Author Topic: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)  (Read 5148 times)

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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
The problem with it is that, unlike the Hornblower novels it aspires to emulate, starship to starship combat is never going to be the kind of thing that requires leadership so much as command, so it's difficult to come by excuses not to promote the successful.

(And unlike the Hornblower series, no historical basis for wanting to stay in lower commands. Frigates had the best crews and frequently the best captains, because they took all the prizes and made all the money.)
« Last Edit: September 09, 2009, 11:22:07 pm by NGTM-1R »
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: Official Volition statement...
And you apparently missed the page I referenced (hmm, which I now see that both link to the same page).  Not all Mary Sues are bad!

No, not all tropes are bad.
Mary Sue is pretty much always bad.
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Kane and Thrawn are not bad.
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Offline Wobble73

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Oh! why did I type on my big fat keyboard??? The thread split at my post!  :(

By this I mean all though mine is the first post in this thread I do not take ownership of this thread.

Kane and Thrawn I have at least heard of, Mary Sue and Honor???  :confused: :shrugs:
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Offline Scotty

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
A Mary Sue is a type of character, link provided (ye be warned now that you will lose hours at that site).

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That's right, because when you defect to a foreign power in order to join up with the captain who defeated you, then take up arms against your own homeland, you do it completely. No mixed loyalties! Just some bittersweet regret.

<sarcasm>I see.  This must be why Stalin didn't have to close the Soviet Union's borders to prevent mass emigration to other countries, even Germany </sarcasm>.  Reigns of Terror generally have that effect.  By this point, Yu is a couple regime changes out of date, Haven wise, and Caslet was the next worst thing to dead when he got to Hades.

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Because, after all, you're not defecting to Manticore. You're joining Honor's Party!

Or the Solarians, or anyone else.  As I recall, Parnell went to Sol and Earth, and there weren't too many other Peeps that came along for the trip.

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ah TVTropes we can now have a common language for analyzing and ridiculing our media.

You have to link to it! :D

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We went from proud ships of the line to enormous missile buses in just a few years.

Such is the nature of war.  We went from proud lines of battle to enormous dreadnaughts and battleships in just over the same amount of time. 
And you apparently missed the page I referenced (hmm, which I now see that both link to the same page).  Not all Mary Sues are bad!

No, not all tropes are bad.
Mary Sue is pretty much always bad.

The "Not all tropes are bad" page specifically references Mary Sues as not always being bad.  And if we want to get into Mary Sues with a more... um, stark, example, we can always argue about Victor Cachet (or Anton Zilwiki).  Talk about a wannabe Author Avatar, even if I do enjoy the stories he shows up in.

Kane and Thrawn are not bad.

Seconded.

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Kane and Thrawn I have at least heard of, Mary Sue and Honor???   :shrugs:

Honor Harrington


 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
The in-universe, 'factual' reasons why things happen don't make them work any better on a literary level.

 

Offline Scotty

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Yeah, neither do the in-world, 'factual' reasons for the replacements of ships of the line.  However, it happened, therefore it is realistic.  Weber, for his many faults, tries to keep it realistic, or at least plausible.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
That was part of the problem. A lot of detail can be left implied. He felt the need to splay the guts of every economic system, political shift, interstellar treaty, novel weapons system, and confounded technobabble nonsense device across thirty or forty pages of exposition. And then that started leaking into his treatment of characters!

Always liked Oscar Saint Just, though. Shame they killed him and Admiral...uh...whatever-her-name-was, the latter offscreen. (They blew up the Octagon! lol, Octagon.)

 
Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
I liked how David Weber went into excruciating detail concerning everything.

And by Admiral whatever-her-name-was I assume you mean McQueen?
17:37:02   Quanto: I want to have sexual intercourse with every space elf in existence
17:37:11   SpardaSon21: even the males?
17:37:22   Quanto: its not gay if its an elf

[21:51] <@Droid803> I now realize
[21:51] <@Droid803> this will be SLIIIIIGHTLY awkward
[21:51] <@Droid803> as this rich psychic girl will now be tsundere for a loli.
[21:51] <@Droid803> OH WELLL.

See what you're missing in #WoD and #Fsquest?

[07:57:32] <Caiaphas> inspired by HerraTohtori i built a supermaneuverable plane in ksp
[07:57:43] <Caiaphas> i just killed my pilots with a high-g maneuver
[07:58:19] <Caiaphas> apparently people can't take 20 gees for 5 continuous seconds
[08:00:11] <Caiaphas> the plane however performed admirably, and only crashed because it no longer had any guidance systems

 

Offline Scotty

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
She has a couple short stories in the anthologies.  One where she gets her nickname, and the other where she loses it.

 

Offline Mika

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Speaking of dying protagonists, I'd like to know the name of the author who:
1) writes fantasy settings
2) protagonists die in his books, up to a level that you start to think that he spent so much time describing the guy he couldn't die!

I couldn't find that much information on Bakker, could have been him or not.
Relaxed movement is always more effective than forced movement.

 

Offline Scotty

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
There's a secondary character who bites it in At All Costs who was introduced almost before Honor was. 
Spoiler:
MeKeon is killed in the big Trafalgar-esque battle.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Speaking of dying protagonists, I'd like to know the name of the author who:
1) writes fantasy settings
2) protagonists die in his books, up to a level that you start to think that he spent so much time describing the guy he couldn't die!

I couldn't find that much information on Bakker, could have been him or not.

George R. R. Martin. A Song of Ice and Fire.

 

Offline redsniper

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Wait wait wait wait wait
Honor has:
...
-a husband
-a wife
    -both of whom are married to each other
wut
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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Basically she married this guy who was already married to another girl.  Really weird, I know.
17:37:02   Quanto: I want to have sexual intercourse with every space elf in existence
17:37:11   SpardaSon21: even the males?
17:37:22   Quanto: its not gay if its an elf

[21:51] <@Droid803> I now realize
[21:51] <@Droid803> this will be SLIIIIIGHTLY awkward
[21:51] <@Droid803> as this rich psychic girl will now be tsundere for a loli.
[21:51] <@Droid803> OH WELLL.

See what you're missing in #WoD and #Fsquest?

[07:57:32] <Caiaphas> inspired by HerraTohtori i built a supermaneuverable plane in ksp
[07:57:43] <Caiaphas> i just killed my pilots with a high-g maneuver
[07:58:19] <Caiaphas> apparently people can't take 20 gees for 5 continuous seconds
[08:00:11] <Caiaphas> the plane however performed admirably, and only crashed because it no longer had any guidance systems

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Yeah, cause we haven't nor have ever had any cultures on Earth where a man is allowed to have more than one wife.
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Basically she married this guy who was already married to another girl.  Really weird, I know.

No, she married both of them. Not that weird.

 

Offline Scotty

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Yeah, it's a Grayson style marriage.  Graysons are polygamists.  There's a faily interest (if spread over 10 books) backstory to those too.

 

Offline Ziame

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Good stories with more than 3 chapters? The Witcher (6 volumes iirc and 2 sets of stories) and "Videssos" by Turtledove
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Offline Silent Warrior

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Re: Split: Series quality (Once more, with feeling!)
Stephen King's The Dark Tower, anyone? Seven books, at least 4 worthwhile. (I'm not particularly partial to #5 and the Raiding Dr Doom-squad... though the rest sloped upwards from there.)

As for Eddings, I have to say I really don't cared for the Malloreon or Belgariad one bit, but I will concede that the authoring quality was at least consistent all the way.
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