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Finished Scoundrels at last. Ehhhh. I think it was just not my kind of story. It's a big heist book. Sure, I loved the original Oceans Eleven and stuff, but that's a movie. A 13-hour audiobook is a whole other matter. I just didn't care about anyone besides Han and Lando. The only reason I finished it was because I wanted to know what happened to spoil the take so Han'd inevitably get nabbed by Jabba. I'm starting Allegiance as it's next in my reading (listening?) order. I hope it is a bit more to my taste.
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May 18, 2024 02:05
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NikkolasKing posted:Finished Scoundrels at last.
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May 18, 2024 02:09
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Filoni is alright, but him making all of his shows so interconnected makes Star Wars feel small in ways the old EU wasn’t.
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May 18, 2024 04:10
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Xenomrph posted:Filoni is alright, but him making all of his shows so interconnected makes Star Wars feel small in ways the old EU wasn’t. On the one hand every EU author shoves their OCs in every story they can manage it, but on the other since Filoni is doing most of the TV stuff it's more noticeable than when you've got a dozen writers all working together
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May 18, 2024 14:05
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StashAugustine posted:On the one hand every EU author shoves their OCs in every story they can manage it, but on the other since Filoni is doing most of the TV stuff it's more noticeable than when you've got a dozen writers all working together But yeah with Filoni at the helm of everything it gets pretty egregious.
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May 18, 2024 19:00
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I totally forgot it was this Danning fellow who wrote Tatooine Ghost. I read that back in the day and I remember liking it. It was a Leia-centered story, specifically Leia's relationship with her father - which was good to expand upon, both for her character and in light of the prequels. It also gave some greater insight into Anakin and Shmi, which was cool, too.quote:20:07:22 Annie, today your mother is a married woman. Clie'gg waited until last month to ask me—Iguess he wanted to be eertain it was him I loved and notjustfreedom. It was a simple ceremony in Anehorhead. Owen came, ofcourse, and a few ofCliegg and Owen’s friends. Kitster, Wald, and Amee were there, and they asked aboutyou. I wish you could have been there, but I know the Jedi wouldn’t have allowed it, even if the message we sent had been accepted. And I understand, I truly do. Way to go, Jedi.
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May 18, 2024 20:04
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I was excited to see the Rebels cast come back in Ahsoka, and was excited by the idea of Ahsoka coming back in general, but everything was so dull and everybody had been stripped of their personality. (I say, arms crossed, trying to look vaguely sage-like.)
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May 18, 2024 20:25
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Can't believe Ahsoka turned into a YouTube reviewer who only has the one pose
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May 18, 2024 20:47
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Arc Hammer posted:https://twitter.com/DavidMann95/status/1211068326933401600?t=e8_KzXW7dvjzHyx8R7k0vg&s=19 This is kinda funny, you link this right as I'm starting a book (Allegiance) with this passage: quote:So he'd dusted those TIE fighters off Luke during that lunatic Yavin battle. Big deal. That had been strictly a favor to the kid, and maybe a little payback for the way I the Imperials had dragged him aboard the Death Star and then walked all over the Falcon with their grubby feet. He didn't mind the Rebels being grateful for that. But it didn't mean he'd enlisted in the Big Cause. Chewbacca was all set to do so, of course. His personal history with the Empire, plus the way they had treated his people in general, had left him with a deep hatred for them. He would enlist in the Rebellion in a heartbeat if Han gave the okay.
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May 18, 2024 21:44
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Yeah, Disney are doing the weird thing where they're saying he's "not political" but also showing him being consistently involved anti-fascist activity over a period of like 70 years now.
