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I do think the Rogue Squadron comics are probably the only place we really see Tycho and Winter together, which is otherwise a relationship that felt like it took place almost entirely offscreen.
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May 4, 2023 17:46
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How was Battle Scars?
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May 6, 2023 06:19
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Finished a re-read of the Dark Horse KOTOR comics and I really miss that crew. Jarael never quite got the focus I would have liked but she was never just ignored or anything like other SW characters have been. (Apparently at some point I bout her outfit in SWTOR. It's no longer sold in the Cartel Market for reasons I am unclear on.) It's a very solid series and certainly in comics these days it feels rare to let a writer to just go off and do their own thing for ages. Minor thoughts: The big inter-series crossover that involved the origin of the rakghouls was not terribly intrusive as it starts in KOTOR. John Jackson Miller - who honestly I've never disliked anything I read of - seemed to really like breaking the "Planet of Hats" trope with SW aliens. First Griff and Snivvians like art, so he likes the art of the deal. Then he branches out more and you have what I think are the first goofy Trandoshan (if a master chef) and stupid Ithorians. Even one of Zayne's fellow Padawans was apparently a Falleen. It was clever to have the 'no romantic attachments' Jedi be a vocal minority that became a majority later, even if you always had people who ignored it and got away with it. Ki Adi Mundi had his... harem question mark and even in SWTOR Bastila/Revan descendant Satele Shan had a son and nobody seemed super eager to drum her out of the order for it. -- I've also been reading some High Republic stuff. After going through this and the last thread's backlog and the... good heavens... of earlier work it's nice to have Jedi who try to process their feelings, as an article I read said. I'm not going HAM on the multimedia enterprise, though. For whatever reason I'm sticking with stuff that has Vern as a central focus. The Nihil are so far a bit underwhelming as villains but she's fun and her Master/Padawan relationship with Imri who's like a year younger than Vern is interesting.
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May 13, 2023 18:43
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I heard they shuttled you around at such a breakneck pace from activity you couldn't really enjoy anything and sometimes didn't even have time to change clothes.
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May 19, 2023 01:08
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Arquinsiel posted:I also heard that, but it was from the theatre kids who were planning to change costumes for dinner and then again for hanging out in the bar after dinner and... If it helps, in this case I heard it from a fairly average family and it was the big send off dinner and they wanted to change but they only had like ten minutes between that and playing sabacc or whatever.
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May 19, 2023 05:59
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fartknocker posted:Crystal Star was one of the handful of books I skipped when I did my multi-year EU reread. I got like 50~ pages in and it was just so boring and bland and I wanted to move on to stuff that seemed better. But you apparently miss werewolves and centaurs! Also the Solo kids getting kidnapped. Again.
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Jun 7, 2023 19:33
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The Shame Boy posted:I thought that was Han Solo in a different book? Or did he just punch one? Corran goes on for an extended period how hot he found said otter in a slinky dress before they did the Dark Side tango. This became funnier when Selonians were more depicted as just upright otters. (The same is true for Gavin Darklighter when Bothans suddenly got a muzzle in their depictions.) I remember enjoying Rogue Squadron on the whole, even if trying to shoehorn in the fighter jock terms felt clunky and for some reason Corran constantly referring to telekinesis as 'teke' - which by the way he wasn't good at - were irritating to me even then.
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Jun 12, 2023 09:26
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Chairman Capone posted:Outlaws' lead writer was the head writer on Far Cry 6 and Watch Dogs: Legion, didn't play either of those but seems like the stories of both weren't great, but I also can't really remember the last Star Wars game with a really good story (haven't played Jedi: Survivor yet so can't comment on that). Survivor and Fallen Order are... fine but the latter especially has large chunks where you're not doing anything story related because you want to scale a mountain and see if there's a new cosmetic chest up there which feels like both feature and bug. When it focuses on the characters it's pretty good. Like a lot of people I felt like making the MC a standard white dude was the most boring choice possible but I came around on Cal. His supporting cast is pretty good too, especially his Nightsister buddy Merrin. (I keep hearing the tie-in novel is super horny for a Star Wars book.)
