A&A The Official Jason Fry Discussion Thread

A (hypothetical) question regarding 2015's Moving Target, if I may.

An unidentified female Mon Calamari admiral is present at the meeting of Alliance High Command, alongside several characters pulled from Legends (Admirals Nantz and Massa). https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_Mon_Calamari_admiral

I wondered if this character could be retconned as Meeta Cors, mentioned in Dan Wallace's The Rebel Files as the commander of the MC80a Nautilian. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Meeta_Cors

 

Love me some good Wayback Machine!

I do wonder if Cecil and/or I had some Legends character in mind who went unnamed there for some reason. (Which would be odd, though, as we name-checked so many other people.) Afraid I can't recall specifics -- mists of time, maaaan.

Since I can't recall, though -- and since there may be nothing to recall -- turning her into Cors seems smart to me.

 

FWIW, while I love the idea of giving a name to the female Mon Calamari admiral, for some reason I always imagined/hoped that Meeta Cors was a Quarren. I've always wanted to see a "good" Quarren serving in the Alliance navy. Not every Quarren needs to the common stereotypes we see so often.

--Adm. Nick

 

I guess Quarren will start becoming decent leaders when Mon Calamari start to do something other than commanding fleets for a change Lead by example and resign your commission, Admiral! A Quarren might step up then and take the job

 

Funny enough, I've been headcanoning for a while that Meeta Cors is a Quarren and the Nautilian had a majority Quarren crew.

As to the unnamed female Mon Calamari admiral from Moving Target, what about Admiral Ackbar's sister? I mean Jesmin Ackbar and Cilghal from Legends came from somewhere. Or perhaps even Ackbar's spouse (either married before or after the war)? Remember Aftab?

 

That's why I always wanted to see more of Vice Admiral Wirriz. A good Quarren second-in-command to Ackbar who helps coordinate early work with privateers despite the fact this his Mon Calamari superiors hate the practice? Somebody get this guy a novel!

 

Never forget Commander Sirlul from Wedge's Gamble. She was first officer to Ackbar during the Battle of Coruscant.

 

Say Jason, heard about your next book about the battles of the series coming in October! Is this basically a Guide to Warfare for the new canon, or something different? Sure it will be great either way!

 

It always rankled me that simply by being of a certain species...or from a certain planet...they were always put into a box,

 

Would be nice if we got MORE actual material surrounding the Rebel Fleet at Endor. Unlike Yavin and Hoth (heck even Scarif), there is little to no actual information. Most of what I've got is pulled from sources plus what I've had to headcanon myself. Endor better get better coverage in 2023 during the 40th anniversary.

 

One of the franchise's few major weaknesses if you ask me. It's not TOO noticeable in the movies and other things Lucas was directly involved in, apart from the Hutts and to a lesser extent the Tuskens, but in the EU... woof. All Trandoshans are amoral bounty hunters! All Rodians are incompetent amoral bounty hunters! All Gamorreans, Weequay, Klatooinians and Nikto are stupid henchmen! And more bizarrely specific stereotypes, seemingly rooted in taking the individual personality traits of the ones we see in the movies and for whatever reason assuming that they apply to all of them on a biological level, because shut up!

 

Different. Can't say more right now, except that I think it's very cool and the ensemble cast of authors has been really fun to be a part of.

 

Or they just die if they were in Rogue Squadron and the New Jedi Order:

Standro Jcir (Rogue Twelve) -- K.I.A., Battle of Brentaal IV (4 ABY)
Andoorni Hui (Rogue Twelve) -- K.I.A., First Battle of Borleias (6.5 ABY)
Koobis "Target" Nu (Rogue Seven) -- fate unknown, served with the Rogues in the Zsinj Campaign.
Kelbis Nu, Jedi Knight -- killed by Peace Brigade sympathisers on Eriadu (26 ABY)
Jovan Drark, Jedi Knight -- K.I.A., Mission to Myrkr (27 ABY)
Toile Senn (Hardpoint Ten), Jedi Knight -- K.I.A., Operation: Hardpoint (40 ABY)
Twool, Jedi Knight -- K.I.A., Destruction of Centerpoint Station (40-41 ABY)

 

Got headcanons? I wrote an entire fanfic on Endor and went hunting for Mon Cal cruisers' names to blow up

 

If only they'd do a Bothan movie leading into the Battle of Endor seen from a different angle and character povs at movies end (kinda like Scariff upped ANH spacebattles even if not overlapping)... it could be so glorious! Complete with Bothan commandos storming and taking Stardestroyers as boarding commandos in the end to free whoever they thought lost in the initial mission to get the plans!

