Jump to content

JB0

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    13145

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by JB0

  1. JB0
    Seto: I'm taking Star Trek Online for Sela canon. She was out of the system when the romulan sun blew up(#thanksspock), most everyone that opposed her was on Romulus and is now so much space dust, a power vacuum existed to exploit, the new empress of the Romulan Star Empire is a halfbreed with parents in two timelines. It is still fanfiction glorification of a minor character, but it portrays her in a positive light as someone who Gets Things Done and can seize opportunity when it arises instead of making her the galactic whipping girl. ALL HAIL EMPRESS SELA. In seriousness, I liked her occasional appearance as "the romulan officer we already know". Anyone could be there, but she managed to insert a minor additional wrinkle due to that unusual familiarity. Just warped in from time to time to annoy the Enterprise-D on the odd otherwise-minor operation, and stir up that ambiguous-to-the-crew question of "Is she REALLY the child of a parallel-universe time-travelling dimension-hopping Tasha Yar?" once more. One of the older books Data admitted to maintaining a database of all their encounters and accumulated knowledge about her in an attempt to eventually prove or disprove her claims(I believe his emotionless butt said it was due to the effect she had on the rest of the crew), and it was a minor detail I enjoyed. Just the idea that this suspiciously-familiar romulan with a crazy story could dredge up all this baggage just by wandering through from time to time.
  2. JB0
    I see it now. What I thought was just a reskinned upvote button(hearts instead of up-arrows) is now a flyout menu. That's... not very good interface design, really. Not that anyone in charge here made that decision.
  3. JB0
    Hooray!
  4. JB0
    Bahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!! A Trek V sequel... a TRILOGY!?!? Yeah, Trek books these days are a lot diffrent than when I was reading. More like Star Wars books. Seriously, guys. Leave the endless cavalcade of galaxy-spanning crises and heroic lineages to the other franchise. Get back to what makes Trek work. ... And more Sela cameos, plzkthx. Oh. Never mind, the books did that too. And screwed it up.
  5. JB0
    I didn't know we HAD a downvote button.
  6. JB0
    Yeah, I think Shatner's novel is the most prominent actual USE of the Borg/V'ger connection. And, well, it is pretty bad. All Shatner's Trek novels read like bad self-insert fanfics with Kirk as some overpowered author wish-fulfillment avatar... which I guess they are. Really, I've long felt that the secret to a good Trek novel is to try NOT to make it a big deal. Don't write some galaxy-changing event, a multi-book saga, a universe-spanning epic, or a shocking revelation that will change the way you view X forever. Just pretend you're doing a TV episode with no budget restrictions or union contracts or star egos to assuage. All the best Trek books I ever read felt like they were "just another episode". Not every story needs to be Best of Both Worlds or Wrath of Khan. Also, thank goodness no one is willing to tie into Star Trek V. Imagine if someone decided to write a book about the god trapped in the center of the galaxy.
  7. JB0
    I think the worst part of Hun-Grrr is his legs/necks. The necks look ridiculous because they are flared to bulk out his legs, but they look ridiculous as legs too. It is like someone accidentally drew his legs upside-down, and no one caught the error until the molds were created.
  8. JB0
    I never said it was a GOOD idea. Though it apparently originated with Roddenberry himself before getting passed around to virtually everybody.
  9. JB0
    I thought it was the other way around, the Borg were the origin of V'Ger.
  10. JB0
    I love that book. True story: I think it is the only Trek book I actually OWN as opposed to having just borrowed from the library. The other one that sticks out in my mind, and honestly skews more towards the bad fanfic side of the equation, was The Kobayash Maru. The main plot thread is Kirk, Sulu, Chekov, McCoy, and Scotty everyone but Spock and Uhura are stranded in a damaged shuttle and killing time before Spock rescues them by swapping stories. The topic of the no-win scenario crops up, and next thing you know the three are telling each other how they handled the most famous test in Starfleet Academy.
  11. JB0
    BEST. THRUST. EVER.
  12. JB0
