never a question that she may have been Right before, or that the sides are so similar that it's no different.

This clarity can be a boon all on its own.