Category Archives: Star Wars

Stormtrooper Katie!

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As if we needed more proof that the 501st Legion (and its counterparts) are completely awesome.

Remember Katie the Star Wars Girl, who was bullied for carrying a Star Wars water bottle back in November 2010? The fandom rallied around this little girl and offered tons of support. Well Katie’s back in the news, this time for a super awesome Halloween costume made by members of the 501st Legion. Katie had been upset by that ridiculous news slideshow of costumed fans at Celebration VI, and wanted to show her solidarity with the 501st by being a stormtrooper for Halloween. Instead of helping Katie and her mom augment a store-bought costume, the members of the local garrison made Katie her very own set of armor! After she grows out of it, it’ll be donated back to the 501st to use during Make-a-Wish events.

May the Force be with Katie!

(sniff…it’s a little dusty in here…)

Random Penguin

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Official news came down the pipeline today that the rumors are true: Random House and Penguin are merging in a massive business deal that will create the largest publishing company in the world. Why is this Star Wars news? Well, as Dunc over at Club Jade pointed out, both Random House and Penguin both have imprints in DelRey and DK that print Star Wars material.

But don’t get too excited yet. This deal is still subject to regulatory approval, and that may be a problem. Dunc and I have both posited that this could be a case for anti-trust investigations. Why? Right now, in the UK, Random House and Penguin make up 27% of book sales. Forbes speculates that in the US, that number jumps to about 40% of trade book sales. Globally, according to the Huffington Post, the two would make up 26% of world wide book sales. I would note that none of these numbers specifically address the academic publishing arms of these companies either; Pearson (owner of Penguin) has a massive education publishing arm, and combining with Random House could end up with a larger share of the textbook market as well, and any college student taking a look at textbooks in their college bookstore knows what kind of problem that might be.

It is important that in all of these articles, the words “subject to regulatory approval” or “anti-trust approval” come up. The fact that both Random House and Penguin are European-based companies could complicate matters. And for those of us who are aspiring authors, this new conglomeration could be good or bad (see the Forbes article linked above.) In any case, this smacks of desperation on the sides of the publishers in the face of ebooks (especially after the Department of Justice came down on the agency pricing model). But don’t look away yet. The Huffington Post also reports that NewsCorp is looking to add to HarperCollins, so more big publisher mergers may be on the horizon.

DVR Watch: Tuesday, October 30th

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Star Wars fans, take notice. Billy Dee Williams (ESB and RotJ’s Lando Calrissian) will be guest-starring on CBS’s #1 drama NCIS tomorrow as Leroy Jethro Moore, the man for whom Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) was named for in the fifth episode of NCIS‘s tenth season, “The Namesake.”

The episode synopsis reads: “A petty officer found dead in the car of a millionaire has ties to a friend of Jackson Gibbs prompting an investigation.” You can watch the preview of the episode here at CBS.com.

NCIS airs on Tuesdays at 8:00 pm eastern, 7:00 pm, central. For those of you on the east coast who may miss the episode due to Hurricane Sandy related weather reports or electric/cable outages, the episode will be available on CBS.com starting Wednesday.

Tosche Station Radio #34: Illustrated

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On this week’s episode of Tosche Station Radio, Nanci and Brian are joined by blog writer Bria to discuss the latest Expanded Universe novel announcements as well as the Essential Reader’s Companion.

Since the last time we podcasted, Bria reviewed the Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan. Nanci started her Jedi Prince retrospective. Emily went to New Mexico and explored some geeky sites. Brian looked at X-Wing’s impossible mission. Bria and Brian wondered who should play Carol Danvers in the Marvel Film Universe.

In Fixer’s Flash, Brian’s been busy reading both War of the Sasons: The Human and The Price of the Stars. He’s also been knee-deep in comics, reading through Captain Marvel #5 as well as Hawkeye 1-3. Nanci’s kept herself busy re-reading the Jedi Prince books for her retrospective as well as the fifth book in the Mageworlds sreies. To complete the trifecta, Bria has also been reading Mageworlds. She’s also found time to get through Vortex and Stephen King’s The Long Walk.

Deak’s Dirt is covering nearly three weeks worth of news, so listen in for a discussion of all things Marvel. The hosts also discuss the Expanded Universe book announcements from San Diego Comic Con, Celebration VI, and New York Comic Con. Everyone seems excited for the John Jackson Miller Kenobi novel as well as the Rebels books.