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May 18, 2024 22:13
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Chewie hates fascists and is the Gritty of Star Wars
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May 18, 2024 22:24
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NikkolasKing posted:I totally forgot it was this Danning fellow who wrote Tatooine Ghost. I read that back in the day and I remember liking it. It was a Leia-centered story, specifically Leia's relationship with her father - which was good to expand upon, both for her character and in light of the prequels. It also gave some greater insight into Anakin and Shmi, which was cool, too. tatooine ghost is from the era when denning was just another rando EU author and i liked it too. he only really went off the rails when he was one of the lead story people for the EU
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May 18, 2024 22:30
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Arquinsiel posted:Yeah, Disney are doing the weird thing where they're saying he's "not political" but also showing him being consistently involved anti-fascist activity over a period of like 70 years now. I'm reminded of Lindsay Ellis's video on what the First Order actually stands for. It's this awkward, failed attempt by Disney to de-politicize Star Wars for the sake of brand protection that unintentionally leads the First Order to emulate neonazi behavior you see in right wing reactionary movements. But you can't really make a point about that when you've got stormtroopers and Sith marching down Main Street USA every hour at Disneyland, because it might be a bit too on the nose. "It's just good guys and bad guys! Cops and robbers! Cowboys and Indians!" they'll insist even as the First Order looks and behaves exactly like the Charlottesville Unite the Right nazis. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAVeyXwy3BE I feel like this is another case of Disney genuinely having no clue what they were doing for the first ten years of Star Wars ownership. They wanted to sell the cool brand image but remove any if the iffy political stuff that came with it. It makes Andor all the more shocking, in hindsight, because it came out and screamed "gently caress these space nazis and every stupid petty monstrous thing they stand for". I'm not saying that Abrams, Johnson, Edwards or Howard didn't include political stuff in their films where the Empire/First Order is concerned, but a lot of it feels incidental rather than intentional. It feels like it has been sanded down for the sake of mass market consumption as this general idea of being "bad" without going into too much detail as to why. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 22:39 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 22:35
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From what I remember of the video Ellis' points mostly focused around the promotion of the franchise outside of the movies themselves, but she's right that the First Order's specific politics were kind of weak. The thing is though, the Empire's specific politics were also kind of weak, but in the late 70s you could be pretty sure that people weren't going to see the obvious nazis and go "yeah they seem like the good guys".
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May 18, 2024 22:58
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At around the 19:43 mark of the video she does ask what the First Order wants and stands for and that's where the discussion of "maybe them having a confused unfocused ideology is the point because fascism is inherently contradictory and stupid" It's in this weird place where the imagery remains but what it's about is pared back. I guess it is true about the OT as well but we at least had the EU and the Empire's policy of human supremacy over lesser species backing it up. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 23:26 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 23:12
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Arquinsiel posted:From what I remember of the video Ellis' points mostly focused around the promotion of the franchise outside of the movies themselves, but she's right that the First Order's specific politics were kind of weak. The thing is though, the Empire's specific politics were also kind of weak, but in the late 70s you could be pretty sure that people weren't going to see the obvious nazis and go "yeah they seem like the good guys". Yeah I don't think the Empire in the OT were anything but Saturday Morning Cartoon Villains. They're just doing bad stuff because they're bad guys. They're British and they kill people and that's the extent of it. The EU and I think Zahn in particular has gone to great lengths to make the Empire look something like a functioning government. I remember in the Thrawn Trilogy, Vader's habit of just executing anyone he pleases is called out as insanely stupid and wasteful. Here at the start of Allegiance, Tarkin is brushed off as 'psychotic." At the same time, the EU leaned a lot more into the ideals of the Empire. The human supremacy and racism is detailed a lot more grimly in the EU. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 23:40 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 23:35
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Tatooine Ghost is relatively decent. A couple of years later he’s publishing the Dark Nest trilogy and then basically steering the EU until 2013. With baaaaaaad results. I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to let him do that.
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May 18, 2024 23:40
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Arc Hammer posted:At around the 19:43 mark of the video she does ask what the First Order wants and stands for and that's where the discussion of "maybe them having a confused unfocused ideology is the point because fascism is inherently contradictory and stupid"
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May 19, 2024 00:12
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Arquinsiel posted:From what I remember of the video Ellis' points mostly focused around the promotion of the franchise outside of the movies themselves, but she's right that the First Order's specific politics were kind of weak. The thing is though, the Empire's specific politics were also kind of weak, but in the late 70s you could be pretty sure that people weren't going to see the obvious nazis and go "yeah they seem like the good guys". https://x.com/BillKristol/status/810650507714891777
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May 19, 2024 02:18
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https://x.com/BillKristol/status/1791734402650710137
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May 19, 2024 02:44
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Arquinsiel posted:From what I remember of the video Ellis' points mostly focused around the promotion of the franchise outside of the movies themselves, but she's right that the First Order's specific politics were kind of weak. The thing is though, the Empire's specific politics were also kind of weak, but in the late 70s you could be pretty sure that people weren't going to see the obvious nazis and go "yeah they seem like the good guys". There's not a whole lot about the Empire's policies in the movies, but the optics are pretty clear. We've got a class of sharply-dressed officers, foot soldiers literally called stormtroopers, and it's only halfway through the movie that they feel comfortable enough to eliminate the Senate as a political body. They're Nazis and they have just recently seized power. I think JJ Abrams was online enough that he probably internalized the idea that the problem with the prequels was a) too much politics and b) too much CGI, and made a conscious decision to avoid both. So you end up with what seems like an insane political situation (the Resistance is a separate entity from the Republic? the First Order has enough territory and resources that they have a giant army and a Deather Star?) that goes totally unexplained, despite the semiotics being basically identical to those of the OT. What you'd expect is the FO to feel a lot more weathered and depleted, ala fascist holdouts, or ragged, ala Nazi bikers.
