|
I keep seeing that take on Shadows of Mindor and I really don’t think it’s true. The in-universe fiction take that Luke describes in the ending section doesn’t align with what was in the preceding book. There’s no indication that the book isn’t what “actually” happened.
|
#
?
May 11, 2024 23:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 05:17 |
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:I keep seeing that take on Shadows of Mindor and I really don’t think it’s true. The in-universe fiction take that Luke describes in the ending section doesn’t align with what was in the preceding book. There’s no indication that the book isn’t what “actually” happened. Well the stuff Luke mentions is in the context of "take this poo poo out because you're going too far with it." He also presumably accepts that the rest of the story is accurate enough to put up with it- I'm not saying the events of the book didn't largely take place but they might have been punched up a little.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 00:16
|
|
|
Starfighters of Adumar
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 01:35
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:I keep seeing that take on Shadows of Mindor and I really don’t think it’s true. The in-universe fiction take that Luke describes in the ending section doesn’t align with what was in the preceding book. There’s no indication that the book isn’t what “actually” happened. The narrative has a ton of really flowery similes which I think we’re supposed to attribute to the “writer.”
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 04:20
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIvoMPG7s8Q He's doing the Scoundrels audiobook I'm going thrrough which means he's doing his best Ford Solo impression a lot. He's quite good. It's also funny because I remember him from the Yugioh English dubs. Notably, in one episode of Yugioh GX, he did a one-off character who was impersonating Yugi which meant Marc had to do his best Dan Green Yugi impression. It was pretty awesome, like most things in GX.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 10:58
|
|
|
Settled on Scoundrels as the first book in my deep dive into Legends, both the books I read before and new ones I missed. I do not remember the character of Winter at all but she's apparently in a ton of stuff, including things I know I read.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 20:23
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:I do not remember the character of Winter at all but she's apparently in a ton of stuff, including things I know I read. Winter was biggest in the Bantam era, the Thrawn Trilogy obviously plus some of the X-wing books and comics and the Jedi Academy Trilogy. She had a few appearances in the NJO onwards but basically cameos. It's interesting that with Winter, Zahn basically anticipated Star Wars royals having handmaiden decoys, though even that was a bit of a retcon in that originally it's mentioned that people confused Leia and Winter because Leia was a tomboy and Winter acted regal, but by the X-wing comics it's established that they physically look alike and Winter is Leia's decoy. I think one of the later roleplaying books (the Force Unleashed one?) closed the loop by establishing that Padme's handmaiden Sabe went to Alderaan to watch over Leia with Bail and helped train Winter how to be a good decoy.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 21:35
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:Winter was biggest in the Bantam era, the Thrawn Trilogy obviously plus some of the X-wing books and comics and the Jedi Academy Trilogy. She had a few appearances in the NJO onwards but basically cameos. Yeah I definitely read the Jedi Academy Trilogy. I don't remember her at all. I remember Kyp, Exar Kun, I even remember the one sort of fakeout high potential Jedi Luke finds who Kun ends up killing when he refuses to go along with Kun anymore. Oh and Dalla, of course. But no Winter. I'll have to keep an eye out for her in my journey. Thanks for the info about the TFU RPG book. That is something I remember, the sourcebooks and guides were invaluable sources of info for turbo nerds like me. For example, somebody on r/starwarseu made a thread about the Vong in the Old Republic. It reminded me of how it was strongly implied in one of the novels I read that Palpatine or Thrawn wanted the Galactic Empire so as to resist the Vong. Wookieepedia says this idea was confirmed in the Essential Guide to Warfare. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 22:29 on May 12, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 22:26
|
|
|
That started as kind of a throwaway line from the ROTS Visual Guide that mentioned that Palpatine claimed the Empire needed a big military after the defeat of the Separatists (and before the Rebellion starts) in case there's an extra-galactic invasion, but it was obviously just something to justify the giant military expansion of repression to the Senate. Then Zahn (again) in Outbound Flight expands on this and makes Thrawn the one who tells Palpatine (or Sidious) about the Yuuzhan Vong and implicitly makes Thrawn's desire to serve the Empire because he wants it to fight the Vong, as part of Zahn's continual whitewashing of Thrawn. Palpatine leans into it, but I don't think at any point Palpatine genuinely wanted to make the Empire because he thought it was the only way to fight the Vong. It's more that the Vong were one of many of the justifications that Palpatine deployed to some of his lieutenants at various points before and after he personally seized power, which was really the be all and end all of his own justifications for becoming Emperor. I forgot that there's also the Rogue Planet novel (which Outbound Flight is a loose sequel to) which makes the Vong, or more specifically Zonama Sekot, one of the early drives behind the Death Star, but even then Sienar had started on work on it prior and obviously Palpatine (and Tarkin) had more pressing interests in developing it.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 22:38
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:Winter was biggest in the Bantam era, the Thrawn Trilogy obviously plus some of the X-wing books and comics and the Jedi Academy Trilogy. She had a few appearances in the NJO onwards but basically cameos. Yeah, she never had a big feature book or anything. I think she winds up with Tycho?
