Lit Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki

Rebel Heist is the the exact mini I was thinking of that fits the definition of late-EU completely forgotten story. I came across it when looking up what I'm still missing from before the canon reboot, and I truly didn't even remember it existed.

 

The funny thing about that era is that there was no real reason to reboot outside the context of TCW itself--Even Piell dying and Ryloth rotating didn't affect anything Jaina Solo or Cade Skywalker were up to. What would have made the most sense in the moment would have been to just openly acknowledge that there were two parallel canons going, the way Trek was for a minute there when the new movies were still happening. Their mistake was being unwilling to let go of the "Star Wars has always been one canon" talking point, so that era just ended up a complete mess instead. Which is a big part of why I was okay with letting it go.

She seemed to be older to begin with though--obviously there's her species to consider but even for a human 35 and 50 can look much closer than 20 and 35.

 

Agent of the Empire was post-2008, I thought? Although it's one of the ones that could probably slot into canon with no problems.

And I actually consider Scourge to be one of the more consistently underrated standalones, though its own continuity status is kinda funny.

Honestly, I feel like a lot of the 'forgotten' works of that time period are more forgotten due to the dire, dire straits the post-ROTJ continuity (and by some extension the franchise in general) had sunken into then because they were forgettable per se.

I mean, as I said a couple of times, I personally stopped believing in it around the time of the DNT and was much happier as a result...

 

And yet he went on to write the first canon novel and it was also great.

 

I find Agent of the Empire to be hilarious of how one dude was somehow well acquainted with both Han and Leia before ANH. I wish there was a third one where he goes to Tatooine for something involving Jabba and ends up meeting Luke and Ben.

 

I think the trickiest aspect of this approach would have been all of the TCW tie-in fiction. Had it just been the TV show, it would have been relatively easy for Lucasfilm to say "the books and comics are one thing, and the TV show is another thing," but in 2008, I don't think they would have been any more willing to be releasing two different lines of books and comics, set in two different universes, than they are now.

I agree that it would have been a great solution, though, even if LFL wouldn't have gone for it. Although I laugh to think of just how furious we would have had on these forums in 2008 if Karen Miller's The Clone Wars: Wild Space novel had been released as "official canon" while James Luceno's Millennium Falcon was released with an "Alternate Universe" Legendsesque label on the cover. Hooh boy. We would have had aneurysms.

Honestly, maybe the mistake was asserting "Star Wars has always been one canon" in the first place. Maybe the Trek route was always the way to go. Like, the Star Trek: New Frontier series was able to keep publishing from 1998 all the way to 2015, whatever was happening in the main TV- & movie-verses be damned. Seven of Nine and the Doctor even showed up in one book, and everyone was like "I'm so sorry to hear about Captain Janeway's death." I was like "... the hell?" Turned out Peter David had written a book where she died and was tying the two works together. And even with that, I honestly doubt that anyone expected her to be dead when Picard and Prodigy came around. That's the level of zen and acceptance I kind of wish we could have always had.

Sure, there was a lot of charm when different eras crossed over, like Rogue Planet affecting the NJO, but really, when the prequels were released, not tooo much about the post-ROTJ-verse would have changed if the prequel-era EU had been its own separate deal. In fact, less prequel influence on how Luke's order was written would have been a very, very good thing.

Of course this is easier to say in retrospect though. In 1999, the ideas of a sequel trilogy, live-action TV shows, and even animated shows, felt like pipe dreams. Whereas in Trek, future movies and TV shows were always a given.

 

Personally the whole "Star Wars is just one canon" thing is what made the extended media appealing in the first place, even if there were contradictions here and there, i like that everything can matter.

Of course there can be a point where it is unsustainable, and i think a Sequel Trilogy was the riskiest thing to do to keep that approach, hence why they chose to end it at that point, to me, if it was rebooted at any point, that was the one.

I don't think TCW is irreconciliable, they just chose the worst approach possible to solve the contradictions (crunching the entirety of the 2002-2005 material in 2 months in universe wasn't a smart move) and in other cases, such as Ryloth, they didin't even try to, when the hardest thing to reconcile, the Mando stuff, they did so in the Bounty Hunter Code book, which also made me wish for the Mandalore Civil War being depicted in a story written by Jude Watson lol.

