Rule 63

While you're reading this, I'm on the road. Yes, I'm posting to you mysteriously (really though, it's just a scheduled post). I haven't finished book 4 yet (shame, shame on me), so I don't have anything to discuss about it. However, I would have felt bad if I didn't post anything until Thursday. So here's some kind of mid-week filler for you.

If you've been on the internet for a while, you've heard of rule 63. Or at the very least seen the results. Rule 63 is gender-swapping. Generally male-to-female, it's often the other way around (those dudes dressed as Sailor Moon ALMOST count as rule 63, but they should really have a male-themed outfit too).

Recently I saw some great rule 63 artwork for Star Wars, so I wanted to share it with you...

This first one is courtesy of Angelo Crelencia of Sketch Please.

For more Rule 63 Star Wars artwork, check out this Deviant Art gallery.


Lastly, a couple fun rule 63 cosplays:

Alrighty folks, that's all from me for today. Have a wonderful Tuesday & Wednesday. I'll be back with more about the Lost Tribe of the Sith on Thursday!

LTotS: Paragon - Bridging Stories

Now we will discuss Paragon. This book kind of flew by (as if the others haven't either- they are rather short) and I'm already halfway through book 4. Without giving away spoilers, I don't have much to discuss. That does lead me to a bit of housekeeping: would you mind spoilers? Would you like them, but behind a 'Read More' cut so that you have to choose to read them? Or shall I continue with overviews and thoughts on general plots, characters, and races as I have been?

Please feel free to leave a comment (or contact me via other methods if you have them) and let me know.

Paragon begins 15 years after the Omen crash landed on Kesh. We are treated in this novel to Seelah's point of view. Considering how much I dislike her character, I was surprised it read so quickly. Reading into the Wookiepedia about the (spoiler alert!) Red Sith Purge did give me some insight. It seems the author did this to bridge the Tales of the Jedi comics to the later (timeline-wise) Fate of the Jedi novels. This is a rare situation in which needing to explain the reasoning for a situation has actually worked out well.

Know when it doesn't work out well? (Tangent warning)
Leia. This has bothered me for a while. In the original trilogy, when Luke asks Leia about their mother, she explains her only memory is of a sad, beautiful woman. That's all fine and well, until the new trilogy in which Padme dies shortly after giving birth to the twins. They explain this in a novel at some point as Leia having had a connection through the Force to their mother (which she then develops with her own twins, Jacen/Jaina). It's a major example of how annoyingly quirky the main characters can be.

Alright, tangent over.

So in Paragon, most of the story is set in the temple that Korsin had the Keshiri help build for the Skyborn / Sith. They do ultimately move to the city (pictured above) of Tahv. Like I said, it's a very swift-paced book, made especially so by the lack of any new details. There are thing relevant only to the novels that do not pertain to any other aspects of the Star Wars universe and no new species or creatures.

It's been a good story so far, but I have to admit I'm looking forward to finishing them. After the LTotS books, it's on to a number of comics (Tales of the Jedi, Knights of the Old Republic, The Old Republic: Threat of Peace, and Knight Errant). The Knight Errant comic seems to segue into a novel (I think the comic comes first or it might be in tandem- I need to look into that).

As I believe I mentioned before, the only games I'll be playing at the Knights of the Old Republic games. Other games, I will search for cutscenes and the like on YouTube, but I'm not going to waste my time on them.


Recommended reading:
Takara Mountains
Ravilan Wroth
Grand Lord


Last, but not least: Returning military Dad throws surprise 'Star Wars' party for son.

Knights of the Old Republic Observations

Alright, I lied. Today we won't be covering the 3rd book of Lost Tribe. Instead, I want to talk a but about some things in KotOR. I played a fair bit yesterday and had a few... amusing thoughts.

First off: it took me this long to finish the game because Taris is just so damn boring. Also, your character runs slow. So I totally admit I have used some cheats to get me through it. Like turbo, which I don't use all the time, but it's nice when you have a looooong ways to go across the map. It's too fast to move around in a smaller area, but nice when you have to go a distance. Especially a distance you've tracked back and forth over multiple times.

The first thing that came to mind isn't really about KotOR specifically, but any games of this style. Whenever you can only have a couple people in your party and the rest have to wait back on the ship or an apartment or... wherever, really. Especially if it's a game with romance options. What do they do?

Character 1: Oh, there he goes again. With the hot girl he likes and whichever of us is useful to him.

Character 2: Hey, at least you got to go out yesterday. I haven't been useful in a week! I'm getting cabin fever here!

Character 3: So, I'm new around here. The hot guy just rescued me and he dropped me off here. What's going on?

Character 1: Oh god, not another one. Look, honey, not to disappoint, but... you basically just sit around with us until you're useful in some way.

Character 3: But I have no skills! I was a dancer!

Character 2: Oh... I'm so sorry.