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May 19, 2024 04:22
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Yes, but they're not political nazis
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May 19, 2024 04:24
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Rochallor posted:There's not a whole lot about the Empire's policies in the movies, but the optics are pretty clear. We've got a class of sharply-dressed officers, foot soldiers literally called stormtroopers, and it's only halfway through the movie that they feel comfortable enough to eliminate the Senate as a political body. They're Nazis and they have just recently seized power. Overthinking it, it's funny in that you had decades to fill in gaps about the universe and thus the EU, and it's in fact fine to throw all that out but Abrams never really had any idea what to replace it with other than "Star Wars Harder with additional Mystery Box™" so it's all kind of a shaky mess. It certainly doesn't feel gameable to play around in like parts of the EU did, if you were the kind of nerd who cared about that sort of thing. (Hi, I bid you dark greetings, it is me, the nerd.) Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 05:10 on May 19, 2024 |
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May 19, 2024 04:38
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The funny thing is that as an adult who has spent a stupid amount of time pushing toy soldiers around the political wrangling that results in a civil war is incredibly interesting to me. Abrams flailed around for a story to tell and settled on one that justifies his own position in life as the son of two movie producers.
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May 19, 2024 04:45
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While we're talking politics and the online SW fandom/hatedom, I mentioned earlier that the most shocking thing for me returning to said fandom after all these years is the resistance to the mere suggestion that the Jedi hosed up. When I was most active back in the 2000s, it was unheard of to deny this. Yes, the "Jedi are the villains" group was always very minor, and theer were debates about how and when the Jedi hosed up, but nowadays to even say the Jedi were wrong is called "revisionism" that "Goerge never intended at all." And when I spoke about this elsewhere, someone gave a really interesting take on it: quote:I've noticed the same thing and I would say with 100% confidence that it's downstream of real-world politics.
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May 19, 2024 04:49
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That'd hold up better if "the adults in the room" weren't demonstrably failing to prevent the erosion of democracy I think.
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May 19, 2024 05:00
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Yeah I think the original sin of the sequels is that they wanted "underdog rebels versus Nazi-aesthetic empire" again and worked backwards from there, no matter how many stupid plot points they had to twist together to achieve it. The production team grew up with Kenner action figures and model X-wings and wanted to play around with those exact toys again, and the entire franchise suffered because of it. You can even feel the merch department struggling with this -- the X-wing minis game had to put out the quadjumper as a playable ship because that was one of, like, three new ships in that entire movie. This one of the things the prequels, for all their faults, managed to avoid entirely. Lucas had already had his fill of that setting and those toys, and so the plot and aesthetics and themes and overall feel are entirely new and different. Executed well? Nah, but the ideas are new and fresh and it's easier to like something if you like what it's trying to be, even if it stumbles in achieving it. I remember walking out of TFA thinking yeah, this does feel a little safe and derivative, but it did a good enough job being Fun Star Wars and I was excited for what direction they would take it in next. And then — despite TLJ taking stabs at some interesting themes and character work — it didn't really take any direction at all.
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May 19, 2024 05:01
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KOTOR 2 came out in 2004 and is still probably the most well known example outside of the films for criticizing the failings of the Jedi order (and the Sith and the Force in general). I think I first played it in 2005 maybe? It's been a long time and my memory is hazy but I think there was a long period where its story was maligned for being so critical of core star wars tenets. I think it might have been Scorchy's Let's Play of KOTOR 2 and the efforts of the restoration mod teams that really started to turn around public perception on the game. If George didn't intend for the Jedi to be failures he wouldn't have written Yoda lamenting his failures and consigning himself to exile in episode 3. I think another angle is that the people who disliked Kotor 2's criticisms got a second chance to voice their anger during the Last Jedi shitstorm thanks to some of Luke's lines and mindset in that film reflecting K2 ideas about leaving the force behind. It got paired up with the prequel revisionism movement in online circles trying to rehabilitate their image and birthed this warped, misremembered perception of what the prequels were actually about. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 05:08 on May 19, 2024 |
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May 19, 2024 05:05
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Meanwhile, as a huge Kotor 2 fan, my biggest disappointment with TLJ is that it chickens out from its criticisms of the Jedi and just has Luke do an unearned 180 degree switch on his opinions and brought back Yoda as the voice of wisdom.
