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gffa · 5 years

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Hey! Long time reader, first time asker but I read your post yesterday about supplementary material enriching experience. I’ve seen all the movies, I’m loving The Clone Wars and I enjoy playing Swtor but that’s all I have experienced. Do you have any recommendations as to where to start with supplementary material? Are the graphic novels you reference on that marvel comic subscription do you know? Thank you for your posts, they are always so interesting!

Hi! Thank you for the kind words, I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog! And I love doing “where to start” posts! Keep in mind that a lot depends on what you happen to like (if you’re more of an OT fan or a PT fan or an ST fan, if you like certain characters more than others, etc.) but I think the basic places to start when moving on from the movies are:- The Clone Wars TV show. As you’ve said, you’re already watching this one but it’s still my #1 recommendation, because it sets up so much of the galaxy and the way things operate in the Republic and is just really good. Finish this one first, as it introduces you to so much you’ll need down the road–a lot of the Jedi characters that will then break your heart when you watch Order 66 happening in Revenge of the Sith, getting invested in Ahsoka Tano and her role in Anakin’s life, getting more time spent with characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padme Amidala, some trippy arcs like the Mortis arc that are fascinating for Force Woo, and a lot of stuff will come up in other shows, comics, and books!- Star Wars Rebels TV show. While it’s about an entirely new group of characters, it has a lot of recurring familiar characters–like James Earl Jones reprises his role in voicing Darth Vader, you learn the fate of Ahsoka Tano here, you get to see some of the clones again, you get a look at what it’s like for Jedi under the thumb of the Empire, you’re introduced to the Inquisitors, you get to see the politics of the Rebellion as the show goes along, you get a better look at Mandalore, etc. This is another show that will help form the foundations of other stuff.- Star Wars Battlefront II game. You can play it or just watch a movie version of it on YouTube. Yeah, the game got a lot of crap for the shit EA tried to pull with it, but it’s turned into a really great piece of media and the story itself is absolutely fantastic and will only take about 2 hours to get through, but a) it’s a great story with great characters (I LOVE IDEN VERSIO SO MUCH) and b) it does a great job at showing a lot of what happened after Return of the Jedi but before the Empire truly gave up. This establishes a lot of the final fight stuff, like the Battle of Jakku and its importance (aka, that’s all those ships that Rey is scavenging at the beginning of The Force Awakens) and what Operation Cinder is and the epilogue helps lead into what the First Order is.- The Star Wars titular comic + Darth Vader volume 1 (by Kieron Gillen) comics. These two are meant to be read concurrently, so I recommend them together, and they do an absolutely incredible job of filling out the space between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. They’re telling fantastic stories (including some really powerful stuff about Vader finding out the name of the Death Star pilot is Skywalker) while also giving some really great insights into the characters, adding depth to the story of the movies, and made me fall in love with the characters all over again. This Vader tends to be a little more mysterious, Gillen liked keeping the mystique to him (which appeals more to some, so if that’s your jam, read these first!), the feeling is very much in tune with the original trilogy in that sense. Same for the heroes, they feel very OT!- Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith by Charles Soule comics. You can read the Vader comics in either order, but I generally like suggesting this one to go second (release order is always good, imo) despite that this is my favorite of the comics. Set not long after Revenge of the Sith, this is a comic about Darth Vader adjusting to his new life and about the bigger, overarching story of the psychological look at a character who cannot admit what he’s done wrong. On the surface, it’s about him hunting down Jedi and trying to raise his wife from the dead, but in the macro sense, it’s about this guy who cannot admit that he had other choices, even when the Force is literally throwing those other paths in his face. Great Vader content for him being powerful and terrifying, while also being an absolute human disaster garbage bag.