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Doctor Spaceman posted:Anderson's stuff is really dumb but there's a stupid goofiness to it that makes it far harder to hate than the worst bits of the EU. I read Darksaber exactly once, in downtime between races at state champtionship rowing regatta at 14 years old, so I was exhausted and distracted. And I just... remember it all somehow. Maybe because it was so dumb.
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Dec 27, 2021 12:06
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I’ve only listened to the abridged audiobook of Darksaber which I think is heavily cut down. I need to experience the stupid in full some day. TJA trilogy is pretty readable when you consider that it’s competing against shot like the Callista Trilogy, The Crystal Star, LOTF, and FOTJ. I would take blob races over that poo poo any day.
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Dec 27, 2021 18:31
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Honestly, I don't think Darksaber is that bad, by the standards of mid-90s EU. It's not great, but I think it has enough decent parts to it, like the Daala/Pellaeon teamup, the unification of the warlords, the whole threat ultimately being a joke about a ripoff Death Star built by a cheap contractor and a stolen valor Imperial - if anything, I think it's in that valley where it's not as enjoyable dumb as other stuff, but also not as good as other stuff despite being as earnest as Zahn's output, where's it's hurt more by being too in the middle than too bad. Then again I'm also a Black Fleet defender so what do I know 
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Dec 27, 2021 18:44
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BFC has Ackbar act like a goofy grandpa and bully the New Republic Military into letting an alien whose species was wiped out by the Yevetha become a pilot. If I remember right the guy becomes a pilot and dies by the end of the trilogy.
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Dec 27, 2021 18:49
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Decided to keep reading Dark Apprentice. After the childish Han/Lando stuff, it did actually pick up a bit. ~ Neat stuff in Luke's academy (What I actually wanted from the series) ~ Cool idea with Exar Kun using Anakin's image to try to trick Luke, but of course Mr. Kun is too hammy to keep it convincing ~ drat, poor Gantoris ~ The next Han/Lando scene was way better ~Daala being Daala, at least it's well-written and not too cartoonish, just accurate for your typical genocidal evil empire faction. Stuff that was dumb ~ The Hidden Planet the Solo kids are on... super unstable, could collapse at any moment, or at least in a century. That's... not a good idea. ~ Han and Lando are going back to Kessel (Big Vader NO here) ~ Anderson I don't think remembers how many students Luke actually has. Luke names 12 he WANTS, but KJA only names 5 or 6 currently with him, but then twice mentions All 12 or 11 being right there. This happens once immediately before a scene where Mara Jade, one of the 12 Luke names, as being somewhere else (with Han and Lando). ANDERSON PLEASE COUNT
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Dec 27, 2021 19:28
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There are more students than get real screen time, at least it gets retconned that way. I, Jedi has Corran there of course, and I think it mentions Brakiss as well. KJA might have decided the latter was part of the original group of students, but his bit in I, Jedi and a tiny one in The New Rebellion is all he really gets in the adult novels.
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Dec 27, 2021 19:35
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:~ Anderson I don't think remembers how many students Luke actually has. Luke names 12 he WANTS, but KJA only names 5 or 6 currently with him, but then twice mentions All 12 or 11 being right there. This happens once immediately before a scene where Mara Jade, one of the 12 Luke names, as being somewhere else (with Han and Lando). To give KJA the benefit of the doubt, I believe this was intentional, so that he could establish that Luke has 12 initial students but KJA wouldn't name all of them himself, so other authors could later develop some of the core new Jedi. Although if I remember right, I think only Kyle Katarn and Corran were later retconned into being part of that initial 12 group. Kyp and Mara were subsequent additions. So it is funny to think that in the old EU there are probably four or five original Jedi students of Luke's, and presumably Jedi Masters, who we just never see and are always just off-screen. Also kind of funny that the 12 initial students was kept for Luke's Jedi Temple in Last Jedi.
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Dec 27, 2021 19:53
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Chairman Capone posted:Although if I remember right, I think only Kyle Katarn and Corran were later retconned into being part of that initial 12 group. Kyp and Mara were subsequent additions. So it is funny to think that in the old EU there are probably four or five original Jedi students of Luke's, and presumably Jedi Masters, who we just never see and are always just off-screen. it's very funny to imagine kyle katarn just sitting around passively while all of the exar kun shenanigans are going on
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Dec 27, 2021 19:59
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Jazerus posted:it's very funny to imagine kyle katarn just sitting around passively while all of the exar kun shenanigans are going on "Hey, Kyle, should we help?" "No, Horn, I wanna see where this goes."
