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PJOmega posted:We probably do, in that everything in video games feels slowed down compared to reality. It wouldn't be playable with 130 mph ghosts and so forth. It does kind of make sense as the reason why projectiles seem so slow in Halo.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:10
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muscles like this! posted:Also for some reason she was really bad about playing nice with other authors, frequently contradicting other books' characterization. Then she quit writing Star Wars books because the Clone Wars cartoon contradicted the characterisation she'd come up with for the Mandalorians.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:12
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The weirdest thing about Karen Traviss and Star Wars book is that she apparently hated anything to do with the Jedi, writing them as useless dicks. Which seems like a problem when you're writing loving STAR WARS.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:35
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muscles like this! posted:The weirdest thing about Karen Traviss and Star Wars book is that she apparently hated anything to do with the Jedi, writing them as useless dicks. Which seems like a problem when you're writing loving STAR WARS. I mean, it’s not a stance entirely unsupported by canon...
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Mar 10, 2018 19:38
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muscles like this! posted:The weirdest thing about Karen Traviss and Star Wars book is that she apparently hated anything to do with the Jedi, writing them as useless dicks. Which seems like a problem when you're writing loving STAR WARS. Timothy Zahn did a bit of "the Jedi aren't all they're cracked up to be" in some of his books (e.g. Outbound Flight) but the reason it was annoying when Traviss did it was that she always did it at the same time as she was wanking over the Mandalorians, so it came off as less of a fair critique and more of a "Mandos rule, Jedi drool!" thing.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:54
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muscles like this! posted:The weirdest thing about Karen Traviss and Star Wars book is that she apparently hated anything to do with the Jedi, writing them as useless dicks. Which seems like a problem when you're writing loving STAR WARS. Can be a good theme if you can handle it, such as in KOTOR2.
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Mar 11, 2018 00:14
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chitoryu12 posted:Canonically the Spartans are supposed to be able to run 34 to 38 MPH with ease (and John once sprained his ankle doing 65), with a reaction time of 0.02 seconds so they feel like everything in combat is moving in slow motion. How did we not get that game?
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Mar 11, 2018 00:45
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i woulda liked to try the original halo with indiginous animals from before ms bought bungie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpXVArrf-W0
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Mar 11, 2018 00:56
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Penpal posted:
Karen Traviss is an English author who does commercial tie-in fiction, as others have said. She first became notable for writing the tie-in novels to the video game Star Wars: Republic Commando. Her first three books were pretty well received, with Hard Contact, Triple Zero and True Colors being more like traditional special ops stories with a Star Wars coating on them. As they stand, they are entertaining light reading. However, it should be noted that these books are written from a Mandalorian perspective, and feature a lot of anti-Jedi sentiment in the writing which reflects Traviss's personal views rather than just the characters. In-universe, it makes sense for Mandalorian characters to hate the Jedi, considering that within the canon the Jedi massacred them. However, that argument loses merit when you have actual Jedi characters start to talk about how corrupt and evil the Jedi are and how the Mandalorians are the true heroes of Star Wars. The genocidal, warmongering, Klingon-lite Mandalorians. That sentiment did not sit well with fans, and even less with another author, Troy Denning, but we'll get to him. Traviss was very active on the Jedi Council Forums and on the Star Wars.com forums, as well as her own blog. She often got into heated arguments with her detractors, leading to the name "talifans" being coined by her, which did her no favours. Still, she had a fanbase, who were named Fandalorians by people who considered them blind followers of Traviss's books. I even remember a video someone made using The Movies! video game about a Traviss pastiche living in an apartment with a bunch of Mandalorians like her own personal harem. But then, things started to get ugly. So, to make a long story short, one of the last big storylines of the old Star Wars canon before it got bought out by Disney was called Legacy of the Force. This series was written round-robin style by Aaron Allston, Karen Traviss and Troy Denning. It is bad. Really bad. Potentially the worst Star Wars fiction written besides The Crystal Star. This is the series that ended with the Kylo Ren equivalent getting his arm hacked off and thrown into a vat of used syringes by his sister before Han and Leia watched his body get burned alive in a waste incinerator. This is the