The EU, and why I hate it

 Don't get me wrong, some of it is alright. I like Battlefront, Empire at War, The Thrawn Trilogy, Shadows of the Empire, and The Force Unleashed (sort of). Asajj Ventress is one of the few EU characters I actually like. But what I really hate is how they try to incorporate all that Marvel comics garbage and Ewok cartoons in. Ewoks have rainbow bridges, trolls, magic, HORSES, the hideous season "kings" that look like they belong in some public domain cartoon for 5-year-olds. Marvel comics have another other Death Star, ugly ships, stupid stories, JAXXON, and generic, unrecognizable appearences for everyone but Vader.

 Then there's half the other stuff. Palpatine has "eyes" and "hands"... Mara Jade wasn't as bad as the others, but why would he have a bunch of mini-apprentices? Vader has them, too. Warlords fighting over what's left of the Empire, two three-eyed mutants who claim to be Palpatine's children, The Death star II is also IG-88, every background character has an elaborate story, and contradictions everywhere. Ackbar dies, Mon Mothma dies, Chewbacca dies, there's some ugly freaks called Yuuzhan Vong who "terraform" things, the Sith still exist, Palpatine is reborn as a bunch of mannequin-clones, The Empire never goes away, there's plenty of angsty villians, and despite the main characters being 70-odd, they still go on their amazing adventures.

Your Shadows of Empire and Thrawn trilogy are inferior to the Marvel comics, which were far truer to the spirit of Star wars (despite some odd stuff) than the later stuff ever was.

Vaderisnothayden said:

Your Shadows of Empire and Thrawn trilogy are inferior to the Marvel comics, which were far truer to the spirit of Star wars (despite some odd stuff) than the later stuff ever was.

I whole-heartedly agree with this.

I also agree with the idea that the Empire or the Sith are still a threat is what sucks about the EU.  Everytime the galaxy is being threatened and Luke has to go mopping up the place only cheapens the original victory of the rebels in the movies.  All the EU does is dilute the punch of the pint that is the Original Trilogy.

I hate about half the EU and love the rest. There is no middle-ground for me.

My advice to anyone interested in picking up a Star Wars book is to read up a little about it first, and then pick and choose the things that you think would appeal to you. Then just ignore the rest, like it doesn't exist. You can find synopsises and reviews online before going to the book store.

I especially dislike when things familiar from the movies come back, again and again. Boba Fett and the Emperor are resurrected. People meet at Cloud City of the backwater planet of Bespin or on the even more backwater outer-rim planet of Tatooine for some peculiar reasons, again and again. I find the concept of Yuuzhan Vong ("New Jedi Order" books) to be almost blasphemic -- does not feel like Star Wars at all. The Ewok movies, I won't even admit to their existence.

I can recommend the X-wing book series and the "Tales" books, which I have enjoyed very much. The X-wing books are mostly about Wedge Antilles and how the Rebellion fights remnants of the divided Empire after ROTJ. These books tell about the characters that stood in the background in the movies and add a few more. I also like the Darth Bane books -- about the Sith a thousand years before TPM.

I also want to say that I think that the books and comic books about the Clone Wars that came out between the release of AOTC and ROTS are much better than the current "The Clone Wars" TV-series and its related books and comics. (even though I think that Karen Traviss is a great sci-fi writer.. I am reading her non-SW books cover to cover). The slightly older books had more depth to the characters -- they were not black and white.(and Asajj Ventress was a hot messed-up girl, not just an ugly evil bitch..). Lucasfilm made an effort here to keep continuity in check between different mediums to a higher degree than before or after: hardcover books, comic books, TV-cartoon (Genndy Tartakovsky) and web-comics.

 One thing I always found annoying is Ventress' appearence. Sometimes she's bald Britney, Chinese, He-She, She-He, or sometimes she'll look good. She's had about three different costumes, though the colors of each keep changing. The color of her triangle tattoos changes, and in both cartoons, her tattoos themselves keep changing. Are triangles that hard to keep consistent? Then you see her now and then with white eyes like the old cartoon.

