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WhiskeyWhiskers
Oct 14, 2013

Covok posted:

What was wrong with her interpretation?

Very Mary Sue.

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twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Very Mary Sue.

Yea, Mandalorians in her works were super mega awesome at everything and blah blah blah. It's annoying because the rest of her work was pretty decent, it's just she loved Mandalorians so much she made them the best at everything.

Generic American
Mar 15, 2012

I love my Peng


I honestly don't think that her take was inherently Mary Sue-ish; it was mostly down to the presentation of it for me, which was always some shade of "MAN, JEDI ARE THE WORST" followed by presenting her Mandalorian characters as ~morally complex~ and emotionally simple by comparison. Even as someone who is absolutely sick of Jedi being the center of so many stories (or being presented as unambiguously righteous by default), I still managed to find it pretty insufferable. I mean for her Republic Commando novels, you could pretty much do a clean edit by replacing every mention of "Jedi" with "politician" and "Mandalorian/clone trooper" with "ARE TROOPS" and barely notice the difference. But if you can block that out, I feel like most of her characters are genuinely interesting and fall short of being Mary Sues... it's just that she doesn't seem to realize that they're not perfect paragons, and that bleeds over into the narrative voice.

It's me. I'm the one who unironically loves Mandalorian culture bullshit. :negative:

Weirdly enough, she did pretty much the same thing when she got tapped to do some Halo novels. But in that case, she was infinitely more justified in her hate-fixation and yet somehow just as obnoxious about it.

Generic American fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Nov 7, 2016

VolticSurge
Jul 23, 2013

Just your friendly neighborhood photobomb raptor.



Basically,Traviss' Mandos are like the Ultramarines from Warhammer 40K-an entire faction of stuck-up pricks that always win and are never wrong. Just replace "Karen Traviss" with "Matt Ward",and they're pretty much the
same thing.

Generic American posted:

Weirdly enough, she did pretty much the same thing when she got tapped to do some Halo novels. But in that case, she was infinitely more justified in her hate-fixation and yet somehow just as obnoxious about it.

Then there was the bullshit she pulled in the Gears of War novels she wrote. The rape camps? Yeah, that.

Big Mean Jerk
Jan 27, 2009

Well, of course I know him.
He's me.
Never forget how Traviss once devoted an entire novel to Boba Fett teaching Jaina Solo how to stab her brother because it would be absolutely impossible to accomplish without ~* MANDO'A TRAINING *~

EVIL NOONER
Oct 8, 2016

by exmarx
haha! kevin mckidd and ray stevenson. no wonder i felt like i sensed a presence...

thats great.

THIRTEEN!!!

Sith Happens
Jun 7, 2005

You will find that it is you
who are mistaken.

About a great many things.

EVIL NOONER posted:


THIRTEEN!!!

THIRTEEN!!!

:hist101: :hist101:

EVIL NOONER
Oct 8, 2016

by exmarx
pretty sure i cried when i saw that the first time

maybe the second time too idk

tsob
Sep 26, 2006

Chalalala~
What reference am I not getting?

Oscar Wilde Bunch
Jun 12, 2012

Grimey Drawer

tsob posted:

What reference am I not getting?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_(TV_series)

EVIL NOONER
Oct 8, 2016

by exmarx

tsob posted:

What reference am I not getting?

its like if you took game of thrones, but removed the fact that its bad, and the tv show was actually cool & good

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.
So, what I'm getting from all this is that Bobba Fett's costume looked so cool that Legends made an entire culture of badasses who all wore the armor and were badasses together. And that is okay when you're 13, but, when you get older, you realize its kind of Mary Sue and gets boring and now we're glad that, while still a warrior culture, they're not "so awesomez, so OP."

Am I following legends vs nucannon mandlorian chat properly?

