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Defiance Industries posted:I like how every line of dialogue that Stackpole writes has every character using the exact same voice, but sometimes they have really simple foreign words thrown in. Which is why very main character is Kai Corran Victor Ian Horn Stiener Allard Davion Liao Skywalker.
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Nov 10, 2012 07:49
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Calax posted:Which is why very main character is Close. http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Star-Wars-CCG-Reflections-II-2-Corran-Horn-SWCCG-Nrmt-Mint-/00/s/MzA4WDIyNA==/$T2eC16RHJHEE9ny2q9bZBQW+D9Fvjw~~60_35.JPG Every character is Michael Goddamned Stackpole.
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Nov 10, 2012 09:34
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He's actually been writing the worlds longest biography series, about his own amazing life. It's just that no one would believe him if he didn't wrap it up in the trappings of "fiction" 
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Nov 10, 2012 09:44
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Stackpole's actually not a terrible writer and storyteller, especially compared to some of the real hacks out there who pull down regular paychecks for god knows what reason. He's never going to run in the same circles as Junot Diaz, but at least he's not Kevin J. Anderson. And all of the sudden I really wish that Junot Diaz would write a Battletech novel.
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Nov 10, 2012 09:56
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It's his dialogue and characterization that are really mock-worthy. Like I said, every character talks with essentially the same voice, but with some really elementary words from whatever ethnicity they are thrown in to tell you that they are a Drac or whatever. His main characters are basically Poochy, right down to everyone talking about them whenever they aren't around. But no, he's not Kevin J. Anderson. Kevin J. Anderson is literature's greatest war criminal. Comparing an author to Kevin J. Anderson is like calling a politician "Adolph K. Stalin, by the way the K. stands for Kim Jong-il."
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Nov 10, 2012 10:03
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Yeah, he writes decent enough plot, it's just that every character has the same voice, and if they're his self insert character then every female they come into contact with is ) oh my god you guys, just super hot and snarky and b) wants to bang the Gary Stu after three chapters. I'd throw in his reusing of descriptions (man made lightning!) but the dude's churned out so much stuff so fast for BT and everything else I can understand how that creeps in. Stackpole's a pulp writer really, whereas Anderson is a hack.
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Nov 10, 2012 10:10
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Realistically, Stackpole writes to his demographic. I bet most of you thought he wrote awesome poo poo when you were kids. Because it was all lightning and explosions, and badasses who can't be stopped. Probably got him more paychecks writing to a childs level relatively well than trying to write to the satisfactions of the middle aged spergs those children grow into.
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Nov 10, 2012 10:17
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Defiance Industries posted:
What he did to Dune... I shall never forgive.
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Nov 10, 2012 10:43
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the JJ posted:What he did to Dune... I shall never forgive. What's he up to now, eight books of reaming that series in the rear end?
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Nov 10, 2012 10:48
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Zaodai posted:Realistically, Stackpole writes to his demographic. I bet most of you thought he wrote awesome poo poo when you were kids. Because it was all lightning and explosions, and badasses who can't be stopped. Yeah. I haven't touched a BT-novel in about twenty years and I still think that the Blood of Kerensky trilogy is the highlight of the whole series.
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Nov 10, 2012 11:36
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Fil5000 posted:What's he up to now, eight books of reaming that series in the rear end? DUNE: The Battle of Corrin holds a special place on my bookshelf as the only "oh wow this book is so BAD that I have to get a (cheap) copy!". I loaned the other books in that series from the library, wondering which neighbourhood of poor african children that train would crash through next - but the last book really took the awful cake 
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Nov 10, 2012 12:25
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Zaodai posted:Well he already plays MWO, so he's probably at least some part of the Word of Lowtax. Yeesh... Ever go up againt any Skye players though? I was thinking of joining them if I get MWO. Westwind fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 16:41
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I never read the BT books, but I did read x-wing book. Maybe there's a good reason I reread the wraith ones more often then I read the others.
