#voxyn

[magnetarbeam]

I don't think I've ever seen any art of Jaina's XJ3 with the running voxyn paint design, and I want to see that.

[shadowsofdread]

ur honor i am late to the inbox meme but i desire... inboxing said memes /lh

💔 BROKEN HEART - what could their partner do that would absolutely break their heart?

🙈 SEE-NO-EVIL - whats a side of your oc that they don't want to show other people?

🌌 MILKY WAY - what was the inspiration behind your oc? what was the first thing you decided about them?

blorbo(s) of your 🫵 choice <3

💔 BROKEN HEART - what could their partner loved one do that would absolutely break their heart?

(yeah, yeah, i'm changing the question to be more inclusive of non-romantic relationships. we do weird undefinable relationships on this blog your honor) (i know you, the asker, know that already /lh)

Which, of course, I say all of that and immediately start talking about Taizi and the case in which he did get really hurt by a romantic interest, though what Quinn did is something that anyone else in Taizi's life could also do and still hurt him just as deeply, if not deeper by nature it being a second instance.

Anyway - what would, and has, broken Taizi's heart is he does a lot to make sure his crew has a safe, supportive place to be who they are without conditions. Well, okay, the one condition being that whatever they want to do and be doesn't harm or stop anyone else on the crew from doing so (which kind of meant that Taizi and Quinn were fated to not really work out). But the Empire is an aristocratic fascist hellhole, and it's a fascist hellhole that a lot of people have to live in, and choosing not to be part of the fascist hellhole machine is much harder than it sounds. So Taizi does, as much as he can, to rid his ship and his crew from those structures. He can never change the fact that he's Sith, but he tries over and over again to put himself on the same level ground as his crew.

And especially with Quinn, Taizi worked so fucking hard to earn Quinn's respect, and then his trust, to get to a point where Quinn could disagree with him and know his opinion would be respected and considered. That he could even snark back, if the mood struck.

Then that all goes up in flame and ash because Quinn, ultimately, goes against all of that - the trust Taizi placed in him, and that he hoped Quinn reciprocated - to choose his loyalty to Baras over Taizi. He chooses the old traditional way of things over the change that Taizi, slowly, patiently, has wrought even on such a small scale. Even ignoring their personal and not-very-professional relationship, that fucking stung. And Taizi was not going to threaten the man's life or kill him for doing so - he'd only be breaking his own beliefs to do so - but he could never trust Quinn again after that. He did what he could to get Quinn transferred to somewhere in the Empire that he'd be respected, that he'd contribute in meaningful ways, but he could never let Quinn back in.

And, like, not that I think Vette or Jaesa would actually do anything similar to what Quinn did, they could, and it'd fucking hurt. It's not, necessarily, that Taizi thinks any of them owe him eternal loyalty for ... basic but radical (in the Empire) decency. He doesn't expect them to stay forever. But rebuking him in so doing? Or completely going back on everything he thought they'd learned over the course over their relationship? That would almost kill him.

Taizi really just wants the fucking world for Vette and Jaesa in particular, and he's immensely proud of how they've grown and that he's been there to see it and occasionally help, in his own way (he does not give himself enough credit, in this regard) and the thing that would break his heart is if all that growth were for naught, or if they cut him out of their lives with no explanation or reason.

(Adding many days later: there's one other thing, that's kind of intertwined with this, is to not be trusted [or to feel like he isn't being trusted]. Specifically, to not be trusted to know himself, to know a situation, etc. There's a whole very painful but very good arc with @voxyn's Rose that I need to summarize another time but, like. Rose and Taizi have a pretty explosive fight after a long period of Taizi becoming increasingly insular and guarded around Valkorion Stuff, and he interprets Rose's pushing in as a lack of trust. On the whole that whole series of events pushes both of them and their relationship to their very limits but ... unlike Quinn, it's something they come back from, with a lot of work and perseverance.)

