Second ‘Mercy Kill’ Excerpt Features More Myri Antilles

Posted on by

Star Wars Books released a second mini-excerpt from Mercy Kill a few moments ago. Strap in for more Myri Antilles!

Then she noticed that Trey had stopped talking. Instead, he was leaning forward, his forehead pressed against a heavy-duty, locking transparisteel cabinet.

Myri moved until she could see his face. “Four? You suddenly look like you want to cry.”
“I do.” He stepped back from the cabinet and shone his glow rod on its contents.

The cabinet had two shelves, themselves transparisteel. On the top shelf were two silvery bowl-like stands, and in each rested a globe larger than a balled human fist—a globe with dials and a depressible button.

Myri stared at them for a moment, then clamped her hand over her mouth to suppress a gasp. “Thermal detonators.”

“Two of them.” Trey’s voice was almost rapturous. “I have to steal these.”

Expect more excerpts throughout the week.

Tosche Station Radio #20: Purposeful Protest

Posted on by

Logo

Play in new window | Download
On this week’s Tosche Station Radio, Brian and Nanci get on soapbox. Brace yourselves!

Kicking off the show, Nanci highlight’s what’s new on the blog this week. You can find a collection of tweets covering Dave Filoni’s Q&A at Star Wars Weekends, Shane’s look back on Wedge’s Gamble (part of our ongoing summer X-Wing retrospective series). Don’t forget, we’re holding a contest to replace Mara Jade’s catsuit. Send in your art and costume photos!

In Fixer’s Flash this week, Nanci went and saw Prometheus and greatly enjoyed it. She was also at Star Wars Weekends livetweeting the Clone Wars news from Dave FIloni. Don’t look now, but she’s also gotten herself into costuming! Meanwhile, Brian finally discusses the goings on at the Origins Game Fair where authors Mike Stackpole, Aaron Allston, and Timothy Zahn held numerous panels discussing writing and Star Wars. A lot of interesting tidbits were divulged during the convention, including perhaps a story idea the three authors are hoping to pitch?

Continue reading →

Star Wars Books Begins ‘Mercy Kill’ Mini-Excerpts

Posted on by

I really haven’t hid the fact that Mercy Kill is an upcoming Expanded Universe novel I’m incredibly excited about. Luckily for me (and you?), Star Wars Books is beginning to drop mini excerpts from the book. The first one features the youngest of the Antilles Spawn, Myri.

He crawled southward, keeping well below the trench lip above.

Myri followed, occasionally peeking up above the rim to see her surroundings. “My father was on the Death Star Trench Run. You know, the famous one. Me, I get the General’s Basement Trench Crawl.”

X-Wing: Mercy Kill is due out August 7th and is the first novel in the series to be published in thirteen years.

Win A Copy of ‘Time Traveled Tales’

Posted on by

Good news: Authors like Janine Spendlove, Mike Stackpole, Aaron Allston, Tim Zahn, and Bryan Young teamed up to put together a nifty anthology of short stories centered around time travel!

Bad news: The anthology was limited to a 500 quantity run and was exclusive to the Origins Game Convention, so you can’t buy it.

Good news (for one lucky person): I went and bought an extra copy to give away!

How can you claim it? Simple! Follow our Twitter account and retweet this message. We’ll select a winner at random.

 

Star Wars Night in Arizona

Posted on by

Apparently Saturday was Star Wars Night at the home field of the Arizona Diamondbacks and here’s the evidence.  It’s really great to know that there is one piece of Sci-fi popular culture that extends so far into the popular consciousnesses that it even intersects our  nation’s past-time.  Follow the link for pictures and video from the event!

Tropes versus Women: Deconstructing Gender Stereotypes in Video Games

Posted on by

Nanci spotted something interesting this morning that I think is rather timely. Earlier this week, I was fuming to some friends over the Tomb Raider reboot. This was a game that I thought had a lot of potential to be both entertaining and (forgive the horrid play on words) game changing. Initial videos showed a Lara Croft that appeared to be a much more complete, deep character. Heaven knows there aren’t enough female characters in the video game universe that fits that description.

