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For the Legends section, those are some pretty good picks. I would add Traitor, but it's smack-dab in the middle of a 500-book series so I understand leaving it out. I'll actually nominate Yoda: Dark Rendezvous and A.C. Crispin trilogy of Han Solo books. Maybe those don't actually hold up, but I remember them being better than most old EU fare. surf rock fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Dec 17, 2020 |
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Dec 17, 2020 16:56
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fartknocker posted:I remember I, Jedi also being one of the few books to explode the idea that not all Force users have the same control or abilities with it. IIRC, Corran basically had zero ability at telekinesis or some of the physical aspects Jedi are shown doing, but he was very capable at projecting visions or ideas into other people's minds, which gets used a lot in the back half of the book. I reread it a few months ago and enjoyed it well enough in spite of it's flaws. The weirdest thing about it is that it's written in first-person, which takes some getting used to if you're coming into it from other Star Wars stuff such as the highly related Jedi Academy trilogy. I do remember liking that part of it. I think he also had the power of energy absorption? Like when Vader just hand-waved Han's blaster bolt at their Cloud City dinner. Honestly, make Jedi more like X-Men imo. From that book, I also remember: - The author constantly portraying Luke as a naive dummy for how he handled the Jedi Academy stuff, at least compared to how Cool Corran would've handled it; if I recall correctly he also portrays Mara Jada as being more into Corran than Luke because they were both ~~~street-smart~~~ - The antagonist being a sexy pirate lady who regularly prowls her ship's gym looking to bang - Corran ending up naked at least once and maybe multiple times - Corran dogfighting with Rogue Squadron and thinking Gavin sucks but that Tycho was like impossible to beat - There being some weird manservant companion who was his dead cop dad's buddy (or the son of that buddy) who had MEMORY POWERS - A Jedi offshoot branch that were basically Power Rangers who all got their poo poo kicked in by Luke and Corran surf rock fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 03:14
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:Yeah and they immediately killed the world brain. Wait, what? God, I swear that half the Legends authors must have just loving hated Stover for showing them up; they couldn't wait to do this poo poo and to turn Vergere and Jacen into Sith. No nuance allowed!
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Dec 24, 2020 03:15
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:Vergere literally sacrificed her own life to save entire worlds and lives, Vong or not. And that's not even in a Stover book! Oh, fair point, I did think that Destiny's Way was pretty good and a better follow-up to Traitor than I'd expected.
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Dec 24, 2020 04:36
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Finally got around to finishing my reread of The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy. I forgot how much of a nothing the whole Kuat storyline turns out to be. Given that it was the major throughline of the whole trilogy... that's not great. However, what is great is the following: - The legit wicked resurrection of Ku'dar Mub'at from the dead. - Dengar being a completely useless part of the story. - Bossk getting a literal "and then everyone clapped" ending after becoming depressed to the point that he no longer cares whether he lives or dies. - Boba Fett kind of getting punked out repeatedly and ending the trilogy without having made any credits, never getting revenge on Balancesheet from stealing from him or shooting at him, not having Slave I, and on his way to cave to Black Sun's demands with the knowledge that they might kill him anyway.
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Jan 4, 2021 05:51
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I agree with the person who said it's only surprising that Disney didn't let the old EU continue to live on an as alternative universe thing. Which, I guess they technically still could (and they are still printing the books after all), but it seems unlikely. But yeah, even before the Disney sale the EU was only canon until a movie or show contradicted it. That said, it is interesting to see the old EU references in the new canon. It's no surprise; many of the people who are Star Wars obsessives now were Star Wars obsessives before the Disney transition, including content creators. I feel like we're living in a world where Disney's creatives pick-and-choose from the old EU but just picked bad poo poo, like Dark Empire. What should they have grabbed instead while doing their EU remix? I guess the obvious answer is the Thrawn trilogy, but what were the other options? - X-wing (too big of a focus-shift to be the sequel trilogy but perfect for a TV show or a spinoff movie series; this is the EU content I would want adapted most) - Bounty Hunter Wars (let's loving gooooooooooooooooo) - Jedi Academy (with some reworks I could see it being this) - Black Fleet Crisis (just worse NJO) - Corellian trilogy (hahahaha) - NJO (I think this is the only other realistic alternative to the Thrawn trilogy, but that's an incredible amount of condensing needed for a trilogy) Anything post-NJO would just be too wildly different to re-establish. Personally, I would've preferred NJO or even Jedi Academy to Thrawn for a sequel trilogy.
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Mar 9, 2021 00:45
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Defenestrategy posted:A lot of the Clonewars/pre-new hope stuff was pretty good reading in my opinion. My focus was on a sequel trilogy, but speaking of the prequels, I'd love a movie or show adapting the MedStar books. Space M*A*S*H made for a helluva story.
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Mar 9, 2021 01:20
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Chairman Capone posted:Yeah, I also thought that the book was pretty decent, especially by the standards of very early Bantam - with the caveat that who knows how much of that was due to him going back and editing it in 2015, so maybe his prose or ideas wouldn't have been as polished back in 1993 or whenever. That is an interesting idea! At the very least, bringing back a sham Senate seems like something Isard or one of the smarter warlords would've done to try to stop planets from deserting the Empire through the pretense of reform.
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May 8, 2021 22:33
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Here's a question: when you think of Corellia, what real-life countries and cultures do you picture? Personally, I had always pictured it as a mixture of Italy and Australia, but a friend mentioned that his mental image of Corellian culture was the American old west.
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May 9, 2021 22:11
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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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