    That's funny, because I was skimming the last couple pages, saw the part about "the books are all about the main characters doing everything and everyone being connected to someone from before" and thinking "Not Corps of Engineers! Aside from Scotty, the cast was all-new!". I guess if you grab a small enough bit part, people won't realize you grabbed anything at all. I still liked Corps of Engineers, though. It was very different from the usual Trek book, and the lack of main characters combined with unusual premise let them mess around in interesting ways.* Darn shame the series didn't sell very well(being sold as eBooks in a pre-Kindle world didn't help). I think I dropped out of Trek books around the time they did a 4-book interseries crossover about... demons banished to the far corners of the galaxy, I think? That sounds completely insane, but I am pretty sure it is a thing they did and not a fever-dream. I mostly just remember it was REALLY bad, even by the standards of the market. Voyager and then Enterprise were giving me all the bad Trek stories I could handle, I didn't need print to fill that void in my life. (The real problem: Janeway Binks darn near killed Trek for me.) I ALMOST came back to the books after Enterprise, when I saw the first post-Enterprise book to come out was dedicated solely to undoing the entire final episode. Because that was a beautiful thing, and I loved how FAST it happened. But no. I read very few Voyager novels(possibly only the one), and no Enterprise novels. Had to move on to unlicensed science-fiction. *Similarly, on the other side of the Trek/Wars fence, I always loved the X-Wing books. No one more important to the franchise than Wedge Antilles on the main cast, and screw jedi power creep. Instead of the Han, Luke, and Leia Power Hour, it was a bunch of franchise-nobodies doing all these things that the regular cast can't get away with. There was also a tension that's absent from most of the stories because they can and do write some of them out. I'd also argue they were more Star Wars-y than the mainline books, but opinions may vary.
  13. JB0
    Welcome to the (space) fold, brother.
  14. JB0
    Kinda what I was thinking. It is sexy, but not SKANKY. WELL NEVER MIND, THEN. I never even considered that possibility. I've clearly watched too much anime, I just assumed the girl had a tail. I mean, she DOES have a tail, but... not one that's ATTACHED to ... you know what I mean.
  15. JB0
    Makes sense to me. A battleship girl without huge freaking guns(and I don't mean that euphemistically) is just WRONG.
  16. JB0
    My heart, it is broken!
  17. JB0
    That is pretty hot. And I like that they've done a new version of the original show's song instead of a new song. Not that the other adaptations haven't had good songs, I just like the nod.
  18. JB0
    Honestly, I can't blame 7 too much for the music=magic thing. It is easy to blame Basara and Doctor Chiba, but it needs to be remembered that DYRL was the entry that elevated music's role from "an aspect of culture that is very easy to share" and on to something with actual special powers. 7 just made it explicit. Really, the way music is handled, and the Minmay hero worship, makes most of the animation since then a sequel to DYRL. The original TV series standing at this point is basically "what if Macross took place in a weird parallel universe where music DOESN'T have supernatural properties and Minmay was just a pop star?". Also, I will never forgive Gamlin for blowing up Millia's VF-1. I'm kind of surprised she did.
  19. JB0
    Oh, I'm not saying it is an implausible outcome. Just that it is not a foregone conclusion, though it really ought to be. (I believe Jim Davis DID get a trademark on Garfield Orange, incidentally. And UPS has a trademark on poop brown. Both limited to within their respective markets, of course. )
  20. JB0
    I remember Memo, vaguely. What possessed him to blame you, other than sheer madness?
  21. JB0
    You'd think so, but in a world where you can trademark ordinary english words like Jazz and Word and Scrolls and Saga, it is not much of a stretch to trademarking made-up words that weren't made up by you.
  22. JB0
    Did someone ask for the Stampede Valkyrie? (No joke, I really do want to see this guy rendered in plastic)
  23. JB0
    Trademark. Big West still holds the copyright. Trademarks can definitely be challenged, but how successfully is up in the air. Particularly as US law designates "intent to use" as a valid reason to hold a trademark, and they have enough historical usage of it to make a believable case that they intend to do so again. And, well, they DO still use some of the Macross trademarks. The UN Spacy kite appears on all their VF-1 toys, as well as the singing Minmay doll toy. That they seem to be backing off of the phrase "Macross Saga" on their newer merchandise comes as a surprise to me, admittedly, but it still appears on some of their older merchandise that's currently available .
  24. JB0
    Pretty sure the answer is a big "nope". I think they're just in a "sue everyone for everything" phase. It happens every few years.
  25. JB0
    Good. Very good.
×
×
  • Create New...