series that had Luke Skywalker's 14-year old son get sexually molested by a 30-year old woman. The series was written round-robin style, but there was next to no communication between any of the authors. Aaron Allston's books focused on stuff that goes unmentioned in the other books, Troy Denning wrote his contributions as a sequel of sorts to his terrible bugnest orgy Dark Nest Trilogy, and Traviss wrote her books about Boba Fett turning the Mandalorians into an army and taking on everyone else. This is the place where Traviss's fights with her fans and her spat with Troy Denning went out of control. It's one thing when Mandalorian characters are dissing the Jedi. It's another thing entirely when the Mandalorians break into a Jedi focused series and all the Jedi characters fall in love with them and want to become Mandalorians as well. Denning and Traviss hated each other, and in one of the most embarrassing episodes to come out of the Star Wars EU, their feud got published as actual books. Denning went out of his way to sabotage Traviss's storylines and literally kill off her characters, and Traviss responded with the literary equivalent of going "nuh-uhh no u!" over and over. While this was going on, Traviss was writing other Star Wars books, as well as short stories. Order 66 and Imperial Commando were sequels to her Republic Commando trilogy, and they tried to undo Denning's damage to her storylines, while also doubling down on the anti-Jedi hate being tossed around in the books, and legitimizing it by setting them during the Imperial time period. By this point, Traviss had been run off of Star Wars.com and the Jedi Council Forums, leading to her only posting occasionally on her blog. Then, Star Wars The Clone Wars happened. In 2009, an episode came out focusing on Mandalore, and, despite future retcons (before the Disney Buyout) managing to fuse her work with the TV show, it completely overwrote most of the Mandalorian history Traviss had helped write for Star Wars Insider along with Abel G. Pena. Imperial Commando: 501st was her last Star Wars book before she left Star Wars forever and moved onto other franchises. She didn't like other people playing with her toys, so she up and quit. After Star Wars, she moved onto Gears of War, where she wrote all of the tie-in fiction apart from the comics, and was the lead writer for Gears of War 3. Her stuff here is okay, and Gears 3 is actually pretty good, but people familiar with her work can also see similarities to her Mandalorian obsession. Here, it was the Pesanga people, essentially Gears of War Maori people. Mandalorians 2.0, with all the COG characters admiring them as super amazing tribal warriors. Then she moved onto Halo, and started writing a lot of books about an ONI blackops team. I haven't read them, personally, but from the summaries I've seen they are way more blatant about the imperialism and fascism that's always been a lowkey element of the Halo series. And that's where my knowledge on the subject ends. A prolific tie-in author who got into a pissing match with another hack writer and leaves a stain wherever she goes because of how toxic she is to her detractors. Arc Hammer has a new favorite as of 01:54 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 01:35
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The history of the Star Wars Expanded Universe is absolutely amazing in every way.
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Mar 11, 2018 02:35
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chitoryu12 posted:The history of the Star Wars Expanded Universe is absolutely amazing in every way. You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the SW: EU.
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Mar 11, 2018 02:42
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Speaking of which, Expounded Universe is a fantastic podcast and I think everyone should listen to it so they can learn all about Shee-zorr's sex stink and Gay Ahab.
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Mar 11, 2018 02:51
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chitoryu12 posted:The history of the Star Wars Expanded Universe is absolutely amazing in every way. Unfortunately my knowledge of the shitstorms that happened really only extends to the Traviss controversy because I quit buying Star Wars books after Legacy of the Force. I didn't follow Fate of the Jedi apart from knowing the bad guy was star wars cthulu and they put admiral "kamikaze ram a planet" Daala in charge of the government. And the Disney canon is too young to have much going for it, apart from Chuck Wendig complaining that peoplle hated his Star Wars books were homophobes.
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Mar 11, 2018 02:57
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The best EU novel is the very first one, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, because it was written at the same time as the first movie was being filmed so it could be turned into a low-budget sequel in case the movie flopped. As such, it reuses a lot of stuff and characters from the movie and is set entirely on a foggy jungle planet (to save on budget in case it had to be turned into a screenplay) and Han Solo doesn't appear because Harrison Ford hadn't been signed for a second movie yet. Because it was written so soon in the history of Star Wars, tons of stuff immediately became non-canon like Vader having a blue lightsaber and having been shot down by Luke instead of Han. It also has sexual tension between Luke and Leia because nobody knew yet that they were siblings.