 

Yeah, for sure it was what gave it a big appeal, and what elevated it above other franchises' EUs. But I still like musing on a what-if scenario where when 1999 rolled around, they had decided that the prequels probably wouldn't gel well with the existing EU (I think I remember reading once that Ryder Windham or someone read the Episode I script and suggested just that?), and had decided to go with two different universes. George Lucas's backstory for Boba Fett is different than what came before? No problem! It's a different canon! You don't need to make an entire comic miniseries just to reconcile the two divergent stories! And then when 2008 came along, they could have rebooted the prequel-era EU again with no fuss, since there was already precedent for it. Spic and span.

Also, imagine if the NJO and beyond had proceeded in a universe with no prequels? That's a fascinating what-if, for sure...

 

Of course, in that situation I think there's a high probability that the NJO would've also proceeded in a universe with no Bantam-verse canon preceding it - that was actually considered at the time, and I think rejected to a large extent because of the "single continuity" credo.

 

I am confused, would this imply that the NJO would take place in the same universe as the Prequel Trilogy or the other way around?

From the looks of it in the NJO's production, since the mid 90's it was intended as a continuation of the Bantam novels, to take it to a larger scale, if it was just a separate continuity there would be no point, i feel that the NJO might have been one of the main reasons why they didin't reboot in '99, it (aside from the inconsistencies not being that big, especially compared to 2008).

I have the feeling that the "reboot of '99" case is just a case of overreaction from both fans and some writers alike to the changes brought on by the new movies, and LFL never truly considered doing so, the continuity was still just 9 years old, the old Marvel stuff was still not fully integrated yet.

 

The NJO coincided with the novel license going from Bantam to Del Rey and it was intended as a soft reboot of the line to bring in new readers. That ended up being the case mostly in terms of tone and stakes, but at the time the inclusion of Mara and the Solo kids was talked about as a special exception rather than the norm, and only as the series went on did it become the big EU-a-palooza that it was. I would argue that it was probably inevitable just because of the wealth of locations and characters sitting around for them to use, but that definitely wasn't how it started.

 

Maybe Palpatine could have learned something from the Fourth Sister

 

The NJO definitely was originally conceived of as a reboot but Vector Prime, as published, doesn't actually feel any different from the median Bantam novel to me. The kids, Mara, and Borsk were really the only EU characters to recur across all the 90s novels, with cameos from Jedi of Luke's inaugural class. In fact by including Kyp as a supporting character Salvatore went beyond what any of the main-story New Republic writers did with Jedi. Like, yes, Lando has an inexplicable new business venture and the New Republic government a different sufficient structure and such but this is the case for every novel set after the Thrawn books anyway.

And then by Agents of Chaos we're already doing more continuity than any Bantam work ever did, simply by including senators and other New Republic officials introduced in previous books. (Seriously, every single Bantam novel that's not written by KJA or stackpole introduces an entirely new non-movie cast of senators and high officials, with the sole exception of Borsk Fey'lya.)

 

The Selkath from Knights of the Old Republic have been in a couple of Acolyte episodes now. I thought I saw one in the background of the first episode but wasn't entirely sure, but there was no uncertainty at all this week.

They had previously made the jump from video games to TV by appearing in The Clone Wars, but now they're part of the elite EU-to-live-action club.

Lepi next!

 

And Boba Fett.

Yeah, I enjoyed Agent of the Empire, but it went pretty heavy on the cameos (honestly as much flack as the live action shows get for too many cameos the comics in both legends and canon are often worse). Similarly, the heavy use of Tatooine.

Acolyte also has the Tynnan species from the 1979 novel Han Solo's Revenge.

 

The Wook's exploded again. More issues with the admins. And Eckhart's Ladder is making a fuss on X.

I have popcorn hehehe.

 

Seems like a pretty unchill web site to be honest.

 

Ughhhhh what is it NOW!? Don't Have a TwiXer so I can't see the rest of the thread.

 

An admin allegedly sent a d**th threat against another admin on Discord (I'm starting to see a pattern now relating to Discord and the Wook), told to resign, still considered their choice, the rest of the admins voted them out anyway, they resignedm, leaked to X. Eckhart's Ladder brings up his own blocking for no apparent reason.

Just another day on the Wook.

 

Sweet Force...

 

Spoiler

 

...OK, I officially think I don't like the Wook anymore, since it's clearly not just Tope and Culator. Sweet kriff, this is a fan website, not the army...

 

No kidding. Seriously. The temper tantrum from these admins is pathetic.