- Age of the Republic comics by Jodie Houser. If you like the prequels at all, these comics are stellar. There are eight of them, four for the main heroes, four for the main villains, and they’re a single issue each, where there’s a short look into their lives at various points, all which illustrate really thoughtful things about the characters, whether through their actions or even sometimes comparisons with other issues in the series. (ie, reading the Obi-Wan one and Jango Fett one really highlighted how each of them dealt with this young person they were taking care of.) They were just REALLY GOOD STORIES, too.- Star Wars Adventures by IDW Comics. These are cuter stories and set all across various eras, from the PT to the OT to the ST to occasionally other areas, but they’re always just absolutely CHARMING. They’re pure delight to read, they tend to focus on moments that are just really fun, so it’s easy to think of it as a kids’ comic, but instead I think they work best at showing some of the more hopeful moments of Star Wars without being too fluffy.- Poe Dameron by Charles Soule comics. These are SO GOOD, they really add so much to Poe’s character and they also do a great job of fleshing out that time between the New Republic still working to stabilize itself and when we know the First Order is coming. But mostly it just really makes you like Poe as a character, it captures his sense of charm and swagger while giving him an actual character arc, as he learns to be a leader.- Kanan: The Last Padawan comics. You need to see Rebels first (or at least the first two seasons, enough to make you care about Kanan as a character) but then this is a gorgeous, beautifully told story. It’s half about the current days with his new found family the Ghost crew (the cast of Rebels) and half about his history as a Padawan in the Jedi Order, how he was apprenticed to Depa Billaba, how he watched her die, how he had to live in the galaxy that wanted him dead just for being born the way he was, how he was being hunted for it, and how he survived. It’s really, really good!- Forces of Destiny animated shorts. You can find them all on Disney’s YouTube channel, they’re these 2-3 minute long stories about the women of the galaxy far, far away (with occasional appearances by others) and they’re pretty light-hearted fare, they’re meant to impart messages to kids or just be bite-sized content, but they’re pretty wonderful and it’s nice to see the women of SW get some attention.- From a Certain Point of View book. For the 40th Anniversary of A New Hope they put out an anthology of short stories, telling the various points of view of different side characters and adding depth to everything that was going on. Not all of them are super great, you can feel free to skip ones if you’re getting bored, but there are some MUST READ ones, especially the Qui-Gon, Yoda, and Obi-Wan ones. And the Admiral Motti story had me in absolute tears from cry-laughing while reading it.- Bloodline by Claudia Gray book. It’s a really good Leia story, but it’s also a book that does a lot to cover what’s going on with the New Republic still struggling to establish itself, why Leia isn’t part of it by TFA, and more on how the First Order came to be and why people stuck their heads in the sand about it.- Thrawn by Timothy Zahn book. While there’s some dissonance between Zahn’s version of the character and the character from Rebels, I think you can make them fit together, and this book really is one of the best of canon material. It’s fun and zips right along and introduces some new characters and sets up some really interesting backstories and just fleshes out the Imperial stuff and gives us Eli Vanto. ALL THINGS I LOVED.FINALLY: The above is aimed at a general list of things that I thin pretty much anyone would enjoy, it’s meant to cover most of the bases as best I can, but if you have a favorite era or a favorite character, feel free to run straight to anything that involves them. There’s a lot of good Legends stuff (as always it’s hard not to recommend the Revenge of the Sith novelization or Wild Space, but that’d just muddle the line between canon and Legends), but I’m sticking with canon right now because it’s easier and there’s so much good stuff and it’s less confusing that way.All the comics are available on Comixology (and there’s never been a comic I hated by any means, though, admittedly some of the mini series can be kind of bland, anything that ran for at least 20 issues is a good bet, and most of the comics are THE BEST of the supplementary material), and if you don’t mind waiting a couple of months for Disney+ (or Googling for streaming sites) the animated properties are all really worth watching. Sometimes they take a bit to get going, but I’ve fallen in love with every single one.These might not end up being your favorites (some of my favorites–like the Aftermath books or the Join the Resistance books–are ones that I wouldn’t put on a list for new-to-supplementary-material fans, because they’re a little too distanced from established characters) but they’re great places to start getting a feel for whether or not you like this kind of thing! :D