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Nov 10, 2012 19:18
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Westwind posted:Yeesh... They are both bad and hilariously serious RPers... And that comes from a poster who writes ad copy for mechs as a way to unwind. Join Caesar's Legion instead. We're awesome.
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Nov 10, 2012 19:26
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Zaodai posted:Realistically, Stackpole writes to his demographic. I bet most of you thought he wrote awesome poo poo when you were kids. Because it was all lightning and explosions, and badasses who can't be stopped. We can bitch about Stackpole's writing all we want, but the fact of the matter is, that dude gets paid. Stephen King once wrote - and I'm paraphrasing from memory here - that in order to be a successful writer, you must first have talent. And before any of you accuse me [King] of being elitist, understand what I mean here. If you wrote something, and someone read it and liked it and agreed to publish it and sent you a check and the check didn't bounce, you have talent. By that measure - the only genuinely objective measure an author can be subjected to - Stackpole's got more talent than most.
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Nov 10, 2012 20:02
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I haven't read Battletech books since they decided to slam the reset button so hard time collapsed and it was back to Star League. And Stackpole handed everything over to Loren L. Coleman but still wrote a pair of books in the "Dark Age" that confirmed who the Author Insert was for me. with a 127 year old (or something stupid like that) Victor Ian Stiener-Davion giving advice to the much younger main character. I will throw this out: Stackpole needs to realize not everyone reads all of his work. I've read all the "Main Line" books he's done from Warrior on to the "Dark Age". And in Warrior and a few other "early" books, it feels like they are not necessarily self contained. He makes references to the Fake Hance Davion plot, Allestro Steiner, the Syke Separatists... But I've yet to find the books that hold these events. If you read his X-Wing stuff he does the same thing, constantly referencing things he's written before in the series as a whole. Probably worst with Xwing because he throws references back to the Comics during the Bacta War.
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Nov 10, 2012 20:29
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Fake Hanse Davion is from Sword and the Dagger, one of the very first BT novels. It might as well be a word-for-word retelling of Man in the Iron Mask with the names and settings changed. Alessandro Steiner is covered more extensively in the Steiner House Book, which is quite a bit better than anything Stackpole has written despite being a historical overview (or perhaps because of it). Skye Separatists come up repeatedly. I'm not sure what period you're referring to, but they're a big deal in several novels, not all of which he wrote.
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Nov 10, 2012 21:04
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I don't think referencing prior events is a problem. I haven't read the early books and when I read the Warrior trilogy I didn't miss out on much. OK there was a fake plot, it was foiled, moving on. I don't need to have every possible detail about it spoon fed to me to know that yes, substituting a double for a major leader in the inner sphere is probably going to cause some problems. I remain unconvinced they should be self-contained, in other words. If he's trying to write a narrative spine for an entire universe or whatever, arguably they're the books that most certainly should not have been. also I'm pretty sure he, like everyone else, was writing these books for the tabletop players who all had encyclopedic levels of knowledge of BT in their heads. Write for your audience, after all.
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Nov 10, 2012 21:14
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When you assume your audience will read anything then it's also safe to assume they've read everything.
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Nov 10, 2012 21:18
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Yes and no. Overall, I'm saying that the book felt like a sequel to something(s) else, rather than it's own novel. You can reference stuff to other materials, but when you give a VERY simple synopsis that amounts to basically staring at the reader and saying "You know everything about this", and use that as one of the major pieces of backstory for the book in general, there's an issue there. It's probably the worst in Coupe(? the last warrior novel) overall.
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Nov 10, 2012 21:20
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Psion posted:also I'm pretty sure he, like everyone else, was writing these books for the tabletop players who all had encyclopedic levels of knowledge of BT in their heads. Write for your audience, after all. I doubt it, considering that the novels have tons of exposition explaining poo poo that people like me already knew. There's a whole chapter in one of the TotC novels where Victor explains the political structure of the Inner Sphere and Clans to, like, Kai and Hohiro or some poo poo.