🙈 SEE-NO-EVIL - whats a side of your oc that they don't want to show other people?

I could talk about any of the blorbos because I think all of them have a "side" that they don't like to show, but I have been thinking a lot on and off about Izvoye. More specifically, Izvoye for various reasons has a lot of pressure on her shoulders to present a certain way: even before she was a Jedi Padawan, there were high expectations on her shoulders (though I think the late Queen of Alderaan - whose name I'm blanking on - tried to shield her daughter from as much of the more political pressures). But joining the Order definitely stacked on that pressure to always embody the ideal of a diligent, patient, and well-mannered Padawan.

Which, Izvoye is those things. And she is, at her very heart, someone who very desperately wants to be carefree. She's always had too many things to worry about to indulge this, but she has an insatiable yearning to learn and explore. She's got this - very lighthearted, ~childish (childish in the sense that it's not Dark or Dry but very sincere, focus on wordplay or exaggeration) sense of humor that most adults around her would tend to find immature. I don't know if people would take her as seriously if they knew she laughs when her friends pull funny faces or talk in a silly voice, or that one of her favorite ways to relax is with a bubble bath.

Tangentially related is that Izvoye really does not like showing the side of herself that wants things. Because "wanting", she has learned, is not something she gets away with unscathed. Loss is inevitable in her life. And though she isn't of the "maybe if I just don't hold onto anything, it won't hurt" mindset - there's a self-protective element, in restraining herself from admitting to Want. That she wants comfort. Wants to rest. Wants someone to stay. The wistful wonderings of what-could-be are their own kind of pain, but easier to bear than the having and then having lost.

🌌 MILKY WAY - what was the inspiration behind your oc? what was the first thing you decided about them?

The vast majority of my SWTOR OCs are basically "what-if" questions, with the exception of the main trio (Hyroh, Taizi, Izvoye). Truthfully, I really could not tell you how the latter two came about: they just started as designs to replay their respective class campaigns and then have grown out from there, being developed and remodeled over the years.

I can still answer the question of Hyroh's inspiration, because there's an actual story and I don't think I've told it in a long time.

Hyroh literally just started out as a visual concept when one day when I was trying to come up with a character for the JK campaign, I went, "hey, a black cat wearing all white would look visually interesting, let's do that!" and the rest is history. Which, ironically, I think it took me awhile to actually get him into his signature all-white gear. But if you've ever wondered why I almost always depict him in white, that's why. I've dabbled in a couple in-universe explanations for the design choice but it's really just part of the tradition.

The two characters that I think influenced him over time were also, conveniently, other Star Wars characters: Ahsoka and Anakin, namely. And of course any other archetypal hero character out there in pop culture probably formed the primordial soup that Hyroh came out of.

[forcewound]

thinking about how much jacen was like padmé before his fall he had such a peaceful, pacifist nature he loved plants and animals. even after anakin dies on the myrkyr mission jacen is remourseful about killing the voxyn queen, what his brother ultimately sacrificed himself to do, bc he doesn't like to harm another living creature, espescially an animal and even lets her know through the force that he regrets her death drags my hands down my face

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Ok, let's talk about the Solo kids' relationships with the force for a sec here.

Jaina basically treated jedi training like a trade school (no pejorative undercurrebt here; we respect trade schools). She wanted the practical applications and treated the force like a tool that she could use to augment her mechanical and piloting hard skillsets. She wasn't interested in the difference ebetween the living and unifying forces because it didn't matter for her on a practical level.

Anakin was college-bound in his jedi training, and came out with something along the lines of a master's degree. He liked learning some of the theory, but he also had the exceedingly rare talent wherein he could bridge theory and practicality, could marry the academic with the day-to-day world. Our boy was so living force that he basically embodied it to take out the voxyn queen.

Jacen has both a PhD in the force and a complete inability to either divorce theory from practice to function in the real world or else synthesize the two to function in the real world.

