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Mulaney Power Move posted:Anyone ever read the first Star Wars spinoff novel Splinter of a Minds Eye? It starts with Luke really wanting to gently caress Leia and ends with him defeating Darth Vader. I think he falls into a pit or something. The story behind that one is really wild. The basic bones of the story came about as basically a spec script pitch for a direct-to-TV/video sequel to Star Wars to poo poo out of the film was a moderate success but wouldn't support a theatrical sequel. That's why Han's not in it, since Harrison Ford was only contracted for a single film and they had Mark and Carrie on a two or three picture deal. And that's why it's on a misty swampy/foresty planet, easy to not need massive sets when you can obscure the background with fog or trees. And since it was pre-Empire and Jedi, that's why Vader is more of a horror movie monster without much personal motivation, and why they're still teasing a Luke/Leia romance.
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Jun 22, 2021 13:38
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Five or six years ago, Insider had a two part article which was the transcript of the discussion where Splinter of the Mind's Eye was planned, it had Lucas, Foster, a few other people, and some of the ideas the threw out during the planning stages was even wilder than the actual book. Off the top of my head, one idea was that it was going to be set five or six years after A New Hope, Luke was going to become a Rebel version of James Bond, he and Leia would be in a relationship, and Leia would be killed which would send Luke into a killing spree. Also the first idea for the villain was Tarkin, who would have survived the Death Star somehow. thrawn527 posted:They've referenced him literally once, right? They've said his name only once but I think the inference is meant to be that Thrawn is behind stuff like Moff Gideon or the Imperial activity that the New Republic pilot mentions. Arcsquad12 posted:The nadir of star wars military SF is the Black Fleet Crisis. It's not Republic Commando, that series is contentious but it has some interesting things going on in it about the morals of using clones as expendable grunts. I have a bit of a love-hate opinion with Black Fleet. There's a lot of individual stuff in it that I like - Luke's opening moral conflict with what it means to be a Jedi, Leia's political career actually being dealt with seriously, Han moving beyond just playing smuggler, Chewie actually remembering that he has a family, Lando and the droids doing Rendezvous with Rama, the villain not being yet another Dark Jedi or Imperial warlord, and trying to depict what it actually would mean for a democratic government to peacefully keep a galaxy united now that the unifying threat of the Empire is gone. Compared to the Thrawn Trilogy for instance (or the sequel movies), it's one of the only EU books that really felt like the characters and the galaxy were actually allowed to develop beyond the holding pattern at the end of ROTJ. But on the other hand, while I really like a lot of those individual elements, they don't necessarily gel together, and there are a lot of other things (Luke's search for his mother for instance) which just don't work at all.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:10
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Black Fleet Crisis’s mil sci-fi stuff is kind of cool, BUT… It’s a mess. The Luke and Lando storylines are both tacked on wet farts, and a lot of the other writing is pretty bad. There’s some stuff at the beginning of the second book where the alien guy who is the last of his kind wants to be a fighter pilot so Ackbar drops everything he’s doing and bullies the New Republic military until they let him do it. I read the NJO first and one of those books has a subplot about the Yevetha being wiped out by the Vong, and made the whole conflict sound a lot more interesting than it actually turned out to be.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:24
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black fleet crisis is probably the most egregious example of "the text says leia is an incredible diplomat but actually she is really bad at it". the whole conflict turns around the new republic in general and leia in particular being really stupid
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Jun 22, 2021 17:45
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I think it might be the series where she refuses to learn the Noghri guard’s names because they’re just going to die anyway.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:48
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Wasn't the Black Fleet trilogy originally written as an original plot and then rejiggered to be Star Wars? I think that and Jedi Trial both really leaned on the generic mil-sci-fi stuff and kinda forgot to be Star Wars because neither were originally intended to be. Kinda wish Legends books set after Black Fleet used the ships introduced in it though, that author did a lot of work laying out a bunch of cool fleet dynamics and new capital ships and then everyone else just kept using ISDs forever after 
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Jun 22, 2021 20:53
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I've never heard that about Black Fleet or Jedi Trial. I'd be surprised if that was the case, because even if they don't "feel" like Star Wars, there is still a lot of the Star Wars scaffolding in both books (plus, I don't see how reusing a non-SW book could even work as from what I understand, Lucasfilm is the one that reaches out to hire authors for specific pre-approved plots). Jedi Trial is not a good book by any stretch but I did appreciate that it's one of if not the only time that an entire book is dedicated to every aspect of a battle, rather than just having a couple X-wings fly in and blow up a star destroyer and then the Rebels win the entire planet.
