#old eu

[bookishjules]

kylo's great and all but he'll never haunt me the way the solo twins do

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

A lot of people treat Star Wars fans as a monolith. But I would argue there are different factions in them to the point they can be considered a conglomerate of sub-fandoms. This is why some people hear contradictory opinions from Star Wars fans because they are from different factions of the Star Wars fandom.

Here are the Star Wars fandom factions as I have observed them:

Original Trilogy purists: They love the original trilogy and hate everything else. Including George Lucas himself. Basically, they view Star Wars from the memories they had of it as children, not for what it is. These tend to be Gen X'ers.

Prequel Trilogy lovers: People who grew up with the Prequel Trilogy. These tend to be Millenials. In my experience they do not like the Original Trilogy purists due to the Original Trilogy purists shitting all over the prequels with some deserved and a lot of undeserved criticism. (I can relate.)

Old Expanded Universe lovers: These are people who love the old Star Wars Expanded Universe before Disney bought it. There are subcategories of Expanded Universe fans specifically when it comes to the Clone Wars stuff. Nowadays the old EU is referred to as Star Wars Legends.

Clone wars fans: This is a sub-category of the Old EU lovers. There are the ones who love the Clone Wars multi-media project which included the Darkhorse comics, Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars micro series and all the video games from that time. And the other ones are fans of the CGI The Clone Wars show by Dave Filoni. From my experience the former does not like the latter due to the former being retconned by the latter. (I can relate to that).

Sequel trilogy fans: These are people who love the sequel trilogy and the Disney era as a whole. This seems to be a mix of millenials and zoomers.

Disney Expanded Universe fans: They tend to fit with Sequel trilogy fans since it is part of the DIsney era. Also, there is some overlap with fans of The Clone Wars by Dave Filoni since a lot of the lore from the Disney era is based on that show. Especially, in how it portrays the Clone Wars and prequel era.

[notes-from-sarah]

This image of Bail carrying Obi-Wan on his shoulders is from the Bail Organa/Obi-Wan Kenobi Clone Wars era adventure book Wild Space by Karen Miller. Years ago I read the entire book purely based on this image. I will have you know, this never happens in the book. You can see the image on the Wookie article for the Sith planet Zigoola but the image is blatant false advertising. I ended up liking the book anyway, but what you see in the picture does not happen.

Image Credit: Art by Chris Trevas for Star Wars: The Essential Reader's Companion by Pablo Hidalgo

[juniaships]

Legacy of the Farce, or, Why Karen Traviss Deserves Nothing

Tv Tropes has a great summarization of where LotF went wrong and why I hate it so much out of the Old EU. Contains spoilers but idgaf it's a bad story so it deserves to be spoiled. 😤

"The series ran into this due to growing animosity between the authors. Karen Traviss was well known for a series of side stories at the time that she had worked on exclusively and thus was never part of a rotating series like Troy Denning and Aaron Allston had been. She was also notorious for never reading other people's works within the franchise, often causing huge Continuity Snarls within a franchise that tried hard to keep things consistent. She was also difficult to work with, as Allston once mentioned how he had wanted to tie the Mandalorians into Fury better, but Traviss outright refused to divulge her plans for them to him. Denning also made various snipes at her as a result and outright ignored much of Revelations when it came time to write Invincible. Traviss had also suggested various unpopular decisions like Mara's death and never bothered consulting the other writers about if they had plans for the characters, an act that is considered very unprofessional to other SW writers at best and downright insulting at worse. Given this bad blood, it's no wonder the series ended up how it did."

From TV Tropes YMMV of Legacy of thr Force listed under Troubled Production. I get executive meddling and all that but Karen (hahaha) was acting like a total diva, distracting the flow of the core plot by shoving in the Mandalorians (her pets) and refusing to work with the other writers. She couldn't even be bothered to read even ONE book.

Who's wack idea was it to hire this adult brat???

And here was Timothy Zahn's interview over the matter (warning contains spoilers and well, pretty long text)

KAREN TRAVISS DESERVES NOTHING!!!!

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Star Wars: Visions of the Future Cover Art by Drew Struzan

[fluffycakesistainted]

Many people/fans who mourn for the old EU and almost always compare the ST and new Disney canon negatively to it look at it with rose-tinted glasses anyways. The old EU was a veritable mess with no doubt a few jewel entries and characters like i.e. the Thrawn Trilogy, but also loads of crap and unnecessary stuff like a resurrected Palpatine, other super weapons like the Sun Crusher etc. (so the old EU does much the same the ST does anyways), the whole "Yuuzhan Vong"-stuff which was written 1/2

2/2 as grimdark as possible just for the heck of it. The New Republic was overall more competent in the old EU, but didn't last much longer than in the new Canon (around 30 years) because the Vong invasion coinciding with a very incompetent chancellor at the helm. What the old EU did largely better though was with not overriding the OT heroes ending in EP VI but expanding their roles from there like i.e. Luke indeed building a functioning New Jedi Order, Leia eventually becoming Chancellor etc.

Oh ok. I can’t really speak much to or about the old EU/Legends, because I just found out it even existed like a few years ago.

[pacificwanderer]

Hi, are you a old EU fan? I’m always confused on why Han and Leia kid Jacen couldn’t be redeem like his grandfather. How bad was he?

Hey Nonnie,

It’s been a while since I delved into it, so I wonder if anyone has a good answer (as in, something better than what I’m going to come up with lol)? 

I’m assuming it’s the author’s preference for like angst or edgy endings (HAH can’t imagine what it must have been like to be the person who wrote Mara’s death, given this fandom’s track record). But Jacen did a ton of bad shit (which is typical for SW land) and was comitted to the dark side, but it started out as a way to keep Luke from being killed and to keep the galaxy from plunging into chaos/other reasons? 

Additionally, he wanted to keep his loved ones safe and I’m assuming the author meant it to be a kind of parallel to Anakin Skywalker and how love (or the fear of losing what he loved) was ultimately what led him down the path to the dark side and ultimately resulted in his death?

But I could be wrong. It’s been a while and I was mostly into the Thrawn Trilogy/KotOR. As for redemption, the books were always a little outside of what George put out there (he didn’t consider them canon), so they kind of played around in the GFFA in a way that perhaps he wouldn’t have (or explored things in ways that he wouldn’t). That could also have an impact on the kind of ending Jacen’s story had.

Feel free to add if you have any insight!

Cheers

[secret-fledgling]

There are certain fans that seem to think the new canon will be a carbon copy of the old EU and I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this but that just isn't what's going to happen

It’s just not going to be that predictable