3 replies to this topic

[Aizen Teppa]

OK. Just LOLed at the thought of such topic. Decided to put a stick into ants' nest. 

 

Discuss the following item: SW Universe state of permanent disasters.

 

I want to stick only to major sci-fi series: SW, ST, B5, SG. 

 

Watched all of them, read fair whack of all (mostly ST&B5). Recently started to acquire many SW books. Reading Wookipedia almost daily. One thing which hit me immediately is amount of disasters, wars, genocide contained within SW. OK all series have wars and other side story conflicts (War is good for business - rule of acquisition # 34), but to be honest SW takes the #1 prize by galaxy, far far away, length. Superweapons of improbable proportions, super-ships not much smaller, countless millions and millions of beings dying. Amazed that there is anybody left alive to fight any wars.

 

And all that posturing between Light side and Dark side. Both were bad. One certainly more bad than other but it doesn't change the situation. My guess is that even if [old/new/even newer] Republic developed super weapon 'flying dildo of doom' they would call it something along the lines of 'flying defender of peace'. It's very Orwell-ish.

 

As for heroes. Well everybody always remember bad guys. That's normal. I love Q or Weyoun from ST, I adore Vader and Thrawn (hmm not really so bad), Bester from B5 is spectacular. And it is normal too that good guys help avert disasters. But SW takes it a bit to extreme.

 

OK that for starters. Expecting interesting debate - and please keep it civil. It is not my intention to offend somebody perception of sci-fi [or SW as it is dedicated forum] by having little laugh and relaxed exchange of ideas.

[a.fake.name]

I semi agree with you, Aizen.


As for the constant state of war, keep in mind we're talking about a whole GALAXY.
In the grand scheme of things, it makes real sense it could happen, because most places building stuff for a war/battle never see the fighting that often.

Look at real life. Attrocities happen all the time, and the perpetrators ?
They get on the UN human rights council.
Now scale that up to a galaxy, and imagine there NOT being constant fighting.

Some of the SW novels actually touch upon that, ironically the Empire brought the GFFA peace of a sorts, since they used force to keep all the various worlds with feuds to stop shooting eachother.

As for the light/dark debate, in many of the later SW books they touched on that quite a bit in the few I read, and started treating it as being good or being evil.

 

What turned me off of SW books was, starting with the way they kill off Chewbacca in the very first novel of the NJO series, and gave us a galactic invasion by a species that was not connected to the force.
It just felt way too forced, and too poorly planned out.

Not to mention that they had authors brought in to pump books out who had almost no prior experience with SW novels.

Personally, I think they should have, instead of the forced NJO series and the later civil war, Jacen turning darkside, etc, had the EU plot actually develop something before jumping back into stuff of the level to shatter major galactic governments.

Basically, they started jumping from major disaster to major disaster, instead of smaller scale stuff to develop characters and plots.

[ashiruni]

Well, there's also several other considerations I have for the SW EU. Games & comics (even the crappiest ones you can find) are usually treated as hard canon, authors (particularly early authors) had little-to-no knowledge of the setting (which had barely been established at the time; Yes, I'm looking at you Mr. Stackpole with your absurd 'torpedoes go thru shields' thing >.>), and numerous other little things that throw wrenches into the works. By the time you even get to the NJO period, the characters have been jumped thru a couple dozen different hoops and changes in realities. Essentially, the only way I've found to remotely make things line up again is to completely discount large numbers of books/comics/games as non-canon, just to maintain some semblance of a cohesive universe.

 

Once you start establishing where the borders of your particular universe are, things settle down a fair bit. That being said, the scale here is something that often goes overlooked. We're not talking about a planet (our own, of which, *always* has some minor wars going on), nor a solar system, but an entire galaxy. That's literally Trillians of stars and planets. Conflict of the scale that a serious and high-profile negotiator is needed on is just a matter of course once you get to this scale. Those minor wars we've got going on at any little time down on little planet earth don't exactly die out (and most planets have a few at some point or another) but you've also got some serious odds that someone here or there will turn their minor war into a sector spanning conflict. Reasonably speaking, keeping negotiators constantly hopping from conflict to conflict is exactly the right thing to do, but I seriously disagree with their choice to use obscenely high-ranked individuals for that. It'd be like sending Queen Elizabeth to Africa to negotiate a settlement. Sure, she's got the skill set, but you're not going to risk sending her as long as you have someone more disposable. 

[a.fake.name]

It depends on the quality of the game, to me at last.

Xwing Vs TIE series, the Katarn games, for example were great.

The one in the age of empires 2 engine was an example of crap.

edit: actually, I could EAW/FOC as crap too, and enjoy how PR shows it for the crap it is.

It all comes down to the work put in to not just put in new crap, but take the stuff we've had forever and use it before throwing in random new stuff.

Also whoever turned the Maruder Corvette and the (example of crap) broadside cruiser into artilerly vessels is a GREAT example of crap in my book.

Edited by a.fake.name, 01 June 2014 - 03:47 AM.