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Jun 22, 2021 21:37
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there's just too much star wars media out there. i don't even know if chewbacca is alive or dead anymore, let alone itchy, lumpy, and mala.
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Jun 23, 2021 20:26
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Chewbacca is always alive through the Force 
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Jun 23, 2021 20:31
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Mulaney Power Move posted:there's just too much star wars media out there. i don't even know if chewbacca is alive or dead anymore, let alone itchy, lumpy, and mala.
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Jun 23, 2021 20:50
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yeah but they can bring anyone back and give them robot spider legs or a mohawk and a wheelchair so no one is ever really gone
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Jun 23, 2021 21:14
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Lord Hydronium posted:Ironically, Chewbacca is one of the last OT main characters who isn't dead in the new canon. They won't kill a character where they can replace the actor with no real issue. Which is why Harrison Ford had to go, but Chewie can stay. They can include him in anything for the rest of time, recasting the actor inside the suit, with no problems whatsoever. That's harder to do with Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia. thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 21:43
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Lord Hydronium posted:Ironically, Chewbacca is one of the last OT main characters who isn't dead in the new canon. No one's ever really gone Episode X,XI and XII will be the Palpification of Han,Leia then Luke respectively
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Jun 23, 2021 22:03
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Chairman Capone posted:Five or six years ago, Insider had a two part article which was the transcript of the discussion where Splinter of the Mind's Eye was planned, it had Lucas, Foster, a few other people, and some of the ideas the threw out during the planning stages was even wilder than the actual book. Off the top of my head, one idea was that it was going to be set five or six years after A New Hope, Luke was going to become a Rebel version of James Bond, he and Leia would be in a relationship, and Leia would be killed which would send Luke into a killing spree. Also the first idea for the villain was Tarkin, who would have survived the Death Star somehow. 1. i am always weirdly shocked they never brought tarken back in the old EU because they basically brought everyone else back. 2, thrawn is mentioned in ashoka pilot spin off. 3. black fleet was weird because it was in that period of the EU where they got tired of the Empire being the bad guy but they hadnt made the vong yet. so you would just have weird villians of the week. like off brand vader dipshit Kueller, and brakiss who kinda hosed around and then died. and various warlords.
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Jun 24, 2021 02:28
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One thing that really annoyed me when I moved from young adult novels to adult ones was how much of a non-character Brakiss is. YJK built him up to be some huge bad guy, and his only real appearance is in The New Rebellion. It’s only really a cameo, and of course the book isn’t very good. Stackpole had him as a background character in I, Jedi, to help flesh out the academy portions of the book. But that was more of an afterthought.
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Jun 24, 2021 03:22
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Casimir Radon posted:One thing that really annoyed me when I moved from young adult novels to adult ones was how much of a non-character Brakiss is. YJK built him up to be some huge bad guy, and his only real appearance is in The New Rebellion. It’s only really a cameo, and of course the book isn’t very good. Stackpole had him as a background character in I, Jedi, to help flesh out the academy portions of the book. But that was more of an afterthought. yeah. they kept trying to make a new thrawn but none of them had any build up or any real interesting character developments. i guess isard counts as an ok villian.
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Jun 24, 2021 12:17
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Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah. they kept trying to make a new thrawn but none of them had any build up or any real interesting character developments. i guess isard counts as an ok villian. I may be alone in this, but I think Daala was also ok, depending on who was writing her. One of the few bright spots of Darksaber was when she gassed the remaining Imperial warlords to take control with Pellaeon.
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Jun 24, 2021 13:03
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Daala is at least a fun villain. She's barely competent and spends most of her time getting chumped but I can't hate her when half her plans involve ramming planets with star destroyers.
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Jun 24, 2021 13:31
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You have to love Daala's (original) character arc: Gets put in charge of a space station and left alone for a few years Takes a few star destroyers and becomes a galactic terrorist for a few months Just kills off all of her rivals Completely destroys everything she just built up Goes into retirement and dates a porn producer I think Daala (like the other villains in Darksaber) are obviously meant to be incompetent, and part of the reason fans really didn't like them is that they didn't know how to take that approach to writing a villain, especially coming right after Thrawn. I also like how throughout Specter of the Past, the Imperial characters know that it isn't really Thrawn because they keep pointing out that if Thrawn hadn't died, there's no way he would have let an idiot like Daala take over the Empire.
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Jun 24, 2021 14:16
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Comes back and is made president because of her track record of incompetence and also gently caress you.
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Jun 24, 2021 14:20
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Pellaeon rules, but he’s more of an anti-hero than a full villain. He was always the competent sidekick that helped the villains until he decided to take over.