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Dec 27, 2021 20:12
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God why did they keep bringing back Alema Rar as a villain? She was perfectly fine being a sad traumatized fallen Jedi that wasn't even that terrible as a bad guy in Dark Nest but she just keeps popping up to do absolutely nothing and is the worst goddamn assassin. She keeps talking about how much she wants to rebuild Dark Nest and how she wants to make the heros suffer but she just keeps spectacularly failing at it despite being invisible or actively erasing memory or something wherever she goes? Whoever mentioned Legacy of the Force would have been a good trilogy or a decent 4/5 parter uptrend is entirely correct. I'm on Exile now and it kinda feels like with such horrible betrayal/loss at the hands of Comneor and the Bothans you'd think the book and the maybe the series should be wrapping up but...there's still a few hundreds pages and another 5 books to go...
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Dec 28, 2021 01:03
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Considering some of the old trilogies felt already overlong, I wonder why they thought nine-book barricades were the way to go, especially since none of their central points were as all-encompassing as the YV galactic war?
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Dec 28, 2021 06:26
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I guess they figured the rise and fall of a new Sith Lord should be pretty long but didnt have enough material/budget to make it NJO length so only about 9 books should be good! 3 for each of us! No not like that Karen.
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Dec 28, 2021 07:18
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Robot Style posted:What's funny about Palpatine's first name being Sheev is that it's phonetically very close to the pronunciation of the Irish word sídhe, which is spelled sìth in Scotland. It's not easy being a German Star Wars fan, because some of the names just sound very weird to us. Fett is literally the German word for fat, both the adjective and the noun. Maul means the mouth of an animal, like a muzzle. "Halt dein Maul" also is used as an expression like "shut your trap". And Sheev sounds like the German word schief, which https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/schief
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Dec 28, 2021 12:33
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Rochallor posted:Plotwise Dark Empire is maybe the stupidest SW thing ever released (until TRoS) but its storytelling is decent and the art is gorgeous. It absolutely nails the tone of pervasive corruption and light vs dark. You take away the dialogue bubbles and it's a masterpiece. Dark Empire gave us Bowie-Sheev. All else is forgiven.
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Dec 28, 2021 23:11
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Rochallor posted:Yeah, KJA is a bad writer, but he does as least keep things moving. The Crystal Star is the worst, but you've got books and entire trilogies where literally nothing happens. gently caress re-canonizing Clone Wars or Zahn nonsense. If I were Filoni, I would have Boba Fett meet a certain extragalactic goo pile in the new series. 
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Dec 28, 2021 23:36
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Continuing to work on Dark Apprentice, - Mon Calamari world-building was cool. - Daala is supposed to be a f*ck-up right? Like all her "cool skills and outside-the-box thinking" is just her own self-aggrandizement while she continues to F up? I mean, to be fair, I don't think anyone could have predicted two suicide ship runs on her Star Destroyers, but drat. This is like a joke from KJA right?
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Dec 29, 2021 01:09
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Later books do paint her as a gently caress up (until she's inexplicably a considerable threat in LOTF and Fate of the Jedi) but Anderson absolutely intended her to be a serious villain. It didn't work because she's a trainwreck but that was the original intent. I love Daala and most characters' reactions to her. She's a loving lunatic who murders her way to the top multiple times and her subordinates only tolerate her because she's killed all their former bosses. The heroes get exasperated fighting her because she inevitably fails but she keeps coming up with ridiculous Tarkin-esque terrorist strategies that cause a lot of damage if they let her run around unchecked.
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Dec 29, 2021 01:28
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Daala's disconnect in LOTF is originally because Traviss just wanted to have a woman Imperial character, and one of her fans told her to use Daala, but because Traviss never read any Star Wars books besides her own, she just based Daala off the Wookieepedia article and Traviss' own girlboss template. Then Denning made her president of the galaxy but that can be explained because Denning clearly has a broken brain, especially when it comes to women characters.