#galactic-pirates #fic recs #not really but that's my tag for recs for stuff :D

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theorenwulf · 5 years

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Star Wars Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn

Not a Hugo nominee, but since I read it in the last two days I’m gonna post some thoughts here.This book is the third in a trilogy of novels about one of Star Wars most famous villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn.

I am generally not a fan of stories about villains and despite theories to the contrary I’d definetely put Thrawn in that category. This one works though because he doesn’t fight the good guys, he fights other people that are just as terribel, if not worse, then him. I also really liked Timothy Zahn old now non-canon Thrawn Trilogy where he actually fights the good guys, but in that one Thrawn dies in the end and is just a compelling and well done character, not the main protagonist. The new trilogy in my opinion is not as good as the old one, but thanks to being part of the NEU and widely integrated into a universe driven by movies and TV shows and not books anymore, that can’t really be held against it.

Overall I thought this was a nice and compelling and mostly which is most important in those books fun Star Wars story. And Zahn as his creator just gets Thrawn like no one else. I also liked the somwehat intriguing look into the inner workings of a Chiss warship and the political maneuvering between Krennic and Tarkin, that for once catches Thrawn totally on the wrong foot.

In comparison to the other books of the trilogy I thought this was not quite as good as the first book Thrawn, but definetely better then the second one Alliances, which I didn’t find particularly amazing.

The one disappointing part about this book are certainly the Grysk, the faceless villains already introduced in Alliances. The idea in itself to bring a new threat from the Unknown Regions into the galaxy for Thrawn to fight is one I really like. I also like that Zahn made the Grysk very different from their equivalent in the old canon the Yuuzhan Vong, despite me liking them in the old EU. I would also like for Zahn himself or other authors to pick up the Grysks story somewhere down the line. In this book though the Grysk stayed just as faceless as in Alliances and we basically didn’t learn anything new about them. The whole Grysk storyline was just a rethread of what happened in Alliances with a new cast of support characters and some intresting tidbits about the Chiss thrown in.

Due to that, for all its potential, the Grysk thread unfortunately played second fiddle to the Imperial plotline with its political maneuvering.

Overall I found this to be a good Star Wars book, not one of the highlights of recent Star Wars books, but a fun read and I don’t really ask for more in my Star Wars books. I also like the ominous epilogue even though events in the finale of Rebels fourth season will probably prevent that talk ever happening.

PS:

Favourite character: Eli Vant, the most amazing sidekick ever that was sorely missed in Alliances, I also liked Faro who grew into the role Vanto filled in book 1 and was different, but definetely also cool in it.

Favourite scene: Vanto and the death troopers in the pirate port, at some points really, really fun.

#star wars #thrawn #review #science fiction

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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What The Mandalorian Means for Ahsoka Tano’s Future in Star Wars

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Despite never appearing in the flesh in any of the movies, former Jedi padawan Ahsoka Tano is undoubtedly one of the most popular characters in Star Wars. A hero in every sense of the word, Ahsoka’s journey spans almost the entire film saga, just in animated form.

First introduced as Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice in The Clone Wars animated series, Ahsoka quickly became one of the main protagonists of the series, as we watched her grow as both a Jedi and a commander who led clone forces for the Republic. And even though her time with the Jedi came to an end before Order 66, when she chose to walk away from the Order in search of her own path, she continued to fight for others.

In Rebels, she became the spy known as “Fulcrum,” helping the fledgling Rebellion in its struggle to topple the Empire. It was during this time that she also faced Darth Vader on an ancient Sith planet called Malachor and learned the truth about the fate of her former master. But the revelation did not break her, even as her duel with Vader left her stranded on Malachor.

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Ahsoka’s live action debut in The Mandalorian, played by Rosario Dawson, marks another major step in her journey. No longer someone trying to find her place in the galaxy or with the Jedi, she now uses her powers to help those who need it. And as Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth learns in the “The Jedi,” nothing will stop Ahsoka from seeking justice.

“She is, for lack of a term, a master, because she’s largely an independent at this point,” The Clone Wars and Rebels showrunner Dave Filoni, who is also an executive producer on The Mandalorian, told Vanity Fair. “I play her much more as a knowledgeable knight. A wandering samurai character is what she really is at this point. I’ve always made comparisons to her heading toward the Gandalf stage, where she is the one that has the knowledge of the world and can help others through it. I think she’s reached that point.”

But if you followed Ahsoka’s journey from the animated series to The Mandalorian, you probably noticed that there are still some gaps in her story. How did Ahsoka escape Malachor and show up on Corvus so many years later? And how was she able to speak to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker? Most importantly, what does “The Jedi” tell us about Ahsoka’s future?

How Is Ahsoka Tano Alive in The Mandalorian?

While we know Ahsoka Tano reappeared in the very final scene of Rebels, reuniting with Mandalorian hero Sabine Wren on Lothal before setting out in search of Ezra Bridger, who went missing after being launched into hyperspace while fighting Grand Admiral Thrawn in space, we don’t really know how Ahsoka escaped Malachor in the first place.

