The Testing Chat III: The Time of Great Chatting

[adr]

ADR's daily post-counts more less tells the story.

I think I had about 7000 posts on sdn over about 7 years... I don't know what kind of secondary effect my posts had, but my post count on its own was nothing to write home about.

[Darksi4190]

I've been there for almost ten years, and I don't even have five thousand posts. I was posting a hell of a lot when I first started, with the combination of the STGODS, vs. debates that hadn't yet been settled, and the discussion threads for episodes of shows I watched, I was probably averaging between ten and twelve posts per day from 2003-2005. Then when I went to college, I started hanging out with my RL friends more and stopped participating in the STGODS, but there were still discussion threads for Stargate and nBSG. From 2005-2007, I think I had something like five or six posts a day listed as my average.

Now I barely make one or two posts a week.

[weemadando]

this was exacerbated by the people who wrote it being largely ignorant of the political subtext, barring some of the WEG stuff (though they "got" the Empire far more than the Rebels).

I wouldn't mind hearing more about this, as I never looked at the WEG stuff for the SW RPG.

it's not all that much, but basically (it'd take me a while to dig out the respective sourcebooks) they realized the empire was straight-up fascist and ran with it. the party (unnamed AFAICR but i call it "the new order party" mentally) ran the COMission for the Preservation of the New ORder, COMPNOR, which maintained its own version of the SS/SA, CompForce, Gestapo, the Imperial Security Bureau (though they were hilariously incompetent and regularly got played by the rebels, imperial intelligence, and random hackers) and maintained political officers within the Imperial armed forces (borrowing a bit more from the NKVD commissariat). The armed forces hated this. In general, the Empire went loose on Core Worlds areas and cracked down hard everywhere else to keep the elites happy.

The Rebels, meanwhile, operated primarily as revolutionary cells and urban guerrillas from what i can recall, and they stood for equal rights for droids as well as for aliens (something that got dropped in the rest of the EU). I don't recall much and would have to dig out more.

I've actually pondered writing some sort of big dumb synthesis of this stuff plus older and some newer material as a source for roleplaying background, but I'm lazy and it'd probably not really see the light of day.

I also liked that it showed that the rebels were also playing pretty goddamn dirty - not afraid of summary justice delivered by a raiding party in the night. IIRC there was also some fluff that talked about them doing pretty atrocious stuff to suspected collaborators.

But honestly the worst is their "prison system". Whereby they'd take the thousands of Imperial captives from their campaigns, who had refused to change allegiance and dump them on an uninhabited planet with some basic pre-industrial revolution agricultural tools, seeds and livestock and going: "hey, hope your life in an intergalactic economy prepared you for this. Don't y'all starve to death now."

[magic princess]

It's because of two things. We were all very connected to Curtis Saxton and the "Saxtonite" interpretation of Star Wars, and pushing it as hard as possible (I don't think even now I'm allowed to elaborate on just how connected we were)--and I'm not bullshitting about that, let's just say Dr. Saxton's project had a lot of moral support from the ASVS gang. Secondly, it's a very attractive nerd topic: "Enterprise versus Star Destroyer!". So excellent placement really compensates for a lot of failings.

[Bakustra]

It's because of two things. We were all very connected to Curtis Saxton and the "Saxtonite" interpretation of Star Wars, and pushing it as hard as possible (I don't think even now I'm allowed to elaborate on just how connected we were)--and I'm not bullshitting about that, let's just say Dr. Saxton's project had a lot of moral support from the ASVS gang. Secondly, it's a very attractive nerd topic: "Enterprise versus Star Destroyer!". So excellent placement really compensates for a lot of failings.

Wait, what? Did you sign NDAs?

I also liked that it showed that the rebels were also playing pretty goddamn dirty - not afraid of summary justice delivered by a raiding party in the night. IIRC there was also some fluff that talked about them doing pretty atrocious stuff to suspected collaborators.