Character 1: Damn, sucks to be you. So, guys, what will it be... Poker or tv?

Seriously, just once, I want a game where you get opportunities to have everyone with you. Heck, not even just once: either make it a part of the story that people get left behind and let them have some action too, or find a way to make the whole party useful. I haven't used the wookie once since I got him and he has a damn life debt to me. 

The other issue I noticed is more storyline. This won't be spoilers unless you honestly thought a single-player Star Wars game wouldn't let you be a Jedi...

When you first really interact with Bastila, your character comments on visions she's had. Bastila makes some snide comment basically insinuating that she's just so awesome, her Force bleeds off onto you. Or something like that: long story short, she tries to say how you surely can't be a Force sensitive and if you are, it's only barely. However, the very next Force user you see (a Sith, of course) comments on how strong the Force is with you. 

I'm sure this was done to draw out the suspense, but all it does for me is make me think that Bastila is just a snobby little bitch. Like I won't be surprised if she turns to the dark side at some point.

LTotS: Skyborn

To recap: in Precipice, Korsin's ship (the Omen) crash landed on a planet. Most of the crew died, as well as the Massassi (something in the planet's atmosphere was poisonous to them). 

We start Skyborn with a new point-of-view, Adari Vaal. I think she may be a part of why I enjoyed book 2 more than 1. She's an interesting character and I appreciate her personality, especially in the face of what she goes through.

Adari is a member of the Keshiri, a race introduced in these novels. I appreciate that the Keshiri, while similar to humans, are biologically different enough that they can't reproduce. I feel as if it occurs too often that species can interbreed and procreate. The Keshiri have purple skin, white hair, and red eyes. Adari is very confused by the red skintone of the Sith she encounters, initially.

The Keshiri are the only sentient race upon the planet Kesh, which also has no metals. This seems to be the reason the race never achieved space travel or had any real knowledge of science. This is what made it so easy for the Sith to insert themselves as the deity of their religion.

I will say I'm mildly confused by the lack of metals, though it is implied that they may be very deep in the planet, but the foolhardy Sith used up all their tools before they could even try to go so deep.

The other interesting thing about the Keshiri are the Uvak: basically large, reptilian birds that they fly. The main group that rides the creatures are the Neshtovar. Before the Sith show up, the Neshtovar are considered the Sons of the Skyborn. An elite group who don't quite rule the Keshiri, but they're still rather important. When the Sith show up, their role falls more into the messenger capacity (as they can traverse the landscape quickly on their uvak). 

In Skyborn, I really began to get a feel for what I had hoped for in this venture. Finding books where the authors were delving into new / less-regulated territory. Often the stories of third and fourth tier characters are much better as the authors don't have dozens of media and snippets that they have to keep in line with. As such, I have far fewer nitpicks right now.

Next I will discuss Paragon, the third book, though I may fold it in with the fourth, Savior. Since we've covered all the new information being put forth, there's really little of interest to discuss without revealing too much by the way of spoilers.

No recommended reading today, beyond the articles I've linked above: Adari Vaal, Keshiri, Kesh, Uvak, and Neshtovar.

LTotS: Precipice - Wookiepedia Inconsistencies

First off: thank you to everyone reading and supporting me in this venture. Feel free to leave comments! If you have any suggested links I check out, please send them my way! If you have any cool Star Wars related sites, products, etc... again, let me know. Like the dress yesterday, if it tickles my fancy, I'll share it.

Last time we covered Sith (the race) and Sith (the order) as well as thoughts on Yaru Korsin.

Seeing as how I finished book 2 and 3 yesterday, I feel like I should pick up the pace. There's a lot that happens in these books, but they average 4 chapters a piece (explaining why they were released as free ebooks).

In LTotS, there is one Houk. Gloyd. He is a gunner on Korsin's ship and turns out to be one of Korsin's only real allies for most of the first few books.

Now I have to recommend you take Gloyd's Wookiepedia entry with a grain of salt. I'm sure it was written after these ebooks came out and I believe whoever wrote it was in the wrong. As it states: "Gloyd was a male force-sensitive Houk who served as gunnery officier aboard the Omen..." However, the passage that caught my eye about Gloyd reads:

Energized and triumphant, Yaru Korsin conferred with Gloyd - keeping his confidences, as he always had, to the huge alien. Too strong to be defeated, too stupid to betray him - and dumb to the Force. The perfect ally.

Now ignoring the grammatical issues there, I want to point out the "dumb to the Force" bit. This caught my attention because I couldn't find any reasoning as to why the alien was working with the Sith and working so well with them. The Houk entry in Wookiepedia has given me some more insight to that, but the book did not. I'm not sure why they list Gloyd as being force-sensitive, since the books clearly state that he is not. If he was, that would have assuaged any concern I had as to why a Houk was working with the Sith. Mind you, the Houk entry has no information about them before 0 ABY (in fact, you have to click Gloyd from the list of notable Houk to get any details). 

