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Author Topic: What are the biggest themes in Star Wars EU?
HedecGa  1207 posts
Registered: Apr '06
42354_Dusty Duck
Date Posted: 12/8/08 10:02am Subject: What are the biggest themes in Star Wars EU?
The Past Is Never Far Behind - Pretty much everything in the EU deals with the remergence of an old foe or old ideology. From Exar Kun returning, to Lumyia's return, to a new Empire in Legacy and the Sith that never stay down for long. Skywalkers fall despite the examples of fallen Skywalkers that came before. Everything goes and comes back around again. Lessons are learned and then quickly forgotten by the next generation, only to be learned all over again and forgotten--which is pretty much like real life, I'd say.

Fighting Is More Important Than Winning - Or "The Eternal Struggle". Tied to "Returning Past" theme. No matter how many dramatic confrontations between the Jedi and the Sith, the Sith (and I guess the Jedi, too) always come back. Yeah, this looks hopeless and futile, but people like Luke don't give up fighting against Empires and he doesn't give up hoping that this time evil will be truly conquered. It's kind of like Batman. He keeps hunting down the Joker and locking him up, knowing he'll just escape and they'll do this all over again. But Batman continues to hope that this time will be different. Some would say that's the definition of insanity, in and of itself, but it also shows that, win or lose, it's important that we stand and fight.

 

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Master_Starwalker  17414 posts
Title: Manager Emeritus
 Registered: Sep '03
47761_Darth Millenial
Date Posted: 12/8/08 12:00pm Subject: What are the biggest themes in Star Wars EU? - Date Edited: 12/8/08 12:01pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Master_Starwalker
CooperTFN posted:
A slightly less morose way of putting it would be that "things are always more complicated than they seem at first glance". The movies are brief and tidy, until the EU comes in and says that "well, yeah, the Emperor's dead and everything, but life didn't suddenly become perfect. And even in the fabled Old Republic, there was a constant struggle to maintain stability".


That would be another way of putting it(though I don't find the other description inherently morose.) tongue

 

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darthjulian777  95 posts
Registered: Nov '08
42083_Anakin Solo
Date Posted: 12/8/08 1:01pm Subject: What are the biggest themes in Star Wars EU?
I think another big theme is Equality between humans and aliens and Aliens oppresion by humans and their strive to be recognized as equal beings

 

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Robimus  3654 posts
Registered: Jul '07
13691_HK-47
Date Posted: 12/8/08 1:17pm Subject: What are the biggest themes in Star Wars EU?
DarthUr posted:
Robimus posted:

As to the Mandalorian's living like ther forefathers did I'm sure your right to a point. Modern advances do make their way into any society surrounded by a more advanced one.


Well, no. That's part of the Noble Savage archetype that is ultimately, at its core, racist and offensive -- that the Indians (to take an example) would've lived in peace and at harmony with nature in a totally static state for millennia and it was only the Europeans who brought change.

This isn't true. The history of the New World was just as full of conflict, technological advancement, societal upheaval, and generational change as the history of the Old World. We think of the Amerindians' history as being this snapshot postcard of peaceful tribal life largely because that snapshot is all European historians saw before they blew it all up.


I'm not sure what your arguing here actually thinking And I don't think I'm suggesting anything racist or offensive. Mando's for thousands of years were warriors, merc's and the like and continue to be such today by all appearances. But a people like the Mandalorians would certainly take technology from others to use for their own ends.

Now if your saying the Mandalorians couldn't have become a society at peace with themselves I don't agree. I'm sure there would be conflict throughout their history on one scale or another but that doesn't mean it would have fractured their entire civilization.

To in some way compare them to Native North American populations probably does work on some levels, of course they would likely be the tribe which eventually conquered all others way before they reached for the stars. happy

 

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DarthUr  1370 posts
Registered: Oct '08
Date Posted: 12/8/08 1:42pm Subject: What are the biggest themes in Star Wars EU?
Robimus posted:
Now if your saying the Mandalorians couldn't have become a society at peace with themselves I don't agree.


That is, in fact, my point. It's offensive on both levels, because even though it seems like a positive stereotype it does make the Noble Savages seem less human than we are -- it postulates that there was something *inevitable* about the Noble Savages' conquest by Civilization, because it's white people who make war and invent new things and push society on its forward progress.

And yes, I do find it a tad offensive on the other side to push the rhetoric that all the advances of Western civilization or "modern" civilization have been, on some level, mistaken because if we stuck with the Old Ways of the Ancients we would be "at peace with ourselves", which is an opinion that can only be held in a state of ignorance about the actual nature of ancient civilizations.

Native Americans were *not* "at peace with themselves". They were a diverse set of nations with expansionist empires, with slaveholders, with class conflict, with insurrections, etc.

Robimus posted:
To in some way compare them to Native North American populations probably does work on some levels, of course they would likely be the tribe which eventually conquered all others way before they reached for the stars. happy


Our stereotype of what "Native North Americans" were like is, as I said, a snapshot taken from a continent that had already mostly been emptied by vast, sweeping plagues that killed up to 80% of the population by the time European settlers came there. The myth of North America as a "peaceful" continent inhabited with people "at peace with themselves" is a lie -- it only looked peaceful because it had, relatively recently, been mostly emptied. And even then what they found were bone-deep ethnic hatreds that boiled over into war. The primary reason for the alliance that we celebrate in mythological form as the "first Thanksgiving", for instance, was one empire of Indians seeking allies against their bellicose neighbors to the south.

The Noble Savage trope isn't an inherently bad trope, but it's a trope that's had a real negative effect on people's understanding of "indigenous" peoples, and it's actually quite annoying to see KT herself and many of KT's fans embracing it as though KT were teaching real historical analogies with her Noble Savage Mandos. The thing in her FAQ comparing the Mandos to the Celts, for instance, is so very wrong it actually is offensive to me (as a non-Celt and as a member of an urban, high-density, "imperial" culture she seems to think is the root of all evil).

 
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Palp_Faction  689 posts
Registered: Feb '02
6026_Palpatine
Date Posted: 12/8/08 5:22pm Subject: What are the biggest themes in Star Wars EU?
The theme is that what the galaxy needed all along was to be led by an Empire that wasn't evil.

 

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Robimus  3654 posts
Registered: Jul '07
13691_HK-47
Date Posted: 12/9/08 9:59pm Subject: What are the biggest themes in Star Wars EU?
After a couple days of thought I actually have something ion topic to contribute tongue

A huge theme in the recent Star Wars EU has been Family. Yes, its always existed in some form or another within the Skywalker Clan, but of late its taken a new importance.

We've had a deepening of the relationship between Luke and Ben throughout LOTF. Millennium Falcon brought us a very family oriented story with Han, Leia and Allana. The continuing storys of the Skirata and Fett families throughout multiple series is yet another, while the focus on the Legacy series has been very much about family in many ways. From Kol to Cade to Morrigan to Bantha and onward.

Even Lando finally settled down with Tendra and has a kid of hs own. We really should throw a shower shouldn't we? batting

 

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