Rewrite the Star Wars Expanded Universe
- Thread starter anon_user
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John Ringo?
Hard to tell, as often getting in authors bears the risk of them simply stamping their own interpretation of the universe. While this isn't necesserily a bad thing, one needs only look at Traviss...
Thande
Donor
Maybe Valéry Giscard d'Estaing could have written for this EU rather than the other one?
No Dark Empire. Palpatine stays dead.
The post-Endor warlordism stuff makes sense, given how the Emperor had abolished the Senate and transferred its remaining powers to the regional military commanders. That should stay.
No making Admiral Daala of all people the leader of the post-YV galaxy and certainly no history-repeating-itself-Jedi-massacres.
The post-Endor warlordism stuff makes sense, given how the Emperor had abolished the Senate and transferred its remaining powers to the regional military commanders. That should stay.
No making Admiral Daala of all people the leader of the post-YV galaxy and certainly no history-repeating-itself-Jedi-massacres.
Oh, and BTW, no Jacen Solo going to the Dark Side and calling himself Darth Caedus.
Maybe Valéry Giscard d'Estaing could have written for this EU rather than the other one?
Would he have produced a more stable governing structure for the New Republic?
Actually, a political thriller set in the New Republic might've been neat. Instead, we basically got Fey'lya as the political bogeyman, rising to power because, uh, just because; politics more-or-less boiled down to personalities, with ideology basically nonexistent.
If Lucasfilm had gotten d'Estaing to write a Star Wars novel, there would be a lot of novelty value there. Not sure it would've been any good, but it might've gotten surprisingly good sales figures from curiosity alone.
EDIT: Incidentally, d'Estaing has actually written a book - namely, a romance novel, in which a president of France has an affair with a fictionalized Princess Di. He claims the idea came from Princess Diana - not because they had an affair, which they didn't, but because “We were talking about love stories between heads of state, and she said: ‘Why don’t you write a book about that?’”
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- All female characters (ESPECIALLY Alema Rar) wear clothes way too small for them.
- Female characters use their "feminine charms" (like in Invincible, where Grandma Leia (60 years old) dresses up like a sexy alien woman as part of a disguise, and Jaina finds it shocking)
- The weird Dark Nest thing where Zekk & Jaina participated in bug orgies & Jag realizes that, due to Jaina & Zekk being melded, Zekk has feelings for him.
- Apparently, Zekk uses the Force to spy on Jaina in the shower.
- Luke got molested by some Ishi-Tib fangirls in the Dark Nest trilogy.
- The scene in Invincible where Tahiri molests a captive 16-year old Ben, then brutally tortures him and (accidentally) kills Shevu.
Which is one of the things I'd focus on most: a decent map of the galaxy. Getting the plot mapped out properly is a very close second, but if the astrography (cosmography if you're Russian) is a mess you're making stories in a vaguely defined world. I'd put up a giant map of the galaxy in Licensing HQ, and every time an author or developer or producer or anyone else suggested a new system, planet, sector or other place I'd point up at the map and say "show me where." If they can't specify and provide a good reason for that location the project doesn't get approved. The goal wouldn't be to stifle the creation of places, but rather to give it organization and focus.
On a similar note, I'd get a think tank together and have them work out what limitations on hyperdrive technology make the most narrative sense. Look at how many ways hyperspace travel is depicted today: in some works it's a point-to-point, anywhere-to-anywhere mechanism with just a few limitations due to gravity wells, and in others "lanes" and "routes" are mentioned. Many writers, including some of the best like Zahn, mix the two. It's important that these plans are created and enforced to keep the universe consistent.
And a definite second on the idea of letting authors use major characters only after they've proved they don't write crap.
And speaking of crap, Lucasbooks could definitely use in-house editors. Some authors have me cringing at their prose, not their ideas.
Heh. I didn't realize ALL of those were from the same author. I was under the impression we had a bunch of authors putting these scenes in to add 'maturity' when it's really just Denning being Denning. Weird.
Thande
Donor
Would he have produced a more stable governing structure for the New Republic?
Actually, a political thriller set in the New Republic might've been neat. Instead, we basically got Fey'lya as the political bogeyman, rising to power because, uh, just because; politics more-or-less boiled down to personalities, with ideology basically nonexistent.
The Black Fleet Crisis trilogy I thought was an attempt to write a political technothriller set in Star Wars. The problem was it didn't sit very well in the setting and the author was clearly uncomfortable with it. I think it'd have been a lot better if he'd just done the story in an original sci-fi setting like Zahn does with his Conquerors etc.