What I'm basically saying is that fantasy is when your PhDs become sith lords and sci fi is when your PhDs become supervillains.

[tenelkadjo]

I’ve been trying to sort folders full of old random stuff (images, photos, graphics, stories -- all kinds of crap) and I came across some Really Old SWEU-related stuff I made. Here’s what each thing is and some notes about them.

INSERT PHILOSOPHICAL SHIT HERE -- 2008

Some friends and I made playlists that were musicals for EU characters and I did one for Jacen and it was just called HEY. This was one of the images for the main post I made about it. There was one for each song.

I wonder if I can find the other ones because I remember in one of them Jacen had a mullet.

This shit was ridiculous and I really miss all the people I did this ridiculous stuff with. ;D

THE SARLACC -- really early... near prequels?

My sister and I were like LET’S PUT CHARACTERS IN THE SARLACC.

I can’t remember what the site was gonna be but we had a ball in MS Paint.

LOOK AFTER YOUR BROTHER -- a Death Troopers fanmix -- 2009

This was an unfinished front & back cover for the mix I never finished.

THAT BOOK WAS A TRIP AND I EFFING LOVED IT.

god kale and trig were so good and precious

VARIOUS NEW JEDI ORDER FANARTS LOLOL -- mid-2000′s????

The Jedi Strike Team because of course.

A totally accurate depiction of a voxyn.

Shimrra and Onimi. :)

[corelliaxdreaming]

I remain convinced the voxyn are just mean dogs who need to be raised right.

[stelladrops]

@voxyn

it is absolutely essential to have friends you can have extremely insane pervert conversations with. this is kind of what makes life worth living

[visionhaunted]

   Jacen’s fall to the dark side this is a repost from my multi bc I felt the need to have it here.

  Let me start this by underlining the fact these changes happen over a span of 14 years and none of this happened over night ( which seems to be something the fandom often accuses the writers of for some reason ). Jacen wasn’t born bad and he was a good person for the first +20 years of his life but his fall to the dark was a long time coming by the time it happened officially in 40 ABY. 

   Most of Jacen’s bigger troubles obviously started with his imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Vong in 27 ABY when he is 18 years old. The Vong and Vergere especially break Jacen over the course of a whole year. He is isolated often, tortured almost daily at first and CONSTANTLY confronted with Vergere’s mind games. Three things happen at the same time here: Jacen is dealing with losing trust in the animals that used be his friends ( thanks to the Voxyn ), losing his humour after being forced to face horrible things and suffering the loss of his younger brother Anakin — and Anakin's death especially proves to be one of the WORST things Jacen experiences as he cannot escape the reminders of what it was like to see and feel Anakin die; first in traitor:

Remembering Vergere brings him to the voxyn queen, and the voxyn queen sends him slithering back down a despair-greased slope to Anakin's corpse. Anakin's corpse floats on a burning lake of torment far deeper than anything that can happen to Jacen's body.

     and then years later during exile:

But Anakin had been fatally wounded on this mission. Had died. The children of Han Solo and Leia Organa Solo had suddenly gone from three to two. Had suddenly stopped being invincible, invulnerable, immortal. Suddenly there was no room in his life, no room in his universe for humor. And from that time on animals had all seemed to wear the faces of voxyn. They were no longer his friends.

    In an instant, Jacen loses the things that made him him and goes through yet another identity crisis, a desperate search to figure out WHO he really is, a search that has marked his entire childhood already and has become a frustrating never ending cycle for him ( and would go on to influence him into accepting the name and identity of Caedus years later ).

   In the first few months during his imprisonment he tries holding onto his teachings, onto the knowledge that he cannot allow himself to fall into the dark but then he feels another thing adding to the pain he already experiences: He feels his TWIN edging closer to the dark in despair and he shares her rage through the twin bond, a bond he decides he has to ignore eventually to safe her from the pain he is feeling:

But he cannot let himself touch [Jaina] through the Force; he cannot ask her to share his torment--she is in so much pain already that to suffer his would only drive her darker yet. And so even his twin bond has become a source of anguish.