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 22:50
|
|
|
She lives inside a mountain in the JAT and fights spider walkers using robo tentacles to defend Anakin Solo.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 22:53
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Yeah, she never had a big feature book or anything. I think she winds up with Tycho? Yeah, she married Tycho.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 23:15
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:That started as kind of a throwaway line from the ROTS Visual Guide that mentioned that Palpatine claimed the Empire needed a big military after the defeat of the Separatists (and before the Rebellion starts) in case there's an extra-galactic invasion, but it was obviously just something to justify the giant military expansion of repression to the Senate. Iirc also Zahn's foreshadowing was for what was originally intended to be a relatively minorblimited series from Dark Horse except that got canceled and then Del Rey decided to spin it off into the NJO as a flagship series
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 23:44
|
|
|
StashAugustine posted:Iirc also Zahn's foreshadowing was for what was originally intended to be a relatively minorblimited series from Dark Horse except that got canceled and then Del Rey decided to spin it off into the NJO as a flagship series Yeah, and obviously the origin of all of this is the single line from Vision of the Future that fed into all of this. I know Zahn recently claimed that the Grysk from his new Thrawn books were what he had in mind all along for the extragalactic threat. I don’t really believe that but if it’s true that’s pretty underwhelming.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2024 23:54
|
|
|
I do kind of like how we get this weird setup where Thrawn has headed out into the big bad wider galaxy to find the Chiss Ascendancy some help fighting the Grysk and then when Vader finally meets them he just slices them all to pieces because they're nothing.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2024 00:23
|
|
|
Vader's also no-nonsense, and anything that threatens order in the galaxy, whether Palpatine's or his, tends to get annihilated in extremely short order
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2024 05:16
|
|
|
So, should I reach it in my Legends binge, is anything post-NJO worth reading? Because Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi seemed to have few or no defenders even back in the 2000s or 2010s, let alone now. It's almost like, as much as it sucks there was a canon reboot, the Legends Universe and timeline had been run into the ground. Legacy got away with it because it had a timeskip away from all the crap.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 00:37
|
|
|
Aaron Allston’s Mercy Kill, which I think chronologically is the second to last book of the old EU. It’s explains enough of the stuff that went on post-NJO to get by, and is typical well done Allston as essentially a final encore for the Wraiths.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 00:42
|
|
|
If you count the comics then the Legacy Volume II comics are the latest chronological book, being set after the whole thing with Luke's (great*)-grandson fighting against new Sith.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 00:51
|
|
|
The legacy comics are pretty awesome, but most other stuff after NJO was trash. Dark nest was god drat terrible, Legacy of the Force was pretty horrible, with poor Allston caught between Troy “Tahiri molesting Ben” Denning and Karen “Mando culture detour” Traviss doing his best. I finally gave up during Fate of the Jedi, with Abeloth and god knows what else was happening.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 01:34
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:So, should I reach it in my Legends binge, is anything post-NJO worth reading? Because Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi seemed to have few or no defenders even back in the 2000s or 2010s, let alone now. The old EU timeline ended with the end of the NJO, full stop. I don’t care if this throws Mercy Kill in the dumpster, that’s okay.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 01:46
|
|
|
I know Riptide and Crosscurrent had a lot of defenders at the time, but I never read them. Like Mercy Kill, I know they're tied into Fate of the Jedi.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 02:13
|
|
|
Did Allston write the LOTF book where Jacen fights Kyle Katarn and Kyle nearly strangles him to death?
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 02:21
|
|
|
Arc Hammer posted:Did Allston write the LOTF book where Jacen fights Kyle Katarn and Kyle nearly strangles him to death? Well I hope he did now if not.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 05:46
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:The old EU timeline ended with the end of the NJO, full stop. I don’t care if this throws Mercy Kill in the dumpster, that’s okay. I tried reading Mercy Kill a couple years ago when I did a read through of all the X-Wing books and didn't make it that far. It's fairly servicable I guess, but I didn't give a poo poo about any of that post-NJO stuff and even absent that it was pretty inferior to the other ones.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 06:19
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Well I hope he did now if not. Pretty sure it was in Fury, his last contribution to the series. IIRC a strike team of Jedi masters ambushes Jacen and while he does fend them all off he realizes that Kyle is more dangerous without a lightsaber since he's got fists with Kell Dragon blood on them.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 06:22
|
|
|
Rochallor posted:I tried reading Mercy Kill a couple years ago when I did a read through of all the X-Wing books and didn't make it that far. It's fairly servicable I guess, but I didn't give a poo poo about any of that post-NJO stuff and even absent that it was pretty inferior to the other ones. I could probably recall the plots of all the X-Wing books if you give me 15 minutes to think, but I can't for the life of me remember a single thing about Mercy Kill. It may have stood out somewhat compared to the other later books, but not by much.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 07:18
|
|
|
Arrinien posted:I could probably recall the plots of all the X-Wing books if you give me 15 minutes to think, but I can't for the life of me remember a single thing about Mercy Kill. It may have stood out somewhat compared to the other later books, but not by much. There's a guy who made off with a bunch of money? equipment? in the chaos surrounding the time when Jacen became a Sith Lord and killed his aunt and had Tahiri sexually menace his cousin, and I think Wraith Squadron was after him (the guy, not Jacen, who was killed by his sister). Most likely that's just what's on the back of the book, though. I think Wedge had a daughter and she's in it?
