Friday, March 28, 2014

Invid's Guide to the Star Wars Universe: Alien Species (#113)

The Massive Index (Posts #1-#100)
The Less Massive Index (Posts #101-#110)

(Turns out I was willing to do two this week after all. Kinda felt the need to not only because I ended up skipping last week, but because this week's entry promises to be pretty meh.

Also, I skipped over "Thyrsian" because the Thyrsians are a race of Echani and also come across as a super-racist concept.)

1121. Throbes. Small. Sapient. Creatures.

Rating: 1/5. Though I find their name amusing.

1122. Tikiarri. The Tikiarri (singular Tikiar) are beings who are described with the words "sleek," "dark," "predatory," and "birds."

One of those words is at least somewhat accurate. I have doubts on the others.

Rating: 2/5 for descriptive hilarity.

1123. Tinnell. They sorta look like caracals, those cats with big long ears, although they don't have those funny tufts on the tips.

Rating: 2/5, because not nearly enough cat aliens remind me of caracals.

1124. Tintinna. Tintinna, also known as T'iin-T'iin and Tin-Tin dwarves (ah, isn't that nice /sarcasm>), are rat people noted as being very friendly.

They're primitives of the "supposedly at least quite rare in the galaxy at large" type, and there being only about three named characters, you could almost believe that idea.

Rating: 3/5, because it's nice to see "friendly rat people" as a concept, even if they're still vastly outclassed by SABER-TOOTHED RAT PEOPLE. (Have I mentioned and trumpeted the virtues of the Ranat enough yet?)

1125. Tirrith. The Tirrith are a hive-minded species of gaseous being that basically resemble floating sparkly tumbleweed. They apparently could make it rain.

There was some villain from the oft-awful Marvel Star Wars comics that wanted to mutate them into weapons.

Rating: 4/5. Because "floating sparkly tumbleweed" is a description I'm unlikely to have the opportunity to write again.

1126. Tiss'shar. Tiss'shar are a species of reptilian creature that perfectly straddle the line between "bipedal monitor lizard" and "small predatory dinosaur."

Despite the very specific insistence of Wookieepedia's article that the Tiss'shar conform to no specific stereotype (which is derived from a quote from a book that insists that no species in the galaxy does this, either-HAAAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-excuse me, I just found something terribly painful and funny for a moment there) despite the fact that the Tiss'shar themselves are full of reptile stereotypes: Serve meat "unheated" (does that mean raw? because I eat cold meat all the time) and "attached to the bone of the creature of origin, with no attempt to disguise the source" (which reminds me of the hilarious scene from the live action Masters of the Universe movie where Teela didn't know that the "sticks" in the chicken she was eating were bones until someone explained it to her), and also they like to serve little animals whole; going naked despite their lack of a proper insulating covering; violent politics that involve frequent murder; hissy shrieking language; descriptive words including "aggressive," "calculating," and "detached," which makes it look like somebody was thinking "better not describe yet another reptile species as "cold-blooded" because that's too stereotypical-and went to find a thesaurus rather than come up with a new idea; being involved in violent professions generally; and finally, being highly successful businesspeople.

Wait, maybe that last one isn't quite so stereotypical... Unless you count that thing about the supervisors.

Anyway, apparently individual Tiss'shar are known to be very dedicated to Tiss'shar corporations because said corporations are ridiculously good employers, offering employees such crazy-good benefits and junk that foreign companies that set up shop on their homeworld have trouble hiring anybody but "less-skilled" workers.

Rating: 4/5, because while there's the big, fat old stereotyping staring me in the face, they're lizard/dinosaur people who are renowned for their business skills.

1127. Titterbugs. Titterbugs are, as their name suggests, bugs who laugh in high-pitched voices a lot.

Who do you have to blame for this? The Ewoks cartoon shouldn't surprise you, but also Paul Dini.

Rating: 2/5. I... kinda like the character design.

1128. Tlönians. The Tlönians of Tlön... existed. Then the Mandalorian Crusaders, the original conquering group of Mandalorians, wiped them out.

I would say "I like the word Tlön," but it was probably "borrowed" from something else.

Rating: 1/5.

1129. Tobek. At some point after the apparent extinction of the Qella, the Tobek "rediscovered" their homeworld and renamed it.

Rating: 1/5. ...I find it odd that an entire species is given credit for it, honestly. Were they isolated from galactic society at the time, or what?

1130. Tocoyans. The Tocoyans are a charmingly ugly species who have a culture in common with the Ktilacs and the Murachaun. Not only do they co-rule the Ktilac Regions, but apparently the three species culturally assimilated with each other pretty thoroughly.

There was going to be a Tocoyan in Return of the Jedi, but the maquette was rejected.

Rating: 4/5. This is based on the charmingly ugly appearance and their membership in an odd little cultural block.

-Signing off.

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