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Dec 29, 2021 01:36
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I've got a week off and I'm bored and I caught up on posts from this thread over the past half year.Chairman Capone posted:Actually this is making me remember that if the Disney buyout hadn't happened, the Clone Wars would have gone on long enough to feature the Yuuzhan Vong episode, so Ahsoka might have wound up encountering them. Oh dang what's the story about that episode? I know it was implied somewhere that Palpatine knew about the Vong and that's why the Empire underwent such a massive military buildup, and I think maybe the Chiss (or specifically Thrawn?) knew about them as well and were also gearing to fight them, and I think Revan (?) might've also supposedly encountered them or something, but I hadn't heard about this. VaultAggie posted:Balance point is the one of my least favorites of the NJO. I just remember it being very slow and tedious, with the highlight being Jacen finally doing poo poo. Jacen has a real "get in the loving robot, Shinji!" energy in the first half of NJO. The payoff is absolutely incredible in the second half, but it's a lot. jivjov posted:I still laugh my rear end off at the editorial mandate of Anakin Solo being the one to die to avoid audience confusion with Anakin Skywalker It might have happened for a goofy reason, but I always liked Anakin's fate. I never found him an intrinsically compelling character, even after the Edge of Victory books, and this story beat sent the other characters in much more interesting directions. Chairman Capone posted:The idea of the Jedi Temple being built over a dark side shrine was originally invented by Matt Stover for Traitor, but it's one of those things where Lucas seems like he independently came up with the idea for Clone Wars. Knowing Luceno, him using it in the Tarkin book was probably him trying to integrate both of those ideas. I'd quibble with this a little bit. Looking at Traitor now, Jacen claims that he's surrounded by the dark side there. Vergere asks why the Jedi would build their Temple on a nexus of dark side energy, and then says that the answer is simple: they wouldn't. I'll quote some of her next lines: "What you feel is the Force. This is the shameful secret of the Jedi: There is no dark side." "The Force is one, Jacen Solo. The Force is everything, and everything is the Force. I've told you already: the Force does not take sides. The Force does not even have sides." "Light and dark are no more than nomenclature: words that describe how little we understand. What you call the dark side is the raw, unrestrained Force itself: you call the dark side what you find when you give yourself over wholly to the Force. To be a Jedi is to control your passion...but Jedi control limits your power. Greatness—true greatness of any kind—requires the surrender of control. Passion that is guided, not walled away. Leave your limits behind." "If your surrender leads to slaughter, that is not because the Force has darkness in it. It is because you do." "The only dark side you need fear, Jacen Solo, is the one in your own heart." I've always loved that interpretation of the Force.
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Dec 29, 2021 23:03
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surf rock posted:Oh dang what's the story about that episode? There's not really a lot more to it than that. One of the ideas for a future Clone Wars episode would involve Jedi encountering a Yuuzhan Vong ship as a sort of X-Files alien abduction parody. Filoni drew a few real basic sketches of a Yuuzhan Vong ship (one of the ones from the Legacy comic) capturing one of the ROTS star destroyers. I think Filoni also said that Lucas established the Vong would not be cut off from the Force as Lucas felt that it was impossible to cut someone off from the Force. That's pretty much it. I'm actually not even sure if Ahsoka and Anakin would be in that episode. Palpatine knowing about the Vong I believe was implied by Luceno in one of his ROTS tie in things, and then became the basis of Outbound Flight, where Palpatine learns about them from Thrawn, who had previously destroyed a Vong scout force. The Revan thing comes from a story Canderous Ordo tells you in KOTOR 1, though I don't think Revan actually encounters one. I remember a very late EU novel had Darth Maul fight a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, too.
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Dec 29, 2021 23:13
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Chairman Capone posted:The Revan thing comes from a story Canderous Ordo tells you in KOTOR 1, though I don't think Revan actually encounters one. Yeah, Canderous talks about a strange ship that looked like an asteroid and spat rocks and plasma as weapons -- "Yuuzhan Vong" or "Coralskipper" don't get mentioned at all, but that was the implication.
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Dec 29, 2021 23:57
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I remember Rogue Planet is where Zenoma Semitic was first introduced. I’ve never read it but it’s been basically forgotten as a book at this point. None of the prequel era novels really had much staying power.
