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Does anyone care about the 'extended universe'? — Page 2

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xhonzi said:

georgec said:

 the prequels aren't EU,

Sure they are!

Georgec, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Haha, I agree with you in that they are nowhere near the level of the OT and everything about them is a pathetic attempt to plagiarize and recreate the OT as well as sell a few toys. But in official terms to SW fans, the prequels are "canon."

Meh.

“Grow up. These are my Disney's movies, not yours.”

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I very much like the "Legacy of the Force" series. The rise of Darth Caedus struck me as a good example of how evil does not start out as black, but sort of an off-white. By the time you recognize it as black, it is too late.

Though I suspect many Star Wars fans hate it for that for that very reason. To each his own.

I thought that the Boba Fett subplot was also supremely well handled. Karen Traviss turned Fett into a flawed and scarred human being, and as a result, his character was that much more badass, even though he's in his seventies!

Again, I suspect that many fans don't want Fett to be "humanized." To each his own.

=o)

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Jacen said:

I very much like the "Legacy of the Force" series. The rise of Darth Caedus struck me as a good example of how evil does not start out as black, but sort of an off-white. By the time you recognize it as black, it is too late.

I thought that the Boba Fett subplot was also supremely well handled. Karen Traviss turned Fett into a flawed and scarred human being, and as a result, his character was that much more badass, even though he's in his seventies!

Again, I suspect that many fans don't want Fett to be "humanized." To each his own.

 I didn't love the  humanizing of Boba, but I admit it was interesting to read.

Although with Jacen/Caedus, while the arc had it's ups and downs, I was never able to get over his initial evil act, where he looked into the future and basically said "If I don't commit murder, the plot will never happen!"  :)

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Tobar said:

SilverWook said:

The Brian Daley Han Solo trilogy, the Lando trilogy, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and the old Marvel comics are all the EU I require. ;)

Aww, no love for the strips? Most of them were written by Archie Goodwin the man responsible for almost half of the old Marvel comics.

My local newspaper didn't seem to carry the strips very long back then. I did buy the Dark Horse reprints though.

Didn't mean to leave those out of the love fest. ;)

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Jacen said:

I thought that the Boba Fett subplot was also supremely well handled. Karen Traviss turned Fett into a flawed and scarred human being, and as a result, his character was that much more badass, even though he's in his seventies!

You get the hell out RIGHT NOW.

She made him cry. Boba Fett doesn't cry! She flew in the face of every bit of superior Boba Fett canon ever written before her, and she ruined the Mandalorians.

She took Boba and the Mandalorians and then tried to humanize them, make them into pure good guys who give shelter to their most bitter rivals, when it's always been pretty clear that they're more grey (and a dark grey at that sometimes) than white.

 

Boba didn't need to be humanized. That's what was cool about him. He was someone you could identify with regardless of who you were (and this is assuming you read some of the pre-Travissty EU on him). The best thing I've ever read about Boba was him talking to Leia in Jabba's palace, when Jabba gives her to him to do with as he pleases. That's when I knew Boba Fett was the best Star Wars character ever. It explains who he is without explaining who he is, if you get my meaning. That's all that ever needed to be said about him.

Now, thanks to Traviss, he's just another whiner like the PT made Vader.

 

Please note that you are entitled you your opinion, good Sir. I just passionately disagree with it, being a rabid Fett/Mandalorian fan.

Keep Circulating the Tapes.

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I do like the Expanded Universe. The different kind of stories, characters, droids, locations, ships (the designs of those are pretty cool), really make the EU worth wild. :)

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 (Edited)

 

jonathan7 said, in another thread:

@Tyrphanax

Are there any sources for the OT EU prior to the Prequels, I've heard that Lucas contradicts a lot of the previous work, but unfortunately I've never seen/read the ideas that pre-dated the Prequels.

 

I'm not quite sure I know what you mean by sources... if you can find the old media, then that's the best source. The old Bantam novels and early Star Wars comics as well as the early sourcebooks and guides and whatnot. I have a well-read copy of the second edition of A Guide to the Star Wars Universe from 1994 which is all pre-PT info in blurb form. I know there was at least one edition later than the one I have, but I was pretty sure it had TPM content. There's also the Star Wars Encyclopedia from 1998 that's supposed to be pretty good. Wookieepedia will also generally give you some idea of retcons and stuff in the "Behind the Scenes" section in most articles.

