Category Archives: Star Wars

Jason Fry Releases Fourth Batch of ‘EG to Warfare” Endnotes

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Rejoice, fans of Mandalorian culture. Jason Fry’s fourth batch of Essential Guide to Warfare endnotes dishes the Mando love.

War and the Mandalorians:Dan Wallace and I were almost finished with the Essential Atlas when we learned the Clone Wars TV show would shake up everything we thought we’d known about the spur-jangling warriors and nomads of the galaxy far, far away. Working quickly, I consulted with Pablo Hidalgo and Leland Chee at LFL to adapt the existing backstory to accommodate Satine and the New Mandalorians, and explain (at least for the most part) how swathes of the planet were turned into wastelands of fine white sand.

Dan and I wanted to do more: Originally, the Atlas was going to include a “Closer Look” at Mandalorian Space, with a local map and write-ups for its major systems. With Mandalorians taking center stage for a number of Lucasfilm projects, that idea was discarded — until Warfare gave me a chance to fill in a gap or two.

It’s understandable that with the uncertainty caused by The Clone Wars, Fry would want to avoid going into too much depth about Mandalorian culture and space. Now that things appear to be more settled, it’s quite a bit safer to flesh out more about them.

For more, head on over to Jason Fry’s Tumblr.

Ewoks are the Devil

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So, I’m working my way back through some of the books that I remember being either some of the worst books I read or those I was warned off of in the EU when I was younger. Right now, I’m working my way back through a book that I already know I can really rant on it for pages and pages, and I will. On the other hand, I’m learning some stuff about it. In comparison to Children of the Jedi, it reads like a masterpiece, it’s just some of the other bits that are just grating.

In the mean time, I owe you all something to take a look at. You get Ewoks.

At the end of the day, what are the things you remember about RotJ? The battle around the Death Star, the Sarlaac, the last lightsaber fight? Yeah, all of those are the good parts of it that I remember. Ewoks make my blood run cold.

More after the jump.

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Dream Star Wars EU Novels

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The slow news period continues, so we’re just going to outsource our content to you. We asked for your dream Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, and you delivered. It seemed like there were some common themes, and one that really stuck out was the desire to see some female characters take the lead of a narrative. Many people asked for Leia, Winter, Mirax, and Mara books.

There were also a lot of people dreaming about a Valin and Jysella Horn novel. And, well …

We’re updating the list throughout the day, all you have to do is reply to this tweet and tell us what you’d love to see from the EU.

To see what people are clamoring for, head to the jump!

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Trope Tuesday: Hold Your Hippogriffs

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It’s another edition of Trope Tuesday and this week we bring one that’s especially relevant to the Star Wars Expanded Universe: Hold Your Hippogriffs.

The author uses a popular and/or modern phrase in a work of Speculative Fiction, and adjusts it to the setting by replacing certain concepts with their more-or-less appropriate counterparts. Works as a sort of Shout Out to make the reader/viewer more at home in the world, while at the same time highlighting the difference; it can also be used to disguise swears. Can backfire if the adjustment comes off as too arbitrary (e.g., if the proverb refers to concepts that should exist in the speculative setting as well).

At times these are specific to an exact scene, too. The replacement concepts can be tailored to characters and current action, rather than being a common phrase of its own. A cop with an antagonistic relationship to his Imperial liaison can sardonically say the liaison’s investigation team got past security like X-Wings go through a Death Star. In this way it can overlap with Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?, though it can refer to past moments anywhere on the spectrum of awesome and suck.

Well frak me, I get the holo. The trope namer is Harry Potter, a series that introduced the world to such lovely phrases as “son of a bludger” and “get off your high hippogriff.”

Occasionally this trope can be amusing in the EU, but sometimes authors have a tendency to go just a tad overboard. The brilliant, foul-mouthed duo behind Penny Arcade pointed this out once. Some fine examples courtesy of TV Tropes:

  • “He was as green as the foam on Lomin-ale.”
  • “Less chance than a flame on Hoth.”
  • “Blue milk-run.”
  • “Sabacc face.”
  • “Out of the reactor core and into the supernova.”

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get out of here faster than a Hutt in free-fall.

Looking Back on the Micro Machines Action Fleet

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I miss these things.

Usual story. You box up a part of your childhood, go to college, and come back home for the summer to find out that your parents went through your belongings and threw out everything they thought you didn’t need anymore. In one fell swoop, I lost a classic Atari 2600, an NES, a box of classic PC games, and worst of all, the Micro Machines Action Fleet toys I had since I was seven.

But this isn’t the post to mourn the loss of those toys (that would be odd and somewhat creepy). It’s to look back at one of the coolest product tie-ins the Star Wars universe has ever seen.

To the jump!

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EU Interview Roundup

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Over at Club Jade, James conducted a video interview with Essential Guide to Warfare author Jason C. Fry.

To celebrate the release of Scourge, Roqoo Depot and EUCantina have interviews with Jeff Grubb. He also made an appearance last week on Star Wars Books’ official Facebook page to answer questions from fans. TFN has a lovely recap here. If the interviews have you curious, you can read a 50-page excerpt from the book over at Suvudu. Scourge hits bookshelves today.

Big Shiny Robot talks to Tom Taylor about his latest project, Boba Fett is Dead.

‘The Old Republic’ May Already Be Losing Subscribers

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The great Word of Warcraft killer? Perhaps not quite reports Ars Technica.

In an investor note released today, Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz said he suspects that subscription levels for The Old Republic may already be lower than the 1.7 million EA reported in February. Creutz’s primary piece of evidence for this belief is publicly available server population numbers assembled and reported by TORstatus.net. These figures have shown a roughly 10 percent decline over the last two months. That doesn’t necessarily mean the game has lost 10 percent of its subscribers in that time, of course, but it isn’t really a sign of strong player growth, either.

I’m, unfortunately, one of those subscribers who canceled their TOR subscription. For the first month or so, I was greatly enjoying the game playing through as a smuggler. The first three worlds were a delight but the problem came when I got to the fourth world I visited. It was pretty much a carbon copy of the third. By this point I was growing a little tired of the recycled dialog, battle mechanics, and fetch quests.

The Old Republic might be a neat Star Wars-skinned MMO, but it just can’t escape being a bit too much of a grind for me. Those hoping that Bioware somehow managed to squeeze a Knights of the Old Republic experience into the game didn’t get quite what they were looking for.

Ars Technica via Club Jade

Sports and Geek Fandom: The Bizarre Double Standard

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Here at Tosche Station, we mean it when we say we’ll talk about anything and everything that has to do with geek culture.

I’m a sports fan. Gridiron football, soccer, basketball (though we’re not on speaking terms until the Sonics come back to Seattle). My first love, though, was baseball. I grew up watching the Seattle Mariners and listening to Dave Niehaus* weave together a daily narrative of America’s grand pass time. Even as my enjoyment of gridiron and basketball waned and my passion for soccer rose, baseball always stayed at the top of my list. But why? Why a game that’s admittedly slow-paced, is crammed full of breaks in the action, whose popularity always seems to be waning? A simple answer, really. Baseball lends itself beautifully to geek culture.

*And to give this a bit more of a science fiction feel, one of the greatest Niehaus calls ever occurred when outfielder Ichiro Suzuki threw a ball on a line from right field to third to gun down Terrance Long. In his words, “Ichiro threw something out of Star Wars.” 

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