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Dec 30, 2021 00:48
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Casimir Radon posted:I remember Rogue Planet is where Zenoma Semitic was first introduced. I’ve never read it but it’s been basically forgotten as a book at this point. None of the prequel era novels really had much staying power. Shatterpoint stayed with me p. good 
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Dec 30, 2021 00:58
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General Battuta posted:Shatterpoint stayed with me p. good That, Darth Plagueis, and the Episode III novelization are good. I also liked the MedStar duology.
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Dec 30, 2021 01:09
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Casimir Radon posted:I remember Rogue Planet is where Zenoma Semitic was first introduced. I’ve never read it but it’s been basically forgotten as a book at this point. None of the prequel era novels really had much staying power. I mean, it was basically a prequel to the NJO; between that no longer being canon, the Tarkin bits being overridden by Clone Wars, and there being almost nothing (in either continuity) about Anakin and Obi-Wan pre-AOTC, there's not a lot of ways it really could have "staying" power. I do think it's interesting that for all that Zahn is accused of not wanting to work with others' characters, Outbound Flight is pretty much a direct sequel to Rogue Planet.
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Dec 30, 2021 03:00
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Finished Dark Apprentice, working on Champions - kinda annoyed how Luke got chumped by Kyp and Exar Kun so easily. Dude's a Jedi Master, beat Darth Vader, how is not-dead Kun gonna be a threat? Luke definitely should not have been ignorant of this evil spirit everyone else apparently knew about. Kinda leads to my next complaint. - I feel like this "trilogy" really missed a big opportunity to make it more about the namesake academy. Barely any of the academy characters get a lot of focus, just comments here and there. I think if the series had been really focusing on the characters of the new Jedi with Luke leading them, it would've been more enjoyable with less sloggy parts. I guess KJA had his hands tied since there was only so much new lore he could invent, but still... - lol at Wedge and Bird-lady stuff - So I know Kyp doesn't die at the end, I guess the reason he's not universally reviled after using the Sun Crusher to destroy 2 solar systems is because his targets were Empire holdouts, so most of the Galaxy is thinking "Well someone had to do it"? - C-3PO was pretty cool in Dark Apprentice, but I don't like the disrespect he's already gotten in Champs, it's one of the reasons I detest the Sequel Trilogy. In the original and prequels C-3P0 is a source for slapstick, but he also gets a chance in nearly every movie to do something cool or helpful. I don't like it when he just gets put down. If I was a kid I'd probably enjoy this series. It's not... unenjoyable right now, I just know there's way better books out there as far as Star Was fiction goes. Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jan 1, 2022 |
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Jan 1, 2022 14:51
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:- So I know Kyp doesn't die at the end, I guess the reason he's not universally reviled after using the Sun Crusher to destroy 2 solar systems is because his targets were Empire holdouts, so most of the Galaxy is thinking "Well someone had to do it"? It's worth noting that most of Kyp's subsequent appearances are in the NJO on, where (at least at first) his name was just slotted into a placeholder original character. Kyp doesn't really have a lot more appearances in the Bantam era, but one of the only ones is in a Young Jedi Knight book (also by KJA) where as I recall, he's depicted as kind of haunted and penitent. But that's just my memory of a book I probably haven't read in over 20 years. Then you get stuff like Vision of the Future where Kyp doesn't appear, but Mara (speaking for Zahn) really condemns him and Luke's mentorship of him.
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Jan 2, 2022 22:04
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I can't remember in NJO. Is it Kyp or Corran who fights against the Vong warlord on Ithor and got turned into a scapegoat by Bork Failure?
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Jan 2, 2022 22:14
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Arc Hammer posted:I can't remember in NJO. Is it Kyp or Corran who fights against the Vong warlord on Ithor and got turned into a scapegoat by Bork Failure? Corran, in Stackpole's last contribution to Star Wars. Actually, looking that up now, apparently the last Star Wars thing he wrote was a three-page Phantom Menace tie-in comic. Never knew that until now. It's strange to think of a Bantam era stalwart doing something prequel related.
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Jan 2, 2022 22:19
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Kyp led the militant Jedi in NJO then did some weird mentor poo poo with Jaina before getting his stuff together.