The thing about Lucas contradicting the EU is, and what most people fail to realize, is that it's written with the understanding that if Lucas decides he wants to explore the section of the universe you wrote about, whatever he comes up with will trump your ideas.

This is most notably seen in the recent Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network. Helming the show is Dave Filoni, who is a pretty hardcore Star Wars nerd, which is great, because he likes to add some of the cooler EU points into the show. The thing is that Lucas has the final say on stuff, so you do end up with contradictory canon here and there. This is the main reason Karen Traviss ragequit the Star Wars universe, because Lucas wanted to do something different with the Mandalorians during the Clone Wars than she had (which could go either way for me right now, depending on what happens in the upcoming Season IV).

The nice thing about the process is that if Dave and his team are going to be exploring areas that have had content written about them already, they'll do their research on it (I'm sure they at least read the Wookieepedia entry if not the media involved) and they'll bring the pre-established ideas to Lucas' attention. Honestly, it seems like Lucas will generally okay the pre-established stuff, unless he feels very strongly about how he wants something done (and that's when you get pacifist Mandalorians and Dathomiri Zabraks).

As far as other things go, things like the PT contradicting OT EU, you have to be realistic about it. You can't very well expect Lucas and his team to put the production of their media on hold in order to go through and read all those books and comics and play all the video games and everything so that they have an idea of how to make this new media fit in with pre-established EU by some author from 1976 (and quite honestly, I don't think he should have to). Plus, he has at least two people who's job it is to retcon things and make sure everything fits together (sometimes pretty tenuously at best) into a fairly continual universe.

I hope that answers your questions!

 

The other thing about the EU, which I'll tack on here for the sake of answering the threads OP, is that I care (/skywalker), but you really have to pick and choose what you like and don't like to add to your personal canon. I've recently been going through the novels in SW chronological order and while there have been a few gems (like the Jedi Apprentice series, which makes TPM a better movie) and a few really awful books as well (I'm reading Cloak of Deception right now, which I so far do not like). You just gotta check it all out, add what you like to your canon and toss out what you don't.

 

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Thanks for the answer. I generally know a fair amount of KotOR era EU, but am generally quite ignorant in other areas. Though I do generally pick and choose alot with the EU I do know... Revan was female in my Star Wars universe ;)

"Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation." - Rabindranath Tagore

"Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth." - Kahlil Gibran

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There really is a boatload of info on all things in the Star Wars universe. If there's something you want to know about from Star Wars, be it a certain period of time, or a person, or a thing, anything, you can be sure that someone has probably written something about it. You just have to know where to look, Wookieepedia is a good jumping-off point for that, since it sources to the original media pretty well.

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 (Edited)

I've said it before, but I wouldn't be half the Star Wars fan I am today without the EU. It kept me into it. I liked the continuing stories and the Tales books and so on. It gave the films an even fuller feeling universe. Yes, some books aren't too great (Planet of Twilight, The Black Fleet Crisis minus Lando, a good chunk of the NJO which practically killed my interest in reading them[I'm only 10 years behind]), and so much of the universe now aligns itself with the PT (not all stormtroopers are clones, dammit), but I still like a lot of them, and really need to catch up. I've already heard about the post NJO stuff already, and I used to be among the first to know, not the spoiled.

The thing about Lucas contradicting the EU is, and what most people fail to realize, is that it's written with the understanding that if Lucas decides he wants to explore the section of the universe you wrote about, whatever he comes up with will trump your ideas.

Yet one of the biggest kicks I got out of TPM was how much of the EU stuff actually made it into the film (at least the little known about it). Case in point being that I learned about Prequel central planet Coruscant from Timothy Zahn and others, not George Lucas. I still pronounce it the same why I read it when I was 10 too (namely with a hard 2nd "c").


Made for IE Forum's Episode III theme month - May 2005.

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xhonzi said:

And, as a quick aside, this is a fantasy universe that includes both Dark Magic users and cloning technology- I don't see how you can't have the darkest of dark magic users use cloning technology to achieve some kind of immortality and bring himself "back from the dead."