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Mar 11, 2018 03:40
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehEkCYjnLJ8
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Mar 11, 2018 03:57
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Arcsquad12 posted:Serious words about for-pay fan fiction. PYF terrible book: it's called the Extended Universe, mom
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Mar 11, 2018 05:34
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ryonguy posted:PYF terrible book: it's called the Extended Universe, mom You're welcome.
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Mar 11, 2018 06:39
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This is still my favorite thing on the whole internet.
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Mar 11, 2018 07:43
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The Halo books do introduce some weird stuff about the UNSC. Yeah sure the UNSC are the poor humans being genocided by the doom-seeking alien empire, but the only reason they were able to fight back at all is because they were on the cusp of entering a stage of brutal space fascism on their own people. The UNSC knew that it couldn't effectively administrate its own territory, so they built up a huge fleet to brutalise and awe the peasants on distant worlds. And the Spartans were explicitly designed to assassinate the poo poo out of any kind of separatist or revolutionary movement. If everything had gone to plan, Master Chief would have spent his military career blowing up hospitals and decapitating folk heroes.
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Mar 11, 2018 08:56
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Skellybones posted:The Halo books do introduce some weird stuff about the UNSC. Yeah sure the UNSC are the poor humans being genocided by the doom-seeking alien empire, but the only reason they were able to fight back at all is because they were on the cusp of entering a stage of brutal space fascism on their own people. The UNSC knew that it couldn't effectively administrate its own territory, so they built up a huge fleet to brutalise and awe the peasants on distant worlds. And the Spartans were explicitly designed to assassinate the poo poo out of any kind of separatist or revolutionary movement. That's canon as of Reach, iirc, where the Spartans start out expecting to fight human rebels and are completely blindsided by the Covenant.
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Mar 11, 2018 10:23
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The halo novels are in that weird place of being surprisingly dark and bloody, being surprisingly decent milsf, and being video game novels all at the same time and it works out better than you'd expect I last read them when I was like 12 or 14 though
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Mar 11, 2018 16:31
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Cat Army 
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Adding to the Traviss chat, IDW, which has the G.I. Joe license (and was turning out genuinely good stories, especially in its COBRA title) wrapped everything up and relaunched with a new Joe #1, written by Traviss. Her run was to last initially 12 issues, but the book was ended after 9 because her stuff was so awful.
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Mar 11, 2018 17:43
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Thanks guys I loved reading about all of that passive aggressive fighting between authors. I've heard the name Zelazny before, so I picked up this book Jack of Shadows for a dollar. Apparently whenever someone speaks the protagonist's name out loud, he gets alerted and can eavesdrop, so that's interesting
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Mar 11, 2018 17:55
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The Iron Rose posted:The halo novels are in that weird place of being surprisingly dark and bloody, being surprisingly decent milsf, and being video game novels all at the same time and it works out better than you'd expect I think the trouble is Traviss's stories are way more blatant about the fascism than even Nylund's books. Halo's story doesn't need the "we're borderline nazis" angle to work as a humanity vs extinction plot. It's window dressing at best, not the driving plot. That's why I rather dislike the post Reach halo games because rather than broad archetypes for the characters they settle on "everyone is a goddamn rear end in a top hat all the time". I suppose we should be thankful the elites had already had their back story established before Traviss wrote The Thursday War, or they would have been next on her "super amazing everyone ones noble warrior" list.
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Mar 11, 2018 17:57
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I thought I liked people posting about terrible books in this thread. 
Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 18:14 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 18:11
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Arcsquad12 posted:I think the trouble is Traviss's stories are way more blatant about the fascism than even Nylund's books. "It'd be better if the fascism was more subtle!"
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Mar 11, 2018 18:28
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:"It'd be better if the fascism was more subtle!" Actually, yeah. It'd be more plausible that way and can lead to more morally ambiguous antagonists instead of the lovechild of M. Bison and Hitler screaming about how he LOOOOOOOOVES stealing your rights.
