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Epicurius posted:For Star Wars podcasts, there's also System Mastery's "Expounded Universe", where they read and discuss a bunch of, mostly bad, expanded universe/legends books. culturally speaking Expounded Universe is a very important podcast, in that it is very important to remember that the EU was bad and needed to be destroyed PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 18:35 on May 30, 2019 |
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May 30, 2019 18:31
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Congrats to this thread for being so much more tolerable than any other Star Wars thread on something awful dot com, I came here to ask for recommendations and was pleasantly surprised at the civility. I'm in a big Star Wars mood lately, having just finished reading From A Certain Point of View, and reading all about the cool lore and behind the scenes stuff form the new theme park. So I was wondering if any of y'all would have any story recommendations that have little to no connection to the movie plot or characters. Stories along the lines of the Canto Bight book from last year, or the MedStar duology, with interesting characters/locations/plots but no force stuff or galaxy-changing consequences. What set me off on this tangent was this story I stumbled across on Wookieepedia about a space boxer who fights against taking a dive that's just Star Warsy enough. I really don't want to dive into fanfic, but I think I've read just about every new canon thing out there without a Skywalker in it.
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Jun 4, 2019 20:48
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The first three Republic Commando books are good, solid reads. Avoid everything else Traviss has written. Her commando series is the only place her anti Jedi sentiment is justified because the only Jedi who are there are young, impressionable, and taken in by a bunch of surly old jerks who never got over how the battle of Galidraan went down. If you do go beyond True Colours just know that Order 66 is a goddamn mess of a book and Imperial Commando 501st never got a follow up due to the pissing war between Traviss and Denning and the Disney acquisition putting Legends on hold. Though I think I heard somewhere that there's some new Legends content coming out? Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jun 4, 2019 |
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Jun 4, 2019 21:07
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Well you see anyone who could possibly wring some enjoyment out of the Star Wars EU is obviously an idiot loser with bad taste... *Accidentally reveals huge personality flaw a couple posts later
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Jun 5, 2019 01:10
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Arcsquad12 posted:Though I think I heard somewhere that there's some new Legends content coming out? The Old Republic still hasn't stopped getting content updates (no major expansions though), so that's not dried up at all. And Marvel just put out Marvel Star Wars #108, continuing the Legends Star Wars ongoing comic after it being previously concluded over 30 years ago.
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Jun 5, 2019 01:26
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I always quick to suggest Lost Stars. It has a few cameos from main characters and involves events from the OT, but the heart of the story is about a couple who are on opposite sides of the Galactic Civil War.
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Jun 5, 2019 02:07
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The Luke Skywalker book also had some good stories, though I think the first one was by far the best. I'd go a bit further re: Traviss and avoid anything other than Hard Contact. That one's still enjoyable, though.
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Jun 5, 2019 04:35
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Chairman Capone posted:The Luke Skywalker book also had some good stories, though I think the first one was by far the best. Gonna disagree, Traviss is pretty poo poo. If you're going to read Legends EU stuff, skip Traviss and, like, re-read the Wraith Squadron books over and over or something.
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Jun 5, 2019 05:11
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I hold that the first three RepCom books are good, but they are diminishing returns. Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is a great standalone book by Matt Stover. I know you want something that isn't big 3 related but that story really works well on its own.
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Jun 5, 2019 05:51
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Arcsquad12 posted:I hold that the first three RepCom books are good, but they are diminishing returns. FYI, while definitely standalone, there are some allusions to Shatterpoint, which is also by Matt Stover and also a really good read, and mostly standalone.
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Jun 5, 2019 07:05
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Xenomrph posted:Gonna disagree, Traviss is pretty poo poo. If you're going to read Legends EU stuff, skip Traviss and, like, re-read the Wraith Squadron books over and over or something. Basically this. Mercy Kill was a nice farewell, I guess.