But honestly the worst is their "prison system". Whereby they'd take the thousands of Imperial captives from their campaigns, who had refused to change allegiance and dump them on an uninhabited planet with some basic pre-industrial revolution agricultural tools, seeds and livestock and going: "hey, hope your life in an intergalactic economy prepared you for this. Don't y'all starve to death now."

I'm somewhat agnostic, because it's counter to the overall themes of the OT, but I can also see it as a way to provide some room for moral conflict.

[phongn]

ADR's daily post-counts more less tells the story.

I think I had about 7000 posts on sdn over about 7 years... I don't know what kind of secondary effect my posts had, but my post count on its own was nothing to write home about.

Whoops, sorry, not you - someone else posted some statistics about postcounts and I thought you did it.

[magic princess]

Baks: My system of morality compares the agreement I made to one without exception.

[Zablorg]

did you take a life together

[weemadando]

I have an unfinished fic that I wrote a bunch of years back that had a subplot based on a lot of the WEG rebel stuff. About how there's all the propaganda and the faces of the Rebellion like Luke and Leia, but a large bulk of the Rebel's forces across the galaxy are still just partisans and insurgents, all working to try and bleed the Empire in their own sectors in whatever ways they can.

It's why I really liked the WEG setting because it tried to look at how the galaxy as a whole would have been going with a generation long rebellion against a tyrannical dictatorship, rather than at just the simple (but classic): "heroes v villains" of the movies.

[Veef]

I don't know where RotS>RotJ even comes from. Jedi is twice the film Sith was. Saying it's the best of the PT is damning with faint praise.

I don't get it either but people seemed really up in arms against ROTJ.

I mean I know the Super NES game opened with one of those damn vehicle levels but guys get over it

[Bakustra]

I don't know where RotS>RotJ even comes from. Jedi is twice the film Sith was. Saying it's the best of the PT is damning with faint praise.

I don't get it either but people seemed really up in arms against ROTJ.

I mean I know the Super NES game opened with one of those damn vehicle levels but guys get over it

Return of the Jedi features the first revelation that the Jedi weren't perfect, and the ending basically says that the Jedi were wrong about the Force. It's the first element of things that would later crop up in the prequels.

[phongn]

What genuinely fascinates me is all the minor internet celebrities that have posted on there- Lowtax (well, okay, major internet celebrity for one post), John Biles, the Lunar Archivist, a couple of other fanfic-posters, and so on. I mean, it's a tiny Star Wars fanboard!

I've seen it referenced by a whole lot of other people (one very notable Apple blogger, Forbes' nerd-blogs, etc.)

I'm somewhat agnostic, because it's counter to the overall themes of the OT, but I can also see it as a way to provide some room for moral conflict.

I kind of like the idea of the Rebels being a bit dirty; as you said, it's counter to the black-and-white themes of the OT but it's much more how a real and desperate insurgency would actually go about things. Lately (last year or so?) I've been recognizing my inherent self-contradiction between enjoying the themes of the OT - and my desires for, you might say 'Saxtonian realism'. I like both and the two are difficult to reconcile.

I also liked that it showed that the rebels were also playing pretty goddamn dirty - not afraid of summary justice delivered by a raiding party in the night. IIRC there was also some fluff that talked about them doing pretty atrocious stuff to suspected collaborators.

When the New Republic first took Coruscant, a whole lot of Imperial functionaries, bureaucrats and other mostly harmless people were pretty much shot-on-sight!

But honestly the worst is their "prison system". Whereby they'd take the thousands of Imperial captives from their campaigns, who had refused to change allegiance and dump them on an uninhabited planet with some basic pre-industrial revolution agricultural tools, seeds and livestock and going: "hey, hope your life in an intergalactic economy prepared you for this. Don't y'all starve to death now."

Whoa, I don't remember that bit. Which book, if you remember?

[weemadando]

It was either in this one:
http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/47134/rebel- ... sourcebook
or this one:
http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/54111/rules- ... e-handbook

[Aaron]

It's because of two things. We were all very connected to Curtis Saxton and the "Saxtonite" interpretation of Star Wars, and pushing it as hard as possible (I don't think even now I'm allowed to elaborate on just how connected we were)--and I'm not bullshitting about that, let's just say Dr. Saxton's project had a lot of moral support from the ASVS gang. Secondly, it's a very attractive nerd topic: "Enterprise versus Star Destroyer!". So excellent placement really compensates for a lot of failings.

