Oooohhhhh!

Mind if I add you to my list of Authoritative People to check stuff with, please?

If I say Toxaplasma gondii, you'll get it totally. And you'll be right at home with the horizontal transmission of genes in the series, even if it's in vertebrates. Bacteria and parasites (symbionts, really) play a huge central role in all the wess'har books.

• skips away, delighted to find a parasite expert *

Thank you!

I'm not even going to ask about Suzanne's comment on parasites, because I've just had lunch...

*I'm glad to hear that you're another convert, Prin - just wait until you read Crossing the Line and The World Before - each book is better than the one before it. *

Ooooh. Now you're finding good reason to talk me out of cleaning today and instead go sit on the swing in the front yard with a glass of sun tea and read

Aha! Thanks for that, jSarek. I'm not up with the card designations yet. Very helpful.

Scorch is still blowing his nose noisly and a little red-eyed, so I can go and reassure him that it was in no way intended to portray him as a guy who just enjoys blowing up stuff and killing Seps.

Hang on....er....

Cockroach King FS:

I noticed that "thug" thing as well. I wondered how they came up with that.

It's not a description of personality, but of his abilities. In the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, there are several kinds of classes - "Heroic" classes and "Professional" classes being among them. Heroic classes are what players normally use to create player characters, and are also the classes used by major non-player characters ("NPCs") controlled by the game master. "Professional" classes are used for minor NPCs, everyday people who haven't stepped out of obscurity and taken a heroic role. Generic clone troopers and stormtroopers use one of these classes, that class being "thug," because their job description has more to do with fighting than, say, the Diplomat or Expert professional classes.

To be fair to the movies, the focus just wasn't on them, and I think the message of the Republic basically forming a slave army that was treated little better than droids was in the film, the books just allow actually getting a look in the heads of the clones.

Garth Ennis is a great comic book writer and did a neat little piece in one of the Star Wars Tales books about the Stormtrooper that Leia shoots in the opening of ANH. Now, in the movie we have no idea who this person is, what they are, they're just a soldier there to get shot, but in the books and EU they can be explored and it enriches the universe.

Thanks, Loocie! Thanks, Kyp!

I noticed that "thug" thing as well. I wondered how they came up with that.

In response to your blog, I read both the books before I played the video game. I don't think I will be attempting to "burn you at the stake" or anything like that.

Ms. Traviss,

I've just finished both of your RC novels (within a week, I might add). Although I'm relatively new to EU, and not too much of a reader until then, I have to take this opportunity to "leave a message to the author" and say that I thoroughly enjoyed both books more than I ever thought I would. Absolutely riveting! Thank you very much!!!

It's a very short (500 word) Q and A piece about Odds.

Possibly not, for one simple reason - I've seen 'em come and go before, and they +neve+r get a foothold. They do seem to be a protest vote to make the government pay attention, and not much else. Which is just as well, really.