Lit Fading Relevance

Agreed. Fett and Phasma are both overhyped, and both die after getting hit by a guy with a stick and falling into a pit.

 

Well we just got an announcement of a new novel from Del Rey and a part of it is going to take place post Jakku with a young Ben Solo.

 

Although I have enjoyed the new films, I'm honestly not sure I prefer it this way. Star Wars fandom, for me, has primarily been about the Expanded Universe since I was a kid. Outside of a couple of comics, I have lost a lot of interest in reading every single novel.

 

Good lord, man. Where do you get this stuff from?

 

Yep, me too.

 

The Legends EU was unique. It was what made me love Star Wars more than Star Trek back in the day. All of the Star Wars material was one part of big universe--the Trek novels, comics, and games contradicted each other and were just filler with no major incidents happening in them. Even fine works like 'Star Trek: Early Voyages' featuring Captain Pike and his crew, which for years had nothing to contradict it, has now been completely shot up by Star Trek Discovery.

Star Wars and its EU allowed the magic view to be kept up without seeing all of the mundane machinery keeping it up in place. You get the awe of the magic trick and a suspension of disbelief. With Star Trek and now the new Star Wars, you see all the mistakes a magician makes and your brain can't even pretend it's magic--it's so obvious it's fakery (yes, we knew that all along, but with Star Wars and its EU the facade could be kept up reasonably well).

 

That's assuming either of them are actually dead.

 

Can you elaborate on this? What has changed that you can see the trick now? I can't say I relate, since the "magic" was gone from the EU for me the moment they had Jaina murder her brother; Young Jedi Knights was my "in" to the EU and the treatment of those characters in later years was some of the most cynical nonsense that has ever had the name Star Wars slapped on it. When the film series came out on Blu-ray, I decided that for me, the story ends with Return of the Jedi, and that was a difficult decision to make because I also grew up so connected to the EU, but like... The current era brought me back, so I'd be curious to know why it's so much emptier for you than those last few years before the buy out were.

 

I think @sidv88 means the immersion-that when you opened an eu novel or reference book or scoured Wookieepedia-the old EU felt alive it felt real.

Now that feeling with the NuCanon doesn't exist-at least not for me.

 

It's all just a matter of opinion. For a lot of people the EU had become laughably bad at times and its why the reboot was welcomed by many people as well.

 

Darth Invictus explained what I meant perfectly. And the worst elements of the EU have already been replicated sooner than I would have guessed: clone bodies for Cylo instead of Palpatine, arbitrary Jedi rules in Dark Disciple as applied to Quinlan Vos, arbitrary Force rules (projection now kills people), and other stuff that I and a growing number of people find laughably bad. And I wouldn't be surprised as time runs on and ideas are reused, some of the even worse ideas from EU somehow comes back in new canon.

There are some new bad ideas too--combining Sith and Jedi holocrons can tell you anything you want? Really?

It's sort of like Marvel and DC. DC, ever since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, keeps rebooting every few years with the promise that the new canon will be more realistic and less silly than the one before. And at first, we do indeed get Batman: Year One and the like. But as time wears on, we get increasingly silly plots and the promise for realism and less silliness is forgotten--Superman is resurrected, Green Lantern goes bad, Wonder Woman may or may not be a founding member of the JLA, and Jason Todd comes back. Then DC reboots again (Infinite Crisis). And again (Flashpoint). And again (Convergence).

Marvel has held together as a continuity for something like 80 years. A lot of it is silly. But DC with it's reboots and promises of seriousness ends up being silly too. Marvel feels like a world you could escape to. DC--you don't even know where to start...

 

@sidv88 well you may not like it but for many the new canon feels just as alive as the EU ever did (and for some even more immersive). And thus far they have done a good job holding everything together. Again it is just a different style of storytelling. It's exactly what the EU would have been as well if Lucas had decided to keep making movies.

 

Catalyst is still relevant to me, it's on my To Read pile, underneath the rise of the empire Tarkin/New Dawn/short stories trade. Now the real question is, do I read the Rise of the Empire trade first or Catalyst?

(Currently about 3 chapters into Ahsoka novel now, decent read so far)

 

Like I said - the traditional sci-fi/fantasy tie-in material. There's nothing in particular that is special or different about it.

 

I think the issue is the moment they blinked and rebooted they lost me. I still the new stuff and try to like it, but the inevitable comparisons to what came before will always mean the new material is inferior.

You think it was bad when the Thrawn trilogy alluded to the clones being evil but no material covering it because Lucas was going to do the prequels? We have now an empty thirty years because maybe one day they'll want to make a film.

I was astounded to hear the other day Ken Napszock (sp.) on Jedi council claim he never liked the EU because it didn't feel like Star wars but he likes the nu-canon, and I'd be curious to hear his reasoning and if it extends beyond "I like this because it's what we have now". I can accept people not liking elements of the EU, but Darth Plageuis, the Darth Bane trilogy, the Thrawn trilogy, a lot of the Clone Wars books, and others were some of the best star wars material we've ever had or will ever get. Bloodlines is as close as the nu-canon comes, and it's only so good because it feels exactly like an EU novel!

 

I watch Collider Jedi Council each week and a lot of those guys have said that they lost interest in the EU when the Vong came along. And it makes sense why someone who didn't really like the Vong storyline would be into the new version because it is a much more realistic story than aliens suddenly deciding to invade the galaxy.

 

Which I don't think is fair and concurrently we were getting brilliant Clone Wars novels (or I guess initially more Ep 1 tie ins).

 

Once upon a time Jammin had a kitten.

Then a Vong came along and eviscerated it.

 

The plotlines of most of the current NEU stories just don't interest me like the remaining hanging plotlines from the EU do.
Aphra, the new DV comic, Poe Dameron etc. interest me enough for the time being but still would rather have a continuation of the old stuff.

 

I have thoughts on this, but I'm gonna reply in the Star Trek thread.

Sent from my SM-G386W using Tapatalk

 

So you expected something from Trek that, unlike Wars, they never promised and were instead up front about not being?

If anything, I've come to enjoy's Trek's total clarity on this - only film / tv counts as 'canon' - as opposed to the convoluted games played by both versions of Wars. Though, admittedly, I've also come to care less about 'canon'.

 

Lol, it wasn't the Vong that did that. It was a garage door.

 

I never expected it from Trek. But it just made the whole merchandising for the sake of merchandising more obvious than it was in Wars. That's all I was saying. It's like watching a magic show with a mirror showing how the trick isn't really magic.

 

The lack of anything like LucasArts or WEG to form the backbone makes me suspect that, no, the New Canon is never going to be anything like the Expanded Universe. But there's nothing wrong with conventional tie-ins.

I think that's the secret - to not worry about what's officially canon or not. I was able to go out and buy my first new SW books in years once I did that.

 

Definitely read Tarkin before Catalyst.

Also, I'm pleased to see that Last Shot, the newly-announced Solo tie-in, is simply subtitled "A Han and Lando story" and not "A Solo novel: A prequel to Solo: Be sure to see the upcoming Solo movie." People will want to read a Han and Lando book for years, especially if its title isn't dated with a "Journey To"esque subtitle.