Star Wars

[KingRoyal]

I remember when, in the latter days of the old Expanded universe, the fetishization of Boba Fett had reached absolutely ridiculous heights, because most of the writers were basically fanfic authors who'd sleazed their way into making actual "canon" books

Every part of the EU was by fanfic writers. That was the basic idea of the EU, basically a large, published fanfic. And, honestly, the best example of what would happen if Star Wars were to actually enter the public domain in a timely manner, rather than be under long-term copyright to a corporation who would act as terrible stewards to the franchise. Man, everything I hate about Disney and copyright can be explained entirely in terms of Star Wars

[Mongrel]

Pretty much.

The EU had its good aspects and stories, it's just that in some cases "official" status seemingly legitimized some "very problematic" stories which really shouldn't have gotten that fully branded corporate support and promotion.

[Thad]

I remember when, in the latter days of the old Expanded universe, the fetishization of Boba Fett had reached absolutely ridiculous heights, because most of the writers were basically fanfic authors who'd sleazed their way into making actual "canon" books

Every part of the EU was by fanfic writers. That was the basic idea of the EU, basically a large, published fanfic. And, honestly, the best example of what would happen if Star Wars were to actually enter the public domain in a timely manner, rather than be under long-term copyright to a corporation who would act as terrible stewards to the franchise. Man, everything I hate about Disney and copyright can be explained entirely in terms of Star Wars

Dave Filoni seems okay.

[Mongrel]

Even the wartiest bits of the stories Timothy Zahn wrote are better than anything Disney's put out so far.

[Brantly B.]

I keep wanting to compare The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker to Blue Flames but that's a reference that if anybody besides Thad and I get I will track you down and eliminate you.

[Mongrel]

I enjoyed the fact that when I googled "Blue Flames" the top result was the score from the last Blues vs Flames game.

[Thad]

I keep wanting to compare The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker to Blue Flames but that's a reference that if anybody besides Thad and I get I will track you down and eliminate you.

I thought Blue Flames came out okay. I mean, at least we finished it.

Dreams Distorted was the one that crashed and burned.

[Mongrel]

Oh it's something else.

I thought Brent was talking about the wretchedly misogynistic anime from the... very early 90's? and was quite confused since they're both horrible but mostly in very different ways.

I was also wondering how on earth there could be an anime known to brontos, but which only Brent and Thad had watched!

[Brantly B.]

The main takeaway is that it (the bad one) was a round robin storytelling exercise in which the authors (one author in particular (me)) had a terrible habit of ignoring or by fiat negating moves made in previous entries that they didn't personally care for, because they were actual teenagers.

Also, you must all now be eliminated.

[Friday]

[Thad]

The main takeaway is that it (the bad one) was a round robin storytelling exercise in which the authors (one author in particular (me)) had a terrible habit of ignoring or by fiat negating moves made in previous entries that they didn't personally care for, because they were actual teenagers.

Haven't read it in probably 20 years but I don't remember us being too bad about that on that one.

KateStory for sure. And the TGRL brawls, oh God; I once did a "nope, that didn't happen, it was all holograms" in one of those. And I took Dreams Distorted way too seriously and you set it on fire.

My recollection of Blue Flames is that we did a pretty good job planning it, working together, and actually finishing the damn thing, to a result I was happy with.

(I don't have dates in front of me but I don't think we were actual teenagers? We might have been 12. Which could explain the difference between that one and our next few years of collaborations which largely involved being openly antagonistic to each other.)

[Brantly B.]

Yeah but KateStory and TGRL are jokes.

...so yeah, it's a KateStory. Although in Rise of Skywalker's case I think they may have actually been doing a feature length KateStory thread.

[Thad]

Also I learned storytelling from superhero comics and superhero comic-adjacent media, so "new writer comes in and immediately gives some awkward explanation for why thing last writer did wasn't real" was totally normal.

It's not usually quite as egregious as Rise of Skywalker, though. That's like JMS Spider-Man shit.

