Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

I think this is true. Also, in recent years, the inverse is true: Thrawn pisses of countless EU fans (much to the suprise of those of us who were brought into the EU w/TTT).

 

Continuity trapdoors indeed, which is why the post-NJO and TCW, and even the NJO for those who don't like it, have been so poorly received by some fans.

 

What do people hate about TTT these days?

 

No doubt, as well as shifts in tone and characterization that (for many) felt jarring/unnatural.

It's gonna be ok. Star Wars isn't going away, and an EU (even if it's not exactly the same EU we had in the 90s/early 2000s) isn't either. It'll all even out in the end. There will be crap, there will be brilliance, and I'm 100% fine with that if it means the myth endures.

 

I think objections usually have to do with the fact Thrawn is depicted as virtually omniscient, and makes Vader and Palpatine look intellectually small in comparison. I don't hold this view, but I can see where the anti-Zahn's are coming from.

 

In other news, it's been months since I've posted here and boy does it feel good to be back ;-)

I love all you silly fanboys/girls (though some may remember our debate re: the term "fanboy" lol)

 

You're correct (although it's the 7th Doctor) - much like Star Wars, during the "down time" for Doctor Who there was a great effort to make a continuous Doctor Who story via novels, under Virgin Books' reign. It was also based upon the "Cartmel Masterplan", which was being used for the plots of the 7th Doctor when the show got cancelled. They also had "Past Doctor" novels that could tie into the new stuff (even if it ran up against the wall of DrWho's equivalent of the "SSD length" - the "dating of the UNIT stories"). They had at least 70 or so novels just for the 7th Doctor, plus all the Past Doctor ones - and the last novel they did was the 8th Doctor, before BBC Books took the license back. Since the show wasn't really back, some of the authors moved as well, and the continuity continued albeit weakly. The new show was the death knell - they've reverted back to the regular tie-in status, and even one of the novels was completely transported to the 10th Doctor (by the same author, however) which pretty much confirmed non-canonicity.
Still, they had about a decade of a run - not as much as the SW EU, but significant nonetheless.

Or one James Luceno.

 

Well, yeah.... or you have Marco Palmieri editing!

 

Jedi Ben:

IMO a happy middle can be found between "the events of the novel don't have the slightest impact on the galaxy at large" and "we gotta blow up the New Republic every five years and the galaxy at least once for each generation of characters!" I understand that the events/ramifications of a SW novel, or a series of novels, can't be expected to top, in influence or destructiveness, those of the movies. IMO you could still have excellent SW novels affecting the lives of millions/billions on a single world, or a group of worlds. Imagine that, say, the events of a novel result in the prominent, corrupt Senator of an important world or sector being overthrown and a new one replacing him, and that new Senator has a cameo or/and is mentioned by name in the next movie.

At the same time, you could develop in that novel or series of novels the main character(s) toward where they will be personality-wise in the next movie or other major media event. True, this would require a lot of coordination between the publishing and movie-making arms of Lucasfilm... but isn't that kind of coordination at least part of what the Story Group is supposed to be for?

Oh, I know coordination will be both difficult and vital to make connected books/series and the new EU as a whole cohesive. Otherwise, you can end up with a series where the authors' styles and individual novels do not mesh well with each other, like the Legacy of the Force novel series. But, again, from what I understand, one of the purposes of the Story Group is precisely to oversee and implement that kind of coordination.

 

You know, on second thoughts, I don't want to see some sort of time-travel story resolve the EU. I'd rather that EU-Luke, EU-Han, EU-Leia, Jaina, Jag and Ben just live happily ever after off-screen.

 

We said good bye to them with Crucible

Anmd we'll say hello to NuEU Han, Luke, and Leia in 2015

 

How can they? Their lives have been ruined by the Legacy era. Jaina killed her twin brother. The fact that this didn't influence her characterization one iota is actually more disturbing to me than if it did.

 

Crucible was the goodbye? You're kidding right? That was the worst goodbye I've ever seen. The Unifying Force was the Goodbye. Period.

 

Crucible was the official good bye. I didn't say it was a good one, my favorite era ended with Survivor
's Quest, followed by TUF

 

Everyone retired at the end of "Crucible" so it boils down to "Marge, I'm confused. Is this a happy ending or a sad ending?" "It's an ending, that's enough."

 

So it seems we've moved into the final stage: Acceptance

1. Denial: "I take the Disney acquisition announcement with a grain of salt"
2. Anger: "Damn you George for selling out, damn you Disney for buying out. FU Marvel for taking over the license!!"
3. Bargaining: "What's great is that they will obliterate the EU I hate, and they'll keep anything pre-ROTJ cause it doesn't contradict canon"
4. Depression: "I'll never buy SW novels again, what's the point? They won't even have an EU beyond coloring books now"

It was...kind of quick wasn't it?