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Jun 5, 2019 08:23
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VaultAggie posted:I always quick to suggest Lost Stars. It has a few cameos from main characters and involves events from the OT, but the heart of the story is about a couple who are on opposite sides of the Galactic Civil War. Lost Stars is the best book of the new canon, and is in contention for best Star Wars book even when including legends content. It's really good, and I hope she eventually writes a sequel.
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Jun 5, 2019 14:15
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thrawn527 posted:Lost Stars is the best book of the new canon, and is in contention for best Star Wars book even when including legends content. It's really good, and I hope she eventually writes a sequel. This is really good to hear, I think I'll pick it up next. Also whoever mentioned Wraith Squadron, those were my first brush with EU content in high school so those books will always hold a special place in my heart. Also I don't know much, but I know I don't care for Traviss or her Mandalorian stuff. Sorry y'all! What's the consensus on those Aftermath books? I know people were down on Wendig's exposition, but overall I loved the plot and characters, plus all the little vignette chapters showing smaller stories were cool imo.
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Jun 5, 2019 17:01
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Aftermath was pretty good. The entire Aftermath trilogy is awesome. It got nothing but better as it went
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Jun 5, 2019 17:06
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I love Chuck and have nothing against present tense but I found the particular prose style in Aftermath unreadable after a couple paragraphs.
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Jun 5, 2019 17:40
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Jim the Nickel posted:Congrats to this thread for being so much more tolerable than any other Star Wars thread on something awful dot com, I came here to ask for recommendations and was pleasantly surprised at the civility. They're dated but the Tales of * series was pretty good, the Bounty Hunters one was my first foray to the EU. Twilight Company is one I've read of the new EU and it's also a decent read featuring Rebel grunts.
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Jun 5, 2019 18:30
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VaultAggie posted:I always quick to suggest Lost Stars. It has a few cameos from main characters and involves events from the OT, but the heart of the story is about a couple who are on opposite sides of the Galactic Civil War. That's the only book in the new canon I've sincerely, thoroughly enjoyed. I need to give that one a re-read at some point. Other books I mostly liked were the first Thrawn book and... Bloodline was ok. Although with the other books, are nearly all them of guilty of dragging out things in the middle? For example, I nearly failed to finish Ashoka because the long, drawn out cave drama in the middle. It got way better as soon as they decided to actually continue the story, but I almost stopped caring at all. Same with Thrawn: Alliances. I am having trouble mustering the motivation to finish it because I feel like the entire middle of the book is filler and going nowhere. Both of those could have easily reduced the page count by about 25 - 30%, easily, without sacrificing any major plot beats. General Battuta posted:I love Chuck and have nothing against present tense but I found the particular prose style in Aftermath unreadable after a couple paragraphs. On the first book, the reviews I saw were positive, so for a while I thought I actually bought the wrong book. It was intensely hard to follow. Although I thought they got a lot better in the other two books. But in all honesty I'm not sure I felt that way because they actually got better, or because I spent so much time flipping back and forth in the first one to make sure I correctly remembered which characters were which, that I knew them well enough to not let the prose get in the way. Doronin fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jun 5, 2019 |
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Jun 5, 2019 18:38
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I nearly forgot to ask the question I came to this thread to ask... Are Alphabet Squadron and Master and Apprentice worth reading?
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Jun 5, 2019 18:42
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Doronin posted:I nearly forgot to ask the question I came to this thread to ask...
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Jun 5, 2019 18:53
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Doronin posted:That's the only book in the new canon I've sincerely, thoroughly enjoyed. I need to give that one a re-read at some point. Other books I mostly liked were the first Thrawn book and... Bloodline was ok. Alliances was a bad miss, and could have easily been 30% shorter without losing anything of value. Zahn's writing has taken a deep dive since the 90s and he's long out of good ideas. Chuck Wendig is the human embodiment of assault and battery on written language.