Before anyone asks: I'm not going to go in and try to edit Wookiepedia. Maybe someone with sharper eyes and knowledge than I could do this, but I really think the entries on the Houk and Gloyd could use some work. The former should have some details about the Houk in the Old Republic and the latter needs to be edited to remove that Gloyd is force-sensitive, as he is clearly not (unless a later book in the series changes that, in which case I'm peeved with the author).

The last thing I'm going to discuss today is more of a nitpick on writing. When a book is written from one character's perspective, I find it very sloppy to switch just to make a point. On page 33 of book 1, the last 5 sentences are suddenly from another character's viewpoint. While the writer did make it clear that it's a different character, I feel as if he was afraid that readers would not understand what was going on. The last 4 sentences could have been left out and things still would have been clear by book 3. 

It's not a big issue, but I feel like the "plot twist" could have had much more impact had that snippet been left out. Instead, the parts of book 2 that build it up and cement the character's behaviors would have had much more impact. Instead, I was like 'Yes, quit belaboring the point.'

With that, we finish Precipice. Next I will start on Skyborn, which introduces us to some wholly new races and concepts. The author also hits his stride more, which made Skyborn an altogether enjoyable read.

Suggested Reading:

Seelah Korsin

The 2 Wookiepedia links above if you haven't read them already.

LTotS: Precipice - Sith Confusion

I haven't forgotten about you, I promise. My "weekend" runs Tuesday / Wednesday on average and some weeks, I'm barely at home (literally this week as I stayed at a friends'). I continued to read and take notes so that today I could compose something to share with you.

While I'm trying to make this less a "review" and just an overview of my journey through Star Wars, it's in my nature to comment on things like story structure, character development, and grammar. I'm an author myself*, so I notice these things and am driven to point them out.

Also, on a final "house cleaning" note, I do apologize for the awkward structure of my posts. Blogging, to me, is somewhere between writing an article and writing a journal entry. I've been trying to find the right balance and if I'm not there yet, please bear with me.

My first point of order...

As I had feared over the years, the books do seem to expect a pre-existing knowledge of many, many things. While this may seem to make for smoother story telling, it can actually hurt new readers. Sure, someone who has read through Wookiepedia or most of the books is going to be fine. Someone who has just seen the movies, maybe played some of the games? Not so much.

Look at other book series. Each one, usually in the first chapter, will give a brief overview of what's going on. Who the main character is, major plot points, etc... and if something comes along that refers back to a previous book, we'll get a recap. Well, most series do this. They all should.

I already knew that Sith were also a species, but I had never looked into the background. The way this book reads, it's as if the origin of the Sith as a system of belief/practice was created by the Sith species, who interbred with ancient human houses to expand out. Instead, it's the other way around. The Dark Lords found the Sith, saw their use (being naturally Force Sensitive), and bred with them to create the people they wanted. They bred for emotion, health, skill, Force, etc... It makes much more sense that way, but it's not clear at all by how the book describes it.

I know this isn't the author's fault, but Sith-species and Sith-organization can lead to a lot of confusing passages.

This time, they did as told. He knew: Tie it to self-preservation, and a Sith would do anything. Even this bunch.

It is not clear whether it means Sith, the species, or Sith, the organization. In another section, the statement "every ensign an emperor" is applied to the Sith, as an explanation for how difficult it is to get them to obey orders. The first implies the species, the second -- as it references a naval role -- implies the organization. I do hope it means the species as if the organization is this difficult to deal with, then how did they rise to such power? We saw in the original trilogy how swiftly Vader would deal with dissent, but most people followed commands and orders very swiftly. In Precipice, Korsin is fighting his people at every turn. In fact, the author makes an effort to point out every non-Sith (species) or non-human character, explaining how they listen, aren't overly ambitious, or an ally to Korsin.

I can understand the concept that by the original trilogy, they've gotten rid of that behavior or bred it out, but at the same time... how did they rise as great as they did? How did they ever become any threat at all? If a captain is spending all of his time trying to appease egos and convince people to do what he asks, a starship can't run. Maybe further books will explain this, but right now I'm baffled...

I like Yaru Korsin, a lot. He's a really strong character and a good concept of what Sith is. I like when an evil character is charismatic, isn't just blindly evil without reasoning for it. Korsin is definitely not good, but he's not just evil-without-reasoning either. Exactly how people should be (just like a well-written good character isn't perfect all the time and struggles with their own set of morals). However, in the setting and structure that the author has put forth of how the Sith (species/org) are, I don't understand Korsin. What makes him different? How did he succeed when he doesn't have the blind bloodthirst and lust for power?

Maybe further books will explain. I'm on the 2nd one of the mini-ebook series now.