For those of you who don’t remember (or didn’t watch Rebels, which shame on you), Ahsoka stayed behind to duel Vader inside the Sith temple on Malachor while the rest of the heroes escaped in the season 2 episode “Twilight of the Apprentice.” For almost two seasons after that, Ahsoka’s fate was unclear, with some believing that the fan-favorite character had met her end at the hands of her master.

But season 4 episode “A World Between Worlds” revealed the truth. In the episode, Ezra gains access to a mystical realm containing portals to different points in time and space. It’s through one of these portals that Ezra is able to pull Ahsoka out of Malachor, just as Vader is about to land a killing blow with his lightsaber.

For a moment, it seems as if Ahsoka has found a way off Malachor. But when Emperor Palpatine senses the world between worlds through the Force and tries to gain access to it, Ezra and Malachor are separated while trying to stop the Sith lord. In the process, Ahsoka is forced to jump back through the portal to Malachor. She then walks back into the Sith temple to an uncertain future.

That’s the last we see of her on screen until she reunites with Sabine in the epilogue of the Rebels series finale “Family Reunion – and Farewell,” which takes place a year after Return of the Jedi. “The Jedi” reveals that Ahsoka is still searching for Ezra four years later, but doesn’t shed light on the sequence of events that led her from Malachor to Lothal and then Corvus.

The best answer we have comes from an unlikely source: the Star Wars Card Trader mobile trading card game from Topps. A series of Ahsoka cards designed by Filoni himself reveals that Ahsoka found another portal within the Sith temple on Malachor that led her back into the world between worlds and “on a spiritual journey that changed the course of her life,” according to Wookieepedia. That’s a pretty vague answer to a very big gap in Ahsoka’s story, but since Filoni designed these cards, they must be canon, right?

The good news is that Ahsoka’s escape from the planet means that we’ll hopefully get to watch many more of her adventures on The Mandalorian as an older and wiser hero.

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What Is Togruta Life Expectancy?

Just how old Ahsoka is when she appears in The Mandalorian? According to Wookieepedia, Ahsoka was born in 36 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin). Since The Mandalorian takes place in five years after Return of the Jedi in 9 ABY (After the Battle of Yavin), this means that Ahsoka is around 45 years old in “The Jedi,” leaving plenty more years of adventuring ahead of her.

Barring an illness or any of the usual hazards that come with fighting bad guys in the galaxy far, far away, just how many years does Ahsoka have left? While there’s no canon answer when it comes to Togruta life expectancy, the old Legends continuity did state that Togruta could live up to 94 years, a pretty long lifespan when you consider that real-world human life expectancy is about 72 years. Of course, this pales in comparison to the lifespan of Yoda’s species, who can live for centuries.

Regardless of whether the life expectancy of Togruta is the same in the Disney canon, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Beloved Star Wars characters rarely die of natural causes, which brings us to a big question about Ahsoka’s future: how is her journey fated to end?

How Did Ahsoka Tano Die?

Even if she’s not physically in the movie, Ahsoka’s presence is felt in The Rise of Skywalker when she speaks to Rey through the Force during the film’s climactic battle with Palpatine. She can be heard saying, “Rey!” when the young hero reaches out to the generations of Jedi before her to give her the strength to defeat the Sith once and for all. Although it’s just as likely that her inclusion in this scene is simply a wink at the Star Wars fans who love the character, Ahsoka’s single line in The Rise of Skywalker has led some to wonder whether this means she died prior to the events of the Sequel Trilogy.

There is some “evidence” that this might be the case, primarily the fact that the other Jedi who speak to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker — Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Mace Windu, Yoda, Qui-Gon Jinn, Luminara Unduli, Aayla Secura, Kanan Jarrus, and Adi Gallia — are all dead. But the difference is that we’ve witnessed the deaths of all of these other characters, whether it be in the films, the TV series, or in the pages of the books and comics. (While we don’t see how Master Unduli died, her death was confirmed in Rebels.)

Ahsoka’s fate, on the other hand, is not written in stone. As far as we know, Ahsoka could have lived decades beyond The Mandalorian, and Filoni even suggested after the release of the film that, just because Rey could hear her voice on Exegol, that didn’t mean Ahsoka was necessarily dead.