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Jun 13, 2023 09:37
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OhFunny posted:In the old canon, the Empire never surrenders. The war goes on for another two decades. Even as Imperial military strength wanes from defeats and warlordism. It has periods of resurgence under the reborn Emperor, Thrawn, Daala that threaten the New Republic. So the military remains a powerful force politically. I seem to recall that, especially if you count that everybody claims the Outer Rim even if nobody actually cared about controlling it, at least around Thrawn's time the New Republic also wasn't super big because the Empire still controlled the Deep Core and whatever other territory.
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Jun 16, 2023 01:55
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I always wondered about the strictures Lucasfilm placed on Bantam, like if we got so much Imperial Remnant was because they didn't want a writer stepping on anything Lucasfilm might do, like how prickly they got according to Zahn referencing anything to do with the Clone Wars (back when we thought it was a war against clones).
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Jun 16, 2023 15:21
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Xenomrph posted:Yeah but the Empire did in fact materially lose at Jakku, the war was over. According to (my understanding of) the fiction, the Empire committed all of their available military might at Jakku and lost soundly. The franchise fiction hasn’t tried to spin it like “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” New Republic propaganda. It's not really worth thinking about it too much, but thinking about it too much that always felt weird. You'd think the Empire would still have a much more massive fleet even then.
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Jun 16, 2023 23:24
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How old was Jaina supposed to be in the Vong stuff and NJO? It felt like they kept trying to go for 'bubbly teen' for probably longer than they should have.
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Jun 17, 2023 10:43
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There's a West End Games adventure book called The Politics of Contraband which is based off the line from the Glenn Frey song but, according to legend, it was originally called something else whose name escapes me but something Lucasfilms lost their minds over because it implied that the player characters were criminals - like, you know, smugglers be - and they couldn't have that. A shame they didn't get to talk to George about it.
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Jun 18, 2023 12:36
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Calax posted:Darksaber felt like somebody told Kevin J Anderson "Look dude, we need to put a stop to this random Imperial of the Week who can somehow challenge the New Republic." and he gave a GIANT STUPID SMILE so he could have his personal favorite seize control (Ms. Slept My Way to the Top). A reminder that Tarkin was such an exceptional lover Daala never bothered with sex again. "After him, fantasizing had been enough." Not the first bit of horny from KJA that got tamped down later, like how it was retconned Luke talking to Lando and Mara and Mara was wearing one of Lando's shirts was just some secret mission where they were working together. Admittedly it is a bit of a reach for Mara to go to Luke from Lando. 
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Jun 20, 2023 12:35
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Chairman Capone posted:People Daala has officially slept with: Was that Traviss' doing?
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Jun 20, 2023 20:50
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fartknocker posted:Wasn’t that from Barbara Hambly’s Children of the Jedi? I don’t have it on hand to check at the moment, and I know KJA made the initial push for Mara and Lando together somewhere late in the Jedi Academy trilogy when they start working together (But nothing romantic happens at all), but I thought the more implicit attempt to show them being together was when Leia and Han talk to them on the HoloNet at one point in Children of the Jedi. You're quite right! I even found the quote: Children of the Jedi posted:“What? Who is it?”
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Jun 21, 2023 15:27
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Vinylshadow posted:I'm amazed they haven't made Lando bi/pan (Wonder if there's a story where Billy Dee was asked about it and he said no) Childish Gambino posted:Glover later confirmed that's how he approached the role during an interview on Sirius XM's EW Radio show, stating, "It just didn't seem that weird to me because I feel like if you're in space it's kind of like, the door is open!" Glover said. "It's like, no only guys or girls. No, it's anything. This thing is literally a blob. Are you a man or a woman? Like, who cares? Have good time out here." That's nice anyway.
