Discussions Unpopular Expanded Universe Opinions

Honestly most of the Expanded Universe felt like it got away from the Core of what made Star Wars, Star Wars and honestly isn't really what i consider "True Star Wars" or to be more generous "My Star Wars" in anyway ...Hence my preference for Nu Canon over Legends.

Well then it got to immersive and i think made things worse...or at the very least i wasn't interested in it anymore.

Well....that explains a lot about your mentality my friend...and one that again I think is why the EU is not what i consider "True Star Wars" at least at its core.

 

A handfull of people and of them Daala always looses, Hans contribution largley relies on attacking Vader´s fighter from above and shooting an old man in the back. Pelly does little by himself and just keeps a status quo, Ania fights from battered Sith remnants after the conflict is largley already over.

 

I always felt like such declarations, of something "going against the core of Star Wars" and "not being True Star Wars" are completely arbitrarty whenever someone says it, wether it is to criticize the new movies, or in this case, the Expanded Universe, like, what does that even mean? What is "true Star Wars"? In what way does the specific material bends that rule to the point it breaks? It's never established, it's always just arbitrary and a fancy way of saying one doesn't like that specific side of the franchise due to personal bias and nothing really concrete that truly applies to that side.

I feel like statements like that get thrown around a lot without much explanation, and aren't really constructive because they aren't saying anything of substance, merely putting the alleged works in a bad light just because.

 

Eh...I still think Legends did more damage in the long run in terms of people perception of Star Wars, and I don't really care what anyone says on that front.

I like a few books here and their...But I do not think the overall direction the universe went was any good and am glad with what we have now then what we had then.

 

That's the thing, i don't understand the "why" of it, especially pertaining to what is the "core" of Star Wars.

 

What you consider “true Star Wars” doesn’t interest or really appeal to me. At least not anymore. If the EU had not existed or was defined in the way you seem to want, I’d have ceased being anything remotely close to a “Star Wars fan” years ago.

I will agree that Legends tonally and thematically did eventually form its own identity, that grew separate from the films.

Hence in later years whenever I watched the films, I honestly found them less than satisfying, at best fun little diversions but not with the excitement when my family and I would watch ROTS so many times over years ago.

 

True, i also saw the EU as the main Star Wars and the movies are simply "windows" to it, but i would never be unsatisfied with them because now i have new stuff to look for as i now have the context of the EU, it's always a great deal of fun seeing them with a friend and being able to tell them that character with one line in ESB is called Hobbie and that he's awesome, we laugh a lot at the fact that i'm able to name nearly any character on-screen, or find a lot more joy in the Wedge Antilles and pilots scenes, or even looking at the characters knowing all the stories that they did experience so far to contextualize where they are now (Palpatine's contemplative smiles in the opera scene makes the book flash before my eyes, the scene itself being a parallel of Sidious and Plagueis sharing that same opera before Sidious killed him) or even look at them and ponder where some traits and interactions will lead them to where they are later, or sometimes look at the actors and having a better mental image of their older/younger selves for the books lol.

For me the EU never detracted from my enjoyment from the films, i merely found something even better.

 

But then I question whether you are a "Star Wars Fan" or want Star Wars to go in a direction that it was never created for in the first place.

Trying to subject a tone on a franchise that it was never meant for in the first place.

I would say the opposite is true for me and quite frankly it did damage.


As far as i'm concerned Star Wars EU evolved Star Wars...It just evolved Star Wars badly.

 

Why, exactly?

 

Because it gave people a lot of bad takes into what they think Star Wars is, that are very different to what the core of Star Wars.

Takes we are still dealing with to this day.

-Making Star Wars fan not embrace the goofy enough
-Making Star Wars think it's more Sci-Fi Military
-People wanting Star Wars to be dark and edgy.

And a lot of this come from the later stuff to what the EU ended up being by the end.

Again evolving Star Wars...Just evolved badly by the end.

 

Gotcha, i get it now.

Personally i think Star Wars can be an almost unlimited variety of genres, Sci-Fi Military being one of them, and dark and edgy another, Star Wars can be comedic, dark, sci-fi, fantasy, and everything in between, which is why i feel the EU is so rich, it has a lot of everything, KOTOR (comic) is a completely different beast than Legacy, same with Allston's books and Stover's, i don't think we should gatekeep Star Wars from being darker or more sci-fi from time to time, nor should we be allergic to it being more kid friendly and comedic.

 

I'm not talking about tone's....although I do think people get bent out of shape when Star Wars is more kid friendly and comedic because honesty....Kid friendly and comedic stuff today is TEN TIMES more mature than anything supposedly dark and adult in entreatment (She-Ra, Amphibia and Owl House) to name a few. But that's irrelevant.

But i do think their needs to come a point when we say "This isn't Star Wars" ...I believe every franchise has a few core principles that it must always adhere too no matter what.

For example if a Star Wars story comes out with a message of "Democracy i bad, Empire is good" then as far as i'm concerned that's the wrong message.

Now i've gone on for a while how I hate how Legends White Washes the Empire and people like Pellaeon, Thrawn and the rest. Never went as far as to say "Empire is Good" but it felt like it was getting more their.

Which is also why I think reboots....be they hard or soft...are necessary...and if not rebooting the continuity...at least taking a step back and "Going back to the roots" and original idea and then building off again.

With Star Wars this can easily be achieved by just jumping ahead forward or back in time and going to a somwhat familiar idea even if it's new.

KOTOR 1 is a good example of this...New era, new story but still very similar and keeps to a lot of the core of Star Wars.

