Club Jade

Both shirts feature art from Katie Cook and will debut at Disney World during Star Wars Weekends.

The blogside. There are, so, so many great responses out to EUC’s gender post now. (Why ours is the only one with 100+ comments and some hella tangents, I remain perplexed. Or maybe that’s just my headache speaking.) Synlah and Skuldren at Roqoo Depot were first out the gate with cluelessness in Star Wars. Emily at Tosche Station wrote Why Star Wars needs women – now more than ever. Rachael of The Galactic Drift says that asking for equality in Star Wars isn’t sexist, and, later (inspired by our comment section, I believe) how turning women into sex objects removes their humanity. And Tricia and Lex at FangirlBlog addressed how the original post missed the point of Star Wars and fandom, and Tricia came back last night with a look at the silver linings of the whole thing.

And, finally, Pete Morrison at Lightsaber Rattling took a look at the dramatis personae of Star Wars novels from the last few years and did a gender breakdown that showed male characters outnumber females almost 2 to 1.

Say what you will about EUC’s post, but it certainly got fandom talking!

Get your X-Wings in bulk. Knights Archive found a listing on Random Houses’ Smart Archive for an eBook bundle of the X-Wing novels. There’s no price yet, but it does include all the classic Stackpole and Allston books and goes on sale July 30th. That’s cutting it a little close for those who want to catch up or reread: Allston’s X-Wing: Mercy Kill will be out the very next week.

The most magnificent motivation of all. Peter David has republished the first draft of Skippy the Jedi Droid, his classic Star Wars story from the much-missed Star Wars Tales comic. (via)

Celebration VI. The first Celebration Show Store exclusive to be announced is a 12″ figure of Clone Commander Ganch from Sideshow. Why is he here? Because he was created by Pablo Hidalgo and Tom Hodges for the The Clone Wars webcomics.

Background. Even more endnotes for The Essential Guide to Warfare..

Reviews. James reads Dark Times: Out of the Wilderness #5 and Boba Fett is Dead #1.

This is not the post I set out to write when I asked the other day which Star Wars ladies should be headlining novels. After all, Nanci already quite eloquently laid out why we need more women in the Expanded Universe. But on Friday, EUC posted a rebuttal to her post, titled Let’s Stop Thinking About Gender and it seems there’s still more work to do on the ground level. I know, I was shocked, too. Though I probably shouldn’t be.

Clearly we’ve forgotten that Star Wars is aimed at boys! And that by asking for something as minor as a female characters whose functions include something other than being Big Bad Lady Cthulu or Confused Teenage Girlfriend makes us the sexist ones! For shame, ladies. For shame. Because we’ve never heard anything like this before.

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Go forth and buy! They have the Padme and logo burnout tees, too.

Her Universe is going mainstream: Tomorrow, they’re launching their new products on Hot Topic, the teen-centric retail chain that’s in malls all across America. They already carry a lot of Star Wars stuff, so I’m sure the Her Universe gear will have no problem finding an audience.

As part of the launch, the first 50 people to buy Her Universe tomorrow will get a free tote bag. And yes, international folks: They ship all over the world!

Yesterday afternoon, Moviefone.com (a division of AOL) posted an article by Jessie Heyman initially entitled “Girl’s Guide To The Avengers: What You Need To Know If You Know Nothing.” After the internet community got a hold of the article (including yours truly) and the outrage began to spawn on Twitter and other sites, the title was amended to “One Girl’s Guide…” because, according to the Editor’s note that was inserted, the intent was not to make female superhero fans feel marginalized and the satirical nature of the piece didn’t come through. Female superhero fans feeling marginalized? Satire? Really? Is that what you’re going to go with?

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Sneak Peek…Comfy, fun, powerful and chic..Essential for any geek girl’s wardrobe! Coming soon… #MayThe4thBeWithYou twitter.com/HerUniverse/st…

— Her Universe (@HerUniverse) May 2, 2012

Another likely May 4th offering! This deal is getting better all the time… Here’s another pic.

Coming soon…”The Force Is Strong With This One” @DENISEVASQUEZStay tuned for more info ;o) #MayThe4thBeWithYou twitter.com/HerUniverse/st…

— Her Universe (@HerUniverse) May 1, 2012

Very Day of the Dead, no?

If you follow publishing news at all – or picked up last week’s Game of Thrones issue of Entertainment Weekly – you’ve probably heard about Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s a vanity-published erotic novel that’s sold more than 250,000 copies,and got author E L James a seven-figure book deal with Vintage, a division of Random House. It just became a a New York Times bestseller. So, yes, it’s incredibly popular.

It also started life as a Twilight alternate universe fanfic, something even major media have been picking up on.

Taking a fanfic and reworking it as an original piece is nothing new – I’m fairly sure one of my favorite space opera sagas started out as a Star Wars story way back in the day, for instance. Cassandra Clare and Naomi Novak may be the best known these days, but they were far from the first to cross over and go pro. It happens, and it’s been happening for a long time.

But it can strike an uncomfortable chord, particularly in cases such as this. Not because of the porn, per say, but because it skirts violating the most sacred – perhaps only – rule of fan fiction: Thou shall not make money off it. (Remember Lori Jareo?) And to boot, the incredible yet completely unsurprising success (yes, ladies do sometimes like porn, deal with it) of this particular case is shining a big, mainstream light on fan fiction in general… One I’m not sure the community wants or needs.

Given the deeply AU nature of her original fanfic, I think it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing James in court. But if the attention continues to spread to fan fiction and the community, if this just is the beginning of a trend, who knows what else will come to light? But only time will tell.

Fate of the Jedi. If you haven’t finished Apocalypse yet, don’t click any of the links in this section, because they are chock-full of spoilers! Over at Lightsaber Rattling, Pete Morrison takes a look at the state of the Expanded Universe post-Fate of the Jedi. (Always-relevant musical interlude: Where do we go from here?)

There are also some new reviews from The Galactic Drift, Fantasy & SciFi Lovin’, and The EU, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Also, if you’re in the mood for some snark, I live-tweeted my reading of the book, and then rambled at length about it on my Livejournal. My review, in brief: Meh.

Namesake corner A custom Clone Wars style Mara Jade action figure! I’ve made no secret of not being a fan of the style, but this is pretty nifty, I must admit. And she doesn’t look like Giada DeLaurentiis!

Author talk. Dan Wallace posts his endnotes for the Book of Sith.

Excerpts. A mini for Jeff Grubb’s Scourge. It’s our next new novel release, coming April in paperback.

Gaming. One of our readers, Annalee, has a good write-up at the Geek Feminism blog on issues in The Old Republic.

Comics. James gives a thumbs up to the twists in Agent of the Empire: Iron Eclipse #4, and Zayne digging himself in deep in Knights of the Old Republic: War #3.