Was thinking of all of you this fine morning, Happy Holidays! – Dave pic.twitter.com/WpD0kKMbfk

— Dave Filoni (@dave_filoni) December 25, 2019

Filoni went as far as to tell io9 that the movie “doesn’t really have any big implications to what I’m doing with the character, to be honest. I just thought it was a really fun thing. I thought J.J. [Abrams]’s instinct to be so inclusive with all these various elements of Star Wars and characters [was great]. And I thought it would be a great thing for the actors involved to be a part of something that was just really this celebrating moment of the Star Wars saga. So I didn’t think of it in a literal story [way]. The film, to me, is like a different area.”

In other words, Ahsoka’s cameo in The Rise of Skywalker could be nothing more than just a wink at fans. Certainly, Ahsoka’s story in “The Jedi” suggests that she has plenty more to do. Next on her list is finding Grand Admiral Thrawn, who could lead him to where Ezra is.

Will Ahsoka Be in The Mandalorian Again?

In many ways, and this is pure speculation, “The Jedi” plays like a backdoor pilot, setting up what could be Ahsoka’s own standalone series on Disney+. The episode introduces just enough of Ahsoka’s own mission without giving much of it away. By the end of the episode, we know that Ahsoka’s on her way to find Thrawn, a confrontation so many years in the making that it seems too big (and distracting) to happen on The Mandalorian.

But even if Ahsoka were to get her own series, that doesn’t mean she would never cross paths with Mando and Grogu again. Since Disney bought the Star Wars franchise in 2012, the studio has been working to build a shared universe of stories on screen that communicate with each other and share characters from one property to the next — just like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the same way that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision are meant to tie into the upcoming Marvel movies, The Mandalorian and a potential Ahsoka series (and the rumored Boba Fett spinoff) could be set up to interact with each other, too.

In fact, “The Jedi” has left the door open for Ahsoka to appear in future The Mandalorian episodes, even as she searches for Thrawn in her own series. She’s already played a pivotal role in Mando and Grogu’s own journey, not only helping the bounty hunter learn his little companion’s real name but also revealing Grogu’s tragic history. Unable to fully understand the child or the way of the Jedi, Mando has needed people to show him the way throughout his quest, and Ahsoka could prove to be the perfect guide and mentor for the duo when it comes to the mysteries of the Force, even if she won’t outright train Grogu as an apprentice. As Filoni said of Ahsoka’s resemblance to Gandalf: “She is the one that has the knowledge of the world and can help others through it.”

Will Ahsoka Meet Luke Skywalker?

In “The Jedi,” Ahsoka points Mando and Grogu to Tython, a mysterious planet powerful in the Force that could be the birthplace of the Jedi Order. There, Grogu must decide whether to reach out with the Force to another Jedi or stay with Mando.

“If he reaches out through the Force, there’s a chance a Jedi may sense his presence and come searching for him,” Ahsoka tells Mando. “Then again, there aren’t many Jedi left.”

Fans’ ears likely perked up at this line of dialogue since we all know of at least one other Jedi operating in the galaxy five years after Return of the Jedi: Luke Skywalker himself. Is the show hinting that Luke will make an appearance on the show to take Grogu in as his student? That seems unlikely since Mando and Grogu are the emotional core of the series, but Ahsoka’s acknowledgement that there are other active Jedi in the galaxy could mean that she’s aware that Luke is out there.

Could this mean that Ahsoka has already met Luke or is poised to meet him in the future? Either way, their meeting seems inevitable. In fact, an Ahsoka and Luke story would provide the rhyming poetry that Star Wars so often deploys: Anakin’s old apprentice finds Anakin’s son years after Vader’s death and helps him learn something new about the Force or the Jedi. Ahsoka could guide Luke in ways that Anakin could not, while she could learn more about her master’s ultimate sacrifice for his son.

The only issue, of course, is that Mark Hamill is much older than Luke would be five years after Return of the Jedi, which means that a potential meeting with Ahsoka would likely involve some heavy CGI to de-age Hamill or a recast of Luke. Unless Ahsoka doesn’t meet Luke until much later in his life, it might be time to ring up Sebastian Stan.

Keep up with all of The Mandalorian season 2 news here.

The post What The Mandalorian Means for Ahsoka Tano’s Future in Star Wars appeared first on Den of Geek.

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