Lit Eleven-ThirtyEight and stuff

It's entirely an OOU problem. The OT shows that you can have characters who are arguably more experienced and more powerful who have to step aside and do nothing but mentor and die away. EU was slowly getting there, before the dark times, before Denning took over. The question I see is whether the EU experiment of creating a new generation could ever really have paid off - people called TTT the episodes 7, 8, and 9 for praise or out of their own perception, and all the huge DR series all seem to be attempts at the scope of a movie trilogy. But none of those were allowed to really phase out the old guys and concentrate on the young ones.

As much as Jacen was the NJO's 'mythical hero', that part is still much more up for discussion than if you said the same about Luke or Anakin Skywalker and their movie trilogies; especially since EU never really established itself as a myth. EU was a quasi-scientific approach at world building, at the creation of technologies, biographies, and history books, not a platform for characters to evolve through fairy tales. What do you get when you concentrate fully on the younger generation? "Younger" stuff like YJK and JJK, something that can stand on its own but is basically brushed aside because it doesn't really count. Cade in Legacy is probably the first real attempt to lose the shackles of the movies and go forward (instead of going sideways and showing characters like Ulic or Revan or Zayne or Vos), but that one only worked because it took enough distance from the movies. But close the gap, make Luke's force ghost appearance link up with that father "Vong supporter/Academy leader/Imperial assassin husband" father character that had to be named Kol and you get what a proper third generation standing on its own would have needed.

And it's all in the hands of an editor or author: If you simply write that Luke is too weak because of Vong poison to do anything but teach, if Han and Leia live in a skyhouse and just stay there, and if Jaina, hero of the Vong war, is the Queen of the Empire who is said to have solved the McGuffin crisis singlehandedly offscree, you're there and we would have no complaint about the next generation. But someone made a very different decision, and there's been a statistical thing that implied that it was probably the right business decision.

Now the really interesting part about this is that a new movie trilogy would be the place to finally get this right, and what do we get? Reports that Rachel and Thomas will be tagalongs in the next adventure of the big three at first. If this is true, I guess it's either because Abrams really wants to do his SW film playing with his very own childhood memories instead of with new madeup characters that mean nothing to him; or because most people involved want to keep this as close as possible to the OT because they think that's what people want from a sequel (and they are probably superficially right with that assumption). Probably both.

Well, I quoted you so people knew what I was referring to, and I aimed at anyone interested in discussing the issue. Well, probably at anyone saying it was a great article since I don't agree with that, as I stated. I got that bit about someone else having written the article.

 

Sure you can take the position that it's all due to writers and editors but that doesn't solve the in-universe problems.

If anything, the article is a very effective summary of why the next generation problems in SW EU are beyond fan fixes! And, if nothing else, this forum has proved its collective ability to create innovative fixes time and again thus anything that is beyond its ability to fix must be damn bad!

 

I didn't perceive the problem as an IU problem - the timeline continues right up to Legacy somehow, so first of all, the kids being underachievers doesn't break anything (and seeing how there was a movement for a non-Force using Ben Skywalker, there might be a fan out there who's happy that the Skywalker/Solo dynasty doesn't always excel at everything). Second, the very nature of the fan fix allows us to read a bad book and make up a story of how 0.3 percent of the novel were important as a piece in an offscreen character's master plan. So of course us fans can happily buy the books and say that Jaina is truly awesome and does a lot of stuff, even if we never read about it. Jacen and Anakin being evolutionary dead ends is kind of sad, but their deaths made for huge stories (even if LOTF and Jacen's recharacterization aren't appreciated, at least they go for the grand pose) with quite some impact. [With two turnabouts, Jacen's story developed more than Han's ever did, especially if you only look beyond the movies.] And the story can still go on without those two characters, especially with a greater variety in family names, and if the authors would take the chance with a cast of a Skywalker Jedi, a Solo Jedi-turned-politcian/empress, a Fel fighter pilot turned politician/emperor, an Antilles pilot and a "take them out of the box they're still there" cast of lots of Jedi, Jedi turned queens, Jedi turned bounty hunters, Sith, bounty hunters turned Mandalorians, pilots, intelligence officers, gamblers turned secret agents.

