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Defiance Industries posted:It's amazing how he managed to come off as pretty likeable and interesting despite being paired with Stackpole's self-insert. I think he might genuinely be the best character Hackpole ever made. I always liked the bit where Corran realized the blood-rimmed hole in the back of a Stormtrooper's helmet looked awfully like Ooryl's fist. fartknocker posted:Being paired with Corran meant he got among the most development of any character in those books, since Stackpole couldn’t ignore him like he tended to do with half the squadron. What I think matters more is that the Rogues that die almost never affect the others. Riv Shiel, to use your example, gets blown out of space by Isard's pet Victory-class SD during an ambush (IIRC, anyway) and Gavin is never shown reacting to it. The next time we see him he's fled to an ice planet that Isard bombs off the map and that gets more of a reaction out of him than losing his wingmate of several years. Meanwhile, every single dead Wraith has an effect on their comrades. Kel is distraught about not being able to save Jesmin, Falynn Sandskimmer dying does a serious number on Myn and Phanan's death wrecks everyone. I think Grinder's death has the least effect and that's mostly because he dies at the same time as Falynn and was explicitly a lot more of a hermit than everyone else. Why the gently caress do I remember all of this.
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Dec 9, 2020 05:05
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Polaron posted:Why the gently caress do I remember all of this. Because Wraith Squadron is a pretty good trilogy
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Dec 9, 2020 05:07
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The only possible canon explanation is that the empire/FO was saving trillions of credits by not building handrails
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Dec 9, 2020 05:23
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SlothfulCobra posted:
Man, IG-88 looked cool, even if he never did anything or even I think move? Just some impersonal Terminator thing without even a vaguely human face to attach any emotion to. Wasn't it some Legends thing that he was some radical kill-all-humans type and wired his brain into the Death Star II's mainframe or whatever and was seconds away from transmitting a galaxy-wide mass robot uprising signal before it got blown up and nobody knew or cared? Lol
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Dec 9, 2020 17:53
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Asterite34 posted:Wasn't it some Legends thing that he was some radical kill-all-humans type and wired his brain into the Death Star II's mainframe or whatever and was seconds away from transmitting a galaxy-wide mass robot uprising signal before it got blown up and nobody knew or cared? Lol Yes, it was. Kevin J. Anderson, ladies and gentlemen.
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Dec 9, 2020 18:49
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Asterite34 posted:Man, IG-88 looked cool, even if he never did anything or even I think move? Just some impersonal Terminator thing without even a vaguely human face to attach any emotion to. Yeah, one of the best parts of the Mandalorian was seeing an IG unit fight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32gxelu_aBw I think they really nailed making it move like a piece of industrial equipment, what with the constant swiveling and adjusting to precise positions before firing. Inhuman, but perfectly functional. In the story Therefore I Am, from Tales of the Bounty Hunters (one of the better stories that Kevin J Anderson has ever written (better being a relative term here)) IG-88B is one of four copies of IG-88, the most sophisticated assassin droid in the galaxy. It believes itself to be the most superior life form, and has dedicated itself to eradicating biological life. The IG-88s escape their manufacturing facility and travel to the indsutrial manufacturing planet Machis III to reprogam the droids there and start a revolution. IG-88B is instructed to start a bounty hunting career to distract from their other activities. While on the Super Star Destroyer with the other bounty hunters, IG-88B downloads the contents of their computer, and discovers the existence of a second Death Star. It reports this information back to its counterparts, and IG-88A decides to try and take over the space station. Then it tracks Solo to Cloud City, where it is killed by Boba Fett. IG-88s C and D die on Tattooine (also killed by Boba Fett) and Ord Mantell (killed by Dash Rendar). The multiple copies is to explain why in the background of Star Wars, you can see IG droid parts all over, such as junked one in the the Ugnaut furnace area, as well as its head being a fixture behind the counter in Wuher's bar.   