Rogue Two: The Bothan Job, bring it! I'd call it "Bothan's Eleven" as production codename!

 

Well, its more a one-shot set after Endor during the celebrations. Two pilots talking to a commando who came with the relief forces. Though you have given me an idea to expand upon it

 

@jasonfry

Got a question...but gonna ramble a minute to get to it...

Most of the time it seems that the same ships, vehicles, etc (ISDs, Mon Cal cruisers, etc...) are used frequently in books...but there are others that are just something in the background or mentioned in a line in a book like the Qaz-class SD, the Diamond-class cruiser or the Fantail-class destroyer that never seem to get developed.

How much leeway do you have to develop these things when working on something like the new Battles book?

 

Hmm. The answer will ramble a bit too, for better or worse.

You have a fair amount of leeway, but you also have some self-imposed guardrails, which are there for in-universe and out-of-universe reasons. And both reasons lead to "playing the hits."

In-universe, it's pretty well-established in Legends and new canon alike that the Empire had ~25K ISDs and they were the backbone of the starfleet, the Alliance depended on Mon Cal refurbs, etc. So you're going to wind up putting those models first when making text and art choices, and properly so.

Out of universe, a mass-market book has to appeal not just to mega-enthusiasts like us but also to casual Star Wars fans, and the audience is primarily made up of the latter. Someone who picks up THE BIG BOOK OF BIG STAR WARS SHIPS (not a bad title BTW) at Barnes & Noble and flips through it is going to put it down if they don't quickly find ISDs and other stuff they recognize. Once again, you're playing the hits.

Essential Guide to Warfare was in some ways an exception -- its starting point was fairly geeky and specialized, so there was room for Ansel Hsiao renderings of battlecruisers, deep dives into obscure WEG models, etc. But even there, you'll note the art is heavy on familiar faces/ships and there are sections reserved for stuff that appealed to a wider audience at the time. (Hello, Juno Eclipse!) And while I'm super proud of Warfare, I've been looking through it recently and some of its choices now strike me as ... odd. I mean, "The Planetary Security Forces and the Judicials" is seriously a section I wrote for it, and 80% of the audience for that piece will probably read this thread within the next 36 hours. I doubt there are economists who study the lifecycles of movie IP spinoffs, but if there are any, they'd probably zero in on something like that as a flashing warning light.

The business discussions are a bit different when you get away from mass-market books. I could see obscure ships working well for FFG, or a revamp of the CCG, or whatever 2021's version of a big honking CD-ROM is. But I think that answers the next question: With the exception of FFG's very cool miniatures, I haven't heard much on any of those fronts of late.

Anyway, hope that helps and isn't too frustrating. New book projects will probably keep featuring callouts to ISD variants and weirdo battlecruisers etc. because SW creators like me love this stuff ... but those callouts will most likely be quick asides for the reasons above. And I think that calculus makes sense.

 

Thanks for your response...and as for THE BIG BOOK OF STAR WARS SHIPS....



Warfare and Atlas are two of my favorite reference books....and I really wish we could get more like them for nu-canon.

And I get 'playing the hits' and don't want that to stop....just that these other ships get some attention when possible.

For example if you were to write a story and our intrepid hero encounters such a ship have some detail thrown in....and maybe get approval form TPTB to adapt some old concept art into the ship.

 

The Planetary Security Forces are one of my favorite parts, thank you for writing that

 

You get a one more "b" if you change SHIPS to BOATS

 

The two Haynes Starfighter guides are close, but not the same. But they show what can be done. And recanonise more than a few Legends ideas.

A Haynes guide to Imperial warships (focusing on ISDs, with one on the cover, and diverging a bit from there) and one for Rebel warships (with Mon Cala MC80 being the cover image) seems like the sort of thing that fits in well with what's already been done.

 

That I could get into...especially if it goes beyond what is on screen. And don't forget the CIS ships. I kind of head canon that they are designed for a biological crew...but that using droids means they just need a fraction of that.