 Though I like her voice and appearence (aside from how her nose gets fat between her eyes), she'd look better if she was a bit less stylized.

Yeah, at least half of the EU makes for pretty bad fiction (Palpatine clones etc.).

The thing that pisses me off is that a huge chunk of the EU that I followed from the 70s up until the prequels was rendered non-canon. So following it was a big, fat waste of time and brain space. 

Right from the start, Splinter of the Mind's Eye was a moot point the moment ESB came out. Same goes for the Marvel comics.

Jaster Mereel was no longer Boba Fett. Owen Lars was no longer Ben's brother.

Really, who in his/her right mind would pay any attention to the EU after getting burned for over 20 years?

I like some of the Clone Wars stuff (particularly Ventress and the original cartoon), but when I'm in the mood for new science fiction or fantasy, the EU is the last place I'd look.

... but the SUCK TO ENJOYABLE ratio within the EU gives SUCK the advantage.

At least two decades of EU works were packaged with an implicit promise that they were pieces of a larger story/work of fiction. In the end they weren't, and since few entries stand on their own without the Star Wars universe, they were a waste of time and brain space. That's how I see most of the EU entries that I followed... and that's why I stopped following EU.

The legacy of EU disappointments also contribute to my larger resentment of the prequels and everything related to them. It convinces me that the magic of the first two films was an utter fluke.

I guess the best way to think of it is like OOT vs SE--I mean does it really matter if Hayden Christensen is in ROTJ or not? The original is still the original. But its nonetheless bothersome that it was written over in the first place. And changing slightly significant parts of the EU, like the Jaster Mereel storyline, invalidates the ability to suspend your disbelief that it's a plausible, connected universe, since if you want to continue to pursue stories you have to mentally disconnect large chunks of it.

Such is the nature of a body of work that was made between two other bodys of work (the OT and PT) whose writer does not care acknowledge the existance of. As much as was possible the EU writers were forbidden to tread on prequel turf since Lucas knew he would be going there, but a lot of unforseen elements got developed in the prequels--case in point, Boba Fett was added because of his popularity in EU.

Asha said:

Yeah, at least half of the EU makes for pretty bad fiction (Palpatine clones etc.).

The thing that pisses me off is that a huge chunk of the EU that I followed from the 70s up until the prequels was rendered non-canon. So following it was a big, fat waste of time and brain space. 

Right from the start, Splinter of the Mind's Eye was a moot point the moment ESB came out. Same goes for the Marvel comics.

Jaster Mereel was no longer Boba Fett. Owen Lars was no longer Ben's brother.

Really, who in his/her right mind would pay any attention to the EU after getting burned for over 20 years?

I like some of the Clone Wars stuff (particularly Ventress and the original cartoon), but when I'm in the mood for new science fiction or fantasy, the EU is the last place I'd look.

Actually, a lot of the Marvel stuff seems to be considered canon to some extent now. And I think Splinter is considered canon too, even though that makes no sense, because no way did Vader fight Luke before ESB. But the whole question of what EU is canon is pointless, because the EU is just merchandising and it makes no sense for any of it to be considered canon.

Lucas himself doesn't seem to consider the EU canon and on that one thing I agree with him. It's self-evident that the eu isn't the real Star Wars and thus shouldn't be considered canon. Sure, some guys at Lucasfilm will tell you certain EU things are canon, but that's just for internal consistency of EU products and for selling stuff. It isn't some great significant truth. And they seem to change what they consider canon. So their canon doesn't have a lot of validity. What's in it and what's not in it doesn't count for a lot.

Sure, it can still sting a bit to find that the favorite eu stories you knew as a kid are not taken seriously nowadays as much as some Zahn book is, but a lot of that old stuff is taken seriously to one extent or another anyway. The Chronology book they put out in, I think, 2005 references a good dose of Marvel stuff. The rule is when some Marvel stuff is referenced by modern canonical items that Marvel story becomes canon as they count it. Various Marvel stories are referenced elsewhere in "canon" too. Once the Marvel stories came back into print in tpbs in the 2000s they started taking them more seriously and referencing them in more works. Splinter seems to still be counted as canon, even if that makes no sense.