The truth being, of course, that it's a prop they had and used a lot because it looked sci fi. It's really part of a 1947 Rolls Royce engine  Anyways, back to IG-88A. It managed to successfully infiltrate the second Death Star and take over all its computers. Things are going great. It's going to start flying the space station around soon, blowing up all the inhabited planets, wiping out the Empire and Rebellion, and build a new machine civilization. Except there's some dumb space battle going on outside. It's enjoying firing the laser, blowing up Rebel ships, the Emperor is caught up in some petty personal squabble and can't be bothered to pay any attention... quote:IG-88 alone had the activation signal that could fly like a knife blade across the HoloNet channels and awaken his invincible army of droids. He could wish for no better opportunity than now, no greater power. He would finish mopping up this minor conflict around Endor, destroy the Rebel ships and then before the Imperials could react, he would strike down the Star Destroyers as well, one after another, in a swath of death and destruction. Left unsaid, of course, is that Lando and the rebels destroy the Death Star a few moments after this. I almost think it would have been better to have the story cut off mid-sentence, but, well, you can only expect so much from Keven J Anderson. It's exactly the kind of thing a kid who had Empire and Jedi memorized would eat up, and boy, did I ever. I think it was the first time that I'd considered, one, that there were other parties at work beyond the Empire/Rebellion dichotomy in Star Wars, which would later be used to lovely effect in The Last Jedi, and two, that characters in the story don't know what story they're in just because the audience does. Dramatic irony, I believe the term is? Thank you for reading my book report. This is a story that boys and girls who like scary robots will like, and I hope Mister Anderson writes more of them. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Dec 9, 2020 18:59
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Man, Kevin J Anderson's stuff keeps writing stuff that sounds like a funny shaggy dog story when you sum it up in one sentence, but is sadly larded up into an entire book e: Speaking of, was he the guy who wrote that story in I wanna say Tales from the Death Star about the random technician who was super gung-ho about firing The Biggest Gun Ever, and after Alderaan blew up realized "oh poo poo I singlehandedly pulled the trigger on the largest single act of genocide in galactic history" and was eaten up by remorse, so when they were getting ready to blow up Yavin he kept insisting they check and double-check everything and kept stalling for time, praying that something, anything, would come along and make it so he wouldn't have to fire the turbolaser again? Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 19:00
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Asterite34 posted:Man, Kevin J Anderson's stuff keeps writing stuff that sounds like a funny shaggy dog story when you sum it up in one sentence, but is sadly larded up into an entire book Honestly that might be the biggest advantage his short stories have over his novels (or series of novels as the case may be) Condensed you see an interesting thing to poke at, but Anderson just keeps adding more and more details and garbage information that makes you absolutely hate experiencing it. Asterite34 posted:e: Speaking of, was he the guy who wrote that story in I wanna say Tales from the Death Star about the random technician who was super gung-ho about firing The Biggest Gun Ever, and after Alderaan blew up realized "oh poo poo I singlehandedly pulled the trigger on the largest single act of genocide in galactic history" and was eaten up by remorse, so when they were getting ready to blow up Yavin he kept insisting they check and double-check everything and kept stalling for time, praying that something, anything, would come along and make it so he wouldn't have to fire the turbolaser again? That was on the side characters in the novel Death Star, which rather than be an anthology of vignettes it followed a narrative throughline of a bunch of people who were working on the Death Star in menial or support capacities and chickened out on the logical conclusion of that story by only killing off like a third or a half of them when the Death Star gets blown up.