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Jan 2, 2022 22:25
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Crossposting from the Retro FPS thread. There’s an actual hood way to play Jedi Knight on modern computers now. Casimir Radon posted:I know I and some other in the thread have lamented that there wasn’t a sourceport for the Sith Engine. Well turns out there’s an in progress engine recreation and it’s in a very workable state. Let me introduce you to OpenJKDF2. I’ve made it to level 8 without any major bugs. The only time it’s crashes was when I tried to activate Max a second time in Barons Hed. As a side note this is first time I’ve actually seen Max in one of my playthroughs despite knowing about it for roughly 20 years. Even in an alpha state it runs far better than I’ve seen it run since Windows 98, surpassing the Gog version.
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Jan 2, 2022 23:12
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Chairman Capone posted:Corran, in Stackpole's last contribution to Star Wars.
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Jan 3, 2022 01:34
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Got to the part where the apprentices all team up to blow Exar Kun away. I cheated and looked at the "Bad books read" thread and see the rest of the book is all about chasing the Death Star prototype which I'm not interested in at all, so I think I'll declare Champions finished and move on to I, Jedi. Glad to hear Kyp doesn't really appear much more after Champions.. He wasn't a bad character concept per say, just not handled well. I agree with the user who said the weakest part of the Academy trilogy being that most of the books aren't even about it. I wanted to really meet some new characters being trained by Luke, not hear about Hand and Lando playing sabacc over and over. Still some nice worldbuilding that went on. I hear KJA gets slightly better in Dark Saber but I think I'll do some Stackpole and Zahn before tackling that.
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Jan 3, 2022 01:46
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Animal Friend posted:I read Darksaber exactly once, in downtime between races at state champtionship rowing regatta at 14 years old, so I was exhausted and distracted. For all of Darksaber's many faults, it is very memorable. I (strangely) also read it when I was 14 (I'm 38 now), and I also remember it. (spoiler tags for Crazy Joe Wilson in case they ever decide to read it) The Lightsaber Death Star. Daala and Pellaeon reunifying the Empire. The death of Crix Madine. The Hutt killing and cloning that one scientist so he could keep killing him over and over again. All of it. thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Jan 4, 2022 22:17
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Bevel Lemelisk's fate in Legends is like a hilariously cruel parody of Duncan Idaho in Dune. I love it.
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Jan 4, 2022 22:24
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thrawn527 posted:For all of Darksaber's many faults, it is very memorable. I (strangely) also read it when I was 14 (I'm 38 now), and I also remember it. (spoiler tags for Crazy Joe Wilson in case they ever decide to read it) The Lightsaber Death Star. Daala and Pellaeon reunifying the Empire. The death of Crix Madine. The Hutt killing and cloning that one scientist so he could keep killing him over and over again. All of it. One minor note it was Palpatine doing the repeated killing of Bevel Lemelisk
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Jan 5, 2022 00:22
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I started reading I, Jedi. Way better of a book than the Academy trilogy. Nice to see a lot of scenes where Luke is actually competent and some of the different lessons he has students trying. My only complaint so far is a complaint about anything Stackpole writes, which is he takes too many little things and has the character extrapolate and over-analyze it and how their personality is being affected/is affecting said thing/situation. He does this in his Mechwarrior books a lot too. Still a big improvement on Academy's writing, I can see thought why this might be considered a bit of a retcon.
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Jan 5, 2022 01:21
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I remember finding the first-person perspective pretty jarring. But I liked it at the time. Though that was when I was in high school 15ish years ago. I’ll probably get around to doing a reread of TJA followed by I, Jedi. I just finished rereading Choices of One which I haven’t read since it came out in 2011. It never got an audiobook for whatever reason. I followed that up with Crisis of Faith, a little Thrawn novella that Zahn had written for the end of the Heir to the Empire 20th anniversary edition, that I hadn’t realized was there. With Disney getting more comfortable making money off the Legends material I’d sure love it if they let Zahn write the third Hand of Judgement book that he wanted to.
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Jan 5, 2022 01:41
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Holy poo poo they actually killed Mara Jade didn't they?
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Jan 5, 2022 04:14
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Angry_Ed posted:One minor note it was Palpatine doing the repeated killing of Bevel Lemelisk Wait what?! Well…poo poo. I guess my memory isn’t all that great after all. Though, now that you mention it, yeah, you’re right. I remember that now. thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 05:18
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