What do you LIKE about the EU? — Page 2

I've read pretty much every book released in the EU and some were hard going whilst others were close to the spirit of the original Star Wars. As mentioned above, the Thrawn Trilogy, which kickstarted everything off in the early 90s, is good reading. Zahn seems to understand the characters a lot better than those who subsequently wrote stories. Thrawn is an interesting character, a non-human in the company of humans and leading them. He had an interesting way of reading enemy tactics. 

The X-Wing series, as I've written elsewhere, were also good books to read and I've re-read them many times. It's good to be able to concentrate on fringe characters and bring them to the fore. Wedge finally got a series to himself, had a backstory (of sorts) and was able to be more than 'Wedge Antilles, the only other character in all of the original trilogy movies'. More than anything, I feel this series of books above all written so far would translate well to a set of TV movies. There is an established set of central characters, similar enough to evoke warm fuzzy feelings, but different enough not to be labelled as a 'Luke clone' or 'Han clone'. The established characters do make appearances, but by-and-large, this is a Wedge series and I think it benefits greatly from having a set of characters who weren't as tightly defined by Lucas. 

Ok, so this thread is about the good stuff in the EU...however, along with the good comes the bad and the ugly. The bad stuff? Well that might be the Yuzhong Vong invasion...a series of books that took far too long to come to an end, killed off everyone's favourite 'shaggy dog' and generally created a clone of Vader. Ugly? Well that would be the rise and fall of Jacen Solo. He seemed to be set to 'clone Anakin Skywalker' but by 1000%...only this time he was 'fighting to save the universe for his daughter' only he didn't get seduced by a great user of the Dark Side, but a bit part character who was killed off in the comics at least twice and was a rebel pilot to boot! Jacen really had to be a bit weak willed to be driven in this way...to me at least! Not only that, but he really did become quite whinny in his manner toward the end...do all Jedi who fall end up with this attitude? 

DarkFather said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

Most Star Wars fans are over on TFN gushing. Some "negativity" is refreshing. 

 

Yeah, but how much negativity?

As much as we feel like. There's nothing wrong with negativity (so-called) when there's a good reason for it. And the EU gives us plenty good reason. A lot of us would feel better from getting to scratch that itch.

C3PX said:

DarkFather said:

Well, go make an EU criticism thread then. No use in hijacking TheBoost's thread that is about the positive.

 

Exactly. It is a pretty crappy thing to go turning everyone elses threads into negativity threads. This is something I am plenty guilty of myself. Some people here just want to talk about SW without having to constantly hear how much we all hate 99.9% of all things Star Wars.

Just because places like TFN have become gushers central, doesn't mean we have to go a million miles in the opposite direction and become basher central.

And while a little "so called" negativity is not a bad thing, it has a problem of becoming habitual. You ever notice that some people just complain about everything? They almost seem to get into a habit of it and can never stop. It is sad. I wouldn't want to be the guy that looks at everything and see sunshine and flowers, but I also don't want to be the guy that looks at everything and finds mold and maggots.

See, I don't agree with this attitude about "negativity". So-called negativity isn't this big boogeyman everybody has to be scared of. It's not this terrible thing. Much of what gets called negativity is criticism. Criticism is not a negative. In fact, it's a positive. It's an important part of discussion. It's constructive. You can't have mature discussion of something unless you allow criticism. It's a not a bad thing to bring criticism into a discussion. It's a worthy contribution.

And if somebody doesn't like something they should be allowed to say so. Does everybody need to like everything? What's so terrible about somebody not liking something? We shouldn't need everybody to like all the things we like. If somebody doesn't like something and says so, it does no harm to anybody.

This "negativity" is harmless. We need to be a little more tolerant of people not always sharing our feelings about everything. Just because we like something doesn't mean it's a bad thing for someone to come and admit that they don't like it. Just because someone makes a considered criticism of something doesn't mean they've crapped on your carpet.

And if you don't like some view of somebody's about something, you don't have to agree with it, just like they don't have to agree with yours. You can choose to disagree or just ignore whatever posted views you don't like. Meanwhile, everybody gets to post their view.

That's fine.  I agree that constructive criticism is a good thing, but much of what you've posted is more like cynicism.  I mean, this:

Vaderisnothayden said:

Shadows of the Empire really pissed me off.

The Yuzhaan Pong invasion was a stupid idea. 

is not constructive in any way.  It's just negative.  This thread was intended to celebrate the things we like & enjoy which can be refreshing.  Constructive criticism is not bad, it's just not what this thread is about & that's why people (myself included) don't really like what you're posting in this thread.  It's not that we want to single you out, argue, or that we even disagree with it all (i agree with many of your points).  It's just that this is not the thread for it. 

Sometimes it's fun and enjoyable to just think about and discuss the things that make you happy or you enjoy without getting bogged down with all the things you'd have done differently or would like to change.  It's nice to just feel satisfied.

SOOOO back on topic....

