Star Wars

Troy Denning and Dan Didio walk into a bar

Insert punchline here.

Neither of them ducked?

A little excerpt of Inferno Squad has been released. It's not much, just introducing the four characters, but apparently Verso was at the First Death Star too, and managed to survive that explosion.

Welp, I've begun to do it, I've begun to tackle the notorious Legacy of the Force series and have now finished the first third of it. There's a fair bit to unpack here, but it all stems from the same source: this is quite an Idiot Plot, and not the kind that creeps up on you as you think about it more, it's right there out in the open, from the very start. To start with, while I do have to let the idiocy of Corellia electing someone like Thracken Sal-Solo as president slide given current events, you've got characters who should know better think a government by him deserves any support whatsoever? Wedge gets a half-assed handwave, but Han's insistence that the Galactic Alliance is turning into the new Empire and Omas into the next Palpatine is utterly ridiculous, and he doesn't get called out nearly as hard on it as he should. He has more of a point after the GAG is formed, but before that the only real beef going on is that the Galactic Alliance does not want a hostile government to have access to a superweapon that can blow away entire star systems, and that the planet needs to pay its dues just like any other if it wants to remain part of the Alliance. Also, there's everyone treating Thracken as if he's "merely" a highly unpleasant person and not a traitor to the galaxy who should at minimum be locked up for life. No tears were shed when Mirta blows his brains out.

Speaking of Bloodlines, while I have no problem with Boba Fett becoming a family man given the relationship he had with his father in the prequels, it's so, so painfully obvious that his plotline has pretty much nothing to do with the overall narrative and he's just in there because Karen Traviss is incapable of shilling Mandalorians (special shout out goes to Ben randomly comparing himself to Mandalorian children and bemoaning how he's such a sad sack compared to them and would be beaten up on the playground by them). Even when it does briefly intersect with the insurrection plot towards the end of the book, by the final scene his story's largely done, there's no reason why he can't just fly off into the sunset with his long lost granddaughter and have a decent amount of closure, yet I know Traviss brings him and his Mandalorian buddies in her other two books because reasons (I did like Beviin though, I kept picturing him as a jolly Husky Russkie kind of guy, complete with the stereotypical accent).

But the real kicker is at the end of Betrayal when Jacen realizes what Lumiya is trying to do to him, calls her out on it and demands proof that Vergere was a Sith, receives none, and pretty much goes, "eh whatever, I guess you're right." If he had just continued to use his brain for another few minutes he would've spared everyone a whole lot of grief and a massive Dork Age for the franchise. And again I have to repeat, I'm pretty sure that Vergere's philosophy as presented during the New Jedi Order was more nuanced than "there is no Black-and-White Morality, therefore Well-Intentioned Extremism is A-OK". Also another shout out to Mara for attributing Jacen's change in manner and forming the space-SS to love troubles (at least her being a Horrible Judge of Character regarding this sort of thing isn't entirely without precedent and she rids herself of that notion in the following book).

After getting through the first two books, it was the Denning novel, Tempest, that I had the least problems with. Go figure. I've always found it snooze-worthy whenever the EU focused on Hapan politics, but at least the man can craft some good action sequences, and the bit where Han's worrying that he's being left in the dust by Leia now that she's a full Jedi Knight funny. Now on to the middle third, the true heart of this beast...

I have to thank things like this for letting me understand why most people aren't really that bent out of shape over Disney's slash and burn tactics on the old stuff.

Now we just need to keep the new stuff from falling back into being that horrible. Thankfully Traviss swore off Star Wars, so there's that.

Yeah, the old EU had a number of gems, but a lot of the books were either alright but forgettable or outright bad.

Though at the same time I have to admit that the sequel trilogy rehashing a fairly big element of the Legacy of the Force, consciously or not, and IMO as of now has shaggy dogged the original trilogy harder than what fans complained the later-EU did, makes me give it the side-eye. Obviously the next two movies can change that opinion, but the opening act didn't give me the best of impressions.

edited 9th Aug '17 6:17:28 PM by ComicX6

Eh, they went with J.J. Abrams. They got what they deserved. Everything I've heard shows him to be a one trick pony whose trick is never putting things right up front where they should be. Plus he's a Star Wars fan who wasted his shot to cement hard-core Star Trek fame too by not paying fucking attention to what really made Trek so good. He parleyed it into this place and then got too scared to stand out above the old stuff there too.

At least when he copied good Star Wars, he understood enough to copy it right. When he copied Trek, he copied the stereotypes and rushed shit. Though he rushed Star Wars too.

Not sure I agree with that; nothing in the new canon so far has had anything close to the sheer cataclysm that was the Vong War, and I'm saying it as someone who likes (for the most part) the New Jedi Order. Kylo is also immensely more tolerable than Caedus to me for two reasons - one, he's not the Big Bad (the weakness of its villain cast is one among the many shortcomings of Lot F) and two, an established character wasn't derailed into him.

But then, I don't think that another evil rising a generation later obviates the victory over the original evil either, which seems to put me in a different camp from a lot of people, so *shrug*. Maybe it's the Tolkien fan in me - always, after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow (or the Dark Side, in this case) takes another shape and begins to grow again, after all.

I don't have a problem with new threats arising - that's just basic storytelling 101 - it's in the use of the Reset Button and how hard it may or may not be pressed. Like the Yuuzhan Vong war was utterly cataclysmic as you said, but by the end of it the heroes came out through the other side still strong and resolute despite all the loss and ordeals suffered with lessons learned (some of which are later ignored or retconned, but that's neither here nor there at the moment) and hope for the future. Then from what I understand Crucible ends with Luke, Han, and Leia finding inner peace and making the decision that it's finally time to fully pass the torch to the next generation...theeeeeen along comes Legacy, where not only is the Jedi Order once again almost completely wiped out but the Sith are once again in full control of the galaxy and back to their genocidal ways. Despite hearing that the Legacy comics are actually well-written, looking at it in a larger context with what came before it leaves a bad taste in my mouth is all.