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Jun 5, 2019 18:59
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Casimir Radon posted:Master and Apprentice is really good. Alphabet Squadron isn't out till next week. Good to know! The guy at Star Wars Explained on YouTube keeps referencing Alphabet Squadron so I didn't realize it wasn't out yet. But I'll go ahead and pick up M&A. Van Dis posted:Alliances was a bad miss, and could have easily been 30% shorter without losing anything of value. Zahn's writing has taken a deep dive since the 90s and he's long out of good ideas. Eventually I will finish Alliances. But I'm glad to know it's not just me. I thought Zahn did fine with the first book, but this second one probably never needed to be written. I have my doubts there will be any kind of payoff to the plot.
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Jun 5, 2019 20:01
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Doronin posted:Eventually I will finish Alliances. But I'm glad to know it's not just me. I thought Zahn did fine with the first book, but this second one probably never needed to be written. I have my doubts there will be any kind of payoff to the plot. I wrote a lengthy review of it and I'll be interested to read your own thoughts on it when you get around to finishing it.
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Jun 5, 2019 20:08
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Van Dis posted:Alliances was a bad miss, and could have easily been 30% shorter without losing anything of value. Zahn's writing has taken a deep dive since the 90s and he's long out of good ideas. I was surprised at how little of even the present-day stuff in Alliances actually worked. New alien threat from the Unknown Regions? Nah Thrawn defeats them pretty easily with tactics (which even then is muddled by the narrative's desire to, nevertheless, build them up as a genuine threat) Reintroducing the Chiss as a species and culture? Well we're just going to have an long, ill-fitting aside about how their only Force sensitives are girls and they use them to navigate hyperlanes because apparently this cool and advanced culture hasn't invented navicomputers And there's the whole weird fact of the novel's awkward placement in-between seasons of Rebels that leaves it feeling inconsequential in the grander scheme of things I'm curious to see how they resolve matters in Traitor, but I'm still surprised by how underwhelming Alliances was. Cross-Section fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jun 5, 2019 |
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Jun 5, 2019 20:17
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Cross-Section posted:I was surprised at how little of even the present-day stuff in Alliances actually worked. I don't that. like yeah its weird, but i can easliy believe it, the galaxy is giant place and such. anyway, i didnt care for alliance. id kinda rather they had just stuck to vader and thrawn buddy cops with just hints of the prequel stuff, the prequel stuff was fine and ok but it just didnt do anything for me.
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Jun 6, 2019 18:01
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I think Zahn works better when not hemmed in by strict publisher demands. Outbound Flight has Obi-Wan and Anakin tacked on for a bit and it feels like he was told to include them. Thrawn is still pretty good but has to fit with Rebels, and Alliance has Rebels and Galaxy's Edge stuff.
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Jun 6, 2019 18:08
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ended up indifferent to Aftermath itself, but i was in turns amused and dismayed by the sheer amount of attention that was directed at wendig's use of the present tense, as if the present tense is some particularly strange or daring experimental technique its tempting to pin this on the general phenomenon "fans of niche nostalgia-driven media don't like you to change their thing from the way they remember it" but you see the same thing in more mainstream or casual reading circles people kvetched voluminously about the present tense when Wolf Hall won the booker prize for instance i still get violent flashbacks to some of the thinkpieces, even after all these years PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Jun 7, 2019 02:29
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PupsOfWar posted:ended up indifferent to Aftermath itself, but i was in turns amused and dismayed by the sheer amount of attention that was directed at wendig's use of the present tense, as if the present tense is some particularly strange or daring experimental technique Most people have a hard time articulating what's good or bad about writing, so I give people a pass for latching on to something easily identifiable like "overuse of the present tense" in Wendig's prose rather than blaming them for something unrelated like having their glorious EU memories tainted. Plus they're more right than they know, he's a bad writer who uses the present tense as a crutch, to say nothing of his terrible pacing, tone-deaf phrasing, general murder of the adjective, etc etc Still though if you go on r/starwarsbooks plenty of people read Aftermath and with all their might produce the following analysis: "I liked the action, and the characters. It felt like I was in the story. 9/10 stars."
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Jun 7, 2019 20:25
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15 minutes of Fallen Order gameplay is out. I'm excited.