[Mongrel]

I remember I learned as an improv thing in high school, but also from watching Whose Line Is It Anyway, that you should almost always say "yes" and not "no". You really remember the way everything would come screeching to a halt, and the dead silence when that person's turn ended up as a huge clunker.

There were a few other lessons along the way: Superhero comics were another object lesson on what happens when you DON'T say yes, since I was already annoyed by story impermanence at a young age, and the improv bit really helped me understand the structural reasons that felt shitty. Moebius' The Airtight Garage (and its sequel) was also a very bizarre but fascinating and incredible look at what happened when a single writer is both talented and insane enough to do KateStory all by himself. It gave me a frame of reference for how amazing a story you could produce by going to the other extreme.

(If you don't know the story behind it, The Airtight Garage came when Moebius started writing a new sci-fi story, did three pages and put them away in a desk somewhere. He couldn't find it, so he just started another story, doing another three pages. When he found the original pages, he made a game out of reconciling the two previous attempts, which he enjoyed enough that he set himself a new a challenge of blowing up the storyline again by the end of the new three pages. That basically set up the model for the entire saga, which ended up creating one of Moebius' more memorable heroes and one hell of a wild ride)

[Thad]

I remember I learned as an improv thing in high school, but also from watching Whose Line Is It Anyway, that you should almost always say "yes" and not "no".

There were a few other lessons along the way: Superhero comics were object lesson on what happens when you DON'T do that, since I was already annoyed by story impermanence at a young age, and the improv bit really helped me understand the structural reasons that felt shitty.

There are a few writers who are really good at respecting past continuity but make it work for them, instead of working for it. Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid are a couple good examples.

Though sometimes, you do have to reset the status quo, because the changes are bad. Not for nothin', Busiek and Waid are the writers Marvel brought in to do the reset button after Heroes Reborn (and while they were at it they threw out some other bad ideas that had built up over the past few years, like Teen Tony and Wasp being an actual wasp-person). It's a double-edged sword -- occasionally you get a retcon that changes everything and becomes the defining characteristic of a particular character or story (Magneto retroactively becoming a Holocaust survivor), but sometimes you get a retcon that's terrible and is itself retconned (the aforementioned JMS Spider-Man ick, the Clone Saga, Nightcrawler turning out to be a literal demon...).

Course, the question of which is which is subjective. Every story is somebody's favorite. Even the Clone Saga.

[Mongrel]

There are a few writers who are really good at respecting past continuity but make it work for them, instead of working for it. Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid are a couple good examples.

Yeah, it can be done, it's just requires a somewhat uncommon talent, as well as enough wiggle room in the plotline to insert a lever to subvert it.

My favourite examples of these are actually from Jackbox Quiplash sessions; for example the right-hand entry in this matchup from last night:



(Thad come play with us)

[Mongrel]

ahahahahahahah omg

[Thad]

I didn't really notice Luke's voice was computer-generated the first time, but now that somebody pointed it out to me it's really obvious in last week's Boba Fett.

On the one hand, I understand the "why" -- they're Lucasfilm, they can do shit like that; you're already doing AI tricks to recreate a young Mark Hamill's face, so why not his voice, too? When you've got access to that kind of tech, you're going to use it. Plus, if you're on the bleeding edge of developing the tech, that means the more you use it the better it's going to get. (After all, Luke's face still has some distracting uncanny-valley shit going on, but it's a damn sight better than Tarkin in Rogue One. They've come a long way already.)

On the other hand, while the result is technically impressive it's still not as good as the real thing. Just have Hamill do the voice, guys. I bet he can still do a young-himself voice. And if he can't, or he's unavailable or something, it's okay to cast a sound-alike. Instead, what we got is just painfully artificial, all flat inflections; it's a couple steps up from Macintalk but it's still the same kind of emotionless delivery. Luke should have some warmth. Even though Last Jedi shows us that he was kind of a terrible teacher and everything fell apart, it should at least seem like he gives a fuck.

[beatbandito]

I'm siding with the theory that this is actually the first hint of introducing a canon Bigger Luke saga.

[KingRoyal]

Not looking forward to the future where Disney owns their actors for infinity