#solo command

Tonin, King of the Mouse Droids

inspired by X-Wing: Solo Command by Aaron Allston

BONUS:

This is exactly how I think it should always sound when Force-users try to describe what they feel in words.

Warlord Zsinj is an evil despot who is trying to conquer the galaxy because of his own desire for power. That's it. There's no attempt to give him a sympathetic background or moral motivation. No backstory about growing up under a Brutal Dictator who oppressed his people and so Zsinj decided to become a Good Dictator and wound up being corrupted by the position. No looming outside threat which forces him to Take Charge For the Greater Good. Just personal ambition, like so many real-life warlords in any era.

He's still a fascinating, compelling character. He's smart enough to not fall to cliche "I will kill my own people at the slightest inconvenience and then act surprised when they turn against me" self-sabotage. He's pays his people well, and actually pays them when it's time. He even lets them actually retire once they've aged out of being useful. So he's a competent, scary threat that takes close to a half-dozen books to be defeated. But he's still A Villain, who the books NEVER try to position as "Maybe he's right after all...."

And I gotta say, it's refreshing to have simplicity like this in fiction every once in a while. I love a morally gray, emotionally complicated story as much as the next person, but eventually if that's all you read then it's easy to forget that sometimes things really are Black & White. And people sometimes get so fixated on "Maturity" or "Complexity" that they try and introduce moral ambiguity where there is none.

So, here it's nice and simple. He's a former officer in the Galactic Empire who struck out on his own after the death of the Emperor, and that's all he has to be.

The series does introduce moral ambiguity elsewhere in the story. Particularly with Gara Petothel/Lara Nostil, a former Imperial Intelligence operative who enlisted in the New Republic military with plans to betray them to Zsinj before realizing that she would rather stay there than return to the Empire. She does have the tragic backstory, and she is wracked by guilt over what he's done. But it's clear: What she did was Wrong, and now she's Making Up For It. The story still has Right and Wrong and she changed sides, there's never a question that she may have been Right before, or that the sides are so similar that it's no different.

In this feature, a fan will share one thing they love from Star Wars Legends — a book, a comic, an author, a character, a scene, an event, or anything else they want to highlight — and tell us more about it.

If you, too, love Legends, follow @from-a-legends-pov and check out our From a Legends Point of View fanfiction event, where we’ll be working with writers to build a collection of Star Wars Legends fanfiction set during the time of the Original Trilogy. Signups are open now through June 2, 2024 — use our Signup Form here to pitch your story concepts (Signup guidelines available here), and please encourage your favorite writers to participate!

Today’s Legends highlight is a moment — a scene from X-Wing: Solo Command featuring Wes Janson and Myn Donos — and we’re talking with one of the From a Legends Point of View mods, Psy.

Tell us about your Legends highlight. What is it? What’s it about?

My highlight is a scene from Aaron Allston’s novel X-Wing: Solo Command, where Wes Janson gives his fellow lieutenant Myn Donos some life advice. Myn has some pretty severe PTSD from the ambush on Talon Squadron (of which he was the lone survivor), and has nearly washed out of the New Republic starfighter corps due to his efforts to deal with his trauma by not dealing at all — he hasn’t even really talked with anyone about the incident. Wedge sees through Myn’s latest attempt at avoidance and orders him to talk with someone about what he’s experienced.

Wes is that lucky someone. The highlight of their conversation is this section, which starts while Wes is jumping on his bed:

“Tell me, Myn, how do I look?”

"Well, stupid."

"Exactly!" With an exuberant bound, Janson leaped off his cot, smacked his head on the ceiling, and swore as he landed on the floor again. He rubbed his head and glared at the treacherous ceiling. "When was the last time you looked stupid?"

"I don't know."

Janson leaned in close to him. "Try to understand this. I'll say it slowly. I want you to remember it for the rest of your life.

"You can't look dignified when you're having fun."

When Myn still isn’t quite getting it, Janson goes on to explain:

"Let's try it a different way. You want to be in control so you don't foul up some horrible way. But you're so in control that you're basi­cally a walking dead man. Since you're dead, you had nothing to offer Lara. You have nothing to offer Wedge — he's got plenty of dead pilots, doesn't need another one. Most of them are smart enough to stay where we plant them, though."

Wes’s advice?

“Get drunk. Get slapped. Do something you always wanted to do as a child, especially if it's something that would humili­ate you today. If you're going to get kicked out of Starfighter Command, make it for something you can be proud of.”

What makes this a Legends highlight for you? What do you love about it?

Wedge has always been my favorite character, but Wes has always been the one I identified with the most. Reading the books for the first time as a eleven-ish year-old attention-seeking chaos goblin, the line “You can't look dignified if you're having fun” was one of my favorites I ever read. I wrote it on a bunch of lined paper and taped it up around my room. 😬

To learn more….

If you’d like to read more about Myn’s and Wes’ adventures in the Wraith Squadron series, you can check out the X-Wing: Solo Command page or the general Wraith Squadron page on Wookieepedia, or find Solo Command at your local library, through an independent bookseller, or at your favorite bookstore.