Personally I never considered Splinter as any sort of canon, not back in the early 80s, not now. And while I got a great kick out of the Marvel stories as a kid, I knew back then that they weren't real Star Wars and didn't really happen in the Star Wars universe. When the Zahn trilogy came out I got the message that they were instead of the sequel trilogy Lucas wasn't making, so it seemed like they being pushed as canon, but I knew they still weren't the real thing. In fact, Lucasfilm in the 90s only considered the films, novelizations, screenplays and radio dramas to be canon, but the Zahn trilogy was taken more seriously than earlier EU and it was with the Zahn trilogy that they started paying attention to eu continuity and coordinating it.

Nowadays there's a guy called Leland Chee who decides what's canon and what's not and he runs a database called the Holocron, for Star Wars canon. But as far as Lucas is concerned, the films and the eu exist in two different universes. He's said clearly that Luke doesn't get married and the emperor doesn't get cloned -denials of two core EU things. To Lucas, the eu isn't real. Sometimes he likes something in the EU and borrows it to stick it in his work (like Aayla Securua or Quinlan Vos), but he's not bound by it and his new tv series has caused continuity troubles in the eu by running counter to eu continuity, as did the prequels. Lucas will surely continue to merrily ride roughshod over the eu, because he knows it isn't the real thing.

Asha said:

... but the SUCK TO ENJOYABLE ratio within the EU gives SUCK the advantage.

At least two decades of EU works were packaged with an implicit promise that they were pieces of a larger story/work of fiction.

There was no such promise. Back before the 90s they didn't even bother to try to coordinate eu continuity between different works and that shows they weren't taking the stuff seriously as one unified fictional universe. It was just a lot of stories and continuity and canon weren't considered or important.

C3PX said:

Why does it matter if it is considered canon or not? If you enjoyed it, then it wasn't a waste of time and brain space.

Sometimes I think some of you guys forget that NONE of this stuff EVER happened. It is all made up anyway. What difference does it make if Lucas' lackeys tell you it did or didn't happen? All that matters is what you enjoy it.

I do find the idea that if something is 'real' has some bearing on its quality to be confusing.

I loved the old Marvel comics, and if they are not 'real canon' according to some glorified blogger Lucasfilm hired to manage their websites and lisecning, that doesn't effect me in the slightest. If "Crimson Jack" gets a mention in the next illustrated Star Wars encyclopedia or not doesn't imporve the stories or detract from them.

I liked "Shadows of the Empire" which I am lead to understand is somehow higher on the canon-train than most of the EU, but that has no influence on me liking it or not.

If George Lucas himself came to me and told me that the "BattleMed: Space Medics" novels from the Clone Wars series were real Star Wars, and intrinsic to his saga, I still wouldn't bother to read them.

That the EU is inconsistent, and contains various levels of canon that may or may not be real Star Wars seems inconsequential to me. That most of the EU is extremely boring, derivitive and just plain not fun is the real reason not to like it.

Vaderisnothayden said:

It's self-evident that the eu isn't the real Star Wars and thus shouldn't be considered canon. Sure, some guys at Lucasfilm will tell you certain EU things are canon, but that's just for internal consistency of EU products and for selling stuff.

They wont tell you anything. You need to log onto their forums and ask.

The liscening department at Lucasfilm only has authority if fans give it to them, and the fact we're having this discussion about 'canon' shows we take these glorified bloggers far too seriously.

Let creators create (Lucas, Zahn, Stover, Tarkovsky) and let liscencing departments liscence.

C3PX said:

TheBoost said:

C3PX said:

Sometimes I think some of you guys forget that NONE of this stuff EVER happened. It is all made up anyway. What difference does it make if Lucas' lackeys tell you it did or didn't happen? All that matters is what you enjoy it.

I do find the idea that if something is 'real' has some bearing on its quality to be confusing.

Then perhaps you misunderstood the point of my post? Or perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say now?