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Mar 11, 2018 18:34
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Penpal posted:I've heard the name Zelazny before, so I picked up this book Jack of Shadows for a dollar. Apparently whenever someone speaks the protagonist's name out loud, he gets alerted and can eavesdrop, so that's interesting
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Mar 11, 2018 18:56
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Davros1 posted:Adding to the Traviss chat, IDW, which has the G.I. Joe license (and was turning out genuinely good stories, especially in its COBRA title) wrapped everything up and relaunched with a new Joe #1, written by Traviss. Her run was to last initially 12 issues, but the book was ended after 9 because her stuff was so awful. I got into the IDW Transformers comics recently after never giving a poo poo about Transformers before and thought hey, this is good! I should check out some of their other stuff! This is one of the ones I looked at. It was. Not good.
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Mar 11, 2018 20:01
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Lord of Light is the traditional pick for best of Zelazny's books, so if you get a chance and enjoy his other stuff... Yeah Lord of Light owns. editL Zelazny wrote quite a lot of bad stuff (basically to pay the bills it seems) but his best is some of the best sci fi/fantasy imo NLJP has a new favorite as of 00:05 on Mar 12, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 22:58
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NLJP posted:Yeah Lord of Light owns. even his bad stuff was still pretty good my favorite short story of his is unicorn variations, because the entire story is a mashup of elements written so he could get paid for the same story in four different themed anthologies
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Mar 11, 2018 23:22
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I know it was said in the long post about Traviss, and elsewhere, but I just wanted to underline it: Troy Denning wrote the Star Wars book where Han and Leia's daughter takes part in a psychic bug orgy.
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Mar 12, 2018 00:53
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Tunicate posted:even his bad stuff was still pretty good A story about a 1) unicorn playing 2) chess in a 3) bar, check check check. I inherited all three of those anthologies from my dad's extensive library when he passed. I already owned the Zelazny collection of the same name, so now I have four copies of the story that I keep around because it's funny as hell. The story's not bad either.
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Mar 12, 2018 00:54
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back in the day a goon i met in a creative writing class gave me like ten zelazny books and also his address so i could mail them back to him when i was done, and not only did i not read them but i lost his address and i've felt bad about it ever since
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Mar 12, 2018 01:23
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I know the Star Wars wiki is as dry as a boring biscuit, but is there a record of the EU that's as mocking as the Transformers wiki? I could really use a timeline punctuated with "yes this poo poo really happened" to get through a rainy day.
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Mar 12, 2018 01:53
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rear end frog posted:back in the day a goon i met in a creative writing class gave me like ten zelazny books and also his address so i could mail them back to him when i was done, and not only did i not read them but i lost his address and i've felt bad about it ever since This reminds me of the time my then-boyfriend gave me one of the Miles Vorkosigan novels (I think it was Komarr?) in college and I never got around to reading it. After we broke up, he passive-aggressively posted on JL about how he'd given it to me with a ~secret meaning~ about how the book had a domestic-abuse couple in it and he didn't want to treat me like that... but the real domestic abuser, it seems, was me! All along!! I found that book again over Christmas while I was doing some cleaning at my parents' house, and it went into the library-donation box. I did have to check for a wingnut inscription first, but thankfully it was clean, so maybe someone can get some enjoyment out of that thing.
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Mar 12, 2018 02:11
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The Bee posted:I know the Star Wars wiki is as dry as a boring biscuit, but is there a record of the EU that's as mocking as the Transformers wiki? I could really use a timeline punctuated with "yes this poo poo really happened" to get through a rainy day. Not off the top of my head, but if you want Star Wars EU bullshit I highly recommend the RLM video about Darth Vader's suit, which is taken from Wookiepedia, as well as the thing I mentioned earlier, the Patreon bonus content for Expounded Universe where the two hosts go on excursions to Wookiepedia and bring back entries like Dance and Realspace.
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Mar 12, 2018 02:15
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The Bee posted:I know the Star Wars wiki is as dry as a boring biscuit, but is there a record of the EU that's as mocking as the Transformers wiki? I could really use a timeline punctuated with "yes this poo poo really happened" to get through a rainy day. I have never seen a wiki that does what tfwiki does
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Mar 12, 2018 02:19
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Any wiki will quickly get taken over by the people who take the subject matter too seriously for fun. It’s just the natural order of thing. See the Archer wiki having an hexadecimal colour chart of every sweater dress Lana has ever worn, with episode references.
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Mar 12, 2018 04:00
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I mean, that's kind of exactly the kind of person you need for a properly comprehensive wiki. Otherwise you end up with something like TVtropes, worst of both worlds.
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Mar 12, 2018 04:03
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