EVIL NOONER
Oct 8, 2016

by exmarx

Covok posted:

So, what I'm getting from all this is that Bobba Fett's costume looked so cool that Legends made an entire culture of badasses who all wore the armor and were badasses together. And that is okay when you're 13, but, when you get older, you realize its kind of Mary Sue and gets boring and now we're glad that, while still a warrior culture, they're not "so awesomez, so OP."

Am I following legends vs nucannon mandlorian chat properly?

lol i mean, lets not pretend that theres only one depiction of boba fett or mandalorians in legends canon pls

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

EVIL NOONER posted:

lol i mean, lets not pretend that theres only one depiction of boba fett or mandalorians in legends canon pls

I didn't follow Legends. To me, it's this dense, multidecade spanning mess of multiple authors writing in the same universe with little to no guiding hand keeping things together. It feels like a dense mess that I chip away at learning over time due to a morbid sense of curiosity.

So, consider me a bit of a neophyte.

What were the other Legends' Mandalorians like?

NTRabbit
Aug 15, 2012

i wear this armour to protect myself from the histrionics of hysterical women

bitches




Covok posted:

I didn't follow Legends. To me, it's this dense, multidecade spanning mess of multiple authors writing in the same universe with little to no guiding hand keeping things together. It feels like a dense mess that I chip away at learning over time due to a morbid sense of curiosity.

So, consider me a bit of a neophyte.

What were the other Legends' Mandalorians like?

They came from KotoR, where they were a space faring warrior culture who went around conquering nearby worlds, before they started doing it to Republic worlds and ended up in a war against the Jedi led republic armies, which they eventually lost. Pretty much everything Mandalorian in the new canon has been carefully taken and adapted from KotoR and KotoR II, and none of the other legends stuff.

NTRabbit fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Nov 7, 2016

EVIL NOONER
Oct 8, 2016

by exmarx

NTRabbit posted:

They came from KotoR, where they were a space faring warrior culture who went around conquering nearby worlds, before they started doing it to Republic worlds and ended up in a war against the Jedi led republic armies, which they eventually lost. Pretty much everything Mandalorian in the new canon has been carefully taken and adapted from KotoR and KotoR II, and none of the other legends stuff.

mandalorians have been in star wars canon before kotor

Generic American
Mar 15, 2012

I love my Peng


Mandalorians are... a bit strange to trace back. Because they never got any screen time outside of Boba standing around and Jango being a jerk, there are a metric fuckton of contradictions and casual retcons about them early on because there was no dominant portrayal to follow. Hell, for a time (right around the release of Episode II), the canon was that they were considered to be all but outright extinct by the prequel era and that Jango Fett— and by extension, Boba— was pretty much the last one. I mean, there was literally a character from the 2D Clone Wars cartoon whose entire motivation at the time was "he REALLY hates Mandalorians and spent centuries systematically hunting them down, but with Jango dead, clone troopers are the closest thing he has left to kill."

I'm not entirely sure where the flip actually happened or what most of the EU looked like for them between the original trilogy and the prequels, but once KotOR made them somewhat important and Republic Commando toyed with the idea of clones adopting bits of the culture, things began to solidify. Then the novels came out, and they went from the brink of extinction to just being nomadic and culturally scattered from getting repeatedly stomped into a puddle by the whole galaxy whenever they'd get a little conquer-happy.

But yeah, they did basically start out as yet another case of every on-screen character in Star Wars being a literal representation of their entire species/culture. Mandalorians wear armor, Sullustans are good pilots, Bothans are sneaky spies, etc. The only difference is that "Mandalorians" and their iconic armor technically predate Boba Fett; the initial concept for the movie was a whole group of armored Jedi-hunters, but was condensed down into a single character for his original appearance in Empire without any mention of the word. And then, once he became so inexplicably popular, they stretched it back out! Just a fun little factoid. :eng101:

Also,

VolticSurge posted:

Then there was the bullshit she pulled in the Gears of War novels she wrote. The rape camps? Yeah, that.
I... was not aware of this. :stare:

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

VolticSurge posted:

Then there was the bullshit she pulled in the Gears of War novels she wrote. The rape camps? Yeah, that.