 I totally forgot about the videogame side of the EU....  I know it's been mentioned many times before, but i think the Kyle Katarn games (Dark Forces, Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight, & Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast specifically) REALLY captured the adventuresome feel of 1977 like no other games before or since.  I recently played JK2 again & really got a kick out of the level where you're sneaking around an imperial docking bay to get onto that huge star destroyer type ship.  You're having to sneak past officers, troops, and stormtroopers using stealth, mind tricks, and ingenuity (such as blacking out a room & using night vision) & they just really nailed the feel of being a jedi (ben kenobi...) sneaking around a large imperial base (death star....), right down to the conversations between the stormtroopers you overhear.  I particularly like the one trooper who brags about the biggest ship he's been assigned to, only to admit that it wound up being really boring b/c they never did anything (at which point i happened to burst from my hiding place & dispatch him and his friend).

Oh yeah, they also got the abilities of a Jedi RIGHT without making them superhuman cartoons.  You are powerful, doing things no ordinary human could do, but it is still subtle and not flashy.  It's like the creators really took notes on Ben Kenobi & Yoda from the OT b/c that's exactly how it feels ingame.

Tales From The Bounty Hunters, Shadows Of The Empire, The Thrawn series, the Dark Empire 1 & 2 Comics series.

There are other cool things out there, but really... nothing else other than the above, holds anything interesting or fun for me.

canofhumdingers said:

That's fine.  I agree that constructive criticism is a good thing, but much of what you've posted is more like cynicism.  I mean, this:

Vaderisnothayden said:

Shadows of the Empire really pissed me off.

The Yuzhaan Pong invasion was a stupid idea. 

is not constructive in any way.  It's just negative.  This thread was intended to celebrate the things we like & enjoy which can be refreshing.  Constructive criticism is not bad, it's just not what this thread is about & that's why people (myself included) don't really like what you're posting in this thread.  It's not that we want to single you out, argue, or that we even disagree with it all (i agree with many of your points).  It's just that this is not the thread for it. 

Sometimes it's fun and enjoyable to just think about and discuss the things that make you happy or you enjoy without getting bogged down with all the things you'd have done differently or would like to change.  It's nice to just feel satisfied.

 

And what if you're not satisfied? Then your opinion's not good enough to be heard? And if you look around I wasn't the only person who posted "negative" things on this thread.

What I don't get is why it's so terrible and offensive for somebody to say they didn't like something. It really shouldn't bother you so much. It's just an opinion. Not everybody can like everything, nor should they have to pretend they do.

Why is it refreshing to outlaw criticism from a thread? That doesn't sound refreshing to me at all. It sounds more like censorship.

And why's it not constructive for people to put out their views on what they don't like? I would think it's a good thing for people to communicate on what they feel about stuff. Communication is good. Censorship is negative.

And really you shouldn't get bogged down in what the topic of this thread was supposed to be. Threads on this board start out as one thing and end up as another. Conversation drifts. It's no harm. It's part of the way this site is more laid back than some other sites. If you want to discuss what you like about the EU, you can do it here and really you can probably bring it up on a whole lot of other threads on this board to and probably start a whole conversation there if people feel like it. This thread was about the EU. I discussed the EU, including what I like about it.

Personally I have trouble discussing what I like about the EU without bringing up what I dislike, because it's all interconnected. Maybe if I didn't love Star Wars and care about it, I might be able to ignore what I don't like about the EU, but that's not me.

C3PX said:

Yeah, I am a huge Dark Forces fan. I wasn't really happy when they turned Kyle into a Jedi, I really liked the mercenary for hire thing, but what is done is done, and Jedi Outcast is one of the best Star Wars games I have ever played.

The Stormtrooper conversations really added to the game, almost made me feel bad to kill them at times. And the force powers were a lot of fun to use, you never feel immortal like you do in The Force Unleashed (which was annoying, turn the difficulty up to high, you can die well enough, but you will hack at a Jawa with your lightsaver for ten minutes just to kill him, turn the difficulty down a bit, and the Jawa dies in a couple of swings, but you are damn near invincible. Either way, not a lot of fun). 

I like the character of Kyle Katarn and I like that they made him a Jedi and more of a badass Jedi than some others.

AxiaEuxine said:

I enjoy all of the EU except

The Ewok Movies...horrid horrid things
The Xmas special (duh)
Ewoks and Droids cartoon

 hate them

Scruffy said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

Once you start resurrecting characters you lose something.

*cough*obiwankenobi*cough*

Kenobi wasn't resurrected. He became a ghost. That's dead.

Dark Empire is probably both the best vision of a near-term post-RotJ galaxy yet, but it's also great science fantasy in its own right. On film, Palpatine is merely a cackling megalomaniac, with no real motive except to take over the Galaxy then wander about it in his bathrobe. DE and its associated WEG sourcebook really delve into Palpatine's plans for himself and the galaxy. The story was unfortunately truncated, but most of what there is is good.

I thought the Dark Empire portrayal of Palpatine was pathetic. In ROTJ he was a distinctive villain, whereas in the Dark Empire, Dark Empire 2 and Empire's End comics has was just a non-disticntive cliche villain and rather annoying. And they didn't bother to draw him looking anything like Palpatine.