Starfleet Jedi

From the CGI Clone Wars thread in the Reviews & Critiques board, now moved into its own dedicated thread:

ILikeDeathNote wrote:

Mr. Orugahn wrote: (unless you look to authors other then George Lucas and massive re-design the franchise).

Oh God.

I highlighted the bold part because I think this is the intended sole purpose of websites like SDN and even the SWTC and the true intent of persons like Wong and Saxton. They want to basically reinvent someone else's intellectual property into their own image, or more precisely to make Star Wars more "hard" because apparently for some reason "hard = better." This definitely seems to be the mindset as indicated by Atomic Rockets of the Space Patrol, which I should point out is maintained and owned by Nyrath, a member of SDN (as supported by numerous comments and references within that website), and is closely associated with RedImperator, also of SDN, once again as indicated by numerous references and comments throughout that website.

I'm not saying that hard science fiction is bad (big Niven fan here, and I'll admit to being a very big fan of Nyrath's website; in fact I wish it had its own forum community), but the whole attitude is suspect to say the least, especially when they seem so feverant to apply it to someone else's intellectual property. Past trends also suggest that sometimes the science can get simply too hard at the detriment of the story itself. This is a common complaint for more casual Niven fans/readers, especially of his later works, and it reminds me of episodes of The Simpsons (and a storyline from the short-lived Simpsons comic strip) and Mission Hill which precisely parody this mindset. I know Nyrath's website openly states that science must be respected, but c'mon, science fiction is hardly expected to make up for the lack of quality education in schools, or am I expected to believe that we should retroactively rework Homer's works to make them more authentic to Ancient Greece, lest we be worried that our middle and high school children start worshipping ancient pagan dieties?

But I've already ranted too much on a topic that richly deserves its own thread if not board. Hell, I could probably write a whole book on this topic, and who knows, maybe I will.

As one of the pro-wars people (sorry guys, but I am) I think it is more a desire to be right and and have 'your team' be on the winning side more then it is anything malicious, at least for the most part. For example, I am a Bangles fan, I have been since I was a little girl. I will defend them to death, because they are MY team God damnit.

Dabat wrote:As one of the pro-wars people (sorry guys, but I am)

There is nothing that states that all members registered on this forum must believe that Star Trek is superior to Star Wars on any quantitative or qualitative value.

I believe that my Karen Traviss thread says a lot about this.

http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1086

I don't know, I don't think we're trying to change it. For the most part, I enjoy the books that work within the rules the most. I just think that most SW fans feel that Lucas seriously jacked his magnificent idea and are trying to redeem it. Generally by working within the rules. But, there are some authors who decide that they don't give a fuck, and make whatever changes they want to, thus giving the other authors more room to work with, while the entire project continues to get further and further from the originals.

ILikeDeathNote wrote:From the CGI Clone Wars thread in the Reviews & Critiques board, now moved into its own dedicated thread:

ILikeDeathNote wrote:

[color=red]l33telboi[/color] wrote: (unless you look to authors other then George Lucas and massive re-design the franchise).

Oh God.

I highlighted the bold part because I think this is the intended sole purpose of websites like SDN and even the SWTC and the true intent of persons like Wong and Saxton. They want to basically reinvent someone else's intellectual property into their own image, or more precisely to make Star Wars more "hard" because apparently for some reason "hard = better." This definitely seems to be the mindset as indicated by Atomic Rockets of the Space Patrol, which I should point out is maintained and owned by Nyrath, a member of SDN (as supported by numerous comments and references within that website), and is closely associated with RedImperator, also of SDN, once again as indicated by numerous references and comments throughout that website.

I'm not saying that hard science fiction is bad (big Niven fan here, and I'll admit to being a very big fan of Nyrath's website; in fact I wish it had its own forum community), but the whole attitude is suspect to say the least, especially when they seem so feverant to apply it to someone else's intellectual property. Past trends also suggest that sometimes the science can get simply too hard at the detriment of the story itself. This is a common complaint for more casual Niven fans/readers, especially of his later works, and it reminds me of episodes of The Simpsons (and a storyline from the short-lived Simpsons comic strip) and Mission Hill which precisely parody this mindset. I know Nyrath's website openly states that science must be respected, but c'mon, science fiction is hardly expected to make up for the lack of quality education in schools, or am I expected to believe that we should retroactively rework Homer's works to make them more authentic to Ancient Greece, lest we be worried that our middle and high school children start worshipping ancient pagan dieties?

But I've already ranted too much on a topic that richly deserves its own thread if not board. Hell, I could probably write a whole book on this topic, and who knows, maybe I will.

Corrected. ;)

Indeed, thanks for the correction!

I don't think it's at all unusual for fans to feel betrayed by the new works and want to have things work differently. A lot of fans of Star Trek only recognize certain series as being "real" Star Trek. Many Star Wars fans recognize either only the OT, or only the PT, or don't like that Lucas made Greedo shoot first when he revised the film.

Nothing strange about it, and I don't think there's anything unusual about seeing the VS community into it. Of course, VS debaters tend to focus on different details, but the core behavior is nothing strange.

I feel that this is very much related to this topic. You could potentially argue that it swings either way.

I actually didn't think that it was related. The idea of fans changing their favorite franchises wasn't really addressed, but I suppose that I can see where it could be used to accentuate a point.

Dabat wrote:As one of the pro-wars people (sorry guys, but I am) I think it is more a desire to be right and and have 'your team' be on the winning side more then it is anything malicious, at least for the most part.

1. I'm sorry you felt an apology was needed for being pro-Wars. I do not speak for the board but I am quite certain all open-minded parties are welcome.

2. At some point, there must be a line between wanting your side to win, rooting for your side . . . and reimagining your side. It is not necessarily maliciousness. As the saying goes, 'do not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity'.