Suggested reading:

Lost Tribe of the Sith: Precipice

Sith (species)

While I was working on this post, a friend sent me this bit of greatness:

(Stormtrooper Inspired Rubber Latex Dress, by ShhhCoutureLatex)

* My publishing credits are a piece of flash fiction in a zine, blog work, and some articles. I've got some finished novels, but I've been too shy to submit them to publishers yet.

Reading: Lost Tribe of the Sith

How excellent that the first books on the list are free e-books? Lost Tribe of the Sith is a series of 8 e-books written by John Jackson Miller (who also wrote the Knight Errant novel- this guy knows his Old Republic Era). The free e-book series was released alongside the Fate of the Jedi series (set after 40 ABY in the Legacy Era), describing the ancient events that led to the Sith that Luke Skywalker encounters in that series.

They're fairly short: the entire collection is 324 pages according to my Kindle. That's including the table of contents, timeline, and the excerpt from Fate at the end. I'm really pleased to have such an easy introduction to my journey.


Because everyone loves a complainer, I'll launch that off. I was very swiftly reminded of why I tended to not read the Star Wars novels in my younger days. Before the Wookiepedia existed, before Google was as fantastic as it is, you had very little chance of finding an image of a particular alien species if the book description confused you. And in the Star Wars novels, it invariably will...

"We've got nothing, Commander!" The serpent-haired engineer flickered before him, off-kilter and out of focus. Korsin knew things belowdecks must be bad if his upright, uptight Ho'Din genius was off-balance. "Reactors are down! And we've got structural failures in the hull, both aft and-"

That's all we get as a description of this engineer (named Lohjoy). "Serpent-haired?" I thought, "upright, uptight? How do those apply to an alien species?" I struggled to get a good picture in my mind of this race and could not recall any such from the movies, games, and shows I've seen. So I took to the Ho'Din article on Wookiepedia.

Is this what you imagined? Certainly wasn't for me. Their hair is not serpents, but simply looks similar and are thermal sensors. What is disappointing is the implication, based on the article, that Lohjoy must have been a rare one of his kind. Not many leave their planet and they really only expanded their own technical capabilities as of 300 ABY. This book is set around 5,000 ABY. I somewhat wish such an interesting possibility had not been used for such a throwaway role. I feel like JJM just wanted an obscure alien to use on page 1 to make it hit home that this is  Star Wars, there's aliens and stuff.

Either way, that nit-picking aside, Korsin is an interesting character so far and I am enjoying the book.

Rant the 1st: Kindle & Comics

When I decided to start on this venture, I remembered with excitement that the Kindle (I have the basic, ad-supported version released last year) recently added support for comics. Sure, the comic would be in black & white, but the Kindle actually displays images beautifully. It's a little strange, yes, but I somewhat enjoy the representation.

To my dismay, however, they only added one level of zoom for the comic pages. Despite having a multi-directional keypad (that would enable you to scroll around the page), you can only zoom from it being centered on the screen to filling the screen. If I squint, I might be able to read the words.

So it looks like I'll be tied to my computer and a comic viewer to read the comic portions of this chronological trip. Until the day I can afford a Kindle Fire, Nook Color / Tablet, or something like an iPad. None of which I foresee in my near future.

So nothing to report on the actual journey yet, just some frustration with Amazon for this Kindle update. Give us more levels of zoom, please!

My Mind's A Machine

I love Star Wars, not as much as some, but pretty vastly. I never got into the books in the past, thinking they'd be pretty bad (based on my knowledge of other expanded universe novels). I did read a few and enjoyed them, but I never really got "into" them.

Until recently. I keep going through Wookiepedia to learn more about certain characters and aspects of the universe. It's made me realize that, WOW, there's some great stories that Lucas never covered in his movies. Guess that's what happens when good authors are given the reigns (to an extent- I've heard some of the horror that can go on behind the scenes when you're tasked with writing Star Wars novels).

So today I made a rash decision. I am going to, in chronological (universe, not released) order, go through most of the Star Wars media. Books, comics, movies, and TV shows. I've purposefully left the games out because I know from experience that most of them are bad. I am restarting the KotOR series though because that one is quite good. I've been told that cut scenes for others exist on YouTube, so I can reference those.

This blog is to document the journey since a few people seem amused by the concept and even interested in it. Star Wars has a HUGE universe and it's very difficult to keep track of it! That may be why I've continued to be a fan even as other franchises tire me. It's difficult to be an obsessive "rules lawyer" for something so vast and often changing.

For those interested, this timeline on About.com is the one I'll be using. It appears to be complete and is arranged in an easy-to-consume manner. If it's missing anything that you're aware of, please comment and let me know where it needs to be added in.





P.S.
The title of the blog, 'Always In Overdrive' is a reference to the MC Chris song, Dengar's Dumptruck. I've been kind of obsessed with that song lately. Here's a video with the lyrics: