Is My Heart Too Broken?

Tinian on Trial

Author: Kathy Tyers

Medium: Short story

Publication date: November 1994 in Star Wars Adventure Journal #4

Timeline placement: 1 BBY

 

“Tinian on Trial” introduces Kathy Tyers’s OC Tinian I’att, a character Tyers must have loved because she kept bringing her back, even ruining her Bossk story in Tales of the Bounty Hunters in order to do so. Nowhere near as obtrusive here, 17-year-old Tinian (another redhead) lives with her grandparents on the planet Druckenwell and is the heiress to their weapons manufacturing company, I’att Armament. Her boyfriend, Daye Azur-Jamin, has recently helped her grandfather invent a new type of personal energy field that renders stormtrooper armor impervious to blasterfire, as opposed to vulnerable to blunt objects.

 

 

As our story begins, the I’att clan, including Tinian’s Wookiee protector, Wrrlevgebev, is trying to sell this new technology to the Empire, in the person of Moff Eisen Kerioth. Lacking a volunteer to wear the force field-enhanced armor and expose themself to blasterfire, Kerioth demands that Tinian be the subject of the demonstration, because like all adult men he gets off on bullying teenage girls. Despite the  protestations of her grandparents, boyfriend, and Wookiee, Tinian goes along with the moff for the good of her family’s company. Upon seeing that the technology does indeed make stormtrooper armor not completely worthless, Kerioth has his troops murder Tinian’s grandparents and seizes control of the factory. 

Daye and Wrrlevgebev both sacrifice themselves for Tinian, Wrrl giving his life so she can get away and Daye becoming horribly maimed and disfigured when he blows up the factory so it doesn’t fall into the Empire’s hands. Tinian escapes still wearing the stormtrooper armor with the only working prototype of the new energy shield. There’s a gratuitous scene where she hides in a cantina and disguises herself as a singer in the band by getting glammed up and wearing a slinky red cocktail dress made with advanced space technology that automatically enhances her bust and curves. When stormtroopers barge in, the babe onstage is so much hotter than the plain Jane they’re looking for that they don’t give her a second glance, causing Tinian to self-pityingly launch into a performance of Kasey Chambers’s “Not Pretty Enough.” Not the time, girl. 

Later, some guy comes in and announces that no one survived the explosion of I’att Armament. Everyone she loves having been violently killed in a single day, Tinian leaves Druckenwell with the disassembled energy field generator, vowing to dedicate her life to getting revenge on the Empire. But actually that guy was sent by Daye to greatly exaggerate the reports of his death! Daye is going to join the Rebellion and dedicate his life to getting revenge on the Empire, and he decides that it’s kinder for him to allow Tinian to believe that everyone she loves has been violently killed in a single day than to let her know he’s alive.

What.

 

My only previous exposure to this character is the aforementioned Tales of the Bounty Hunters, which made me dislike her for upstaging Bossk in his own story. She’s much more likable and sympathetic here, though, so I’m tentatively looking forward to her appearances in Kathy Tyers’s further Adventure Journal stories. Like many modern YA romance heroines, she’s self-deprecating and insecure about her looks, yet has every male character ready to get themselves killed to protect her, and when she cleans up she’s a knockout. I have a feeling some people might read something uncharitable into that, but it’s fine.