In fairness, a little re-imagining comes with the territory. SDN folks will bemoan and decry "stupid" people who simply watch the shows as entertainment and, seeing more gee-whiz and polish in Trek, assume a higher tech level. But the fact is, that sort of gut-reaction analysis of a fictional universe is as much as it deserves.

What we all do is quite different.

When a casual watcher sees a special effect of, say, a ship blowing up, the casual observer does not calculate its yield or freeze-frame to see if particular sections of the spaceframe were damaged first. That's because the ship blowing up is a question of plot, and if the effect serves to illustrate the plot point of the ship blowing up then it is a successful special effect and the creators care no further.

The debate changed with the alt.startrek.vs.starwars newsgroup. There, the concept promulgated by the Star Wars fans of deeper analysis -- as if watching a documentary -- was tested. So, too, did arguments of canon finally settle on an ownership standard as opposed to a creator standard, though in many cases these merge.

The essential problem with that came in two separate ways.

For starters, the deeper analysis was argued for by the Star Wars fans because the casual analysis didn't work for them at all. To have accurate analysis you must be, if not impartial, at least able to put your bias aside. But the debate was considered a game to win by most of the significant SW people, so for all the deep analysis there came deep flaws, intentional or otherwise.

Second, the standard of canon was not adhered to. The same folks who would spend weeks going line-by-line analyzing character statements would not apply the same rigor to the canon issue. This caused a very obvious cherry-picking on their part.

(There was another problem insofar as the cultural component there. ASVS earned its reputation as 'a hive of scum and villainy' because the game-players there found that being complete psychopathic buttholes was also an effective tactic because one's opponents would leave in disgust.)

As for me, when making my site I employed the ASVS standards of analysis and canon policy as stated, but correctly employed. Instead of cherry-picking the canon policy I derived the correct analysis (doing so around the same time as SW EU experts were saying the same thing). Instead of cherry-picking the depth of analysis of the material itself, I took it deeper still and found that many of the ASVS conclusions were false. Others followed and did better still.

Through it all, we've gotten further and further away from the casual viewer going to the theater to be entertained on some idle Friday night.

The trick, though, is that whereas some would take that rigor and depth and misuse them, what one must do to be a good Vs. Debater on either side is to follow the evidence. Indeed, one's goal should not be debate, but discussion and clarification.

I know that my vs. debate experience thus far,. has mainly been spent defending the SW canon policy, defending the EU, and trying to clarify continuity glitches. I have done very little debating about who would actually win in a battle.

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:I have done very little debating about who would actually win in a battle.

This is why I'm not very active at all, despite the fact that I am quite interested in the topic as a whole. I'm not blaming anyone in particular, here. I joined up late and somewhere along the line it got really personal.

To answer the question, it seems to me that "they" are not concerned that they are hijacking the franchise. I do not believe this was their intent, but if they stopped to think about the fact that they are re-imagining the franchise they claim to love, it would not give them pause for long. As I said, it's personal for some.

How do you acknowledge the creators' intentions and also maintain a debate based on facts? I don't know. Argue endlessly, I guess. That's kind of what I expected when I got into this, but I found that there is a major faction which tries to sell things like weapons never powered-up fully and space clogged with star destroyers in all but a handful of systems.

This is clearly not Star Wars, but to some it's fine to pretend it is to win the argument. It's more than a little off-putting.

Well, that and me no good at science and math, me writing major.

2046 wrote:The trick, though, is that whereas some would take that rigor and depth and misuse them, what one must do to be a good Vs. Debater on either side is to follow the evidence. Indeed, one's goal should not be debate, but discussion and clarification.

I see no problem wanting to debate. There's nothing pejorative about it.

My only thing is that by thinking of it as a debate, one can readily end up in the debater's mold of trying to win the debate at any price. The debater formerly known as Kynes explicitly exemplified this point:

"1. Debate is not a search for truth. It is an exercise in rhetoric.
2. As it is not a search for truth, positions which I do not personally agree with may be adopted to win.
3. The objective of debate is to emerge the "victor," having used superior rhetorical tecniques [sic] to gain victory.
4. Any tactic empirically effective at advancing a position should be used."

CrippledVulture wrote:

Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:I have done very little debating about who would actually win in a battle.

This is why I'm not very active at all, despite the fact that I am quite interested in the topic as a whole. I'm not blaming anyone in particular, here. I joined up late and somewhere along the line it got really personal.

To answer the question, it seems to me that "they" are not concerned that they are hijacking the franchise. I do not believe this was their intent, but if they stopped to think about the fact that they are re-imagining the franchise they claim to love, it would not give them pause for long. As I said, it's personal for some.

How do you acknowledge the creators' intentions and also maintain a debate based on facts? I don't know. Argue endlessly, I guess. That's kind of what I expected when I got into this, but I found that there is a major faction which tries to sell things like weapons never powered-up fully and space clogged with star destroyers in all but a handful of systems.

This is clearly not Star Wars, but to some it's fine to pretend it is to win the argument. It's more than a little off-putting.

Well, that and me no good at science and math, me writing major.

You seem to believe that it is a forgone conclusion that this is going on. The fact is that this situation cannot be dealt with in absolute answers, like the one that you just provided.

Not every versus debater arguing for the big SW is hijacking the franchise. Not even all of the ones including and defending the EU in their posts.

The novels were not written in order change the franchise, or even to help in the versus debate. Virtually none of the EU, with some very obvious exceptions(i.e. ICS), was created eith this is mind.

On many occasions, these works were created by lifelong fans of the franchise with an amazing opportunity to add their ideas to help the franchise evolve.

I fell, for the most part, that this discussion has very little purpose as I feel that doesn't exist on a broad scale.