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Nov 10, 2012 21:20
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Defiance Industries posted:I doubt it, considering that the novels have tons of exposition explaining poo poo that people like me already knew. There's a whole chapter in one of the TotC novels where Victor explains the political structure of the Inner Sphere and Clans to, like, Kai and Hohiro or some poo poo. okay but who else was reading these? Was there some market for BT fiction who didn't play the tabletop? I guess maybe as a marketing tool to draw people into TT or buy the MW games but...? then again the only reason I know poo poo about BT was picking up Flashpoint to read on a train. I figured "well this has giant stompy robots and is probably worth $1.99" I figure I learned some important things in that book:
After going back and reading some of the other books, I realized I'd lucked out in finding something Not Terrible to start with. God help anyone who thought "hm I bet this DRT book is worth reading" Psion fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 21:50
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It's been four days and I have orders from 9 players*. I wonder who's going to be standing still this turn? *I may have more than that Psion posted:After going back and reading some of the other books, I realized I'd lucked out in finding something Not Terrible to start with. God help anyone who thought "hm I bet this DRT book is worth reading" No one who isn't already a Battletech Fan has read D.R.T. Did you see the cover? Yeah. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 21:51
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PoptartsNinja posted:It's been four days and I have orders from 9 players*. I wonder who's going to be standing still this turn? This would totally be a viable option if Battlemech Mimetic Armor existed. Oh well, what are the odds that a +0 move mod will draw the ire of a Clan heavy?
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Nov 10, 2012 22:09
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Well I'm standing still voluntarily, but I think we may have some people still knocked out in the Northeast US. And maybe an out-of-towner. Could we get confirmation on missing orders so the rest of us can sub in some orders while some proper alternates get tapped? EDIT: I mean we can tell who hasn't checked in this turn on the doc, but confirmation never hurt nobody.
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Nov 10, 2012 22:12
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PoptartsNinja posted:No one who isn't already a Battletech Fan has read D.R.T. Did you see the cover? Yeah. Point of order! At some point in the past, an actual human being bought a copy of this book (not me): http://www.amazon.com/The-Saliva-Tree-Brian-Aldiss/dp/B001FL0U08/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1352583705&sr=8-2&keywords=the+saliva+tree Doubt not the power of drunk-shopping! Stackpole's one of those guys I tend to think of as an introductory author. He writes novels that actually work fairly well for getting younger kids into the genre. They're nothing too complicated and the plots, at least, usually aren't completely brain-dead (even if the dialogue might stumble), so a kid can enjoy the story without needing a nuanced understanding of political situations and social interactions in the Galaxy of Stompy Robots/X-wings/Magic Maps. I can't really enjoy the man's work anymore, except by way of mockery, but I suppose I can appreciate that he's done a fair bit to get people into science fiction, and in its own way that's as meaningful an accomplishment as a snaring some big snazzy prize. They can't all be Greg Egan or Iain Banks or what have you. (P. S. Someone has to make a fourth-grader read Use of Weapons and then do a book report on it. I am deeply interested in what kind of interpretation would come out, and I'm not kidding there.)
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Nov 10, 2012 23:01
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Offering LLSix a chance to take over X7 since he was knocked out last turn and I haven't heard anything from the Blackjack for three turns now. Control will revert if/when the pilot comes back.
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Nov 10, 2012 23:09
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PoptartsNinja posted:No one who isn't already a Battletech Fan has read D.R.T. Did you see the cover? Yeah. This is a strong point I hadn't considered. Main Event, then, which is also awful and has cover art that doesn't make you think something got misfiled into sci-fi. Psion fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Nov 11, 2012 |
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Nov 11, 2012 00:09
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GenericServices posted:(P. S. Someone has to make a fourth-grader read Use of Weapons and then do a book report on it. I am deeply interested in what kind of interpretation would come out, and I'm not kidding there.) I don't know if they would have the necessary gravitas to pull that off.
