Lit The nitpicking thread: Things you hate in stories you love

Obviously based on the Silver Linings thread, but opposite. What things didn't you like in your favorite Star Wars stories? Please motivate your choices whenever possible.

For example, I like the Thrawn Trilogy, but the idea of adding an extra vowel to the names of clones (Joruus, Luuke) strikes me as kind of dumb. It's just so random.

I'm also a fan of the MedStar books but I think it had a pretty weak ending, because of the really predictable spy subplot and how brief the climax was. I feel like more could have been done with this.

I really like the premise of the Hand of Judgment, stormtroopers going rogue and helping people out, but the members of this group felt like some of the blandest characters in the EU. They lacked personality and I couldn't even tell them apart for most of Allegiance.

What are your grievances?

 

The Darth Bane Trilogy- The fact that bane gets his ass handed to him more often than not.

Kenobi- The fact that a lot of times Anileen came across as a b****

 

Pellaeon's "gardening" speech in Destiny's Way - didn't seem consistent with his previous characterisation.

 

The Clone Wars: I hate how the Separatists come across as incompetent. Yes, by watching the show, the Separatistate do seem like a legitimate threat and I think the war is portrayed very well (I think the Separatistable win more than in the multimedia project and there are some brutal battles), but the Separatists often come across as a joke and it cheapens everything the achieve. Also, I can't stand Anakin and Dooku fighting all the time, it makes no sense with ROTS.

The Darth Maul TCW arc: this one deserves its own place. This is actually one of my favorite arcs and it's well executed. But I have to say the whole concept is ridiculous. I feel it cheapens Obi-Wan's achievementioned of being the first Jedi in a thousand years to kill a Sith (this is only mentioned in the EU but I do think it's important story wise even if it isn't canonically mentioned) and Darth Maul's survival doesn't make any sense. He was cut in half, fell down a giant pit, on a hostile world. Also, Palpatine would have felt that he didn't doe amd so want to finish the job; failed Sith don't survive very long.

I can't think of any others right now.

 

Lately I've come to dislike Jacen's arc in a majority of the NJO (that he's featured in). Basically, the entire period from BP-SBS.

As Ulicus commented to me, I think the Vergere controversy is all Stover's fault.

Uh, I dislike what Open Seasons did with Jaster Mereel. I don't see any problem fitting The Last One Standing with Boba Fett's backstory in Attack of the Clones.

 

I don't like C3PO.

 

I really enjoyed X-Wing: Mercy Kill, but man, it sure did not have a lot of action in actual X-Wings. (Or starfighters in general).

 

KOTOR 2: My main problems are the rushed ending, glitches, bugs, and all the cut content that was not put in, because of Lucasarts's greed to rush the game out by Christmas that year.

 

KOTOR: Personally I can forgive a lot of the decisions to make the Old Republic look more familiar then Tales of the Jedi, I mean it's still been a solid 16,000 years since the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order was established and so, logically, been at least that long since interstellar travel and communication was all but perfected, why would technology and everything look massively different? HOWEVER, putting a Yoda-race in charge of the Jedi Council, giving Malak respiratory problems are a bridge too far. Ebon Hawk both name and designwise could have done with a bit more originality. If wish they'd arrived at TOR's Defender-class, without having the Ebon Hawk as a half-way point between it and the Falcon.

Sanctuary: Talked about this before, but while Anakin is off doing his thing, Talon Karrde and Kam Solusar are wholled up in a cave. Kam uses his Jedi senses to keep them on alert. Then, just before the end of the book, they try to send out a whole ships and they die, and then they get radiod that Corran, Jaina, Jacen and the Errant Venture are in system. You had one job, Kam.

 

I forgot the biggest one: using ANOTHER Death Star in ROTJ. If they wanted another superweapon they should have gone with an original design, not merely a bigger version of what they had before. Feels kind of cheap.

I really like the second half of ROTS but showing the Death Star under construction seems a weird choice, timing-wise. It took them a few weeks/months (?) to get that far, but the rest nearly 19 years?

I wish Del Rey had made more consistent use of some characters that popped up occassionally and then were forgotten about for ten books (Karrde is a big one, but also smaller characters like Belindi Kalenda from the Corellian Trilogy, and the secondary cast from Truce at Bakura for example, they added a diversity that the EU mostly lacked).

Agreed, I love KOTOR but the Yoda stand-in, Vader stand-in and Falcon stand-in are weak points. It's logical from a marketing perspective but feels unoriginal. Or maybe they wanted to give players some familiar Star Wars-y things to latch onto on their first foray into the past? Probably the former.
Still a great game though, I actually started replaying it yesterday and ordered the comics omnibus online today.

 

It take place 4,000 years before the rise of the Galactic Empire.

 

I know, but 4000 is nothing when Obi-Wan's "the Jedi have protected the Republc for a thousand generations." was interpreted as a literal 25,000 years, before which either the Jedis were first created or only the least recent galactic government that we know of was established.

 

It is still 4000 years, 4000 years of technological and aesthetic evolution, and for all we know so could the Republic have begun as a planetary alliance in the same solar system or two-three close star systems that tuck years to travel between in ships that needed gigantic power plants for their primitive hyperdrives to function.

 

I hate that YDR ends. I wish I was still reading it.

 

I still hate that Legacy was cut short by some 30 issues.

 

That ROTJ occurs at/on Endor, not Coruscant. Coruscant would make more sense as the location for the final battle against Sheev and his forces.

That TOTJ contradicts itself so much. Naga Sadow's appearance, lineage, and titles all changed from comic to comic.

 

Dude I was totally going to post this.

I reread YDR like once every two months and it loses absolutely none of its value. Just an amazingly well-written novel.

But per the thread's question... toooooo many to count.

 

Not really, as the whole idea is that the Emperor is building his new Death Star in secret to lure the Rebels into a trap. Not going to happen If he was building the thing above his Throne World.

 

And maybe in the new EU that is the case. It already wasn't anyway in the canon KOTOR took place in. And it's 4000 years of aestetic revolution starting from a culture that has advanced to the point of interstellar travel 10,000 of years ago. By then they should really have decided that pants are pretty rad idea and all that. Some planets can be super medieval, but a space military that spends all their time on spaceships can look like a space military if you ask me.

 

Your cultural bias is showing.

 

Yeah, the leftmost guys helmet is a pretty familiar but other then that they don't have anything in common with the movies other then they are clothing for humanoids.

 

Why would they? They are not the Clone Army, Judicials, Seps, Imperials or Rebels. Though funny enough they do have a certain similar look to the Naboo Security Forces.

 

Revan goes around in cape, chestplate, skirt and lioncloth and he's my favorite character. I'd have liked to see the planet where his fashion sense come from, but I don't begrudge Taris ect. theirs.

 

That would have been awesome! Leia has a role in that final battle and hashes things out with Vader.

At least another 50 issues were needed. Keep Krayt dead and add more scenes with the Yuuzhan Vong!