#my money is on sinjir or thrawn

[stars-n-spice]

I need to lock these gay ass motherfuckers all in a room.

For science.

[gffa]

Some scattered Star Wars novels/comics thoughts: - I finally finished Thrawn: Alliances today and I think I’m coming down on how it’s not the worst canon Star Wars book, but that it certainly showed all of the weaknesses of the author’s writing in a way that was hard to get around.  I feel like it’s hard not to compare this one to Last Shot which also was perfectly fine in a lot of ways, but also didn’t really do anything with the pieces of the good book that could have been in there and showed a lot of weaknesses in the bigger story focus. At least with Alliances I was able to dig into things and make some interesting commentary (but this is probably influenced by how I have more opinions than I do on Anakin than I do on, say, Han or Lando) and I felt like I could make 80% of it work all right, and I certainly felt things while reading it, so I was engaged.  Most of the time.  There were some stretches in there where I got pretty bored, I admit. I’m sure the book suffered from my heightened expectations of it, because I was so looking forward to it after how much I enjoyed the first book, but also I really do think this one just needed a much stronger editor and guiding hand to rein things in and to do better at connecting things to the bigger galaxy it was taking place in and tone Thrawn himself way the hell down. Is it worth reading?  Yeah, I think so.  I’m glad I did!  And if you have less Strong Opinions About Star Wars (especially on Anakin Skywalker), it probably reads perfectly fine!  Or, you know, different people have different views on it, I could see someone enjoying it just fine even if they have very strong opinions on things! For me, though, it was definitely a slog to get through at points, but also I have a lot to say about it, I took a lot of caps to react off of, so at least there’s that.  I feel like there’s at least half of a good story in there, Zahn is a solid writer if someone can keep a lid on him and structure him better, I would absolutely pick up a third Thrawn book if he gets to write it, but this was not as good as the first, no. - I read that Beckett comic the other day and that’s sort of been on my mind as I write my reaction to Alliances, in that I just honestly had nothing to say about it. It wasn’t bad, it was perfectly fine.  It told an action story that fit the number of pages it had and fit with the movie just fine.  But I had absolutely nothing to say about it, it was just there.  And I feel like that’s the downside of the structure of the franchise these days--it means less awful stuff going off the rails, but it also means you get a lot of stuff that can’t actually go anywhere or do anything interesting, because they’re not really allowed to. I would have much rather have had the story of Beckett and Aurra Sing, something that would actually fill in significant details, rather than a story that had no impact in either direction.  And I’ve read at least one review that liked that part of it, that it didn’t feel the need to do any earth-shattering moments, that instead it’s just a day in the life of the characters.  If that’s your thing, this comic would be absolutely great! But I admit that I don’t care about Beckett enough to have craved that, he wasn’t the stand-out new character in Solo for me (that would have been Qi’ra, I am so much more interested in a day in her life)(or VAL, tell me a story about her, because the movie wasn’t the worst about her, but it wasn’t great, either, she really could have used more focus!) so that probably affects things a lot.  As it was, though, it just didn’t do much for me because there was nothing there to care about, but it wasn’t a horrible time, either. And this is nothing on knocking the writer or the artists, they did a perfectly fine job at what they were aiming for!  My lack of interest is more in that it was a comic not aimed at me, so of course I didn’t feel anything for it. - I’m about a third of the way through Aftermath: Life Debt and so I’m hitting the point where I really like and care about these characters, it’s not just getting through it for the sake of the bits and pieces about Leia or Mon Mothma or Rae Sloane or seeing the Empire fall apart, but that I actually enjoy Sinjir’s scenes now, I enjoy Jas’ scenes now.  I realized that during the scene where Sinjir is teasing her about how she didn’t even ask about how much money their next job paid, like, oh, you like us now, we’re your friends now~~.  I felt this sudden jolt of, oh, I like them now, too.  I like them.  I like this story about them, I like their adventures, I like them for them. It’s still a series of books that I don’t think I could get through while reading them, this has to be an audiobook experience for me, but I’ve definitely hit the point where I’d listen just for them, even if there were no more scenes with characters I’m familiar with. The Mas Amedda stuff has been pretty fascinating, though, with him being all I DON’T WANT TO LIIIIIIIIIIIVE WITHOUT PALPATINE HERE, like, whoa, calm down, buddy.  Except that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?  Palpatine made it so people had to depend on him and couldn’t really get along very well without him, didn’t he?  And that’s why the Empire is in shambles beyond him--which is sort of ironic that he felt an Empire that couldn’t survive without its Emperor deserved to die, yet he was the one who made it so that it couldn’t survive without him.  And I would absolutely believe that of someone like Palpatine.