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Nov 11, 2012 00:14
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PoptartsNinja posted:Offering LLSix a chance to take over X7 since he was knocked out last turn and I haven't heard anything from the Blackjack for three turns now. Control will revert if/when the pilot comes back. Sweet. All the same, I hope b0lt is okay and comes back soon. I'll have orders in soon. Trying to decide between shooting E1 & F4 this turn. Edit: Oh god, look at where E3 is. LLSix fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Nov 11, 2012 |
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Nov 11, 2012 00:21
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the JJ posted:What he did to Dune... I shall never forgive. I own eight of his Dune books. I was weak, I got into Dune and just started reading and wanted to keep reading Dune, then I noticed when I got onto the books that he was responsible for that I was enjoying them less and less but I couldn't get out because I was in too deep why is everyone a face dancer robot? He... did things... to me. Horrible things. Fortunately I can still enjoy the original books, they were not tainted too badly by association. I keep the other ones as mementos of my suffering.
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Nov 11, 2012 00:50
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LLSix posted:Sweet. All the same, I hope b0lt is okay and comes back soon. I'll have orders in soon. Trying to decide between shooting E1 & F4 this turn. b0lt is still on IRC in #megamek. I am not sure he has said anything in like a week, and I don't think he's logged off. No idea what his deal is - if he's somewhere hit by the storm that didn't lose power but he evacuated, or if something worse/stranger has happened, but I don't really know how to go about figuring it out. I have no idea, basically.
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Nov 11, 2012 01:44
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Waiting to hear back from the Banshee for movement-related shenanigans.
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Nov 11, 2012 02:05
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Fraction Jackson posted:b0lt is still on IRC in #megamek. I am not sure he has said anything in like a week, and I don't think he's logged off. No idea what his deal is - if he's somewhere hit by the storm that didn't lose power but he evacuated, or if something worse/stranger has happened, but I don't really know how to go about figuring it out. I have no idea, basically. Some people don't run their irc client on their computer. If they have something running on say a VPS they can log in from any computer/phone/tablet/whatever and keep their history and all that jazz. Of course this is all conjecture from my part but it's one possible explanation.
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Nov 11, 2012 02:23
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Defiance Industries posted:They are both bad and hilariously serious RPers... And that comes from a poster who writes ad copy for mechs as a way to unwind. Join Caesar's Legion instead. We're awesome. Sounds good, thanks for the recommendation! I'll join up if I find my Asia-located wireless can handle MWO play. Westwind fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Nov 11, 2012 |
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Nov 11, 2012 07:26
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Sorry, I picked a horrible time to visit family on the east coast, and then got completely swamped with work over the last couple days. I should be good from now on though.
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Nov 11, 2012 07:36
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Westwind posted:Sounds good, thanks for the recommendation! I'll join up if I find my Asia-located wireless can handle MWO play. If it can, don't forget to follow the instructions in the MWO thread. And anyone else reading this who's considering Mechwarrior Online, do go read that thread. I played for several days alone in the wilderness, pugging it up, and it sucked. Then I started playing alongside goons and everything got about a billion times awesomer. It was like night and fuckin' day, man.
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Nov 11, 2012 08:56
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Movement related shenanigans... resolved? The one night I decide to crash out early and not check my PMs...
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Nov 11, 2012 15:09
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PainGod put up his newest Mercenaries video recently, and had some nice things occur in the mech of the mission segement for the Fafnir. First- it was narrated by George Ledoux, Second- it incorporated fanart from the Nadir scenario. I'll let you figure out which one. Go ahead and check it out.
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Nov 11, 2012 15:41
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landcollector posted:PainGod put up his newest Mercenaries video recently, and had some nice things occur in the mech of the mission segement for the Fafnir. First- it was narrated by George Ledoux, Second- it incorporated fanart from the Nadir scenario. I'll let you figure out which one. Go ahead and check it out. Ohhhh yeah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH6Nt6-1Vs0
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