Any authors who you think should've been offered the chance to write for the EU?
as long as Denning keeps his weird sex fetishes in check.
Any authors who you think should've been offered the chance to write for the EU?
Maybe Valéry Giscard d'Estaing could have written for this EU rather than the other one?
I can't say I've noticed these. What are they?
Zahn wrote it was a 'hundred' threats. Mind you that was when he had the galaxy as only 25% mapped and the entire rest of it is the Unknown Regions, rather than the bizarre and idiotic map they've gone with now that for some ludicrous reason has the Unknown Regions be one massive blob on one side of the galaxy that almost comes right up to Coruscant.
Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head.
- All female characters (ESPECIALLY Alema Rar) wear clothes way too small for them.
- Female characters use their "feminine charms" (like in Invincible, where Grandma Leia (60 years old) dresses up like a sexy alien woman as part of a disguise, and Jaina finds it shocking)
- The weird Dark Nest thing where Zekk & Jaina participated in bug orgies & Jag realizes that, due to Jaina & Zekk being melded, Zekk has feelings for him.
- Apparently, Zekk uses the Force to spy on Jaina in the shower.
- Luke got molested by some Ishi-Tib fangirls in the Dark Nest trilogy.
- The scene in Invincible where Tahiri molests a captive 16-year old Ben, then brutally tortures him and (accidentally) kills Shevu.
Would he have produced a more stable governing structure for the New Republic?
Actually, a political thriller set in the New Republic might've been neat. Instead, we basically got Fey'lya as the political bogeyman, rising to power because, uh, just because; politics more-or-less boiled down to personalities, with ideology basically nonexistent.
Agreed. The Thrawn trilogy actually gives some fairly consistent stuff about hyperdrive. In the original trilogy Han says the Falcon can push .5 past lightspeed. This makes no sense if you interpret it as '150% c' as it would be far too slow, so Zahn just treats it as a number in itself, stating that "Point Five" is very fast, "Point Four Five" is a Victory Star Destroyer's top speed, "Point Four" is an Imperial Star Destroyer's cruising speed, and "Point Three" is an older Dreadnaught's. This makes a lot more bloody sense than the system they later instituted where it's the other way around. He also gives a speed for Point Five, something like 127 light years per hour if I remember correctly.crackersandcheese said:On a similar note, I'd get a think tank together and have them work out what limitations on hyperdrive technology make the most narrative sense. Look at how many ways hyperspace travel is depicted today: in some works it's a point-to-point, anywhere-to-anywhere mechanism with just a few limitations due to gravity wells, and in others "lanes" and "routes" are mentioned. Many writers, including some of the best like Zahn, mix the two. It's important that these plans are created and enforced to keep the universe consistent.
The Black Fleet Crisis trilogy I thought was an attempt to write a political technothriller set in Star Wars. The problem was it didn't sit very well in the setting and the author was clearly uncomfortable with it. I think it'd have been a lot better if he'd just done the story in an original sci-fi setting like Zahn does with his Conquerors etc.
Oh, and BTW, no Jacen Solo going to the Dark Side and calling himself Darth Caedus.
Agreed, agreed and agreed. I think the Yevetha were vaguely supposed to evoke imperial Japan during WW2. The Teljkon plot felt vaguely Star Trek. The White Current stuff I think was symptomatic of the fact that EU authors other than Zahn and sort of Anderson had no bloody clue what to do with Luke Skywalker. He does get a few brownie points for tying it into the main plot at the end though, and for actually giving Chewie and his family their badass moment. Arguably that bit of the Black Fleet Crisis is a Fix Fic for the Star Wars Holiday Special.I liked aspects of Black Fleet Crisis. It felt a bit like an attempt to look at the politics of the interventions in the Balkans (and of intervening in Rwanda and Somalia), which was interesting to consider; further, there was the professionalization of the military theme, which I liked.
It would've been better if the Yevetha weren't so pointlessly nasty, and if the Teljkon Vagabond stuff (which was fun to read about) actually connected in some way with the rest of the story, and if the White Current stuff was dropped entirely (because that material pretty much went nowhere).
Still, I actually liked that series. I may try and hunt down some other books by Kube-McDowell one of these days.
True! And Hand of Thrawn strongly inspired a crucial stage in my own writings, which means I would most probably never be so good a writer, so I wouldn't be posting on here to change the EU, and...A thought: if the EU were to be redone along the lines being favored in this thread, we'd lose the motivation for one of the best Fix Fics in English literature: The Hand of Thrawn Duology. We'd make up for it by having better overall storylines, but that's a damn good plot that will never come to life.
I don't think I ever saw that stuff from Denning as fetishism, I just thought he was obsessed with the character of Alema Rar in the same way that Traviss is with the Mandalorians. You notice it in the Legacy of the Force books where Rar vanishes whenever any other author is writing only to magically reappear when Denning takes over.
Agreed, agreed and agreed. I think the Yevetha were vaguely supposed to evoke imperial Japan during WW2. The Teljkon plot felt vaguely Star Trek. The White Current stuff I think was symptomatic of the fact that EU authors other than Zahn and sort of Anderson had no bloody clue what to do with Luke Skywalker. He does get a few brownie points for tying it into the main plot at the end though, and for actually giving Chewie and his family their badass moment. Arguably that bit of the Black Fleet Crisis is a Fix Fic for the Star Wars Holiday Special.
True! And Hand of Thrawn strongly inspired a crucial stage in my own writings, which means I would most probably never be so good a writer, so I wouldn't be posting on here to change the EU, and...
PARADOX
Yeah, Traviss' masturbating over Mandalorians is legendary, it's almost like a parody of Boba Fett's fanboy image.Except that in Legacy of the Force, Alema Rar appears in Exile, Sacrifice and is killed off in Fury (the last & first are Allston books & the middle one Traviss').
Also, while Alema is pretty much Denning's pet character, the amount of author-love lavished on her is NOTHING compared to Traviss and her Mandos. I mean, for God's sake, the Mando plot-line is pretty minor compared to the other plot lines, but she spends about 1/3 of each of her books focusing on Boba Fett or his granddaughter or the other Mandos, even when they're not doing anything. And the only time the Mandos appear in a non-Traviss book are in Invincible, where they kill Moffs and then get owned by Jacen/Darth Caedus.
However I don't think it's as bizarre as her interpretation of Daala as actually competent, which in historical terms is like Mussolini showing up and single-handedly winning the war on terror for.