This week’s Camie’s Concerns dives into The Essential Reader’s Companion by Pablo Hidalgo. Brian, Nanci, and Bria discuss the content, the artwork, and share their impressions of the book. Should you buy it? Listen in to find out!

Tosche Station Radio is the official podcast of Tosche-Station.net and a part of the Solo Sound network. If you like what you hear, please leave a review on the iTunes Music Store or the Zune Marketplace. We can also be found on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.

Video Game Flashback: X-Wing’s Impossible Mission

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There was a point in time where I played a lot of video games.

I mean, growing up in the Seattle area, you had one of two options after school. Deal with the relentless rain (and this was before Gore Tex was cheap) or find some sort of entertainment inside. I was lucky to have a pretty nice computer at home at the time*, so after finishing up homework I’d often sit down to play the old X-Wing combat flight simulator that Lucasarts released in the 90s.

*Kids, there was a time when having a computer at home was a rare thing. In a class of about 25 students, I was the only person who had a personal computer at home.

One of my lingering memories on one such rainy afternoon was playing through Tour 1, Mission 4. The dreaded Protect Medical Frigate mission. The goal was simple, protect the medical frigate Redemption as it took on wounded soldiers from multiple shuttles. The complication came when wave after wave after wave of TIE Bombers entered the picture, seemingly more than you and your wingmen could handle.

I spent three days working on beating this mission. Time after time I’d get overwhelmed trying to fend off the Bombers. They would always get torpedo volleys off before I could so much as spot them. It was, looking back at it, the first time I was well and truly frustrated with a video game.

I wasn’t the only one that struggled with this mission, though. From the Wook!

The Redemption was created for the 1993 LucasArts video game Star Wars: X-wing, as one of two Rebel medical frigates, along with the Salvation. In the game, the Redemption appears in the fourth mission of Tour of Duty 1, “Protect Medical Frigate.” The difficulty of eliminating waves of TIE bombers approaching the Redemption from opposite directions led to Michael A. Stackpole selecting it as a training scenario for Rogue Squadron in his 1996novel X-wing: Rogue Squadron.

Trope Tuesday: Expansion Pack Past

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Another Tuesday, another plunge into TV Tropes. This week we’re looking at a trope that’s particularly relevent to the Expanded Universe: The Expansion Pack Past.

Sometimes, characters just have over-complicated origins. They may start off reasonable, but slowly and surely, different writers swoop in and reveal more and more of their past via Flash Back until it’s a confusing muddle of nonsense and clutter.

This tends to happen to characters with a Mysterious Past. The writers explain a bit, but not all of it, so they can milk the Mysterious Past some more. Unfortunately, they then repeat this trick so often that there’s practically no room left for even more mysterious-pastness. It’s unclear that the character ever had time to have a mysterious past with all the revelations we’ve already seen; and it’s ironic that, for all their supposed mystery, these characters tend to have more backstory than any of the other characters.

In extreme cases, when the bits of the backstory simply cannot be chained together, we get a Multiple-Choice Past.

To some degree, this is a risk of the Expanded Universe, particularly early on with some legacy characters. Take a look at Boba Fett and the Mandalorian culture in particular. At one point he was just a mysterious bounty hunter that (somehow) managed to get out of the belly of a gigantic wormy monster thing. The Mandalorians were just a race or group of proud warrior folks. Or maybe just mercenaries?

That was all well and good early on, but the trouble comes in when multiple creative entities start pulling out the expansion packs to give these characters and cultures backstories. You have some authors going in one direction and then you have show writers going in another direction. It’s not impossible to link these different expansions together, but it does create quite a bit of a continuity headache. Sometimes you wonder if things would have been better off if they had been left mysterious.

Of course, this is the franchise that gave backstory to this guy …

Jedi Prince Retrospective: Introduction

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I have many guilty pleasures.

I’m not ashamed to admit it. I love horrible entertainment in general. Lately I’ve been binging on the show “Say Yes to the Dress” on Netflix. Yes, the show where brides pick out way-too-expensive wedding dresses over and over. I have no explanation other than I think wedding dresses are pretty, I like window shopping, and I like shows that don’t make me think too hard.

So it should come as no surprise that I have many guilty pleasures in my fandom of choice, Star Wars. After all, I’ve been reading the Expanded Universe for over 20 years now. I love Union, the comic in which Luke and Mara get married, because of its cheese factor. I don’t care what anyone says.

But that’s not even close to being the worst thing in Star Wars that I love.

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