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May 19, 2024 05:47
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It's worth bearing in mind that this franchise has always had people incapable of comprehending things like "Han Solo is lying about the Kessel run" or "Stormtroopers are only bad shots when Vader has ordered them to be" since 1977.
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May 19, 2024 05:47
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Arc Hammer posted:If George didn't intend for the Jedi to be failures he wouldn't have written Yoda lamenting his failures and consigning himself to exile in episode 3. Or have him say stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaXfb0l9fzA&t=125s OBI-WAN: But he still has much to learn, Master. His abilities have made him... well, arrogant. YODA: Yes, yes. It's a flaw more and more common among Jedi. Too sure of themselves they are. Even the older, more experienced ones. In the same film as this: “If it does not appear in our records, it does not exist!” Or hell, back in TPM, Qui-Gon is clearly set up as the wisest and best of the Jedi, but Obi-Wan says plainly that he's not allowed on the Council because he has unconventional ideas about the Code. George was warning against echo chambers in 1999. KOTOR II is its own thing, I think. The Jedi suck in both those games, to be frank. But when they try to strip the Exile of the Force after the Exile saved all their lives, that was a step too far. Glad Kreia killed the hell out of them.
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May 19, 2024 06:09
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NikkolasKing posted:KOTOR II is its own thing, I think. The Jedi suck in both those games, to be frank. But when they try to strip the Exile of the Force after the Exile saved all their lives, that was a step too far. Glad Kreia killed the hell out of them. It is certainly it's own thing, but what I meant was that it wasn't uncommon back in the old EU, even during the time the prequels were in theaters, for Star Wars stories to be critical of the setting and its ideas. I get what you're saying about nowadays where suggesting something was "wrong" gets you snarls and hissing responses. I wonder if they were around back then too but maybe not as loud. I mean, Traitor came out in 2002 and it contains Matthew Stover's major shift in perspective on what light side and dark side actually means to The Force. The movies are questioning the Jedi ideals in a trilogy depicting their downfall, and you have EU material challenging what being a Jedi truly means. The New Jedi Order series has its ups and downs but I respect it for trying something new and asking what would need to happen to keep Luke's Jedi order from repeating the mistakes of the old order. "New" is in the title, after all. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 06:40 on May 19, 2024 |
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May 19, 2024 06:22
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Arc Hammer posted:It is certainly it's own thing, but what I meant was that it wasn't uncommon back in the old EU, even during the time the prequels were in theaters, for Star Wars stories to be critical of the setting and its ideas. I mean, Traitor came out in 2002 and it contains Matthew Stover's major shift in perspective on what light side and dark side actually means to The Force. The movies are questioning the Jedi ideals in a trilogy depicting their downfall, and you have EU material challenging what being a Jedi truly means. The New Jedi Order series has its ups and downs but I respect it for trying something new and asking what would need to happen to keep Luke's Jedi order from repeating the mistakes of the old order. "New" is in the title, after all. Yeah I love the last chapter or two of Unifying Force where Luke and the Jedi sit down and purposefully plot a new direction for their order based on what they’ve learned over the course of the Vong war, and the new perspectives on the Force that Jacen and Vergere have taught them. Then Dark Neat comes along and immediately flushes all of that down the ‘fresher. 
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May 19, 2024 06:39
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ninjahedgehog posted:Yeah I love the last chapter or two of Unifying Force where Luke and the Jedi sit down and purposefully plot a new direction for their order based on what they’ve learned over the course of the Vong war, and the new perspectives on the Force that Jacen and Vergere have taught them. Which book is it where Vergere is revealed to have been Sith all along and was lying to Jacen to make him fall? Supposedly that was a mandate from on high to explicitly repudiate her take on the Force as expressed in Traitor.