I don't know what's more unnerving. The rape camps or the fact people spend time reading novels about Gears of War, a game with an excuse plot at best.

The rape camps, for sure, of course: it's kind of a hosed up, "too-edgy-for-you" element for a game about big hairy men shooting shaven apes...huh, that sounded a little racist in hindsight. Huh, that...hmm.

Generic American posted:

Mandalorians are... a bit strange to trace back. Because they never got any screen time outside of Boba standing around and Jango being a jerk, there are a metric fuckton of contradictions and casual retcons about them early on because there was no dominant portrayal to follow. Hell, for a time (right around the release of Episode II), the canon was that they were considered to be all but outright extinct by the prequel era and that Jango Fett— and by extension, Boba— was pretty much the last one. I mean, there was literally a character from the 2D Clone Wars cartoon whose entire motivation at the time was "he REALLY hates Mandalorians and spent centuries systematically hunting them down, but with Jango dead, clone troopers are the closest thing he has left to kill."

I'm not entirely sure where the flip actually happened or what most of the EU looked like for them between the original trilogy and the prequels, but once KotOR made them somewhat important and Republic Commando toyed with the idea of clones adopting bits of the culture, things began to solidify. Then the novels came out, and they went from the brink of extinction to just being nomadic and culturally scattered from getting repeatedly stomped into a puddle by the whole galaxy whenever they'd get a little conquer-happy.

But yeah, they did basically start out as yet another case of every on-screen character in Star Wars being a literal representation of their entire species/culture. Mandalorians wear armor, Sullustans are good pilots, Bothans are sneaky spies, etc. The only difference is that "Mandalorians" and their iconic armor technically predate Boba Fett; the initial concept for the movie was a whole group of armored Jedi-hunters, but was condensed down into a single character for his original appearance in Empire without any mention of the word. And then, once he became so inexplicably popular, they stretched it back out! Just a fun little factoid. :eng101:

Also,
I... was not aware of this. :stare:

Thanks for the info dump. It's always interesting getting the meta-story.

I actually remember the "Jango and Bobba are the last of their kind" story for a long time until I saw The Clone Wars. Now that Pablo Higalo is guiding the NuCannon, at least their story will stay consistent, hopefully.

Covok fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Nov 7, 2016

VolticSurge
Jul 23, 2013

Just your friendly neighborhood photobomb raptor.



Generic American posted:

Also,
I... was not aware of this. :stare:

Yep. They basically take teenage girls, do some mad science poo poo to make them look like pornstars,and use 'em as breeding stock. The creepy part? They enjoy it. Traviss tries to make it sound like this great patriotic duty,which just makes her sound more like she needs mental help.

EVIL NOONER
Oct 8, 2016

by exmarx
She was just trying to save the erotic fiction writers some time and effort

tsob
Sep 26, 2006

Chalalala~

Generic American posted:

I honestly don't think that her take was inherently Mary Sue-ish; it was mostly down to the presentation of it for me, which was always some shade of "MAN, JEDI ARE THE WORST" followed by presenting her Mandalorian characters as ~morally complex~ and emotionally simple by comparison.

My impression from years of seeing people occasionally bitch about her stuff is that what she did with the Mandalorians was transform them from a planet of warriors who got ambitions on conquest every few hundred years only for the galaxy as a whole to push their poo poo in and give them a time out till the next uprising in to a brotherhood of warriors who mostly started as Mandalorian but eventually embraced sapient lifeforms of all types, teaching them their ways, garbing them in similar armor and so on so that they became almost like the Jedi in that they were a sect who believed as one, operated as one etc. but who anyone could join and you didn't have to be a wizard to excel within. Which is cool, and an interesting idea since anyone can do it and not just "chosen ones".

