Discussions EU works you like but everyone else hates

@Jedimarine True, Courtship is a very underrated novel, especially considering how compenently written it is, how ambitious Luke's character arc was, and how many long-lasting inclusions to the lore are introduced here.

The romantic melodrama isn't that bad, either, it's in character and it doesn't take up most of the novel.

 

I think one problem people have with Courtship is that the author really pushes his new creations over what came before. Like the whole "Hapes was able to defeat the empire due to being utterly technologically superior to the rest of the galaxy" and "the emperor was afraid of the Witches of Dathomir so he had the planet blockaded". Both things downplayed if not alltogether ignored by later authors.

 

Dark Empire

I think it has one of the best arcs for Luke Skywalker and it’s got a very cinematic feel, while blending all the good elements of Star Wars into a cohesive story.

 

I never thought about it that way, you may be right on that, but i don't remember the novel saying explicitly that the Hapans could have beaten the Empire (especially when you take into account all the Superweapons) just that they could have been VERY useful for the Rebel Alliance back in the day (which is a fact, Tenel Ka nodded).

 

Ah, but that was the point of the early books in the EU. They were opening up opportunities for future stories.

If you look at 3 of the earliest works: Thrawn Trilogy (as a whole), Truce at Bakura, and Courtship, they all were geared specifically to open up a universe essentially closed by ROTJ.

Thrawn Trilogy: Showed us an evil genius from the dead emperor's back pocket, so skilled, he would have undone the film's victory, if not for an incredibly unexpected turn of events. Also showed us the darkside was not ended in ROTJ. Either one could be seen as rebukes of the "triumph" of the good guys in the movies. Very similar to much of the debates about the sequel trilogy and their effect on the legacy of the OT.

Truce at Bakura: HA! Shows us the mess was bad within days of the victory at Endor. The Ssi Ruuk? Evil aliens the Empire was trying to keep at bay? You'd think the Emperor would've trained his Death Star on them first. But the point was to make the universe more dynamic. To show us that there could something else besides the empire in the galaxy to contend with.

And as you said about Courtship, Wolverton gave us a small but significant new power in the galaxy. Now as I have always read it, while the Hapan's were technologically impressive, they were not insurmountable. But the question of cost v the benefits of making a isolated and insular collection of xenophobes submit was the key for Palpatine. You can see many examples of the varying degrees to which Palpatine exerted control. The Corporate Sector, Hutt Space, the Ssi-Ruuk from above. I have no doubt if their was something in the Hapes Cluster that Palpy really wanted, he would've come and took it. The obvious would be the technology...why not have Hapan Battle Dragons with Imperial Logo's on the side? Well, just the reality of the TIE fighter shows us that the Empire had little interest in being on the cutting edge if brute force and massive numbers will do.

Force Witches? If you were the singular power in the galaxy...would you want evil and unpredictable force heretics running around the galaxy?
Could he bend them to his will? Probably. Did he need to? He had Vader. He had Inquisitors (already in the EU by then). And if he wanted, he could release them to reek chaos. Maybe they were an Operation: Cinder-type fallback plan that was never activated.

Now none of this includes the eventual "fleshing out" that happened further in the series. The Hapes became significant, particularly in the LOTF era. The Force Witches were embraced. And this was the point in those books. In an era before 20 years of EU lore, he gave us stuff that never existed before, and provide reasons for it to be worth remembering. Could Hapes been a cluster of subjugated Imperial servants? Sure. But wasn't most of the galaxy like that? This was different. And we are left with questions about who these people are, and that can lead to future stories. It did lead to future stories.

And out of universe, I'm not going to bemoan an author's bragging with their creations. Many, many authors throughout the EU have turned characters and concepts into outsized pieces of the universe. From Coran Horn to Saba Sebatyne, from the Sun Crusher to the Star Forge. Love or hate them, they were much advanced by their creators as major parts of the galaxy, perhaps on par if not superseding the film plots and characters. I think the galaxy would get a bit stale if this wasn't the case.

 

Which is an argument that has gotten quite tiresome at this point, it is used to criticize pretty much every story set post-Endor, if the people who make such claims had their way, then that Era would be the most boring in storytelling potential ever, with no threats to our heroes, no setbacks, no realism whatsoever, just perpetual victory because they once destroyed a Battle Station over some unknown moon at the edge of the Galaxy.

I like when stories from post-ROTJ carry over that sense of optimism from that ending and show our heroes in a good place (the Bantam era is a good example of this), but some people take it too far, there can't be a Ssi-Ruuvi Empire because it undermines Jedi, there can't be a Thrawn because it undermines Jedi, there SURELY can't be a major death like Chewbacca's because it undermines Jedi.

 

There can't be anything post Ep 6 because it undermines Jedi

That's just gonna happen when you make something that was originally intended to be THE END

 

Well, i just don't see it that way, nothing that comes after it can take away the huge victory and happy ending that was ROTJ, just as nothing can take away the happy ending from Hand of Thrawn, those are still satisfying endings to the story so far, the fact that there can be a new story later on doesn't undermine the ending or less the story itself.

Undermining would be as if something retroactively made some of the events terrible or something, like in, say, that Luke never really wanted to redeem Vader and he was just saving face, or that Han was actually HOPING for Luke to die on the DS II's explosion so he can get with Leia, THAT is undermining a story, not making another one that comes after it, having a logical follow-up.

And ROTJ is "THE END" of the story, at least of the story told in the 6-film original saga, the story up to that point is finished, like George Lucas said "that was the story i wanted to tell".

 

Battlefront 3 Elite Squadron story of the brothers X1 and X2 and Lethal Alliance Death Star plans story those games are not hated but sadly forgotten

 

Until Lucas changes his mind and says "Wait I want to do more"

 

Don’t you mean Disney and Kennedy?

 

Lucas has changed his mind a lot over the years (or even days) , there's at least 6 different versions of how Star Wars was "supposed" to go according to him, but it doesn't change that nothing diminishes that the ending we got for the original Saga was ROTJ, my use of Lucas' quote wasn't to say that Lucas' intent is still for that to be the definitive ending of everything Star Wars related, but that, for the story that is told in those movies, that was the ending, and nothing can change that.