Even if something is malleable everything still has a limit and one has to know far that limit is before it breaks sometime you can stretch it far....very far in fact, but i still think there is a limit and it can break

 

But Star Wars wasn't goofy, until maybe TPM and ESB is darker and edgier than ANH (which is why certain people like it). Sot these aren't issues just in the EU.

Now the military sci-fi comes from X-wing books and Thrawn. But that's not the entire EU though. Tales of the Jedi, KOTOR/SWTOR and all KJA's work weren't mil sci-fi. The Clone Wars Multimedia project wasn't either.

Each parts of the EU focused more on some elements than others, so people who liked those thing would be drawn to them. But it also brought more people into Star Wars than just the movies on their own, myself included.

I do agree that some part of the EU did affect Star Wars negatively, The Thrawn and X-wing books in particular, being so popular, pushed the idea that Star Wars was just a military story will some space magic to support it.

 

So is because of that that you think it goes against the "core" of Star Wars? Well, i understand if you want all Imperials to be unsympathetic caricatures, but Thrawn and Pellaeon are still bad guys, especially Thrawn, if anything one could use the same argument against Canon, Rae Sloane is just as sympathetic as Pellaeon, and Canon Thrawn is far more morally good than Legends Thrawn, yet Legends goes too far into the sympathetic Imperials?

If anything Legends made a point in showing how a "benevolent totalitarian ruler" type of character is still a terrible idea for a goverment with Roan Fel and later Valkorion, even Sia became more of an unlikable character and a dissenting voice in Legacy vol 2 to drive this point home when she is ruling as part of the Triunvirate, while Gar Stazi (the GA guy) was the "good guy" in the discussions.

Canon also did the failures of Democracy in post-ROTJ just like Legends, with that and the sympathetic imperials, what is it that goes fundamentally against the message in one that doesn't in the other?

 

I disagree i think Rae Sloane at the end of the day is still portrayed as bad.

I think Legends does way much to give excuses to Thrawn and Pellaeon.

Again i don't see it the way you do my friend...please don't try to convince me otherwise..I'm not gonna listen.

Star Wars has aways been goofy....people ESB dark but honestly...it's not that dark...a bit somber tone....But dark

 

Created for what? By whom?

According to who? You? Lucas?

 

The ethos of art.

But again...I will always look down on Legends anyway...I don't like it overall...and i'm glad we don't have it...I think Star Wars is a much better place now than it was before.

 

If I might give my view on this.

Canon isn't showing them to morally better than the heroes like Zahn and Stackpole ended up doing. They also don't treat the Empire as fundamentally good, just run by some bad eggs. Canon treats the Empire as bad through and through, with some good eggs.

Also Stazi is a military dictator, so him being 'good' isn't really positive for democracy.

 

For once we actually agree.

 

Okay, I can sort of respect admitting keeping SW at a younger tone, or a more G or PG rating. I disagree, but I can see where your coming from.

Not really? Leia is a princess, and Luke is very special. Star Wars never particularly valorized the "common people" or democracy, even in the PT democracy is treated as a sort of rhetorical abstraction, when its clear the galaxy's fate is in the hands of a special few. The empire's evolution in legends is realistic-states change. The roman empire of Hadrian's day and Justinian's were very different creatures. Much the same as Palpatine and Marasiah.

Personally, I like the crypto aristocratic undertones-that yes force users are special, and because of their blessings they are a central focus in history. As opposed to saying "everyone matters" when that simply is not true, especially in fiction.

TBH I wish SW ran with the "skywalkers are cosmically ordained to be the center of history" implication even more explicitly than what it did.

 

Yeah...I've seen a lot of your philosophy my friend over my many years here and i just can't fundemenalilty agree with any of it on any level.

And honestly the aristocratic nature of Star Wars is actually something I would change.

 

I respect your candor.

Personally I don't think SW should be as grimdark as say 40K for example. Heroes should still exist, the light should not be extinguished. That said, I want to see a setting and characters that grapple with challenges, face the horror of war, the vagaries of cosmic destiny and fate, and the awe inspiring wonder and terror that comes with the power wielded by two small religions across a galaxy for thousands of years-an eternal war between two contrasting ideals-with the appropriate gravitas, and seriousness.

I want the scale, the grandeur, the intrigue, and the human tragedy, ambition and loss, alongside the mysticism and the dance of the emissaries of representatives of benevolence and malice across the stars. You know Space Opera.

 

I mean....I think we get that, but i guess our views on what "Space Opera" are, are quite different. Or at the very least i still think Star Wars is space opera now and always has been.

I also jut don't think Star Wars is that intellectual as you want it to be....Nor should it...It's populist entreatment at the end of the day, otherwise it never would have been as popular as it is.

All i can say is Star Wars appeals way more to me NOW then back then and clearly for you it's the opposite So...Star Wars is making things more for me than for you...my issue is when people say one way is better than the other...it's not...It's just different...it's just a different you don't like.

All i can say in response is maybe they'll stop making it for me one day and that will suck but...I always have She-Ra anyway so i wouldn't care no big loss for me.

 

I mean that's the thing-in my view it should aspire to be that intellectual. That is why Traitor is the best SW book after all.

If its not going to aspire to be more than PG entertainment, then it is ultimately of little value or interest.

 

Well not to you...But to many there is still value.

It's not about good or bad....it's just you aren't interested personally...you can't make a objective statement about it....You move on with your life and go find other things.

I'm sure their are other franchises out their you could focus on. Postive things and all that.