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 07:34
|
|
|
What's morbidly fascinating to me is the language people use to describe Danning's novels. I'm doing research of fan opinions on here and on Reddit and it's not just "the books are badly written." It's often "it's self-indulgent," "he hates Star Wars," "he's having a slapfight with Karen Traviss," and so-on. There's plenty of EU novels folks don't like, but I've never heard anyone say Kevin J. Anderson hates Star Wars or was actively like sabotaging it somehow. It honestly makes me curious to look into this in more detail whenever I get there..
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 12:18
|
|
|
Honestly I think “hates Star Wars and is actively sabotaging it” applies more to Traviss than Denning, especially since I think she explicitly said it.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 12:22
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:Honestly I think “hates Star Wars and is actively sabotaging it” applies more to Traviss than Denning, especially since I think she explicitly said it. Say what you will about the tenets of Mandalorian fetishism, at least it's an ethos
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 13:45
|
|
|
Chairman Capone posted:Honestly I think “hates Star Wars and is actively sabotaging it” applies more to Traviss than Denning, especially since I think she explicitly said it. I read her blog posts back in the day when she still only had the first two Republic Commando novels to her name, and the main thing she held against the Jedi Order during the last years of the Old Republic was that they had accepted command of an army when the order really had no qualifications for leading armies at all. As a whole she basically viewed them as representatives of the archetypical incompetent/inexperienced officer surrounded by vastly more qualified and experienced subordinates, and she was herself greatly biased toward enlisted service members and stories putting them at the forefront to begin with. Everything else sort of followed from that, with her first couple of books earning her a reputation for being anti-Jedi due to being about PoV characters looking at the Jedi Order from the outside during the time when the order was arguably at its worst. I think what has gotten a bit lost since then was that, as much as there were people who disliked her early books because they were stories with people having negative experiences with the Jedi Order as a common theme, there were a lot of people back then that also liked them for the same reason, viewing them as a breath of fresh air. Her doubling down on the Mandalorian bias wasn't without support from among fans in the beginning. Then it completely unravelled when she had to actually work alongside other authors in a new era instead of writing her own stand-alone Clone War-era stories, and just tried to do more of the same there.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 14:30
|
|
|
The first two and a half Republic Commando books are decent enough mil-sf fare but yes, it is when she has to write alongside other authors that the headbutting starts. She's not a bad writer when she's in her niche. Until Gears 5 came out, Gears of War 3 had the best writing of any games in the series and she penned that one. Though you stick around her writing long enough you definitely notice patterns. There's a serious anti-government buraucracy stance among her characters and a huge helping of romanticized warrior-farmer societies. It works well in a series like Gears where the government is literally fascist in nature and the Gears themselves are only aligned with them out of necessity rather than patriotism because they're facing an extinction level threat (and even then they despise the fascists who are all in on the bullshit). It kinda works in her Halo novels because the books have had underlying fascist dystopia elements that the games gloss over. It doesn't work in Star Wars outside of the brief 3-year window of The Clone Wars and that's where her best writing for the franchise happens to sit.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 14:59
|
|
|
Slashrat posted:I read her blog posts back in the day when she still only had the first two Republic Commando novels to her name, and the main thing she held against the Jedi Order during the last years of the Old Republic was that they had accepted command of an army when the order really had no qualifications for leading armies at all. As a whole she basically viewed them as representatives of the archetypical incompetent/inexperienced officer surrounded by vastly more qualified and experienced subordinates, and she was herself greatly biased toward enlisted service members and stories putting them at the forefront to begin with. Everything else sort of followed from that, with her first couple of books earning her a reputation for being anti-Jedi due to being about PoV characters looking at the Jedi Order from the outside during the time when the order was arguably at its worst. There are definitely fans of that sort of critique of Jedi or Force Users in general. There are elements of it in both KOTOR games but especially 2. The idea that Jedi and Sith are both just supers having a dumb philosophical argument which kills billions of normal people. But importantly KOTOR was still ultimately about Force Users so I don't think it was trying to really demonize or make the two groups look stupid, like I always heard Traviss was desperate to make every Jedi look dumb. Or perhaps the secret was even if the Jedi in KOTOR 1 and 2 sucked, they were original characters who were made to suck. BioWare and Obsidian didn't take fan favorite Jedi Master Vrook and ruin him forever. Whereas Traviss was handling characters with years of established backgrounds so mishandling them really sticks out like a sore thumb.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 15:08
|
|
|
Arc Hammer posted:The first two and a half Republic Commando books are decent enough mil-sf fare but yes, it is when she has to write alongside other authors that the headbutting starts. Between what I remember of the NJO and Mass Effect 1, "incompetent politicians hold back our beloved soldiers who know everything" seems like a popular idea in popular scifi back in the 2000s. Hell maybe it still is, I don't do much scifi. Star Wars is about as close as I usually get.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 15:40
|
|
|
Also like plenty of clone wars material is about how putting the Jedi in charge of things is kind of a dumb idea- hell "maybe the old Jedi were kinda fuckups" is an idea going back to at least ROTJ. Its just the combination of taking that idea while also being really into the warrior cult that literally worships the abstract concept of violence that doesn't quite work. And yeah she's a decent milsf writer when she's not on the soapbox (unlike Denning I at least have fond memories of a few parts of her books).