The Force Awakens isn't as extreme as that example, but there you still have Luke utterly failing to resurrect the Jedi Order and he, Han, and Leia all seeming to be living miserable lives and not having been able to realize the hope they had brought into existence in the original trilogy. Part of it's a problem of limited scope that can be fixed by more novels and comics and whatever to flesh out the thirty year gap, but the contrast when you look at where the characters are at and what they've done in the different time frames and universes doesn't help, nor does Kylo being discount Caedus.

Honestly I think the sequel trilogy would've been more palpable for me if they had moved it further into the future, well out of living memory of the original trilogy, but marketability and all that.

It's the Resistance angle that does it for me in TFA, but I guess the Republic woke back up and started building up for a real war, so I can hiss at TFA without calling the full sequel trilogy a waste. Sort of. I mean, even with a peace treaty signed, isn't this more of a Cold War scenario where the war could have reignited at any point and the Republic could have been blindsided from not having a military?

For me one of the more interesting things about the YV war is that it continued to affect the EU well after it happened, both because surviving Yuuzhan Vong in the galaxy remained around and appeared in other books, and it was one of the reasons for the fall of the Galactic Alliance in the Legacy comics.

But for the more current topic, the reason the NR probably didn't want to believe the First Order was out there was both because of agents of theirs in the Senate, the possibility of another devastating war, and fear of being seen as a new version of the Empire.

edited 10th Aug '17 6:55:24 AM by theLibrarian

IIRC its been said that the actual Imperial Remnant is so toothless they're a non-threat while the First Order was seen as a non-issue with Leia thought of as a warmonger tilting at windmills for thinking they need to be dealt with.

edited 10th Aug '17 7:05:23 AM by doineedaname

The Imperial Remnant that signed the peace treaty after Jakku was basically a non-entity, with most of the Imperial Navy's capital ships destroyed or captured along with its shipyards. A year after Endor, the Galactic Empire has been reduced to about half its territory plus Coruscant, with constant uprisings quickly undermining their rule. They sign the treaty because that is the difference between the war ending a couple weeks after Jakku, or a few months later with Imperial personnel expecting nearly 100% casualties. Their capital fleet was essentially gone and with virtually no pilots left to fly fighters, meaning the Imperial war machine was basically a bunch of isolated garrisons waiting to be systematically crushed and swept away; not unlike the last few minutes of an RTS game where your opponent refuses to concede and you need to hunt down the last building and couple of units. By the end of Aftermath, the few remaining Imperial commanders are literally chucking their fighters out of the bays as kinetic bombs/suicide runs because they have nothing left to work with.

As for the Resistance-you should read Bloodlines and Before the Awakening, which explain why it was necessary. Or just read these posts i made elsewhere. [1] [2]

edited 10th Aug '17 8:49:03 AM by ViperMagnum357

And now that all makes sense.

Makes me wonder what else is hiding out there.

Hello, I've read the posts and I must ask a perhaps awkward question: why is Troy Denning considered such a laughingstock? Bear in mind, while I am well-versed on Legends comics, the only novels I've read so far are Heir to the Empire (epic awesome), Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor and Literature/Crucible. Zhan's and Stover's novels I thought awesome, but even Denning's one seemed pretty good and a fitting finale to the gang's adventures (not many heroes get to properly retire in their old age, if they reach their old age). Yet almost every mention I see of Denning seems one of ridicule and/or scorn. Since I've never read anything else by the man, I'd like to know the reason behind such animosity.

His main falling is that he tends to do...creepy stuff.

Like

Alien-hive-mind-induced Orgies

Having a mid-twenties sith apprentice offer sex to Ben Skywalker, Age 15, to turn him to the dark side.

He also started the whole 'Jacen Solo goes evil' thing, so there's that.

Yeah, Dark Nest Trilogy was squicktastic. I think they gave him the Grand Finale because no one cared at that point, and they had no interest in having him write for the new EU.

edited 9th Sep '17 8:59:47 AM by ViperMagnum357

Denning's problem is that he's mediocre at the best of times, and dreadful most of the time, but he was like the head writer for the post-ROTJ novels for something like ten years, and his thumbprint was everywhere, even in novels he didn't write. He had an obsession with gross-out content, Darker and Edgier themes to the extent that he started sounding like a teenage boy, and he quite readily killed off the characters introduced by other writers, but put his own front and center.

He's quite similar to Karen Traviss, which is hilarious because they hated each other while writing Legacy of the Force.

edited 9th Sep '17 12:03:47 PM by CrimsonZephyr

So have Troy Denning and Karren Traviss written any books lately.

Don't think so.

Did Denning and Traviss hate each other because they kept shoving the Mandalorians back and forth between "flawed but badass" and "Mary Tzu badasses that were right about everything"

Well, gigantic egos rarely get along. The rest of the authors tended to really dislike Traviss more, since after she left the Story group, all her characters and concepts were routinely mocked.

A person with creepy fetishes and is under the delusion that Star Wars is like warhammer 40k vs a person who espouses fascist ideals and considers a race of killers to be the most advanced civilization in the galaxy. Which is worse.

Both. They were both horrible, from that description.

Zahn's work was the best in my eyes. I was okay with Traviss's Commando books, but I hear she got worse later on, so . . .

She did. The second-to-last book involved Etain being so attached to clone troopers that she apparently forgot that they were killing Jedi and jumped in front of a lightsaber to protect one.