Unfortunately, it appears the developers have lost their way. Depicting gratuitous sexual assault and suggesting that Lara needs to be protected by the masculine player does not a deep character make. So, back to square one, another developer studio that doesn’t quite seem to understand what people mean when they ask for strong, female characters.

Maybe they should pay attention to a new project headed by Anita Sarkeesian: Tropes versus Women.

I love playing video games but I’m regularly disappointed in the limited and limiting ways women are represented.  This video project will explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.  The series will highlight the larger recurring patterns and conventions used within the gaming industry rather than just focusing on the worst offenders.  I’m going to need your help to make it happen!

As a gamer, a pop culture critic and a fan, I’m always working to balance my enjoyment of media while simultaneously being critical of problematic gender representations. With my video web series Feminist Frequency,  I look at the way women are portrayed in mass media and the impact they have on our culture and society.

They’ve already hit a number of funding goals to get high-quality episodes produced looking at various cliches and stereotypes regarding female characters in video games. Here’s some of the deconstructions they have lined up:

  • Damsel in Distress – Video #1
  • The Fighting F#@k Toy – Video #2
  • The Sexy Sidekick – Video #3
  • The Sexy Villainess – Video #4
  • Background Decoration – Video #5
  • Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress – Video #6
  • Women as Reward – Video #7
  • Mrs. Male Character – Video #8
  • Unattractive Equals Evil – Video #9
  • Man with Boobs – Video #10
  • Positive Female Characters! – Video #11
  • Video #12 – Top 10 Most Common Defenses of Sexism in Games

Combining TV Tropes with a topic that sorely needs discussion in this industry? Sounds look a good cause to me. Deconstruct away.

Trope Tuesday: In the Blood

Posted on by

It’s Tuesday, which means we’re delving back into TV Tropes to talk about an amusing or just quirky literary device that makes the entertainment we love work. This week, we’re investigating a trope called In the Blood.

Genealogy and Ancestry are really popular tropes in fiction. It makes a great Secret Legacy, a source of fraternal conflict, adds drama with an unexpected family reunion, and can set up a host of different conflicts and relationships. Just like in real life, a person’s ancestry can determine their genes and, to a lesser extent, their personality and even their talents; but in fiction this extends to skills, superpowers, and even moral alignment.

Sometimes even The Messiah and the most valiant Knight in Shining Armor are at risk of going insane, or over to The Dark Side, if a parent or grandparent was a Villain by Default or member of an Evil Race. This inevitably leads said character into a Wangstyexistential crisis that comes completely out of left field, since they rarely ever struggled against villainous impulses before this revelation.

Boy howdy, where do you even start with this one when it comes to Star Wars? You’ve got your various generations of the Skywalker and Solo bloodlines, all sorts of Hapan royalty, and who knows how many Fetts. Sometimes, there are certain traits that seem to carry on from generation to generation. Young Ben Skywalker definitely inherited his mother’s snark. If you look at the Antilles family, one daughter became a pilot like Wedge and the other daughter went into intelligence work like Iella.

Occasionally generational ties provide a familiar touchstone that can bridge from one age group to the next. Aaron Allston has said as much when he’s discussed the importance of the Antilles sisters in more recent Expanded Universe works.

X-Wing Retrospective Part 2: Wedge’s Gamble

Posted on by

Continuing into part two of our ongoing retrospective on the illustrious X-Wing series, we move past the introduction to the series Rogue Squadron and into Wedge’s Gamble.  The second book of the series is less about letting the readers slip into the military pilot perspective instead of the farmboy, Jedi or smuggler, and more about exploring the characters and their relationships with each other.

On that note, there really isn’t even that much in the way of dogfights in this book.  Whereas in Rogue Squadron there were at least three different blood-pumping, heart-pounding battles where the readers felt like they might lose the characters who they’re just starting to care about, we’re given the opportunity to fear for them in much different ways.

Be sure to check out the rest below the jump.

Continue reading →