Lit Unpopular EU opinions

I'm positive that Marasiah's mother and Hogrum Chalk are intended to be descendents of Allana. Just as Roan Fel is basically confirmed to be descended from Jaina and Jag by this point.

Which come to think of it...means that Marasiah Fel is the first product of incest in the EU?

Beccatoria, thank you for making me feel not alone. My biggest complaint about the EC is that the changes made really alter the flow of the ending scenes, for the worse. (I do like the backstory from Leviathan, even if playing it ahead of one's first playthrough kind of takes a lot of the wind out of the ending.) Also, on this tangent, I think Karpyshyn's original ME3 ending idea is completely nonsensical.

 

That's not incest! That's way beyond first cousins!

 

Not incest, we'll just see a rise of hemophilia in the future Fel emperors.

 

Um, no, cause they'll have nice Antares Draco genes!

 

That's because A-Wings are better than X-Wings...

 

Nah, TIE Defenders all the way.

 

Well yeah, TIE Defenders, but I was talking about Alliance spacecraft only.

 

I like X-wings, A-wings, TIE Avengers, and TIE Defenders so it makes no difference to me.

 

TIE Defenders are what happened when LucasArts said, "So, this B-Wing...what would happen if we made it a TIE, and made it fast?" It is, to quote Jason Fry, a ridiculous stat block.

I mean, I love the things, but there's a reason the things are nearly impossible to find - there's no way any NR starfighter could believably win against them if not flown by Wedge or Luke. Even my man Tycho got ion cannoned by one in Starfighters of Adumar. Though I would really love to see what Tycho could do with an A-Wing against one...

Really, starfighters should have to make tradeoffs, as the A-Wings and most TIEs doe with speed for durability and weapons, or the B-Wing and Y-Wing do in the opposite direction.

I am curious to know how a clawcraft would fare against the Defender, though.

 

I think its become too late to kill Luke properly because the best possible deaths for him have already been used. Whatever fate awaits him will ultimately be anti climactic. He should have died in place of either Anakin or Ganner.

Also, Ganner was the best new Jedi character introduced since Vector Prime.

Not sure if this is popular or not, but every writer currently working on Star Wars books needs to be let go except Luceno and the guys who wrote NJO need to be brought back (except Denning and Allston whom i've tired of).

 

It would be second cousins, I think, given that Fel II and Allana would be first cousins and presumably Allana would be Mrs. Fel's mother, keeping her the same generation as Roan.

 

hmm... that's actually still possible

 

Agreed on absolutely all counts.

Re: Marasiah, even if her parents are second cousins, there's nowhere I'm aware of that calls that incest? Of course, I say this as my own third cousin, so I may, quite possibly, be biased.

 

Me too. Like you, I felt the revised dialogue was too direct and spelt things out where unnecessary.

Should I duck for cover now?

(I do think Leviathan should have been in the game from launch though -- albeit, it probably would have needed the dialogue changed a bit, to keep the surprise of the ending more intact.)

My Shep chose Control also. I just loved the poetry of the Reapers' harvest ending and them returning to their original purpose as the galaxy's Shephards.

Playing god, I know, but my Shep was very much the Jedi Knight who did that anyway.

 

Yay! Of course, I say this as someone who reads a lot of 18-19th century novels, where they're all about the marrying of first cousins.

So, yes, I did mean a combination of essentialism (but not really biological, more in the sense that meaning exists outside of our own imbuing) and communitarian (in the sense that humans apprehend meaning through community). Which is, as you say, kind of the opposite of an existentialist reading, which is why I asked . However, it's interesting that an existentialist reading puts responsibility back in the hands of the player to construct the meaning, when most of the commentary I've read has accused BioWare of wanting to railroad the story and meaning. Out of curiosity, have any official representatives mentioned anything about the original ending being existentialist and such?

 

I like the Darth Bane books. I think they're fun. There. I said it.

 

I don't think that they have, but then official statements have been few and far between when it comes to commenting actively on the ending's meaning, which I suppose may in itself be a statement about the importance of player interpretation. I'm not sure whether or not it was so explicitly intentional, but I do know that the cosmicist issues raised by the Reapers were, along with the fact that before the game was even called Mass Effect, there was an intention amongst the developers to address issues like the technological singularity, Fermi's paradox, that kind of stuff? With themes explicitly and intentionally addressing notions such as the insignificance of the individual in galactic terms and also the blurring of boundaries between the biological and synthetic - I'd argue that the series skews more existentialist than essentialist?

But basically, no, this is just me spitballing and talking about my take on it! Though I find this interview interesting (spoilers for the ending, obvs) because of the way it's clear that the people in question enjoyed their endings largely because of the way they allowed their personalised experience of the game contextualise their final choices.

It's really interesting to talk about communitarianism, though. It's something that isn't necessarily in conflict with what I was saying above - existentialism might hold that meaning rests with the individual, but there's no need to deny the role of community in forming that understanding, and I don't think Mass Effect does. A huge amount of the story is about building alliances but under that it's about expanding definitions and group boundaries. Getting Ashley to include aliens in her worldview, getting Tali to include the Geth. Organic life expanding to incorporate synthetic life into the galactic community. At the end, the whole reason, I think, that we get memes about how dumb the Catalyst's logic is, is based on an inability to shift perspective to incorporate all life in all times into that communal group. But the decision you make at the end is very definitely going to be influenced by your Shepard's opinion on her place in the galactic community, whom she considers to be part of it, and at what level.

I'll be honest, I think a lot of the complaints about railroading aren't really based in railroading, per se, because Shepard is constantly being forced to choose between a limited number of options that may or may not be to the player's liking, you just pick the one that best fits. I think that it was just they were so used to the options representing the way Shepard would choose to deal with the situation, and it was such an emotionally important decision, that people really resented there was no ideal solution and felt railroaded, instead of focusing on th fact that Shepard is having to choose between a number of options that are all imperfect without enough information to really understand them. And it's in the reasons why she chooses the one she chooses that I place the responsibility back on the player? (As an aside, I find it ironic that this approach is often dismissed as "headcanon" by the same people who hold Bioware's comments that the player helps create the story as proof that they should have provided a more populist ending... But enough snark! )

 

--This coming from a guy who said Rogue Planet is a masterpiece

Also, Dark Empire is basically so bad it's unreadable.

 

That's actually a really good point.

 

Interesting. I was I believe 12 when I read Crystal Star, and I remember really liking it (and Corellian Trilogy, read around the same time) for the Jaina and Jacen bits. I didn't really understand the adult bits, and haven't really been inclined to go back and reread it.

 

As much as we've veered entirely off topic, your post's actually highlighted an interesting Star Wars parallel: Vergere.

Original dialogue: "I am Vergere [you work it out, dear reader]."
Extended Edition: "Er, yeah, so... I'm just a Sith [got it now?]."

So, for the purpose of this thread, I'll say it: I never minded the retcon to make Vergere a Sith. Yet, ironically, I much preferred the openness of the original ME3 ending that didn't spell out the Catalyst's goals quite as transparently. Backwards, huh?

(Of course, I read Traitor after the retcon, so I guess that had a lot to do with it.)

 

Chalk me up for a person that found the Dark Empire series to be overrated and the art abstract and oddly-colored.

 

I'm not sure how many of these opinions are actually unpopular, but I'll give it a shot.

-The real New Jedi Order died with Kenth Hamner and Luke's approval of his murder.
-Stackpole's X-Wing books were only alright. Isard's incompetence damaged them. The Dark Tide books were far better.
-I love the MedStar duology.
-Millennum Falcon was a complete bore: Luceno phoned it in on that one.