Lit MACLUNKY -- The Lit Forum Maclunky Thread, v3

I was focusing on comics with the prior post but for books? Phasma remains the most we've seen in terms of how the First Order really works.

 

Yes, excellent point - another reason I am not one for trying to decanonize or retcon what I don't like is because I have experienced people wanting to retcon what I have liked,and I know just because I don't like something doesn't mean there aren't other people who do like it.

Oh yeah definitely.

I mean, The Star Wars Holiday Special is a pretty solid candidate for worst bit of star wars but a lot of stuff from that story have been used well later on - like, a surprising amount of it from Chewie's family to life day itself, and the wookiee homeworld, and even that pronged weapon that Boba Fett used that ended up in Force Awakens and the Manadlorian. Come to think of it, the Holiday Special gets a lot of references all things considered, doesn't it?

 

The Holiday Special (Which I think now I genuinely like if taken on it's own terms as a Holiday Special made in 70's) honestly established quite a bit of stuff for Star Wars for moving forward than a lot of earlier Star Wars stuff.

I mean come on Kashyyk first appearance is there, and that planet has been crucial for decades.

 

You can make gold from dirt, it’s true. X-Men 3, terrible as it is, laid the emotional foundation for the protagonist’s character arc in The Wolverine which was one of the better superhero films. But I think it’s a matter of taking something and adding to it and building off it, not undercutting other stories to prop up the less popular one.

 

Just finished watching the first three episodes of Peacemaker. The opening credits alone left me speechless...

 

The entire Prequel Trilogy, for me, rests on the supporting material. Just in Canon, TCW adds so much to the era that redeems most of what bothers me in the films.

The ST needs more supporting material. Specifically, an animated series because you want it to the higher profile than novels and comics tend to be.

There's enough of a nebulousness to the timing of Rise of Kylo Ren and Bloodline to give us a series set around that period. You could have a Luke/Ben piece and Leia/Han/Poe.

I personally feel like pre-TFA is more ripe for interesting stories BUT a serious between TLJ and TROS with the rebuilding of the Resistance and Rey training with Leia would also do a lot to add structure. Resistance actually added some great stuff once it intersected with TFA and TLJ.

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Honestly I feel like with the Sequel a lot of the "Supporting material" that can serve as a TCW style will be fleshing out the Pre TFA stuff and the Post TROS material and continuing this story of Rey, Finn Poe and Rose, even Jannah and if they want Ben Solo in the spirit realm myself.

Granted some comic stuff post TLJ and TROS would be nice but i think the big TCW style stuff is Pre TFA post TROS in terms of doing what TCW did with the Prequels for folks.

Granted I love the Prequels regardless of the supporting material but to each their own.

 

I feel like they should bring back Resistance for a bit to flesh out the TLJ-TROS timeframe a bit more.


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The Star Wars Adventures comic has been doing stories in the TLJ -> TROS timeframe for a couple years now.

 

So i'm a big fan of this show called The Ghost and Molly McGee a show about a girl named Molly McGee befriending a ghost named Scratch.

Anyway one of the human characters is named Libby who is jewish and celebrates Hanukkah and they tell this story of her families menorah and well...It ...It got real!


Like for a kids show, it got really real. Here's the clip from that episode.




If you wanna see the full episode

 

It is interesting to think that despite Zahn being one of the bigger names EU writers I feel like outside of Thrawn, other authors like Vietch, Kevin J, Anderson and Dave Wolverston probably had a bigger impact on Star Wars storytelling and lore in the long run.

Heck I'd argue even Dennings probably had a bigger impact with just the concept of a Skywalker/Solo child going to the Dark Side.

 

“Outside of Thrawn”

Like that’s a small thing, and not an entire franchise onto itself and a character archetype many storytellers would try to imitate in the decades following.

 

Yeah i guess.

But I still think Zahn is a bit overhyped in terms of impact on the whole, and other authors under looked.

 

Well, I think that’s just because you’re kind of looking at the superficial and not giving it proper thought. Quite a few storytellers in the franchise were influenced by Zahn, people like Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, Chuck Wendig and Chris Terrio. Hell, even his contemporary Kevin J Anderson...Daala is very clearly him trying to recreate the Thrawn formula.

 

I think it'd be possible to make a case that Zahn's impact was "overhyped" in the sense of not being entirely positive, but in simple terms of influence? I'd argue he created the Legends continuity by tying his work in so heavily with WEG. Entirely apart from authors influenced by him and/or Thrawn derivatives, that right there is pretty much the skeletal structure of the old EU, and even to a large extent the new one.

The tweet you're responding to is more pointing out the disproportionate influence of COPL as a single and somewhat-mocked book than saying anything about Zahn, who after all debuted with a full trilogy. (Wolverton also wrote the first Jedi Apprentice book, and unlike COPL I'd actually call it good, but if anything JA wasn't influential enough.)

 

I was rereading Courtship recently and caught myself thinking, "Wow this really pulls together a lot of EU elements" a moment before remembering that this book created all of these elements. Dathomir, Zsinj, the Nightsisters, the Hapans... the only shame in my opinion is that the Chu'untor never got anywhere as much further development & backstory as I would have liked.

 

Thrawn is overhyped. And could currently be excised easily from New Canon without much changing, and by himself isn't that interesting of an idea - basically "what if there was a competent Imperial, and to make him visually interesting let's make him blue."

 

The thing is though, it’s kind of irrelevant whether you rate Thrawn himself as a character. Other authors and storytellers in Star Wars have been chasing variations on that archetype for decades now, right up into modern canon too.

 

Denning was not the first to come up with that idea, only the first to execute it—and arguably, that credit could go to Elaine Cunningham for Jaina’s story in Dark Journey.

 

It was always hanging over Anakin Solo's head too.

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Hey Everyone! I got myself a Podcast! So if you ever wanna see what my face looks like take a watch. We are called

EYE ON CANON

(No I'm NOT the guy in the Thumbnail that's my Co-Host)



(Point is watch on Youtube...But I'm on this show)

 

I don't think the narrative (including the heroes) praised Daala the way they did Thrawn though (at least in terms of her intellect/military genius). I could be missing some EU context in that regard

 

Because it’s not the exact same character/writer. It’s the same archetype, the archetype that Zahn originated. Imperial Warlord serving as a villain post-RotJ with a distinct visual or character trait to make them stand out. With Thrawn it was that he was a blue alien in a faction that was depicted entirely by humans and he had the love of art as a character quirk.

With Daala she’s a young woman in a faction that was depicted in the films as being exclusively dominated by older men. Her Star Destroyer is even called the Gorgon, following the pattern of Greek mythology Zahn established with Thrawn’s Chimaera. They’re not the same character, but Anderson was definitely following the formula Zahn established with Imperial villains.

 

Also note the continuation of the "Imperial military and dark-sider" villains concept with Exar Kun there - though he doesn't actually work with Daala - or, coming back to COPL, Zsinj and Gethzerion. That's definitely a pattern deriving from Zahn.

(I mean, of course, arguably that goes all the way back to ANH with Tarkin and Vader, but still.)

 

For pre-Zahn non-imperial military (but still military) and Darksider working together, we have Lumiya and the Nagai (and later, Tofs). Though they had imperial remnants working with them too - we just didn't get to see who the military leader of those remnants was.

Even the Ewoks movies had the Sanyassan warlord Terak & his goons, working with the Witch Charal.

Vader as the "evil wizard" working alongside a military (the Empire) in ANH is a good prototype in the Star Wars context though.