And that she then took that concept and made them almost comically "better than thou" compared to the Jedi on every level, including Boba Fett training someone who'd been fighting Jedi all her life in place of Luke Skywalker, who had beaten numerous Sith and was well acquainted with teaching people as well as being easily available and willing. Mandalorians were just peaceful farmers who fought because they had to do so since those drat Jedi kept screwing up the galaxy, and were really just reluctant badasses who'd rather bring in the harvest than fight but were better at it than everyone else in the galaxy when they did. That their gear was better than those of anyone else and could fight Jedi equally, including light sabers. And so on.

And that at the end of the day she just hated the "spoon bender" Jedi and needed to enlighten everyone else as to how awful they were.

Generic American posted:

Weirdly enough, she did pretty much the same thing when she got tapped to do some Halo novels. But in that case, she was infinitely more justified in her hate-fixation and yet somehow just as obnoxious about it.

I haven't read any of her Halo stuff either, having only read Fall of Reach years ago when it was still relatively new, but my understanding is that she basically pinned all the really heinous poo poo on one doctor (Halsey?) who before had been a rather sympathetic character but under her tenure was much more villainous, while all the Spartans who before had been fairly ambivalent or nice to Halsey were now openly critical, distrustful and hateful towards her and their upbringing. And in placing all the blame on Halsey instead of spreading it around, the UEG (Halo Human government) became less shady and complicit in the Spartan project, making the setting as a whole much less murky and interesting to many people.

Karen Traviss seems to me like someone who never got to be a cool kid in school and is relieving herself as an adult by taking any popular franchise, making GBS threads all over the stuff people tend to like about it and then introducing her own element to show how the outsider part is really the cool thing and the thing people think is cool is poo poo and they should be ashamed of liking it. Which might not be true, and I certainly don't have the grounds to back it up having never read any of her work, but is certainly the impression I get hearing people talk about what she's written in franchises and seeing what are supposedly her rants once or twice.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Given the subject matters (Mandolorians, Halo Spartans, Gears) I always figured she had some kinda hard on for military fascism.

Oh and she was still on the Star Wars writing staff when The Clone Wars started introducing the modern form of Mandolorians. She threw a fit about it, IIRC.

Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Nov 7, 2016

bunnyofdoom
Mar 29, 2008

Jaxxon: Still not the stupidest thing from the expanded universe.



honestly, I think I know who she is voting for this election

EDIT: Correction, she's English.

Double Edit: Yes she was a brexiter, and dear god, don't go to her twitter page

VolticSurge
Jul 23, 2013

Just your friendly neighborhood photobomb raptor.



Galaga Galaxian posted:

Given the subject matters (Mandolorians, Halo Spartans, Gears) I always figured she had some kinda hard on for military fascism.

Oh and she was still on the Star Wars writing staff when The Clone Wars started introducing the modern form of Mandolorians. She threw a fit about it, IIRC.

Didn't she have some whiny rant about it? I vaguely remember something like that.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Pulling away from Mandos for a bit, I like the modifications they made to that old separatist shuttle:

Old


New:


They solved the massive fin issue by... cutting most of it off :v:

thelaughingman
Mar 14, 2005
oooh I like madness!

Covok posted:

I don't know what's more unnerving. The rape camps or the fact people spend time reading novels about Gears of War, a game with an excuse plot at best.

The rape camps, for sure, of course: it's kind of a hosed up, "too-edgy-for-you" element for a game about big hairy men shooting shaven apes...huh, that sounded a little racist in hindsight. Huh, that...hmm.


Thanks for the info dump. It's always interesting getting the meta-story.

I actually remember the "Jango and Bobba are the last of their kind" story for a long time until I saw The Clone Wars. Now that Pablo Higalo is guiding the NuCannon, at least their story will stay consistent, hopefully.

Sometimes I think Pablo Hidalgo just makes stuff up as he goes along.

Superstring
Jul 22, 2007

I thought I was going insane for a second.

thelaughingman posted:

Sometimes I think Pablo Hidalgo just makes stuff up as he goes along.