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May 19, 2024 06:54
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Which book is it where Vergere is revealed to have been Sith all along and was lying to Jacen to make him fall? Supposedly that was a mandate from on high to explicitly repudiate her take on the Force as expressed in Traitor. Betrayal, I think. The Legacy comics have her in flashbacks as well but I think that was a bit later
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May 19, 2024 07:07
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NikkolasKing posted:Or have him say stuff like this: It takes a minute to puzzle out (I think TPM more than any movie in the franchise benefits more from repeated viewings; there is a lot you can tease out of it) but Qui-Gon dying in TPM is the first time it's suggested that Jedi becoming part of the Force upon death isn't the default, and it's a major indictment of the prequel Jedi that they just leave their corpses all over the place when we see Obi-Wan and Yoda ascending into Force heaven, basically. The idea that the Jedi have completely lost their way and have no idea what they're doing is just textual, it's not an interpretation. Now the answer that we eventually get that becoming one with the Force is basically a perk you can take at level 20 is disappointing, but hey.
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May 19, 2024 08:47
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One thing which kinda bugged me about KOTOR II is that, to match its tone, the setting is also quite different from KOTOR I. Or the situation is different, if that sounds better. Like in KOTOR 1 the Jedi Order seems mostly fine. If you do the non-canon DS route they're toast but other than that there don't seem to be any major, existential issues. But then by KOTOR II they're on the verge of extinction. So they survived the mass defections under Revan and Malak, and the subsequent wars with them, but Nihilus and Sion wiped them all out? Is that what is supposed to have happened? I can't recall the length of time between KOTOR 1 and 2. But yeah, KOTOR II is such a "darker" game. KOTOR 1 is all about the wonder of "yay, I'm a Jedi like every little kid has wanted to be!" Then in 2 it's all like serious and depressing. So I guess it only makes sense that the Jedi could no longer be a thriving organization in such a story. It just feels very abrupt is all. I think that's part of why folks hated it.
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May 19, 2024 23:43
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Yeah, it's stated that Nihilus was wandering around hunting them where they met up, and they had a big meeting to decide what to do about it on a planet of people that see through the force and SURPRISE he showed up and ate everyone.
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May 20, 2024 00:01
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NikkolasKing posted:One thing which kinda bugged me about KOTOR II is that, to match its tone, the setting is also quite different from KOTOR I. Or the situation is different, if that sounds better. Kotor 2 is five years after Kotor 1, and ten years after the Mandalorian Wars. Remember that in Kotor 1 the Jedi enclave on Dantooine was annihilated. The Jedi Civil War killed most of the Jedi and Dark Jedi, only about 100 remained by the end of the conflict, and the devastation from two back to back wars of conquest left the Republic on the brink of collapse. They blamed it on the Jedi, with most of the galaxy not seeing much distinction between Jedi, Dark Jedi or Sith. It's all just Force users to the layperson. Then Nihilus and Sion appeared in the aftermath of the Sith fragmenting and started hunting down other Force users. The Jedi Atris manipulated events to try and draw out the evil that was hunting them by orchestrating a Jedi conclave on the planet of Katarr, which did draw out Nihilus, who then proceeded to consume the entire planet with every Jedi and person on it save for Visas Marr. It's only touched on a bit in the games but the KOTOR era Jedi were already in decline for a few decades, ever since Exar Kun betrayed the Order and launched the Great Sith War. Repeated conflicts were grinding the order down over time, and then the one-two punch of the Mandalorian Wars and the Jedi Civil War nearly destroyed them. KOTOR 2 is very much a story about dealing with the aftermath of galactic wars and the vacuums that follow; the echoes of past conflicts and the wounds they leave behind. It's significant that the inciting incident for the plot isn't actually the Jedi Civil War, but the Mandalorian Wars five years prior. As much as any religious war in the Old Republic could be traced back to the Jedi/Sith sectarian struggle, it's little comfort to the regular people on the receiving end. A greater tragedy does not diminish a lesser tragedy, and a new war does not wipe away the scars of the last one. They remain, they fester, and if they don't heal, all life may be endangered. "Do you wish to feel the teachings born of the Mandalorian Wars? Of all wars? Of all tragedies that scream across the galaxy?" Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 00:11 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 00:08
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StashAugustine posted:On the one hand every EU author shoves their OCs in every story they can manage it, but on the other since Filoni is doing most of the TV stuff it's more noticeable than when you've got a dozen writers all working together The problem is also that they can't really use the movie characters in shows easily (unless they do more animated work) so the OCs are what they have to work with.
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May 20, 2024 01:01
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