Comments | deaka: still alive! (no, really)

deaka

still alive! (no, really)

Sep 20, 2010 00:34

I've really not been doing well with the whole journal thing lately. (An update a month, on average? Oh dear.) Work has more or less taken over my life this month, at least. Had the chance to catch up this weekend, and ended up doing... practically nothing useful. Hmm.

Did skim-read through Destiny's Way for a fic, and wow, I'd forgotten (or ( Read more... )

njo, all things british, eu, life on mars, tv, rambling

Comments 9

archaeologist_d September 19 2010, 14:51:08 UTC

Gave up on the NJO. I'm finding it extremely difficult to write SW because of it. :(

deaka September 19 2010, 15:09:10 UTC

I was doing okay until LotF/FotJ, but I think it's just been gradually eroding my defences over time. *sigh*

archaeologist_d September 19 2010, 15:19:15 UTC

LotF did it for me. I never read the last book in that series - skimmed it in the bookstore - but I'd read enough recaps to know that I'd had enough. Besides Luke, Han and Leia's characters had been completely ruined at that point for me.

deaka September 24 2010, 11:58:04 UTC

Invincible was just terrible, terrible writing, even leaving aside what it did to the characters and how poorly it tied up the loose ends of the series. But then, it was Troy Denning. I don't think he even tries anymore. Just throw in some disturbing sexual overtones, some ridiculous gore and a few silly Force powers that only exist when he's writing, and hey, another book for the series! Denning 101.

juxtaposie September 19 2010, 17:03:50 UTC

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

No, me either! Not even a little! Nope! Not one single bit!..

Soooooooo bitter! *shakes fist*

For writing purposes, the characters mostly live in an AU in my head that is Vong-less and devoid of character assassinations.

deaka September 24 2010, 11:51:03 UTC

Revel in the bitterness with me! *g*

I do love AUs. It's nice to be able to go, hey, what if the characters didn't end up completely unlikable? *sigh*

juxtaposie September 24 2010, 15:36:03 UTC

Likable characters. What a lovely, novel thought...

sunnyskywalker September 19 2010, 17:45:02 UTC

my frustration with the characters all being callous, arrogant, morally corrupt morons bereft of self-awareness

Or we could put those iterations of the characters in a room with late-series HP characters and see who's left standing! Is there a theory of character degradation increasing the longer a series goes on somewhere on TV Tropes? (I'm sure there is, but if I look, I'll lose several hours.) I'm leery of series in general now because it happens so often. You start out liking them, and then the author(s) start losing perspective and running out of shocking new things to do, so... gah.

deaka September 24 2010, 12:11:34 UTC

If there's not, there should be. A pattern of character regression, maybe, rather than progression? The series version of flanderization, where the characters and the series are reduced to their worst qualities?

I think part of the problem with recent Star Wars EU is that 1) some of the writers aren't trying, and some are really very bad, and 2) they're attempting to do a kind of gritty, shades-of-moral-grey realism thing that (IMO) doesn't sit very well in the Star Wars mythos to begin with, and hasn't been handled with any degree of nuance or sophistication.

Sometimes I wish speculative fiction wasn't so heavily inclined towards series, because it's so easy to get burned.