And I'd forgotten about Giscard's Diana-inspired novel thing
Agreed. The Thrawn trilogy actually gives some fairly consistent stuff about hyperdrive. In the original trilogy Han says the Falcon can push .5 past lightspeed. This makes no sense if you interpret it as '150% c' as it would be far too slow, so Zahn just treats it as a number in itself, stating that "Point Five" is very fast, "Point Four Five" is a Victory Star Destroyer's top speed, "Point Four" is an Imperial Star Destroyer's cruising speed, and "Point Three" is an older Dreadnaught's. This makes a lot more bloody sense than the system they later instituted where it's the other way around. He also gives a speed for Point Five, something like 127 light years per hour if I remember correctly.crackersandcheese said:
As for the 'lanes' and things I hope they were only intended to be popular trade routes rather than intrinsically making hyperdrives work better, I don't think I've actually seen that in EU fiction.
Definitely agree about mapping the galaxy - the chaos that happened with the EU in OTL is obvious if you've ever played Star Wars Supremacy ("Rebellion" in the obviously biased USA
) where it has loads of planets from the EU but they're scattered around randomly compared to where they were eventually placed in the Yuuzhan Vong books (or what makes sense from the original context).
Thande
Donor
I don't think I ever saw that stuff from Denning as fetishism, I just thought he was obsessed with the character of Alema Rar in the same way that Traviss is with the Mandalorians. You notice it in the Legacy of the Force books where Rar vanishes whenever any other author is writing only to magically reappear when Denning takes over.
I liked aspects of Black Fleet Crisis. It felt a bit like an attempt to look at the politics of the interventions in the Balkans (and of intervening in Rwanda and Somalia), which was interesting to consider; further, there was the professionalization of the military theme, which I liked.
It would've been better if the Yevetha weren't so pointlessly nasty, and if the Teljkon Vagabond stuff (which was fun to read about) actually connected in some way with the rest of the story, and if the White Current stuff was dropped entirely (because that material pretty much went nowhere).
Still, I actually liked that series. I may try and hunt down some other books by Kube-McDowell one of these days.
But then what would I have for my username?!
But seriously, if they had made Jacen become Caedus in a way that progressed somehow from where he was at the end of The Unifying Force, and was well-written, I'd have been behind it. Legacy of the Force, was, honestly, a monumental trainwreck that wasted story potential, characters, and was riddled with author favoritism (TRAVISS, and to a much lesser extent Allston & Denning), dropped/ignored plotlines, illogical character actions (see: every single Jedi before Jacen killed Mara), very "forced" changes with no in-universe reason for the changes, and other egregious violations of storytelling or common sense.
A thought: if the EU were to be redone along the lines being favored in this thread, we'd lose the motivation for one of the best Fix Fics in English literature: The Hand of Thrawn Duology. We'd make up for it by having better overall storylines, but that's a damn good plot that will never come to life.
Thande
Donor
Agreed, agreed and agreed. I think the Yevetha were vaguely supposed to evoke imperial Japan during WW2. The Teljkon plot felt vaguely Star Trek. The White Current stuff I think was symptomatic of the fact that EU authors other than Zahn and sort of Anderson had no bloody clue what to do with Luke Skywalker. He does get a few brownie points for tying it into the main plot at the end though, and for actually giving Chewie and his family their badass moment. Arguably that bit of the Black Fleet Crisis is a Fix Fic for the Star Wars Holiday Special.
True! And Hand of Thrawn strongly inspired a crucial stage in my own writings, which means I would most probably never be so good a writer, so I wouldn't be posting on here to change the EU, and...
PARADOX
Except that in Legacy of the Force, Alema Rar appears in Exile, Sacrifice and is killed off in Fury (the last & first are Allston books & the middle one Traviss').
Also, while Alema is pretty much Denning's pet character, the amount of author-love lavished on her is NOTHING compared to Traviss and her Mandos. I mean, for God's sake, the Mando plot-line is pretty minor compared to the other plot lines, but she spends about 1/3 of each of her books focusing on Boba Fett or his granddaughter or the other Mandos, even when they're not doing anything. And the only time the Mandos appear in a non-Traviss book are in Invincible, where they kill Moffs and then get owned by Jacen/Darth Caedus.
I did like Chewie and family going all badass. I think Chewie was underused in the EU; no wonder they killed him off at the beginning of NJO.
I imagine something a bit like Hand of Thrawn could've emerged - at the least, someone would need to write an end to the war, and why not Zahn for that?
Thande
Donor
Yeah, Traviss' masturbating over Mandalorians is legendary, it's almost like a parody of Boba Fett's fanboy image.
However I don't think it's as bizarre as her interpretation of Daala as actually competent, which in historical terms is like Mussolini showing up and single-handedly winning the war on terror for.
I think she's drawing precedent from when Daala gasses all the warlords except for herself and Pellaeon.
EDIT: What's even more hilarious is the Anvilicious way in which the new series points out that Daala did not in fact get her position by giving Tarkin blowjobs. Or so she says. There's this scene where Daala's office gets a female intern, and she gives her a pep talk or something about sticking it to men. I can't remember perfectly because I was laughing by that point.