Wait, what? Did you sign NDAs?

You know how some things are an insta ban? Some of us can't reveal more then that without risking an instaban if a mod over there read it over here.

[evilsoup]

oh god stop building it up
now I want to know, and I have no idea what you're talking about
anyway, we have the secret clubhouse

[Infinity Biscuit]

Hinting at it seems at least as bad as saying it outright, though, since now everyone here probably assumes something worse than what it actually was :L

[Crazedwraith]

Clearly they told him how many gigatonnes he need to put in the ICS to defeat the trekkies. duh.

or they bribed lucas with hookers and blow to get him the writing gig in the first place.

[Bakustra]

ADMIN ANNOUNCEMENT!

The official position of these forums are was will have been is that the deep, dark secret being referred to is that a cabal of USENET debaters saved Hitler's brain!!!

Anyone implying differently might, I dunno get called a jerk or something.

But seriously, let's not press things to the point where people might get punished/hurt over it.

[Darksi4190]

Hurt?

You make it sound like the old ASVS cabal has its own assassins or something.

[Crazedwraith]

emotionally hurt, you nitwit

[Bakustra]

Hurt?

You make it sound like the old ASVS cabal has its own assassins or something.

Jesus, you fuck, don't you know that the Gilded Hand may be listening right now??

...

emotionally hurt, you nitwit north-of-Detroiter

[Darksi4190]

How do you know where I....

*Slams hand down on a giant red button, video screens descend from the ceiling showing images of tactical squads gathering outside the house*

You aren't taking me alive.

*kicks open a weapons locker and grabs an M240 machine gun*

[magic princess]

Now that is exactly how an old ASVS thread went!

[magic princess]

Hinting at it seems at least as bad as saying it outright, though, since now everyone here probably assumes something worse than what it actually was :L

Yet this is the very lifeblood of the excitement of a Beltway Bandit: Getting invited to Fox News to drop just enough hints about something to skirt around your Top Secret clearance and make all the professional officers angry at the spirit-but-not-letter violations of the talking head getting paid 300 USD an hour to tell Lockheed we need a 5 billion dollar programme for Mach 5 underwater rocket torpedoes.

[Big Orangutan]

it's also quite possible that skyfall is mediocre and nuwho is driven by a toxic ouroboros of nostalgia

but actually sdn tends to ignore stuff more than anything, especially when it comes to games

What about Stark's endless caustic diatribes in the gaming subforum?

I don't think Thanas or Stas (or before, Shep) were that heavy-handed in History? It's just that there isn't all that much interest there. ADR's daily post-counts more less tells the story.

Stas and Shep weren't no trouble, but Thanas' elitism and heavy handedness was one major factor for History currently being a discussion wasteland and minefield.

I don't really care about how high it's rated. It's an ending to a trilogy that was badly botched from day one. The fact that on its own it basically sums up everything they agonizingly drew out over the course of three films doesn't help. I think I said this before but ROTS being the only movie you really need for a prequel is kind of damning of how uninteresting the subject matter really was. It's just a mediocre action movie that happens to be about Darth Vader.

I know ROTJ has lost a lot of its luster in recent memory but at least it was a cap to something I could get invested in.

Like RLM said, Anakin is just a bad apple from the start so where is the hope in the story? There's no tragedy in a bad person being bad and suffering for it.

But Anakin Sky was not evil from day one; boy do I dislike Plinkett's infamous reviews, as slightly bland and silly in places that The Phantom Menace was. Anakin was not exactly boiling with latent malevolence throughout TPM and in RotS's opening scenes, while a hardened Clone War veteran with hang ups, he was not poised on becoming a murderer of Jedi younglings and was still first slowly eased into becoming evil by Palpatine when Palpatine ordered the on the spot execution of Count Dooku (a guy who not exactly didn't have it coming).