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 15:52
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:Between what I remember of the NJO and Mass Effect 1, "incompetent politicians hold back our beloved soldiers who know everything" seems like a popular idea in popular scifi back in the 2000s. Hell maybe it still is, I don't do much scifi. Star Wars is about as close as I usually get. Post-9/11 science fiction is definitely a thing. Mass Effect is a prime example of it. The "incompetent bureaucrats" thing goes way, way back but fiction influenced by 9/11 definitely put it in the spotlight.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 15:58
|
|
|
Slashrat posted:I read her blog posts back in the day when she still only had the first two Republic Commando novels to her name, and the main thing she held against the Jedi Order during the last years of the Old Republic was that they had accepted command of an army when the order really had no qualifications for leading armies at all. As a whole she basically viewed them as representatives of the archetypical incompetent/inexperienced officer surrounded by vastly more qualified and experienced subordinates, and she was herself greatly biased toward enlisted service members and stories putting them at the forefront to begin with. Everything else sort of followed from that, with her first couple of books earning her a reputation for being anti-Jedi due to being about PoV characters looking at the Jedi Order from the outside during the time when the order was arguably at its worst. I mean, I think those aspects are true, but it's also true that she's said she stood up and cheered in the theater at the Order 66 scene in ROTS and that anyone who is a fan of the Jedi is a real-world Nazi, so if anything I think she was hiding her real views in those early books and let it come out more later on. Let's also not forget that the one thing that finally made her walk away from Star Wars was the decision being made that some Mandalorians were pacifists and it wasn't a monolithic warrior culture of unbeatable kick-rear end Klingons.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 16:33
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:But importantly KOTOR was still ultimately about Force Users so I don't think it was trying to really demonize or make the two groups look stupid, like I always heard Traviss was desperate to make every Jedi look dumb. Or perhaps the secret was even if the Jedi in KOTOR 1 and 2 sucked, they were original characters who were made to suck. BioWare and Obsidian didn't take fan favorite Jedi Master Vrook and ruin him forever. Whereas Traviss was handling characters with years of established backgrounds so mishandling them really sticks out like a sore thumb. This is pretty much it, I think. Critiques and unorthodox opinions of standing institutions makes shared universes richer, generally, and it makes a lot of sense coming from the mouths of Traviss's OCs when they have a real reason to be beefing with the Jedi, etc. Even if they're wrong, providing this alternative POV makes for more compelling characters and a more complex and interesting setting. It becomes a problem when, for example, Luke loving Skywalker starts poo poo-talking the Jedi and fluffing up the Mandos for basically no other reason than to lend legitimacy to Traviss's own politics. It's also a problem when her politics are, by and large, poo poo. To wit: StashAugustine posted:Also like plenty of clone wars material is about how putting the Jedi in charge of things is kind of a dumb idea- hell "maybe the old Jedi were kinda fuckups" is an idea going back to at least ROTJ. Its just the combination of taking that idea while also being really into the warrior cult that literally worships the abstract concept of violence that doesn't quite work. Raising children from birth to be mystic space wizards? Bad, unforgivable, a sin punishable by death. Raising children from birth to be warmongering mercenaries? Cool, awesome, in fact a thing that owns entirely. And if you don't agree with her, you're just like the Taliban.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 16:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 05:17 |
|
|
The blaster is good...the lightsaber is evil
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2024 16:50
|
|