doubleofive said:
Wow, I didn't know your Star Wars Universe was literally just the movie until recently. That must seem incredible, to have your canon so much bigger now. I envy you, but I always have.
It's fantastic to have it so much bigger and I have this board to thank for it. That was a damn 20-year dry spell. What's also great to me is that my canon has almost zero involvement or influence from Lucas. The film and some of the characters are him, but the radio version is much deeper. He was hands-off because he'd sold the rights to it.
The Daley books are equally fantastic. Much like this board - because Daley wasn't made to (or even allowed to) shoehorn the stories into George's world - the stories end up being better because they aren't bogged down by Lucasfilm. They have room to breath. Splinter was written as the sequel, by the ghost writer of the Star Wars novel, so it has the feel of that original universe before the shrinking began.
To paraphrase Dr. Eldon Tyrell - my canon is more Star Wars than Star Wars. It's that way because it was written by two very talented authors and free of George's fingerprints.
Regarding being envious. It wasn't hard work at all. In fact it came naturally. I was disappointed by some of Empire, so at the time it was just a sequel film I wasn't super crazy about. I did own a LD of it for a while.** It wasn't a 6-film mega media empire yet. It was just a film and its sequel, so it was easy to dismiss it. A few years later I was so disgusted with Return, that the goodbye was a cake walk. One great film, two sequels that I found disappointing. probably happens all the time, to lots of people.
The further distancing was just a product of the passage of time. As you get older, you prioritize much more efficiently. Judging by your picture, you seem to be in your twenties. It's a safe bet that when you're my age 25 years from now, a great many things will have fallen by the wayside because other things, more important & more meaningful, will have replaced them.
I guess in simpler terms, I'm not at war with the franchise. I like a small corner of it and I've completely ignored the rest. That mental energy is put to much better use - motorcycles, baseball, wine, and beekeeping.
**Actually, I still own a copy of Empire and Return. I have that Definitive Collection box set that originally led me to this board. Sitting in a closet somewhere I think.