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Jun 24, 2021 14:29
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VaultAggie posted:Pellaeon rules, but he’s more of an anti-hero than a full villain. He was always the competent sidekick that helped the villains until he decided to take over. He was one of the few characters where I kinda actually bought into the idea that "maybe the empire could have been salvageable had a egomaniac wizard not been the one in charge" -- Pellaeon seems to come down on an authoritarian side but not just being a xenophobic dictator just for the hell of it.
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Jun 24, 2021 14:57
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Pellaeon is the Karl Dönitz of Star Wars being a true blue Imperial and space racist war criminal but less of a homicidal warmonger like the party heads. Or at least Pellaeon is based off the myth of Dönitz more than the actual man, the way that Thrawn is built off the mythological version of Rommel. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 15:04
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Zahn actually did get the title of Grand Admiral from a book on Dönitz.
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Jun 24, 2021 15:40
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Chairman Capone posted:Zahn actually did get the title of Grand Admiral from a book on Dönitz. True but Thrawn is definitely more of a Rommel type, the "noble commander working for the fascists who treats his enemies with respect" archetype. Pallaeon definitely fits the mould of Dönitz by being the military guy left in charge after the bureaucrats and politicians are all dead or in jail.
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Jun 24, 2021 15:48
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Speaking of the Thrawn Trilogy: https://twitter.com/DelReyStarWars/status/1408062545651322880
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Jun 24, 2021 16:25
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Chairman Capone posted:Speaking of the Thrawn Trilogy: That cover art sucks compared to the Bantam originals
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Jun 24, 2021 16:33
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Just the first book getting unabridged? I’d love to see the whole series since abridgment is a crime.
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Jun 24, 2021 17:07
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I still wish we'd gotten the Dark Force Rising and Last Command annotated editions, but oh well.
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Jun 24, 2021 17:09
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Someone should ask him if he’d be willing to put a list of annotations out online.
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Jun 24, 2021 17:21
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkuPxEz54Mw Some Republic Commando comms chatter was put into Bad Batch. Cool to see the game getting some more love in current canon and the switch release.
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Jun 24, 2021 18:25
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Van Dis posted:That cover art sucks compared to the Bantam originals At least Rule of Two's cover is a definite improvement over the, uh, previous one 
Cross-Section fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 19:12
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Honestly, I think the Thrawn ones are an improvement over the originals too, I never really liked the clear ROTJ reuse images for the OT characters on those.
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Jun 24, 2021 19:41
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Speaking of covers, I remembered how awesome the japanese edition covers for the thrawn books and the NJO were. It's a shame they never reused them elsewhere.
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Jun 24, 2021 20:04
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Chairman Capone posted:Honestly, I think the Thrawn ones are an improvement over the originals too, I never really liked the clear ROTJ reuse images for the OT characters on those. Some of the latter Legends book covers were getting absolutely dire with their restrictions on how they only had the rights to film-era stills for likenesses.
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Jun 24, 2021 22:02
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Yeah I'm a little disappointed they had a chance to make new non-SWTOR Legends art for the first time in *years* and instead went with weird abstract stuff.  Chairman Capone posted:Honestly, I think the Thrawn ones are an improvement over the originals too, I never really liked the clear ROTJ reuse images for the OT characters on those. They did this for a *ton* of the Bantam books -- Apparently Leia wore that outfit the Ewoks made her for the next fifteen years if those covers are anything to go by Slashrat posted:Speaking of covers, I remembered how awesome the japanese edition covers for the thrawn books and the NJO were. It's a shame they never reused them elsewhere. Hell yeah, these ruled -- they were also basically the only canon art for the Solo kids for a long time too. Jacen and Anakin especially were dead ringers for Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher's hypothetical sons. We can all agree that Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor had the best cover though, right? Screw this abstract stuff that tries to look more artsy, I'm never gonna look cool reading a big-rear end STAR WARS cover on the train so why not just go crazy with it: 
ninjahedgehog fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 22:57
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That's definitely a great one in terms of detail alone, especially when you consider that the same year we got probably the least-effort cover ever, Millennium Falcon. 
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Jun 24, 2021 23:30
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I'm quite fond of the cover for True Colors: It's a big step up from the Hard Contact cover which is just The Fall of Reach with Clones instead of Spartans.  
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Jun 24, 2021 23:40
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 The one true answer.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:51
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Casimir Radon posted:
Bonus answer would be the covers for the old Lando books where they clearly used the Kenner Falcon toy for a reference model 
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Jun 25, 2021 17:20
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