It's probably all stuff from his old tabletop campaign.

Preview for the next ep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmqBTRH2RAY

NTRabbit
Aug 15, 2012

i wear this armour to protect myself from the histrionics of hysterical women

bitches




Superstring posted:

It's probably all stuff from his old tabletop campaign.

Preview for the next ep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmqBTRH2RAY

There's another bit at the end of Rebels Recon as well, this is the episode with the YT2400 in it

ShineDog
May 21, 2007
It is inevitable!
I'll spray piss if they've snuck ol dash on us as well as thrawn

drunkill
Sep 25, 2007

me @ ur posting
Fallen Rib
Possibly a little too short to be Dash Rendar.

Covok
May 27, 2013

Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.
Dash Rendar was in the special edition of A New Hope. So, there is that.

Is there a lot of love for Dash in the fandom outside the fans of Shadows of the Empire video games, nowadays? Also, do yourself a favor and let your memories of that game remain in rose colored glasses: it is rough if you drag it back up.

bunnyofdoom
Mar 29, 2008

Jaxxon: Still not the stupidest thing from the expanded universe.



He's reasonably popular in xwing circles cause he's a good choice on the table if built right.

NTRabbit
Aug 15, 2012

i wear this armour to protect myself from the histrionics of hysterical women

bitches




Covok posted:

Dash Rendar was in the special edition of A New Hope. So, there is that.

Are you sure about that? The freighter type is in the background of a shot, but that's all, and the wiki says the character is legends only

kefkafloyd
Jun 8, 2006

What really knocked me out
Was her cheap sunglasses

NTRabbit posted:

Are you sure about that? The freighter type is in the background of a shot, but that's all, and the wiki says the character is legends only

The Outrider is seen departing Mos Eisley, but Rendar himself was not visible. He could have been piloting it, he might not have been, nobody knows.

EVIL NOONER
Oct 8, 2016

by exmarx

bunnyofdoom posted:

He's reasonably popular in xwing circles cause he's a good choice on the table if built right.

lmao

NTRabbit
Aug 15, 2012

i wear this armour to protect myself from the histrionics of hysterical women

bitches




kefkafloyd posted:

The Outrider is seen departing Mos Eisley, but Rendar himself was not visible. He could have been piloting it, he might not have been, nobody knows.

Apparently it was never specified as the Outrider, it's just a freighter briefly seen on screen, so Rendar and Outrider are both legends only

EVIL NOONER
Oct 8, 2016

by exmarx
For now

NTRabbit
Aug 15, 2012

i wear this armour to protect myself from the histrionics of hysterical women

bitches




Well Filoni already said no when people asked for him, so I wouldn't hold your breath

But Filoni shut that down, too. “No,” he said, turning to Rebels voice actors Sam Witwer and Tiya Sircar. “See what I have to deal with? Every little thing.” He confirmed that an Outrider-style ship was dropped into the trailer as an homage, but that Rendar would not be making an appearance. “It’s a very similar, similar, similar ship,” Filoni said. The designer who created it for the Lucasarts game now works on the show, he said, so she got to reintroduce it in the series.

NTRabbit fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Nov 8, 2016

kefkafloyd
Jun 8, 2006

What really knocked me out
Was her cheap sunglasses

NTRabbit posted:

Apparently it was never specified as the Outrider, it's just a freighter briefly seen on screen, so Rendar and Outrider are both legends only

Really? All the materials I remember from back then went "Hey kids that's the Outrider!" but I guess if they really want it out then they want it out.

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VolticSurge
Jul 23, 2013

Just your friendly neighborhood photobomb raptor.



NTRabbit posted:

Well Filoni already said no when people asked for him, so I wouldn't hold your breath

Well,darn. I was looking forwards to (knowing how the show is written) either Rendar and Ezra having some petty dick-waving contest over something really dumb, or Sabine getting the hots for him,only to realize he's actually a giant rear end in a top hat when,I dunno,he almost gets the team killed.

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