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Dec 9, 2020 19:49
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Asterite34 posted:Man, Kevin J Anderson's stuff keeps writing stuff that sounds like a funny shaggy dog story when you sum it up in one sentence, but is sadly larded up into an entire book That would be Steve Perry and Michael Reeve's Death Star. A fellow named Tenn Graneet keeps hesitating, like you say, allowing Luke enough time to blow up the Death Star. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tenn_Graneet
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Dec 9, 2020 19:51
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Toph Bei Fong posted:
Iirc he also spent a few pages pulling pranks on the emperor, slamming doors shut in his face and stuff. Lol
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Dec 9, 2020 20:14
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I like the IG-88 Death Star story and I'm not ashamed to say it
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Dec 9, 2020 20:27
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I can't remember how many people in Tales from Jabba's Palace end up dying when Jabba's barge exploded. I remember a lot of them looted whatever they could after Jabba died and ran. And then a lot of the survivors got their brains taken out by the Bomarr Monks, who were the original builders of the palace and took back control after Jabba died. They even got a little aggressive baiting in more criminals to remove their brains. Weird guys.
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Dec 9, 2020 20:41
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SlothfulCobra posted:I can't remember how many people in Tales from Jabba's Palace end up dying when Jabba's barge exploded. I remember a lot of them looted whatever they could after Jabba died and ran. A lot of weird poo poo goes on at Tatooine for being such a "backwater"
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Dec 9, 2020 20:46
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SlothfulCobra posted:I can't remember how many people in Tales from Jabba's Palace end up dying when Jabba's barge exploded. I remember a lot of them looted whatever they could after Jabba died and ran. Was that before or after the derelict palace was, due to no one having a copy of Jabba's will, repossessed by the bank and turned into the Tatooine Retirement Home for Aged Aliens? ...God the Jedi Prince books were weird... Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 21:09
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It's a nice little goofy thing that's fun to read in a way that a lot of Star Wars stories aren't. I'll take KJA over Karen Traviss' "Big Hard Men Making Big Hard Decisions" or just plain forgettable like some other authors who I know I've read the books but couldn't tell you what happened in them beyond maybe one or two scenes (Crystal Star, Dark Journey, the Aftermath trilogy) He's apparently a really friendly and approachable guy, too. His writing process involves working out the plot, then going on long hikes with a microcassette recorder and just telling himself the story. He then has the tapes transcribed, goes over them once, and sends the draft to the publisher. Which is a weird way to work, but, well, he's sold millions of books and is a multimillionaire, so, it works for him, I guess? He's very explicit and open about writing as many books as possible to be successful, too, which is a refreshing bit of honesty. quote:What I wanted was to be successful enough so that that's what I could do for my job. Many, many authors work at part-time job. They work in a restaurant, or they have a clerk's job somewhere, or they work in a bank. And then they go home and they get to write for one or two hours in the evening. quote:I have given this talk in many, many writers' conferences. I call it the “popcorn theory”. Because I have written so many different things and tried so many different things and you send out proposals and you send out ideas. To me, it's a much longer story than I would normally be telling. The whole interview is pretty interesting if you're into writing craft and such: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2016/10/17/23-million-books-kevin-j-anderson/
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Dec 9, 2020 21:15
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Toph Bei Fong posted:
This idea is kind of similar to what is going on with the character of King from the manga/anime One Punch Man. King is a tall, scary looking guy with a big facial scar who is one of the top 10 heroes in all of Japan. Monsters quake in fear when the King Engine roars. It turns out he just looks like a hard rear end and is really a super nerd with a heart condition that causes his heartbeat to become loud when he is scared (the aforementioned King Engine.) All the monsters he's credited as killing were just coincidently defeated by another hero who just didn't stick around after so everyone assumed King was responsible.
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Dec 10, 2020 16:09
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Sodomy Hussein posted:A lot of weird poo poo goes on at Tatooine for being such a "backwater" it's still a place with like thousands of years of history fun fact: tatooine was once a lush jungle world where the ancestors of the jawas and tuskens possessed a rich and thriving civilization capable of spaceflight
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Dec 11, 2020 03:23
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Jazerus posted:it's still a place with like thousands of years of history bonus fun fact: the sandcrawlers that jawas use are repurposed mining vehicles/ore haulers. Space DeBeers/Exxon tried to mine for ore on Tatooine centuries ago, and just wrote the things off and left them behind when they couldn't find anything worth digging for.