The case for starting over is "I don't like IU anymore, make a better IU". Which is, of course, as OOU as the process of starting over is an OOU process. It's all about the books being so badly focused that we don't enjoy them anymore, and about certain events making us lose interest in the timeline. And why do we care? Because we'd like better for the characters, or because we'd like better ROI for our money. So the case here isn't that the characters somehow "underperformed" (which, I stress again, the article goes to great length to deduce from a skewed perpective on the characters), it's that the car won't get out of the mud. It won't ever for people who hate having lost Anakin, it won't ever for people who hated the Vergere/Jacen retcon affair. And yes, the train is also gone for those who wanted the supposed Crucible/SOTJ situation - big three retire, next novel attempts to sell with the next generation - to happen in a more timely fashion, and not lose more than a decade of IU timeline. Those problems, however, have nothing to do with the general state of the YJK generation characters.

Now, if we're starting over and write a new EU, aren't we simply delaying the Next Generation question for exactly one generation? Would Rachel's and Thomas' kids ever be allowed to take over the EU? Or is there a more fundamental franchise logic problem at work?

 

Here's an out of the box thought, maybe we're getting an Abrams and Thomas and Rachel are Luke, and Leia?

Carrie< nmark, and Harrison might be Force visions of the future.

 

Escape Pod: Talon Karrde
http://eleven-thirtyeight.com/2014/02/escape-pod-talon-karrde/

 

You guys are in luck! Not only do we have a great new piece by Ben today, but I've just launched our first poll ever--how will you be watching the new episodes of TCW? Go for Ben, stay to express your love of Netflix, your amenability to piracy, or your disdain for TCW under any circumstances.

 

So, Kreia is an evil Buddhist.

 

Again, thanks for insisting on "the Exile" over "Meetra".

 

Pfft.

 

Hinduism always gets the short end of the stick in Star Wars.

 

Something I believe Jello's mentioned once or twice.

 

That's a terrific article, Jello. Especially in light of my recent readings of the X-Wing series. Isn't it odd, as well, that of the three most prominent villainous Imperial female characters we have, two came from Mike Stackpole and the other came from Kevin J Anderson of all people? No one's created a female Imperial officer above the rank of Lieutenant since the Bantam era.

 

Stunning article, Jello. Really phenomenal stuff. I couldn't agree more on all accounts.

On a side note, I love your analogy of the Republic being a mix of democratic Athens, republican Rome, and Arthurian Camelot. That damned line was quotable, good sir!

--Adm. Nick

 

The Galaxy of Intrigue splatbook gave us an organization focussed on fighting the system - the Firebird Society - led by a female Major General:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tessala_Corvae

 

Allow me to welcome Cynical_Ben to the coalmines website!

Rebels, Greg Weisman, and the Disney Factor

 

Good point - haven't read much of WEG.

 

Thank you very much for the opportunity, Coop. The article is a bit out of date already, unfortunately, since I wrote it earlier this week before we got the profiles of Zeb, Sabine or Hera, but that really doesn't affect the main point, so, I'm happy with it.

I'm considering making a weekly Rebels review a thing on my own blog once the show starts airing, since I do enjoy a good feature review. But that'd involve me actually posting on my own blog.

 

You do it, I'll pimp it. Probably.

 

We'd been getting an unusual amount of Twitter traffic for a Saturday, then I noticed that Greg Weisman has retweeted Ben's article.

 

I KNOW RIGHT?

 

Prior to the Bantam era, on the other hand, there was a female Imperial captain, who appeared to be commanding a 6-ship fleet of Star Destroyers.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Plikk

It's interesting to think about.

 

Oh, hey--as long as the thread is bumped anyway, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Mia to our guest ranks as well! Friday was the carrot; today is the stick.

 

Well done, Mia, terrific article. I think it's telling that Sabine (and Hera, to be fair) already has a small mountain of fanart devoted to her and cosplays being put together months before the show will air; people are excited at the prospect of having another heroine (or two) to cheer for, and the fact that she is a woman of color gives representation to an ethnicity that has been sorely underrepresented in Star Wars previously. Hopefully, Rebels is the beginning of a changing of the color guard within the franchise, not just the exception to an unspoken rule.