    Jacen has always been a very lonely person and mostly shared his emotions with his sister and no one else, not even his own parents. This moment is one of the first that marks a long history of decisions that eventually tore the twins apart and pushed Jacen closer to the dark. They both start trying to keep each other out of the bond to avoid HURTING the other further and end up isolating themselves in the process. Jaina eventually recovers from this, Jacen does not. Jacen goes on to shoulder all of his torment on his own starting with his torture at the hands of Vergere and ending with his guilt over what he believes he has to do as Caedus years later.

   The year Jacen spend with Vergere very much completely broke apart his view on the world and himself. Vergere declared Jacen Solo is dead and then proceeded to form Jacen into what she WANTED him to be. A man of action, someone who made decisions, something Jacen has been struggling with his entire life. During this time Jacen goes from considering her his jailer and torturer, wanting to kill her ... to considering her a supporter, a friend. It is a very concerning change Jacen goes through as he starts to ACCEPT Vergere’s philosophies. One specific lesson from her eventually becomes a horribly twisted foundation of Jacen’s own ideology:

"What distinguishes a flower from a weed is only-- and exactly-- this: the choice of the gardener."

   Vergere wants Jacen to make the choice, BE the gardener who decides who is a flower and who is a weed. At first Jacen is dedicated to proving her wrong, to showing her everyone is a flower, that he will save everyone, kill no one. The longer he is trapped alone with Vergere the less he can hold onto that belief and eventually this argument between him and Vergere finds its climax in Jacen killing a group of Vong in pure anger, an action she chastises him for while not offering him a BETTER way of releasing his anger, resulting in Jacen being trapped in a loop of knowing there is darkness in him and struggling to find a safe outlet for it, further fueling his already at times incapacitating paranoia.

   All of what Jacen experienced during his year away would go on to shape his view of the world forever and not always in a good way although it must be said he has possessed traits that affected his philosophies negatively from the start; most notably his stubbornness and pride:

Mara's look turned grave. "We must help [Jacen]," she said. "If he'll let us. He hasn't always been cooperative that way."

    And this conversation between Luke and Mara marks one of Jacen’s worst habits: His reluctancy to accept any kind of HELP. Jacen has always, always struggled with his pride, with the idea that he knows what he is doing. This kind of thinking almost got him killed at the start of the war and it would continue to get him into trouble many years later when he starts making decisions over people’s heads because he ‘ knows whats best ’. It becomes the most defining trait of his work and his thought process, the idea he knows what is best for EVERYONE. The more he slides into the dark the worse his arrogance becomes. 

   At first he mainly got himself into trouble with this kind of thinking but we see very soon after his return from captivity that he has learnt the WRONG lesson from Vergere as he uses the force to see into Tahiri’s head without her permission to try figure out what is bothering her. He acts out of a good reason ( trying to help Tahiri find peace and making her feel like part of the family ) but goes about it in a terrible way and justifies it to himself as a reasonable action and THAT becomes an ugly theme in Jacen’s actions later on.

   Jacen’s belief that he is always right has good sides and bad sides. He insists the war with the Vong has to end PEACEFULLY and it does thanks to his help but his success in this situation only further fuels his idea that the force is guiding him and that means he cannot be wrong. He goes on his five year journey and returns home early when the ‘ force ’ tells him to go despite his teacher insisting he shouldn’t abandon his studies early or risk having to deal with the consequences. He ignores the order and his own twin to go through with a war that he is CONVINCED is going to stop a bigger disaster down the line, all because he had a vision about it and at this point he has allowed his ego to become so big that he blatantly ignores anyone trying to talk him out of his ideas. 