 Apparently my post was unclear. I was totally agreeing with you.

thecolorsblend said:

Why is this even an issue?  Because LFL and some of the subsidiaries thereof insist that we fans regard these (largely inferior) offerings as being the prior/ongoing adventures of the movie characters.

The idea of canon only exists to please a certain sort of fan. Lucasfilm would make just as much money off the franchise if they discounted the idea entirely, like Star Trek does.

Look at any other fictional universe that's in the hands of multiple creators, from the Marvel Universe to Zorro. It's totally natural there will be inconsistencies, changes, retcons, and widely varying quality. We're talking about a fictional universe that spreads across hundreds of hours of film, hundreds of thousands of pages of books and comics, and even wierder supplementary materials.

In the early 80s "Superman: The Man of Steel" was a comic that reworked Superman's origin (at the time I didn't know that. I was 7). It was my favorite comic. I understand that a new Superman origin series was published in the early 2000s (Birthright), and "Man of Steel" doesn't "count" anymore. All I can do is shrug my shoulders and re-read a 25 year old comicbook that I like. 

With all these Star Wars writiers fighting for scraps from Lucas's table, the 'canon' idea that somehow gives equal weight to blurbs on a Star Wars CCG card, RPG supplements, and well-written epic novels is bound to have flaws, massive ones, but to the degree canon policies work, (which I don't persoanlyl care for), I respect it, because it's trying to please the fans (who of course, are never pleased).  It has no other purpose.

TheBoost said:

C3PX said:

Why does it matter if it is considered canon or not? If you enjoyed it, then it wasn't a waste of time and brain space.

Sometimes I think some of you guys forget that NONE of this stuff EVER happened. It is all made up anyway. What difference does it make if Lucas' lackeys tell you it did or didn't happen? All that matters is what you enjoy it.

I do find the idea that if something is 'real' has some bearing on its quality to be confusing.

I loved the old Marvel comics, and if they are not 'real canon' according to some glorified blogger Lucasfilm hired to manage their websites and lisecning, that doesn't effect me in the slightest. If "Crimson Jack" gets a mention in the next illustrated Star Wars encyclopedia or not doesn't imporve the stories or detract from them.

I liked "Shadows of the Empire" which I am lead to understand is somehow higher on the canon-train than most of the EU, but that has no influence on me liking it or not.

If George Lucas himself came to me and told me that the "BattleMed: Space Medics" novels from the Clone Wars series were real Star Wars, and intrinsic to his saga, I still wouldn't bother to read them.

That the EU is inconsistent, and contains various levels of canon that may or may not be real Star Wars seems inconsequential to me. That most of the EU is extremely boring, derivitive and just plain not fun is the real reason not to like it.

 

 "I do find the idea that if something is 'real' has some bearing on its quality to be confusing."

It's not a quality issue. It's relevance issue. That something has a certain genuineness or realness makes it more relevant. You can believe in its fictional existance more, whereas the spinoff material seems to be just the imitation Star Wars, not something that "really happened" in that fictional universe. It's a suspension of disbelief issue. The Star Wars fiction that is outside the original films (or outside all the films and the tv shows from 2008 on, if you take the Lucas view) is more real than the fiction that is put out just as merchandising or as otherwise subordinate material (like spinoff material such as the Ewok movies). Suspension of disbelief goes farther with stuff that is the real thing. When you read a Zahn Thrawn trilogy novel that's not the real characters. You want to see the real characters. You are aware that what you hold in your hands is an imitation and not the real thing. That has an effect on how you feel about the story. (Maybe not you personally, but certainly a lot of people.) As such, how much a work is or is not real Star Wars has a significant bearing on how you feel about it.   

If George Lucas himself came to me and told me that the "BattleMed: Space Medics" novels from the Clone Wars series were real Star Wars, and intrinsic to his saga, I still wouldn't bother to read them.

If Lucas said that he'd be talking bull. Though I might be curious to see what he was calling canon. However, if I thought they could somehow be real Star wars I might have to read them. But what's real star Wars is not defined by Lucas or his flunkies. It's defined by the nature of the thing itself and is there for us to see.

