Rish once told me that George Lucas claimed to like normal names in his science fiction...wait, no he didn't. I just asked him what the quote was, and he said that it wasn't Lucas at all. It was actually Orson Scott Card. Card claimed that he didn't like it when they make names sound sci-fi by putting in all sorts of extra letters particularly Xs. For some reason I always thought that it was Lucas who said that, and I thought of him as a hypocrite, because this was the same guy who named Chewbacca's home planet of Kashyyyk. I guess I was wrong with my disdain for him. He wasn't hypocritical after all.
I have to agree with Card on the naming thing. I dislike names that are made to sound sci-fi. These days, however, every kid gets named some goofy sci-fi type name. Kids are actually named Jaxon instead of Jackson now. Luke Skywalker is a cool name. Similar to other famous sci-fi names like Flash Gordon and John Carter. Even a name like Lando Calrissian is cool, despite being a little odd. It feels sci-fi without having to be spelled Lyndo Kylryzzian.
Today, when I was at Ross, I saw a ship from the Star Wars Micro Galaxy Squadron line that I did not have. I've been collecting these for a while, and would like to someday soon make a little 1/72 scale space station that I park these ships on. The reason I didn't have this ship yet, was because it was definitely not one that I would pay full price for. This ship belonged to the stupidly sci-fi named character of Asajj Ventriss.
Asajj Ventriss was a character introduced in the 2D animated Clone Wars show that was created in between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. In fact, it is supposed to lead right up to the moment that Revenge of the Sith begins in the skies above Coruscant. She wasn't a particularly good character, and I don't know if anybody remembers her fondly.
The ship doesn't look very Star Wars-y either. it seems to belong to a completely different universe than the one the Jedi inhabit. I think there's a good reason that this ship was in Ross. I wasn't the only one who didn't want it at full price.
I do like having ships of all kinds, though, for my space station. That's why I bought so many of those little ships from the Lightyear movie. So, I went ahead and got me one of these too.
This ship comes with a stand, which is something new...of course, that's just because the ship is so poorly designed that there's no way for it to land. It's wings have to be up and down rather than side to side. Seems to me like the best way to make it land would be to make it's cockpit able to twist, but I don't know if it does that kind of thing in the source material.
The figure is kind of dumb two. She has two ignited lightsabers in her hands. She's a one inch tall figure, so there's no way to put the lightsabers down. She always has to have them in her hands, even while she's in there flying her spaceship along. I may have to take the fingernail clippers to those lightsabers and remove them so she can be something other than just a Jedi in battle.
All of the Micro Galaxy Squadron ships tend to have some kind of play gimmick, and for this one, it's that the wings extend. It can go from looking like the picture above to this picture below.
The guns are adjustable too, so they can be pointing forward even though you've changed their position on the wings. I don't know why, but I really want to twist that ship so the wings are sideways instead of up and down. I wonder if a dremmel and a little super glue could make it happen. Maybe some silver paint, and it could look like a completely different ship. I don't know. I guess I'll have to think about it.
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