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Jun 22, 2023 00:30
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I do feel like a lot of Stackpole's rep comes from being mediocre, which as somebody who made their bones in RPG-related fiction made him unfortunately a standout. I've never read his Battletech stuff but am told that the quality viewed with a critical eye never reaches beyond the heights of "all right I guess, considering" but his Shadowrun stuff - which admittedly was only some short stories about his pet characters - never impressed me much and Shadowrun fiction sets a pretty low bar.
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Jun 25, 2023 13:09
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Aren't the Ssi-Ruuk capped by the Vong later on? Even if that was probably "here's something you vaguely recognize for Impact."
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Jun 26, 2023 14:14
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Casimir Radon posted:Back when I read the NJO I hadn’t read The Truce at Bakura or The Black Fleet Crisis so I thought I must really be missing out. Yeah, not so much. Black Fleet is one of the EU things I have absolutely no knowledge of save, I guess, there was a Black Fleet and a crisis.
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Jun 27, 2023 01:50
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Dapper_Swindler posted:why does she look like oogie boogie if he was an ameboa and drawn by Dav Pilkey. I've always wondered where that art comes from. I assume it's fanart. Reading her wiki entry she doesn't appear to have ever been drawn much because all the pictures are of other people.
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Jun 28, 2023 15:45
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Arc Hammer posted:Everyone knows that the best Mormon Science Fiction is the DOOM novelization where DoomGuy goes back to Earth and gets a hot DoomGal wife and they fight off the demons like God intended. Yeah he's catholic but that just means he's got more beef with the demons and Sandy Peterson is Mormon anyways and doomguy teams up with Mormons on earth to fight the demons. Those are up there with the Resident Evil novels. Admittedly S.D. Perry was working off some badly translated notes of story elements she had to include, but they're still goofy fun like trying to rational just why the women dress as they do in some of the games. Especially Jill in RE3.
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Jun 29, 2023 10:29
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Chairman Capone posted:I went to college in Greensboro where Card lives and a guy I knew managed to interview him for some political science project, all I remember was him saying that Card was a weird guy in person. Yeah, it wrinkles my brain he wrote the sword fighting dialogue for Monkey Island.
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Jun 29, 2023 16:07
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Arquinsiel posted:The writer profiles in the old WEG Adventure Journals had a lot of similarly weird stuff in them. Lots of people really needed us to know their specific religious beliefs, or how they thought families should be organised. Similarly there were other authors who just loved getting to put their nonsensical OC Do Not Steal into the universe. Adventure Journals was a wonderful concept that we shall not see the like of again but yeah, it was also a real grab bag with some people who thought they were going to make their MARK ON STAR WARS in between write ups of different tramp freighters and a scenario for the original miniatures game.
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Jun 29, 2023 19:37
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Arquinsiel posted:The comic was pretty good so I may get that one. Yeah, John Jackson Miller's Star Wars stuff was always really good. Loved his KOTOR comic. Knight Errant doesn't have any interpersonal dynamics as fun as Zayne bouncing off of The Gryph or Jarael but it does show Sith Lords being different flavors of weird petty tyrants. (I genuinely don't think people were allowed to write Jedi with genuine senses of humor in the novels so Kerra doesn't get to show a lot of wit, which is a shame as JJM was good at that.)
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Jul 5, 2023 13:43
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Rise of Skywalker could have been saved by "I bid you dark greetings."
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Jul 6, 2023 01:09
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On the John Jackson Miller front he also wrote the excellent prequel novel to Rebels called A New Dawn featuring Hera and Kanan which I highly recommend.
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Jul 6, 2023 02:57
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Chairman Capone posted:But I think the funniest thing about the Jedi Prince books are that for years they and Dark Empire were the go-to evidence for the subset of fans who really vocally disliked the EU, and once the Disney purchase happened those people were so ecstatic that the terrible EU stories about Palpatine's grandkid and Palpatine's resurrection would be thrown out and the "real" much better stories would finally be told in movie form. Didn't seem to hear a lot from them after Rise of Skywalker came out, though.... There was always that minority of fan who hated the EU for reasons that, upon investigation, were pretty arbitrary but there was some amusement to be had when they swore up and down once the buyout happened that you would never see a single shred of the old EU in anything forever, never expecting that Filoni would grab from it with both hands among other people.