I loved the old Marvel comics, and if they are not 'real canon' according to some glorified blogger Lucasfilm hired to manage their websites and lisecning, that doesn't effect me in the slightest. If "Crimson Jack" gets a mention in the next illustrated Star Wars encyclopedia or not doesn't imporve the stories or detract from them.

Well, it's nice to know the old stories are getting some attention in the new material.

TheBoost said:

thecolorsblend said:

Why is this even an issue?  Because LFL and some of the subsidiaries thereof insist that we fans regard these (largely inferior) offerings as being the prior/ongoing adventures of the movie characters.

The idea of canon only exists to please a certain sort of fan. Lucasfilm would make just as much money off the franchise if they discounted the idea entirely, like Star Trek does.

Look at any other fictional universe that's in the hands of multiple creators, from the Marvel Universe to Zorro. It's totally natural there will be inconsistencies, changes, retcons, and widely varying quality. We're talking about a fictional universe that spreads across hundreds of hours of film, hundreds of thousands of pages of books and comics, and even wierder supplementary materials.

In the early 80s "Superman: The Man of Steel" was a comic that reworked Superman's origin (at the time I didn't know that. I was 7). It was my favorite comic. I understand that a new Superman origin series was published in the early 2000s (Birthright), and "Man of Steel" doesn't "count" anymore. All I can do is shrug my shoulders and re-read a 25 year old comicbook that I like. 

With all these Star Wars writiers fighting for scraps from Lucas's table, the 'canon' idea that somehow gives equal weight to blurbs on a Star Wars CCG card, RPG supplements, and well-written epic novels is bound to have flaws, massive ones, but to the degree canon policies work, (which I don't persoanlyl care for), I respect it, because it's trying to please the fans (who of course, are never pleased).  It has no other purpose.

 

That calling stuff non-canon has succeeded monetarily for the Trek franchise doesn't mean it would work for Star Wars, nor does it mean Lucasfilm believes it would work for Star Wars. And do we really have figures demonstrating that the Trek franchise's merchandise fiction sells as well the Star wars stuff? There is certainly no proof that people at Lucasfilm believe that the merchandise would sell as well if it were not called canon, so there is no proof that sales is not a factor in calling stuff canon. You can feel free to "respect" their canon bullshit all you like, but don't expect me to respect it, because it's a big lie that tells us a whole lot of works are more important and relevant than they actually are. And I don't tend to respect bullshit as a rule.

Canon policies also exist to satisfy those making them. They can be used to include some story a "creator" wants to include, whether it deserves to be included or not (eg. the recent Buffy comics). They can  be used to exclude stories a creator doesn't want to include (eg. Gene Roddenbery excluding numerous Star Trek things). I think a factor in the existence of a canon policy for Star Wars is that some people in Lucasfilm wanted one to satisfy their own fannish feelings and they convinced Lucas that it would benfit the franchise. It's not all done for you and me. 

Another reason for a canon policy is just to keep continuity straight for one fictional universe. Which is an in-house thing done to keep the fiction working with some consistency. This is why there's all this Star Wars canon policy stuff that we're not told. Because it's not all done for us. It's done to help the writers keep the story straight.

C3PX said:

TheBoost said:

C3PX said:

Why does it matter if it is considered canon or not? If you enjoyed it, then it wasn't a waste of time and brain space.

Sometimes I think some of you guys forget that NONE of this stuff EVER happened. It is all made up anyway. What difference does it make if Lucas' lackeys tell you it did or didn't happen? All that matters is what you enjoy it.

I do find the idea that if something is 'real' has some bearing on its quality to be confusing.

Then perhaps you misunderstood the point of my post? Or perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say now? Either way, I will try to clarify.

I was merely stating that this whole "canon" business is more than just a little bit silly, considering it is all just a bunch of made up stories anyway. I think it makes more sense to enjoy what you enjoy, and don't give a bother about the rest or what other people, whether they be fellow fans or GL himself, have to say about the matter.

