YMMV / X-Wing Series

• Adaptation Displacement: The novel series started out as a tie-in to the video game.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Lampshaded in-universe when Elassar is first introduced. Is he genuinely bonkers, or is he playing it up to impress his new squadmates?
  • The possibility of Isard being entombed on Lusankya for life is something that's brought up a couple times in-universe. She was probably killed by Iella...but even New Republic officers in-universe agree that the idea has a certain poetic justice.
• Complete Monster: Director of Imperial Intelligence Ysanne Isard is Empress in all but name after the death of Palpatine, having risen to her position by betraying and killing her own father. Brutally oppressing nonhumans and ordering strikes against the Rebels, Ysard has her rivals assassinated, while having countless people taken aboard her Executor-class Super Star Destroyer, the Lusankya, and tortured to be mindless drones or sleeper agents. Worse still, Isard ordered the creation of the Krytos Plague, which causes infected nonhumans to die horribly, and set it loose on Coruscant before the Rebels captured it. This was so that the New Republic would both bankrupt itself trying to treat the infected and tear itself apart along species lines, as resentment towards immune humans rose. When Coruscant falls, Isard flees on the Lusankya, tearing out of the heart of Coruscant and slaughtering untold numbers of innocents. Willing to torture countless sapient beings and tear the galaxy apart in her quest for power, Isard repeatedly demonstrates why she is worthy of the moniker "Ice-Heart".
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: After the Emperor's death at Endor, the Rebel Alliance's military strategy has devolved into a race to seize Coruscant, with Fey'lya and the Bothans jockeying for the honor on one side, and Ackbar counseling sound caution on the other - creating a close resemblance to the Allies' rush to seize Berlin and end World War II, with Patton and Montgomery each furiously advocating his respective plan over the other's, and several voices urging Eisenhower to reach Berlin before their Soviet "allies" could.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Tycho Celchu. Stackpole didn't know he would become so popular when he created him. And in a way, Wedge Antilles, who has a small but devoted set of fans. There's also Wes Janson, who was offscreen for the first four books, reached this status incredibly quickly when he replaced Tycho as Wedge's "on-screen" second-in-command and brought the funny with him. See here for a bigger list.
  Janson: Performing a puppet show while flying is a felony on some worlds.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Go here.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Go here.
• Narm Charm:
  • Isard's line "I am Iceheart, I do not burn" is rather narmy, but it also fits her pretentious, overbearing nature rather well.
  • There's also some of Kirtan Loor's trying to be The Dreaded, which may come off as narmy, but they also serve to show how he's not nearly as much of a bigshot as he thinks he is.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Wraith Squadron: Seeing the effects of Gaslighting from the victim's perspective is not pleasant. It's easy to see how Grinder might have ended up passing out from shock over the squadron's counter-prank.
  • The horrifically gruesome deaths caused by the Krytos plague are pure Body Horror. Made even worse in that it was specifically engineered to exploit the Republic's compassion so that they'd exhaust themselves trying to cure everyone instead of writing them off as a loss like The Empire would. Moreover, it was specifically designed not to effect humans, meaning that it exploits the concept of Fantastic Racism by turning non-humans against the human leaders within the New Republic.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Warlord Zsinj originated in The Courtship of Princess Leia as a one-note Large Ham villain. The Wraith Squadron trilogy retcons him into a reasonably competent commander who sometimes plays up buffoonery as Obfuscating Stupidity. And also because he really enjoys hamming it up, especially in the company of people who can actually figure out how much of his persona is an act.
• The Woobie: At various times Iella Wessiri, Tycho Celchu, Tyria Sarkin, Lara Notsil, Myn Donos, Piggy, and Dia Passik all count as this, whether of the iron, stoic, or original variety.
• Woolseyism: Arguable, but Russian versions of novels have a lot of text that wasn't in the original - it really debeigifies Stackpole's books, making them much more entertaining to read.

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