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Jun 9, 2019 01:19
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It looks like an early 2000s platformer ala god of war by way of prince of Persia
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Jun 9, 2019 01:29
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Arcsquad12 posted:It looks like an early 2000s platformer ala god of war by way of prince of Persia In the best way possible.
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Jun 9, 2019 03:03
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Aw, the droid's got WALL-E eyes.
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Jun 9, 2019 03:32
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Hot take: that droid is a much better design than the new wheel guy from Rise of Skywalker. Also didn't realize Saw Gerrera was going to pop up in this. That was a fun surprise.
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Jun 9, 2019 04:45
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Alphabet Squadron is out now. Anyone have a chance to read it?
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Jun 12, 2019 23:31
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Alphabet Squadron is out now. Anyone have a chance to read it? Downloaded and read the first chapter last night, seems pretty good so far!
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Jun 13, 2019 17:43
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PupsOfWar posted:ended up indifferent to Aftermath itself, but i was in turns amused and dismayed by the sheer amount of attention that was directed at wendig's use of the present tense, as if the present tense is some particularly strange or daring experimental technique its less the present tense and more the overly flowery prose mixed with present tense. something about the writing doesn't jive write in my mind which sucks because there are some cool ideas there. I like operation cinder and poo poo because it fits in palpatines whole character. Pops Mgee posted:Hot take: that droid is a much better design than the new wheel guy from Rise of Skywalker. Also didn't realize Saw Gerrera was going to pop up in this. That was a fun surprise. after reading the gameinformer and various glowing previews. i am kinda excited for this game. also i like saw gerrera. i kinda like the idea of some space zavimbie/che guvera fighting for year and years and years against the empire and becoming more and more hosed up both mentally and physically from the toll.
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Jun 16, 2019 03:31
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To me it was Wendig trying to deflect all criticism at his work as being the result of homophobes because he's a thin skinned jerk.
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Jun 16, 2019 03:59
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Arcsquad12 posted:To me it was Wendig trying to deflect all criticism at his work as being the result of homophobes because he's a thin skinned jerk. Could you elaborate on this?
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Jun 16, 2019 05:32
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Xenomrph posted:Could you elaborate on this? I bounced off Aftermath due to Wendig's prose, but I think it's being a little unfair to interpret his blog post that way: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/09/07/star-wars-aftermath-reviews-news-and-such/
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Jun 16, 2019 05:44
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I like operation cinder and poo poo because it fits in palpatines whole character. brother palps is a cool villain, it'll be good to have him back even if it's (hopefully) just as a sort of narrative specter, not a clone or whatever one idea I've seen explored a bit in fandom culture but which im not sure has been expored in canon is that the OT-era sith are not very...sith-y The nature of the Dark Side, or at least the way it is conceptualized in the sith code*, is that it's this source of cosmic social darwinism wherein all beings must constantly try to self-actualize through unrestrained pursuit of their passions and ambitions, seeking a sort of randian freedom at the cost of safety, security, and decency. This is opposed by the Light Side wherein peace and tranquility are sought at the cost of various constraints. A Sith "society", therefor, should be this chaotic, freewheeling pseudo-feudalism where fortunes can be made or unmade in a single betrayal or a single moment of hesitation We see this ideal realized in the MMO and various other ancient-era star wars materials, where sith are these debauched arisotcrats constantly backstabbing, murdering, adultering, and otherwise scheming amongst themselves palpatine however is very much not that - he's a weird ascetic trying to create a sterile police state where everything and everyone is subordinated to his iron will I'm sure the real reason for this is that lucas radically re-conceptualized jedi/sith stuff in between his trilogies but it's fun to think of palpatine as a sort of reformer or heretic against classical sith ideology *im aware that in-universe its an open question whether the light/dark divide is real
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Jun 16, 2019 23:53
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I think the reason it jives is the Sith Code is not a creed for the masses but a creed for the individual. In that context it makes Palpatine's rise to supremecy over the whole galaxy and being beholden to no power but his own the ultimate manifestation of the code.
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