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Dec 11, 2020 04:59
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there's a not zero chance Corran Horn will show up in one of the slew of new star wars shows
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Dec 11, 2020 05:46
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Yeah whatever would we do without all of the distinctive and memorable character moments of Corran Horn like
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Dec 11, 2020 05:55
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In the space-pacific ocean, a furry creature emerges from the ocean with a rock and a clam and proceeds to open one with the other. A man across from it gives it a long gaze and then winks. Although I guess in the lore they're supposed to act more like prairie dogs.
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Dec 11, 2020 06:07
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i like the one with the imperial tax goatman is scrooge type shithead and than he falls inlove with some implied to be virginal young alien girl who is trying to find a way back home and becuse he really really hard for her horns, he keeps trying gently caress her and well. you can find the audio of the sex tape on wookiepedia.
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Dec 11, 2020 06:29
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Defiance Industries posted:Yeah whatever would we do without all of the distinctive and memorable character moments of Corran Horn like corran horn loving an otter
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Dec 11, 2020 16:49
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The podrace in Episode 1 was in honor of Boonta's Eve, a traditional Hutt holiday named for Boonta the Hutt, commemorating his "rise to godhood" after his successes in defeating the Warlord Xim and exterminating the Moralan species after they organized a slave revolt against the Hutt clans. Godhood is a bit of a weird thing for the Hutts, because early on in their history they worshipped the twin suns of their homeworld Varl as gods, but at some point after the Hutts had started building a presence beyond their homeworld, some horrifying catastrophe destroyed one of the suns and reduced the other to a white dwarf, as the legend goes, "Evona was consumed by a black hole, and in fury, Ardos expelled its gaseous external layers and destroyed the other planets of the star system." Either way, the planet was rendered mostly uninhabitable, and the Hutts decided that their gods were dead, and since the Hutts themselves survived the death of the gods, they had become near-gods. Also they made the planet of Evocar into their new homeworld, expelled the native Evocii to the moon Nar Shadaa, and terraformed their new planet into their version of paradise: A bunch of swamps. They renamed it Nal Hutta, which apparently translates into "Glorious Jewel" but that makes me uncomfortable about the etymology of the word Hutt. Dapper_Swindler posted:i like the one with the imperial tax goatman is scrooge type shithead and than he falls inlove with some implied to be virginal young alien girl who is trying to find a way back home and becuse he really really hard for her horns, he keeps trying gently caress her and well. you can find the audio of the sex tape on wookiepedia. I remember reading about that. He was attracted because they both had electromagnetic horns. And she killed him with her knife-tongue as part of having sex.
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Dec 13, 2020 00:21
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SlothfulCobra posted:Also they made the planet of Evocar into their new homeworld, expelled the native Evocii to the moon Nar Shadaa, and terraformed their new planet into their version of paradise: A bunch of swamps. They renamed it Nal Hutta, which apparently translates into "Glorious Jewel" but that makes me uncomfortable about the etymology of the word Hutt. as a hugely egotistical slaver culture it seems in character for the hutts to call themselves "the glorious ones" basically Jabba the Glorious
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Dec 13, 2020 00:44
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I dunno what we called the EU stuff before the Thrawn books but the 80s Marvel Comics were full of weird poo poo. Like the super weapon that would play marbles with the Universe. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Shawken_Device Or when Luke was banging an Imperial Spy who became the Dark Lady of the Sith... and got more sexier over time for some reason. http://swcomiccollector.blogspot.com/2015/04/first-appearance-shira-brie-lumiya.html
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Dec 13, 2020 12:59
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SlothfulCobra posted:
And then the bartender made a joke about how love in one language means lunch in another and the guy who looks like Satan called him an rear end in a top hat.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:35
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A lot of Star Wars stories would be a lot more palatable if they were presented under an umbrella of 'Here's something that could have happened.' instead of 'here's something that definitely happened.' The beyond-obsessive insistence so many in too deep fan types have on the latter is why the Legends section of the Death Star II battle on the will had/has Lando being recorded as picking up video game powerups alongside stuff like the guy who crashed into the Executor and who was standing by Ackbar when he said it was a trap. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 17, 2020 15:20
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silvergoose posted:That book is so bad Oh, that? That was just Han wrestling with a phallic metaphor for hours, getting all sweaty. Perfectly normal literary device.