    His five year journey that follows the war with the Vong is driven by the desperate need to find out once and for all who he really is and what his purpose is. It is important to note that his journey didn’t set off his development into Caedus, if anything it only made it easier for him to further fall back into ALREADY established bad habits such as letting his fear guide him and putting his pride and search for identity over everything else. Jacen didn’t return from his journey suddenly a changed man. The foundation for this change had already been laid YEARS prior thanks to Vergere and the struggles he dealt with long before he even met Vergere. 

    Things take an even darker turn when Jacen’s daughter is born. Jacen loves his daughter, more than anything else and when she is threatened by Tenel Ka’s grandmother and her people, who want a week old child dead, Jacen lets his anger guide him and lashes out, putting a brutal end to the attack on his daughter and first mind rubbing Ben so he won’t be able to accidentally reveal anything about Allana that could put her in danger and then almost killing Ta’a Chume for raising her hand against the girl. Jacen JUSTIFIES his behaviour ( both to himself and Tenel Ka ) as necessary, as almost too nice a reaction to such despicable behaviour. Tenel Ka doesn’t exactly discourage him, being worried for their child herself and with the two of them being the only people to know about Allana and her parentage, there is no one to disagree with them, to make Jacen see that he went TOO FAR and is on a dangerous path straight to the dark side now. His constant worry over her also helps make his paranoia much, much worse over the next few years.

    By the time Jacen’s family realises his behaviour has become incredibly worrying it is already too late. Jacen has already decided they’re wrong, he is right and that is how it has to be. Afraid to lose everything ( his daughter, his identity, his pride ... ), Jacen REFUSES to admit he is wrong and with years of only himself and at best Tenel Ka and at worst Vergere ( and eventually Lumiya ) being there to judge his actions ... he passed the point of no return years ago. 

TL;DR: Jacen wasn’t ‘ destined ’ to fall but his fall also didn’t come out of nowhere. His long established tendency to refuse help, listen to his own paranoia instead of reason, his struggles with his anger and identity and both self inflicted and situational isolation from others, especially his twin, set him up for failure. Jacen was heavily traumatised and refused to admit it. Eventually the pressure became too much and something had to give.

[bornitereads]

Star by Star - Troy Denning

Star Wars: The New Jedi Order book 8

Reread: Nov 2023

Denning said this is one is going to have so much crazy shit in it. And he wasn't lying. New Jedi hunting beasts, voxyn, are on the scene and the young strong Jedi Knights go on a mission to Myrkr to kill the voxyn queen. It's a hard mission and many of them perish. Including Anakin Solo. RIP little Solo, we knew you so briefly. Meanwhile the invasion of Coruscant starts. Traitors try to kidnap Ben Skywalker, but fail thanks to his Uncle Han and Aunt Leia. Lots and lots of people die.

It's an very action packed and tense read, especially the voxyn mission parts. But the fall of Coruscant doesn't lack for action either. The war is going badly for the New Republic, very badly. In fact I would say that this is essentially the death blow for it. Oh sure it lingers for a couple books, but it's really over.

Info: Del Rey; 2001

[magnetarbeam]

"Only Jaina, whose feelings Jacen could always sense through their bond as twins, seemed calm. Whatever came, warning or no warning, voxyn or not, they would handle it - or not. They had cast their fates to the Force, and now they had no choice but to trust where it carried them. It was a strange sort of composure born of battle and death and suffering, the grim serenity of the soldier, who was both maker and victim of the all-devouring cataclysm."

-The New Jedi Order: Star by Star

[stelladrops]

@voxyn

[shadowsofdread]

Aloe for Taizi :3c

aloe: how does your muse handle grief?

Oh, I got so excited when I saw this one because I've really been needing to talk about all the shenanigans that happen in my friends' DMs, as this question largely relates to what happens in there. But first, I'll talk about the one canonical example of how Taizi handles grief: Ziost.

Firstly, and this will be the common thread: Taizi does not really do grief. Taizi is repulsed by the process and experience of grief like oil to water. He'll sit at the top of it but will never really mix in with it, will never let it enter him willingly.

