Is there anything in the EU that's generally, all-around LIKED?

You know, I think I may be one of the few people who, if not so much liking everything in the EU, has at the most been entertained by pretty much 99% of it. There's only a handful of books I've really felt a bit of a struggle to get through, but even they were easy reads, and at the very least could be read fairly handily between patients or on lunch breaks.

I've been catching up on my EU the last three years (since I'd read a shockingly small amount prior to that) and while there were parts that I thought were weak, there's not much that I raise to the level of "hate".

I really, really despise the whole "you're not a SW fan unless you hate it" attitude, and while I know that's partly a tongue in cheek statement, that mentality just gets on my nerves. The funny thing is how many people I've found working at the hospital where I work who also read EU materials (granted, they may not even know what EU means), but they never venture onto the web to look up stuff or go to the official sites or any of that, and between that and the people I've met at cons who don't frequent forums, I think there's a huge majority of fans who don't have their voices heard.

And I don't think this group is some dim mass of humanity that blindly buys anything with SW on it (since at least two SW fans at the hospital are surgeons and another a pharmacy tech), but I think they just have real love for the universe and no idea that the fan factions and the forums and the hate even exist. There's a solid chunk of fandom that just loves SW but sees it as strict entertainment that they don't try to elevate to anything else.

I guess I'm somewhere in the middle, because I love SW, and the EU, but I also love discussion. The flip side is that the amount of negativity is a bit much, and getting the concentrated version on the forums makes it a bit frustrating even when I feel like I'm having great discussions with some people.

It's more than just the internet though, because this kind of attitude existed long before the net, as old fanzines will show and essays like Harlan Ellison's excellent Xenogenisis which talks about the abuse that authors had to endure at conventions and more, all pre-Internet.

I think even the "haters" must like SW more than they make out, or at least I hope they do, because I can't imagine spending free time reading books or forums about something that you despise.

 

Well, I think Knights of the Old Republic was pretty popular. After all, it was named the 2003 Game of the Year. That's no small accomplishment.

KOTOR 2 was good, but not quite as good as the original. Plus, pretty much every Star Wars fan nowadays has heard of Revan.

 

As awesome as some of us think Stover is....some people really really despised Traitor.

 

Of course, I enjoy like 99% of the EU. Dont mistake shooting around different ideas as a dislike of the EU. Think of it more as a wish list. You'll find mostly EU fans on this section of the board, not haters. Just because someone did not like a certain aspect of a book/comic/video game doesn't mean we dislike the EU.

 

People throw hissy-fits and hate this and that because they're attention-******. I read, I have fun, I continue on with my life.

*sighs*

Where's Excellence when you need him?

 

*ahem*

Kyle. Katarn.

 

I think everyone just really loves a Mando section every other chapter in a LOTF book, right?
...
Right?

 

Because fighters and smaller ships have never taken down a super-dreadnought. Ever.

 

If not for the whole "it would ruin my books" thing, I'd tear those sections out of Bloodlines and Sacrifice, and paste a new picture over the Bloodlines cover. That and I'm not really that bad.

 

Everyone likes .... Brian Daley's portrayal of Chewbacca!?!?

 

I liked the ROTS for the most part. My only problem with it (that I remember off hand) was that the ending was very rushed. It was like Stover put his heart and soul into the book, then after the Anakin/Obi-Wan fight, realized he needed to be done with it in 2 hours, and rushed through the rest of the story.

 

I'm a pretty vocal TTT basher, and I never recommend it to anyone. I know I'm not alone in that - whatever happened to Shelley?

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything negative about the Daley Han Solo trilogy at all, other than the fact that it's old.

 

Part of it is a function of how big a fictional galaxy is and how much stuff you can put in it. It can have a very broad appeal, being a whole galaxy full of stuff, so it will attract people who like one thing but don't like another.