I agree. I always liked the notion of an immortal Palpatine, and really enjoyed Dark Empire. I'm quite surprised that Palpy has not been resurrected in the EU (again). Instead we are stuck with crap like this:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darth_Krayt

 

“It is only through interaction, through decision and choice, through confrontation, physical or mental, that the Force can grow within you.”
-Kreia, Jedi Master and Sith Lord

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ThiefCobbler4ever said:

I do like the Expanded Universe. The different kind of stories, characters, droids, locations, ships (the designs of those are pretty cool), really make the EU worth wild. :)

Thank you for using the correct term. I twitch every time I read this thread's title. =P

SilverWook said:

Tobar said:

SilverWook said:

The Brian Daley Han Solo trilogy, the Lando trilogy, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and the old Marvel comics are all the EU I require. ;)

Aww, no love for the strips? Most of them were written by Archie Goodwin the man responsible for almost half of the old Marvel comics.

My local newspaper didn't seem to carry the strips very long back then. I did buy the Dark Horse reprints though.

Didn't mean to leave those out of the love fest. ;)

I'm not a fan of DH's reprints. It's great that Williamson was so involved with it and contributed new art to assist with reformatting to fit the comic book format but his art just looks best without color.

Their later work on reprinting Russ Manning's stuff was terrible. They never used any of the Sunday strips. I'm not even sure they had access to them given how wildly different their colors were compared to the Sunday originals. That plus the fact that they never reprinted any of the Sunday exclusive stories. Save for a very hard to find exclusive of the Constancia Affair for KB Toys. No, for me the best way to read the strips is in their original format.

 

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Tyrphanax said:

Jacen said:

I thought that the Boba Fett subplot was also supremely well handled. Karen Traviss turned Fett into a flawed and scarred human being, and as a result, his character was that much more badass, even though he's in his seventies!

You get the hell out RIGHT NOW.

She made him cry. Boba Fett doesn't cry! She flew in the face of every bit of superior Boba Fett canon ever written before her, and she ruined the Mandalorians.

She took Boba and the Mandalorians and then tried to humanize them, make them into pure good guys who give shelter to their most bitter rivals, when it's always been pretty clear that they're more grey (and a dark grey at that sometimes) than white.

 

Boba didn't need to be humanized. That's what was cool about him. He was someone you could identify with regardless of who you were (and this is assuming you read some of the pre-Travissty EU on him). The best thing I've ever read about Boba was him talking to Leia in Jabba's palace, when Jabba gives her to him to do with as he pleases. That's when I knew Boba Fett was the best Star Wars character ever. It explains who he is without explaining who he is, if you get my meaning. That's all that ever needed to be said about him.

Now, thanks to Traviss, he's just another whiner like the PT made Vader.

 

Please note that you are entitled you your opinion, good Sir. I just passionately disagree with it, being a rabid Fett/Mandalorian fan.

Hmph....

Couple of things.....

I never once thought of the Mandos as "good guys" through Traviss. I saw them as pretty much amoral, at least how the Jedi define morality. From their own (Traviss-written) point of view, Mando morality is very complex, and definitely at total odds with the Jedi (and much of the rest of the galaxy.) But from within their own reality, there are good guys (adherence and responsibility to the honest, macho, plain-spoken Mandalorian culture) and bad guys (liars, wimps and traitors to the Mandalorian credo). Don't forget, Boba Fett himself, at the beginning of this novel is considered a "bad guy" by the Mandalorians themselves, even though he is Mandalore! He already had the mercenary part down pat, but what was compelling to me was his gradual embracing of Mandalorian responsibility and finally his owning of Mandalorian heritage, therefore transforming into a "good guy" (by Mando standards). Definitely still a "bad guy" to the Jedi, including Jaina Solo.

Boba Fett cried. Yes he did. A character who never cries bores me. In that situation, they are no longer a character, they are simply a force that I cannot identify with as a reader. There is no dramatic tension, in other words. In fact, when Boba finally cries, every badass thing he ever did in the Bounty Hunter trilogy, in Empire, in the Leia short story you refer to (I agree, it kicked ass)...... all of these badass things became THAT MUCH MORE BADASS, because he finally broke, and I empathized with him. When you empathize with a character, their accomplishments become that much more meaningful.