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Jul 6, 2023 16:27
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Robot Style posted:Which reminds me that Peña also canonized the Star Wars VHS Game, and made two of its player characters Lumiya and Kyle Katarn. Vaguely related, a random NPC in the WEG book 'Cracken's Rebel Operatives' turned out to be Jan Ors. Given her stats, she could have gotten the Death Star plans herself. Did Kyle and Jan ever get together?
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Jul 7, 2023 14:58
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Vinylshadow posted:They were romantically involved, and he asked her to marry him during the Vong war, but she refused Huh. Fair enough, I guess.
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Jul 7, 2023 16:04
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Lord Hydronium posted:The Battle of Toprawa version was the first one, it goes all the way back to Brian Daley's radio drama in 1981. Dark Forces was probably the first one most people were exposed to, though; other than the aforementioned choose your own adventure book (Jedi Dawn), the Toprawa version largely lurked as a background detail for a while, popping up in WEG a few times. It shows up in some of the late Bantam books more as a part of Tyria's backstory in Wraith Squadron and the battle actually being shown in the Han Solo Trilogy (Bria Tharen is part of it). Yeah, it's never touched on a whole lot in WEG because a lot of those books were written before Dark Forces so there weren't, for lack of a better term, conflicting accounts.
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Jul 7, 2023 16:34
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Rochallor posted:I like that idea the Leia has been doing this sort of thing for a couple years, running ops for the Rebellion under the auspices of DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY, and after her cover is blown in ANH she has to resort to more Hitman-style stealing-people's-outfits-shenanigans, culminating with her biting off more than she can chew in ROTJ. She should have just thrown a credit chip in the corner and dropped the chandelier on Jabba when he crawled over to pick it up instead of going for one of the scripted assassinations. Look, if you buy the premium Boushh DLC cosmetic you want to use it, okay?
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Jul 10, 2023 00:08
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astr0man posted:It's fine at best? Courtship Zsinj is also nothing like the wraith squadron version, and I always thought it was weird that they even bothered sticking that "if you liked this it's continued in courtship!" blurb in at the end of solo command. I don't even recall Zsinj being in Courtship very much, but it's been ages since I've read it admittedly. More that he's just this sort of overall threat thanks to his Super Star Destroyer in orbit.
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Jul 10, 2023 16:07
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"Mama." ―Zsinj's first and last word
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Jul 10, 2023 19:19
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Chairman Capone posted:The full Ahsoka trailer is out. Aside from a full view of Elon Musk Thrawn, one other EU element present: an E-wing in it, which was cool to see in live-action. It was always one of my favorite EU fighter designs. It's dumb but I'm glad Sabine cuts her hair.
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Jul 11, 2023 23:05
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Vinylshadow posted:(That at least can be slightly rationalized as Sabine colored his hair; here's hoping they at least remember that his ears are green) It was always odd they decided what a human/Twi'lek hybrid would look like was 'have green ears, I guess.'
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Jul 12, 2023 20:03
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My favorite Star Wars ship is the Moldy Crow. (Or the HWK-290 light freighter if you want to get Wookipedia about it.)
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Jul 13, 2023 11:54
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thrawn527 posted:Yup, and it got weirder. Ah, yes, the 'sometimes Hutts have hair, I guess' bit.
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Jul 14, 2023 16:30
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Radio! posted:The placement of Leia's shoulder made me think he was also wearing a little beret and now I'm disappointed he's not. I'm sorry, Leia is only to have two different hairstyles and is not allowed to wear a hat.
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Jul 14, 2023 18:28
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Arc Hammer posted:We've been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet! The Endar Spire is under attack! Hurry up - we don't have much time! "We take different shifts. That's probably why you haven't seen me before." That top tier BioWare writing!
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Jul 16, 2023 02:37
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