This was in response to the previous poster bemoaning the fact that they wasted "time" and "brain space" reading all this EU, only to later be told that it never really took place in this fictional universe.

I guess I just really have a hard time seeing the significance of whether or not a fictional story is considered "canon" of a fictional universe or not. Though Zombie made a good point about it making it hard to suspend disbelieve with things like Boba Fett's backstory and other aspects of the galaxy constantly changing; for some reason I just really have a hard time caring about it at all. All that matters to me is my own enjoyment of the book I am reading.

Well, you and TheBoost are of a like mind in this, but not everybody is. To many people, if something is in some way less "real" then suspension of disbelief is harder and the emotional conent is dulled because you feel it's not "really happening" in the fictional universe. Of course none of it really happens anywhere, but enjoying fiction depends on pretending it does, to an extent. And we can do that a lot less if we are aware something is just an imitation or counterfeit. For some people it's enough if Lucasfilm  guves something the rubber stamp and says it happens. For these people that is enough to assure these people that it "happens" in the Star wars universe. Others require a more real innate inherent sort of realness in the nature of the thing itself. Which is where I stand.

TheBoost said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

It's self-evident that the eu isn't the real Star Wars and thus shouldn't be considered canon. Sure, some guys at Lucasfilm will tell you certain EU things are canon, but that's just for internal consistency of EU products and for selling stuff.

They wont tell you anything. You need to log onto their forums and ask.

The liscening department at Lucasfilm only has authority if fans give it to them, and the fact we're having this discussion about 'canon' shows we take these glorified bloggers far too seriously.

Let creators create (Lucas, Zahn, Stover, Tarkovsky) and let liscencing departments liscence.

The point is a lot of fans believe in the authority of Lucas Licensing as regards canon and as long as that is the case we are constantly confronted with situations in which the making of some point requires us to detour into arguing that this stuff is not canon. The existence of the myth that this stuff is canon is an oppression. And not just because we have argue with people who believe in it, but because it is an oppression to have an offensive lie shouting us all over the place when we're reading about Star Wars. The canonical version of ROTJ's ending has Hayden as the ghost they say. Like hell it is. And that untruth, expressed with such confidence, bothers me, particularly as I know it has many fanatical followers who would like lecture me on how Anakin's ghost is not Sebastian Shaw if I dared mention how I liked how Luke saw the old guy at the end. 

I loved the old Marvel comics, and if they are not 'real canon' according to some glorified blogger Lucasfilm hired to manage their websites and lisecning, that doesn't effect me in the slightest. If "Crimson Jack" gets a mention in the next illustrated Star Wars encyclopedia or not doesn't imporve the stories or detract from them.

Well, the Marvel comics have a different sort of realness. The films are the real thing and merchandising is not, but amongst merchandising EU things, some have the special status of being true relics of the era in which the films were current. They are often marked by being more true to the spirit of Star Wars (even when doing weird silly stories) than more recent stuff is. Star Wars, the OOT, the real Star Wars, is very much a thing of its time and that is its spinoff material from that time. In that sense, the Marvel comics are more real Star Wars than the 90s EU or later stuff.

Imagine a world where some dude from LFL liscenscing had never posted on the "Star Wars.com" mesage board any mention of 'canon.'

No "C" "G" "D" levels. Nothing.

I can't guarantee that "Star Wars" would make just as much money without a canon system, but you know what makes a crapload of money with no canon system? The X-Men.

They have a move series, multiple cartoon series, mangas, novels, actionfigures, tabletop games, and even comicbooks, and no one is having apoleptic fits trying to make those all tie in together into a seemless chronology. They don't even try to keep it consistent between properties.

Even single properties, like the X-Men comics, in the run of one editor might have continuity issues, but no one goes on Marvel.com and says "Well, X-Men #234 page 8 has been lowered from D-Canon to V-Canon."

So, since I'm not convinced that a Star Wars canon policy is in place to somehow increase sales, it must be in place to please a certain sort of fan, the sort of fan who cares about official canon. Its ironic that these sorts of fans are the very ones who get their panties in a bunch about canon.