There is likely no definitive number, ever, for the lives lost on Ziost. No real way to quantify and categorize the sheer scale of death. How could you? Where would you even begin? There were the people who died during the possessions, the people who died when the Republic was invading, then everyone else left behind who weren't evacuated in time. All of them, all of them, rendered indivisible and indistinguishable from each other. There is no way that Taizi could ever take responsibility or ownership for all those dead.

When Taizi feels grief, or is in a situation where grief is a natural or expected response, he's spurned into action. Which isn't to say that grief cannot be or is not action, grief looks like a lot of things, but the difference is that he just - does not get his emotions or any part of his Self involved. He does not want to suffer the sting of the loss.

Taizi takes the lead alongside Darth Marr to hunt down Vitiate and make him pay for Ziost, but he doesn't ever really - speak of Ziost again, and truly does his best not to think of it at all. He sees Vitiate as his responsibility but he'd sooner fall on his own lightsaber than actually talk about why - his deep sense of failure for the part he feels he played in Vitiate even being able to do this in the first place. Ziost lives inside of him, he carries that with him forever, but it's not something that ever gets processed or even acknowledged, even privately. If grief at its most basic is an experience and expression of loss, of metabolizing that loss, wending your life through it - Taizi calcified Ziost within him. Built layers and layers of sediment around the wound - but the wound is still there, in the exact shape it was when it was first made. It's still infected, but just isolated from the rest of himself so it can't spread.

Taizi's grief in an interpersonal (and thus more extreme) form is a theme I often return to with the characters I've paired him with - courtesy of @voxyn and @tiredassmage, respectively.

Rose and Taizi have, like, the Trophy for most codependent fictional guys in the world because it's pretty much unspoken knowledge between themselves and the rest of the cast that they will not live without each other. It simply will not happen, because neither of them could grieve the other. It is a loss neither of them could or even want to survive. Even outside of life-or-death circumstances, there's a certain chain of events in KOTXX that sorely tests their relationship (because Valkorion's a manipulative fuckwad) and results in them going on a bit of a break from each other. It is, arguably, one of the worst times in both of their lives. Neither of them cope well with the loss of the other, even temporarily.

Kind of similarly, kind of not, Taizi has a really awful bad time in the AU where Alucren is the Outlander and Commander of the Alliance. Thinking Alucren well and truly died with Marr's flagship (or rather, there being no available evidence to the contrary, and no Alucren to prove them all wrong, so Taizi simply runs away from thinking about it at all), Taizi throws himself into leading the defense against the Eternal Empire in the power vacuum left by Marr. He has nothing left, really, except his crew - except he can't even bring himself to look at his crew either, because they've turned from people to Potential Losses. He could lose them too. He could lose all of them, but he can't do that, he's not going to survive that, he cuts himself off emotionally and physically to avoid even the anticipatory grief. As a result, no one is there when he's fatally wounded in a battle with Zakuul, and the Empire is led to believe that he died in the attack (little do they know, he survived, with a little help from Acina).

So, yeah. Long story short: Taizi and grief don't mix. The guy will avoid it at all costs, and would frankly rather die than face his losses at all.

[ BOTANICAL HEADCANONS ]

[thisiseditsandstuff]

NEW JEDI ORDER: STAR BY STAR — Mission to Myrkr

[corelliaxdreaming]

So Jedi aggression against the Vong, who are actively enslaving civilians, is wrong, but Jedi aggression against the voxyn, who are specifically targeting Jedi is fine.

I N T E R E S T I N G. 😐

[bluerhapsodist]

So it sounds like, if we go by the NJO beginning arc, Jacen would be more philosophical and a pacifist, as opposed to Jaina being more pragmatic and ready to fight under Mara's tutelage. Jacen wants to better understand the Yuuzhan Vong and care for the downtrodden; Jaina wants to fight the Vong, whatever it takes. I could see Jacen being a reluctant warrior who gets involved when innocent lives (or his loved ones) are in danger. Meanwhile, Jaina takes on riskier missions to prove herself, to the point everyone gets concerned about her mental health. Everything blows up at Myrkr in the hunt for the voxyn queen, with Jacen rescuing a comrade and trapped behind enemy lines and Jaina desperately wanting to save him but forced to flee.