 

Son of a Bith and purplerain It's not so much the TTT, which is fine and I think is great fun, but what came after, with stuff like HoT and Allegiance with Thrawn being a step ahead of Palpatine, knowing and setting up everything and Mara making a jealous Darth Vader look a chump.

 

https://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movi...ouncement-coming--very-shortly-191546539.html

Looks like we will get a casting list soon. My bet is that they will do it May 4th.

 

My goodness. With the way some of you talk about how the EU has been the last six or seven years or so I would think some of you would be happy for an EU reboot.

Do you think it is possible they just made too many EU books and made the universe too crowded. Just like with television series that go on for a long time (around ten years for tv show standards) towards the end it often goes downhill because they have simply run out of good ideas and are just making things up as they go.

Granted the same thing may happen with Star Wars under Disney but hopefully once they do start coming out with books they won't go into overload mode like the current EU did.

 

No, I don't think the issues we've seen are due to over saturation, just a combination of poor management and terrible creative decisions.

 

You people give up too easily. I personally will preserve everything pre-RotJ that's not blatantly contradicted so badly it's unworkable (I.E. I MIGHT Give up Force Unleashed depending on Rebels, but I doubt I'll need to give up anything else with the time placement of the series being pretty open.), especially since they're not very likely to come out and make a blatant statement about everything before the OT.

Other fandoms such as Doctor Who and handle their canon on an ambiguous "you pick and choose" basis where contradictions exist but the fans can either pick a story as accurate and accept the other as canon but slightly off, or assume one source is simply incorrect and ignore it. Even with Star Trek, where there's an official "non-canon" status for all novels, that doesn't stop me from accepting the Enterprise novels as a continuation of the series simply because there is unlikely be any other official continuation (there are also contradictions between some source books, but guess what? I can salvage some ideas between both sources and say they both happened in some form, two POVs can enrich a universe). If Star Wars is gonna drop its all-inclusiveness (which is a loss IMHO), that does not mean I just have to automatically give up 'everything', including stuff that isn't even out yet.

Note that even in Star Wars, I've already done this with that little TCW timeline I put together. Sure, there are sources suggesting stories from both new and old material may be canon, but I've had to do the mental work to make it fit... and yet guess what? I found a method that's satisfied both myself and a few others here.

Jason Fry isn't the only one who can JasonFry it, solve continuity issues creatively.

I read these stories. They enhanced the universe overall, changed my perception of it. They happened as far as I'm concerned, even if it turns out they were off in a detail or two, anything pre-ROTJ definitely happened to me.

As for post RotJ? It's impossible to know what can be saved there until we get ep VII. Leaving an entire 30 year gap empty seems awfully strange, so we'll have to see.

 

And, on the last point, I've a bridge to sell - want to buy?

Not that I dislike what you're suggesting, just highly sceptical of it happening. I think it'd also require a skill set beyond DR, I'd suspect Stradley could pull it off but he's committed to Dark Horse.

 

To be fair, aren't the "prequel novels" that Marvel have done for a lot of their films that sort of "novle that develops the main characters toward the next movie"?

Although, those I think are usually released at the same time as the movie -- if not slightly afterwards, I'm honestly not sure? -- so might be more the case of future EU stories being the lead-in prequels to Episode 7 (think Shadow Hunter, Cloak of Deception, Darth Plagueis, etc) and us not seeing the "bridging stories" between 7 and 8 until after Episode 8. (Which, when you think about it, is how TCW has been as well: Lucas only filled that in after he'd finished the films first.)

If they did go that way, I'm actually not that averse to it, as it'd make it easier to maintain continuity (albeit there's always the chance Episode 8 could later throw events in Episode 7 into a new perspective -- "No, I am your father" etc.), but that could maybe be a different way of doing things in the future, as it's not like the Shadow Hunters and Darth Plagueises have been bad books.

 

Honestly, the future of the EU is likely to be material that is closely linked with major film/tv releases and has a limited impact, similar to what we've seen in the past with TCW tie in material. What we lose ultimately, is the unique stories that branch into eras that are not currently being marketed. Likely very little new material in the KOTOR/TOR/DotJ/TCW/PT eras from now on. Nothing far future like Legacy either (even if canonically it were still possible).

Future material will be extensively combed over to be consistent with major releases, but it will also be far more limited in scope and designed to be accessible to those who only watch said newest release. This is very typical for major comic tie in material for current film franchises, including Trek, Terminator and many other licenses.

Long story short, new tie in material will play it very safe and will be far more consistent, but at the cost of the creativity and ambitiousness of the old material.

 

Except for the relatively dull The Approaching Storm.