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TheBoost said:

Jacen said:

I very much like the "Legacy of the Force" series. The rise of Darth Caedus struck me as a good example of how evil does not start out as black, but sort of an off-white. By the time you recognize it as black, it is too late.

I thought that the Boba Fett subplot was also supremely well handled. Karen Traviss turned Fett into a flawed and scarred human being, and as a result, his character was that much more badass, even though he's in his seventies!

Again, I suspect that many fans don't want Fett to be "humanized." To each his own.

I didn't love the humanizing of Boba, but I admit it was interesting to read.

Although with Jacen/Caedus, while the arc had it's ups and downs, I was never able to get over his initial evil act, where he looked into the future and basically said "If I don't commit murder, the plot will never happen!" :)

I agree completely. I wish his "turn" happened later, say in the 2nd or 3rd novel. It was too sudden, even after the subtle build-up in NJO and the Dark Nest trilogy. That said, we knew Jacen Solo was the epitome of pragmatism, therefore it at least made logical sense for this to occur, if not the most plausible sense.

Even Luke commented on "ends justifies the means" pragmatism, which I thought was one of the most brilliant passages in the entire series-- "There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil."

Too bad Luke couldn't see it in his own nephew.

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After watching the turd sandwich that was TPM in 1999, I started to buy Marvel back issues of the Star Wars comics of the 1970s and 1980s in order to remind me how cool Star Wars used to be when it was at it's peak.

The Holiday Special is also EU, and I'll watch that occasionally for a bit of fun.

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Jacen said:

Tyrphanax said:

Jacen said:

I thought that the Boba Fett subplot was also supremely well handled. Karen Traviss turned Fett into a flawed and scarred human being, and as a result, his character was that much more badass, even though he's in his seventies!

You get the hell out RIGHT NOW.

She made him cry. Boba Fett doesn't cry! She flew in the face of every bit of superior Boba Fett canon ever written before her, and she ruined the Mandalorians.

She took Boba and the Mandalorians and then tried to humanize them, make them into pure good guys who give shelter to their most bitter rivals, when it's always been pretty clear that they're more grey (and a dark grey at that sometimes) than white.

 

Boba didn't need to be humanized. That's what was cool about him. He was someone you could identify with regardless of who you were (and this is assuming you read some of the pre-Travissty EU on him). The best thing I've ever read about Boba was him talking to Leia in Jabba's palace, when Jabba gives her to him to do with as he pleases. That's when I knew Boba Fett was the best Star Wars character ever. It explains who he is without explaining who he is, if you get my meaning. That's all that ever needed to be said about him.

Now, thanks to Traviss, he's just another whiner like the PT made Vader.

 

Please note that you are entitled you your opinion, good Sir. I just passionately disagree with it, being a rabid Fett/Mandalorian fan.

Hmph....

Couple of things.....

I never once thought of the Mandos as "good guys" through Traviss. I saw them as pretty much amoral, at least how the Jedi define morality. From their own (Traviss-written) point of view, Mando morality is very complex, and definitely at total odds with the Jedi (and much of the rest of the galaxy.) But from within their own reality, there are good guys (adherence and responsibility to the honest, macho, plain-spoken Mandalorian culture) and bad guys (liars, wimps and traitors to the Mandalorian credo). Don't forget, Boba Fett himself, at the beginning of this novel is considered a "bad guy" by the Mandalorians themselves, even though he is Mandalore! He already had the mercenary part down pat, but what was compelling to me was his gradual embracing of Mandalorian responsibility and finally his owning of Mandalorian heritage, therefore transforming into a "good guy" (by Mando standards). Definitely still a "bad guy" to the Jedi, including Jaina Solo.

Boba Fett cried. Yes he did. A character who never cries bores me. In that situation, they are no longer a character, they are simply a force that I cannot identify with as a reader. There is no dramatic tension, in other words. In fact, when Boba finally cries, every badass thing he ever did in the Bounty Hunter trilogy, in Empire, in the Leia short story you refer to (I agree, it kicked ass)...... all of these badass things became THAT MUCH MORE BADASS, because he finally broke, and I empathized with him. When you empathize with a character, their accomplishments become that much more meaningful.

Well, I'm eventually going to get around to rereading her books, so we'll see.

Keep Circulating the Tapes.

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