In the end, Jaina goes on the warpath in Dark Journey the way she did at Borleias, prompting Mara to intervene and pull her from active duty before she gets herself killed. Meanwhile, in Traitor, Jacen has no one but the enigmatic Vergere to rely on as he's brought to enemy-held Coruscant. While Jaina learns the limits of her fighting prowess on Hapes, Jacen learns to find his own strength and let go of his questions by outrunning the Vong and befriending the World-Brain.

They reunite in Destiny's Way, with their twin bond still broken but slowly healing. Jacen reveals what he did to survive in enemy captivity. Jaina shares what she learned when Mara pulled her off the front lines. Their bond heals along with the schism among the Jedi in time for the New Republic counterattack.

What if during the New Jedi Order, the Solo children’s ’philosophical conflict’ had been arranged with the twins being on opposite sides while Anakin’s caught in the middle?

Essentially, had the authors not forgotten about Jaina and Mara’s master-apprentice dynamic and had Jaina balance her Jedi skills with her piloting ones (maybe with Wraith Squadron), they could’ve framed her and Jacen as having opposing stances on the Jedi schism and their role in the galaxy. Not only do their already-opposing personalities mean they’re already prone to disagreement, but Anakin being caught in the middle and having to contend with this rift between his siblings would place further emphasis on how he’s respected by pretty much all Jedi of Luke’s new Order, regardless of if they support Luke or Kyp. It’d also make Jaina’s and Jacen’s character arcs after Anakin’s death (or being rendered comatose with little hope of recovery, in my take on it), since I imagine a scene where the twins get into a heated argument over how best to approach the Mission to Myrkr where they start cutting deep into each other’s insecurities (a product of both mounting frustration and the stress of the Myrkr strike mission) at which point Anakin snaps and brutally calls them both out for their mistakes and how they’ve let their ideological differences tear them apart. The twins don’t get a chance to apologise to their brother, however, as he has to be put under shortly afterwards, and their lingering guilt (combined with their separation) causes them to spiral further in Dark Journey and Traitor respectively, with the twins reconciling upon their reunion in Destiny’s Way.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

My Favorite Star Wars Book Ever

At this point, my deep and abiding love of the Star Wars EU Legends Continuity Books is no secret, and I have apparently pissed off a few people who were fans of Kenobi (the book, not the the show). Them's the breaks in the fandom that is helmed by Anakin *bring the goddamn drama or get off my stage* Skywalker. (Please realize that that is said lovingly; I am HERE for Solo/Skywalker legacy shenanagins.) And speaking of legacy shenanagins, the fact that this book is the culmination of arcs for so many characters that we have literally been able to watch grow up and survive many adventures as the Yuuzhan Vong threaten to annihilate the galaxy is what makes it my unequivocal, hands-down, ride-or-die favorite Star Wars book. Let's talk Star By Star.

*Spoilers abound below the break*

So, like many Star Wars books, the plot of Star By Star is pretty darn straightforward: The Mission to Myrkr to kill the Voxyn Queen and it's immediate aftermath, interlaced with the fall of Coruscant to the Yuuzhan Vong. (For anyone who needs a refresher or an explanation, let me direct you to the one, the only, the wonderful Wookieepedia.)

What makes this book absolutely fucking AMAZING is a combination of the character work and worldbuilding, much of which comes to a glorious head in this book--as well it should, this is very much the turning point of the Yuuzhan Vong war. It also launches a solid half dozen long-ranging new arcs for characters that I just adore.