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Dec 17, 2020 17:29
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Cornwind Evil posted:A lot of Star Wars stories would be a lot more palatable if they were presented under an umbrella of 'Here's something that could have happened.' instead of 'here's something that definitely happened.' The sperg insistence on the latter is why the Legends section of the Death Star II battle on the will had/has Lando being recorded as picking up video game powerups alongside stuff like the guy who crashed into the Executor and who was standing by Ackbar when he said it was a trap. Please do not disrespect heroic Rebel A-Wing pilot Arvel Crynyd like this
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Dec 17, 2020 17:33
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Cornwind Evil posted:A lot of Star Wars stories would be a lot more palatable if they were presented under an umbrella of 'Here's something that could have happened.' instead of 'here's something that definitely happened.' The sperg insistence on the latter is why the Legends section of the Death Star II battle on the will had/has Lando being recorded as picking up video game powerups alongside stuff like the guy who crashed into the Executor and who was standing by Ackbar when he said it was a trap. And those are the same spergs that go out of their way to poo poo on the Sequels. Mind you, the Sequels are bad movies for bad movie making reasons, but the they are bitching about overpowered Rey while writing lurid slash fics about Jaina Solo inserting herself into their self-insert character. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 17, 2020 18:26
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Usually most extended licensed works of a franchise are in kind of a nebulous territory of possibly having happened, often EU works will end up getting contradicted by more official works, sometimes more official works will reference EU works as some kind of little nod of approval. There was a whole tier-system on Wookieepedia before Disney came along. Unless there's some kind of official attempt at canon curation, the audience is either free to pick what they like or to be a petulant child complaining about inconsistencies. Spoiler: Official canon curation never works and usually sucks and produces awful stories that everybody hates. The new official star wars canon tends to haphazardly borrow from the old EU because nothing can stop people who liked the old stories to bring them back and nobody can stop the audience who liked the old stories from including them in their own personal headcanon. Outside of Star Wars, there's trainwrecks like DC's crises where they endlessly trash all the ongoing stories and yet those stories are never really gone. It's making a bigger mess to solve another mess that wasn't really that much of a problem.
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Dec 17, 2020 18:41
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corran horn is just keeping up with rogue squadron tradition. because wes jansen hosed a bothan.
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Dec 20, 2020 01:18
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Stackpole wrote both those scenes.
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Dec 20, 2020 01:43
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SlothfulCobra posted:The podrace in Episode 1 was in honor of Boonta's Eve, a traditional Hutt holiday named for Boonta the Hutt, commemorating his "rise to godhood" after his successes in defeating the Warlord Xim and exterminating the Moralan species after they organized a slave revolt against the Hutt clans. this makes me wish there were elaborate backstories for all the races and planets present in the ol' Ep 1 Racer game
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Dec 20, 2020 02:07
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Defiance Industries posted:Stackpole wrote both those scenes. Stackpole has the one move when it comes to sci fi.
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Dec 20, 2020 22:56
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...Tedious diatribes about how "politics" are bad but soldiers are good?
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Dec 21, 2020 00:14
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Defiance Industries posted:...Tedious diatribes about how "politics" are bad but soldiers are good? No no, that's his military fiction move, his sci fi move is to make it so that you know its cool and sci fi because the protagonists gently caress and gently caress people that aren't human for spice.
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Dec 21, 2020 07:47
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honestly it's the most believable part of his writing. most humans are horny and love to gently caress.
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Dec 21, 2020 10:18
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Brute Squad posted:honestly it's the most believable part of his writing. most humans are horny and love to gently caress. This is why I'm voting for the pod people party!
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Dec 21, 2020 12:29
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