Another conflict-generating part of it is that in the past, big fictional settings or big mythological settings may have had a progenitor, but once that guy's done telling his story, other people come around and tell their own. The guy who told the first Zeus story didn't come back 30 years later, interrupt the second guy telling Hercules stories, and say "no, that's not how I want things to work." For one thing, he was most likely dead 30 years later. For another thing, he'd probably have gotten stoned by an angry mob of people who wanted to hear what the second guy had to say. When things take on a life of their own, people generally like those things to, well, live.

As you start to get into these things, you learn that this author wanted Anakin Solo to live, or this author had this really cool-sounding idea for the Force, and so forth... and people think, hey, I want to hear that story. But then this other guy (who has set up a corporation to walk in and say "no, that's not how I want things to work" for him) comes in and stops the current storyteller. Being mass media in the modern world, we can only watch and complain. We can't yell back at the guy "hey, let this guy have go, we want to hear this." We can't throw stones at him or do other kinds of things to make him shut up. We can only sit back and take whatever this first guy will let us hear.

It runs counter to our social evolution in a lot of ways. In the Internet, there's this vague, elusive hope that if enough people come here with their complaints and wishes that somehow that first storyteller will hear them, and let the second guy have his shot.

Now, some other fictional universes have avoided a lot of this conflict because the mechanisms through which they are interfered with are largely invisible. Very few people would actually know, if say, Spock had really meant to turn evil and become the new Khan in story X written by Y author, so very few people are going to get angry when they don't get to hear that story because they didn't know someone was getting ready to tell that story. LFL and Lucas are very big and very obvious in the ways that they interfere in their fictional universe, which produces a lot of frustration. They are ever-present and highly visible in everything that is Star Wars. They jump out there in front of us, virtually, in a way that makes us want to throw rocks at them. It's not that they won't just "leave it alone" - which admittedly could be a disaster in the modern, Internet-based, information overload and copyright world - it's that they're so damn visible and vocal about it, and they at least seem to run in and say "no, that's not how I want things to work" very often (although that may just be a function of their high visibility.)

 

TIE Fighter?


I mean, come on, everybody loves the Empire.

 

Daley...meh, the Solo books are mediocre. First one is the best, second one is OK, the last one I've only ever been able to read all the way through once; on re-readings I don't make it past chapter two.

 

Not to mention the shoulder-pad, Githany's thong, and Vader's Pants...LOL!!!

There's relatively few Legacy-era comics haters that I've seen.

 

Nope, I personally don't like the 'hat'. 'Cheep Asian nockoff it is'

 

Um...what is the Hat? I'm not up to date with fan slang.

 

Tell that to the people who don't like the X-wing novels because of the reason I gave. I'm not one of them, not really.
But even I'm of the opinion that real world battleships and aircraft are entirely of a different matter.

 

Teh Hat

Teh Thread

Freakin' sweet, yes?

- lazy

 

i think every entry into the EU has at least one hater on this board. and likewise every entry into the EU has at least one huge fan on this board (even if only as a joke).

at best we might be able to, with enough information about various posters, be able to say 'EU fans over 27 all love TTT', or 'Australian EU fans all love LEGACY' or something like that. there's no way everything in the EU can be universally liked, given that even just 6 films aren't all liked by all Star Wars fans, and what we like from those films varies considerably.

 

Ha! Freakin' sweet, indeed.

 

Nothing is without its critics - which I think is normal and to be expected. And despite all the debating around here, I think there is plenty of EU that is liked by a large majority.

- X-Wing Series
- Thrawn Trilogy
- I, Jedi
- Shatterpoint
- Mara Jade: By the Emperor's Hand

A lot of folks seem to like Hard Contact as well. The Jedi Apprentice books get criticism for not being "as good as they could have been" but are usually considered one of the better young adult series out there. Just my observation.

 

I think we all-around like this forum.

at least, I pray no one comes here as some form of self-punishment or self-hatred.

Whether you come to cheer or cry, or just to see people cheer and cry...we all like coming here.

(and anyone who doesn't think this forum is an expression of the Expanded Universe...take a couple weeks to get to know some of the colorful characters in here...you'll be impressed.)

 

Knights of the Old Republic.

The Old Republic stuff seems to go over real well. Love Darth Bane.