Normally I do my best to have coherent, organized thoughts about books, but at this point what I really want to do is just a big, messy, disorganized list of stuff I love about this book. So, in the immortal words of Captain Han Solo: Punch it!

The whole concept of the voxyn and the voxyn queen. Let's be real, predators bioengineered to hunt down and murder the crap out of jedi with their ability to sense force-users, sonic blast roars, acid saliva, retrovirous-laden paw pads, and a poisoned tail barb. These things are horrifying and genuinely felt like a threat to the jedi, which honestly got kinda hard to do sometimes in the EU. The big "they're all cloned from a single queen" is a wee bit video game weak spot/boss fight, but honestly I'm not complaining given the sheer grind that this mission becomes.

The Jedi Strike Team Dynamics. This TEAM you guys. This team is an absolute disaster from start to finish. Not only do you have all three Solo kids with their sibling fuckery dynamics--specifically Jacen and Anakin's crippling fundamental disagreement on force use ethics that ultimately is a rehash of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's debate about the living vs. unifying force but in an apocalyptic combat zone--but almost every member of this team is potentially a disaster. You have Tenel Ka, Tahiri Veila, and Zekk on the team, who are collective love interests for the Solo siblings, and I'm pretty sure that sending siblings and couples on life-and-death missions is not a good idea because instincts and motivations get all sorts of fucky and tangled. Then you have Alema Rar, whose sister gets acid-in-the-faced-to-death by a voxyn in chapter 1 of this book, which is just a disaster waiting to happen. Then you have the friendship dynamics with Raynar Thul, Lowbacca, and Tesar Sebatyne, which arguably carries over some of the young jedi knights dynamics that never got solved. This team was a TIME BOMB, and frankly the fact that they managed to pull this mission off is a miracle.

The Battle/Force/Jedi Meld. So, not only do we have a team full of hideously complicated and unstable relationships, but they spend the entire goddamn mission in a meld that basically lets them all be in each other's thoughts and feelings and share extreme physical sensations, including pain. Which like...The Vong are major pain fans, so this might have been a poor life choice. Plus, it sets up some of the complicated stuff with Raynar and Jaina and Zekk in the Killick War later. *weird telepathic forearm rubbing* That said, I love the idea of the battle meld, and it really is just a great ride to watch this shred the team.

The Yuuzhan Vong Worldbuilding. Literally the worldbuilding for the Vong in this whole series is A+ horrifying and fascinating. We just get a lot of it here, and it's used to excellent effect.

Anakin's Death. Ok, so this was fucking heartbreaking, and it might seem like a weird thing to put on a list of things I love about this book. But what makes this death just an incredible read is the quality of the writing, the impact on the mission, and the fact that this death sets Jacen on the path to becoming a Sith Lord, pushes Tahiri into becoming the badass she grows into, fundamentally changes how we think about the unifying and living force, and honestly adds some stakes because if the Solo kids aren't safe, then literally ANYONE could die here. This death is so critical and changed so much and was done with respect and weight.

Borsk Fey'lya's Death. We don't love this Bothan. He's kind of a dick. But uh...I will give him credit for buying time for people to get off-planet during the fall of Coruscant, and for blowing 25,000 Vong to hell along with him.

Lando Calrissian Being the Only Adult in the Room With Eyes. Lando delivers the strike team to the Vong, but before he does, he starts a fight. Lando Calrissian HAS EYES IN HIS HEAD and can clearly see the lines along which the strike team is destined to fissure. He tries so hard to get them to air it out before the mission and to clear the air. It doesn't work, but he TRIED, and that's more than Luke or Han did. I guess that's what happens when you're a farmboy who has never had to lead a pre-fractured team and a gruff loner who did everything himself. Lando though...Lando understands that even Jedi have fracture points and conflict points. Give this man more credit.

I think that more or less covers the things that I love about this book. If you love the EU Legends Continuity, I strongly recommend this whole series. There are more good and great books than there aren't, and the Yuuzhan Vong are such great antagonists.