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Darth Krawlie
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We're cool, Tank. It's just the constant rubbing in my face that has me furious. You're one of the few people that fully understands what I'm going through. Suddenly I feel conflicted about conventions or even looking at store merchandise because it is saturated by material that I believe to be false, and nobody seems to know the difference.

I feel like I was a loyal fan for decades, and am suddenly exiled. I feel very disenfranchised, and I've come to accept that maybe the types of fans like me are in the minority. Maybe most people don't recognize that Star Wars is more than films, or even care. And I'm okay with that. Still, I feel jaded.

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Suddenly I feel conflicted about conventions or even looking at store merchandise because it is saturated by material that I believe to be false, and nobody seems to know the difference.

 

It's all false, Z.

 

Are you going to give Rogue One a shot?

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Then I don't get it. :(

 

I was thinking, you know, "EU"?

 

The joke was on the fact that you used words like "exiled" and "disenfranchised" like this was some kind of human rights violation. And I was saying how does the UN allow such atrocities to occur.

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Man you need to chill out a bit. People were having a joke with you, everyone gets your love for the EU and why. They were trolling you in the same way you admitted to trolling people in a recent post about the new canon ripping off the old one. Don't take everything to heart, learn to have a laugh about it.

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Zerimar: considering the things certain people of the "Give us Legends" groups have said to me, and my husband, I'm never going to support them. Perhaps that's wrong of me, but after two years of effectively being called a traitor, and that we've betrayed the EU because I like the new canon, I'm sick of it.

 

I loved the EU. I wish we could get more Wraith Squadron books, but that wouldn't happen with Aaron being gone. The closest I'll ever get to that is the Poe Dameron comic, which I love. I'm finally getting to read about the New Republic again, my favorite era. And I'm finally getting stories I love with the same heroes I fell in love with, not Dark Nest or Legacy of the Force or Fate of the Jedi.

 

My dog is named Mara. I get being attached to these characters and storylines. But it happened two years ago, and we're getting new Star Wars movies, and new books. I don't understand how this is bad.

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Honestly, I just have sadness when I think of the EU. It's like Star Wars was filled to the brim and has suddenly become hollowed out again in favor of what is only a decent movie from a director that already ruined another another beloved franchise.

 

Given a choice between keeping the EU or restarting with new movies, I would have chosen keeping the EU, flawed as it is and as much as I've really grown past it. But, dammit, I put in over a thousand hours reading that stuff and a good chunk of my youth. I understand why Disney didn't feel like spending $5 billion for a chance to publish more books, especially with Luke, Leia, and Han qualifying for social security by the latter novels, but that doesn't mitigate the slap in the face I felt when they just tossed it all out the window and basically declared it all a waste of time.

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Imagine my glee/anger that you're also an EU fan.

 

Did you enjoy them? Sounds like you did. Can you still read them over and over? Yup.

 

So that hardly makes them a waste. It's all fiction. NONE of it really happened so you can like whatever you want. Just because the new films don't share continuity that doesn't invalidate them as ever existing or being enjoyable. Disney isn't breaking into your house to steal your EU books and erase therm from reality (like George tried to do with the pre SE OT).

 

You're the one that chose to invest hours and hours of your life reading spin-off licensed genre fiction-- if you're cool with that but it's suddenly a waste of time because it doesn't fit into an "official" FICTIONAL canon you're a very complicated individual.

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Did you enjoy them? Sounds like you did. Can you still read them over and over? Yup.

 

If I wanted to, sure. But it won't be the same. From now on, they're officially fake. And, yeah, everything's fake, but now I can't PRETEND this is what happens to these characters anymore. If it were a separate property in the first place like Batman: TAS and the latter Timmverse, then it'd be easier to accept. But these stories were Star Wars post-Return of the Jedi for three decades, and for a long time it really seemed that they would be all we would ever get. If you wanted to find out what happened to these characters, the EU was where you had to go.

 

It's where the lore of Star Wars went from rather basic and ill-defined in the movies to full, rich, and even bloated. In some ways, the novels eclipsed the movies in my mind since they told so much more of a full and intricate story with planets and aliens I knew quite well. Now that world-building has been paved over.

 

So, yeah, finding out that it got wiped from the record was more than a matter of "Well, you can still read them". It fundamentally changed what it is they are forever. And excuse me if I mourn the loss of something I loved from my youth.

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If you can't pretend that a piece of pretend is not unpretendable I feel really sorry for you.

 

Odd statement coming from a writer. You're not fully mindful of the fragile dance of keeping your audience in the moment and fully invested in your pretend character and setting when you contemplate your screenplay? Isn't it usually the goal to make the characters as real as possible, to make the audience so invested in them that if you have a character do unusual they would immediately pick up on it and feel uncomfortable? For that matter, isn't your writing better when the characters and settings feel real to you?

 

That I feel differently about something when its entire place within the larger lore has changed is no failing on my part. Fiction is supposed to be an emotional experience (at least in part). Emotions can hardly be flitted away with calls to look at things more rationally, and I'm not really interested in trying. If the whole context of what you're reading changes, my emotional response will change as well. Downgrading the novels down to "Legends" status constitutes a massive belittling change in context.

 

 

 

Also, tell me about the great responsibility and pressure of never being wrong about anything ever.

 

At the moment you're challenging my feelings and saying you feel sorry for me because I'm not pretending the right way. Is this really the time you want to be making that accusation?

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There just has to be some kind of original psychological phenomenon at work here!

 

On the Psychology of the Enjoyment of Multimedia Tie-In Fiction and the Relative Degrees of Canonicity, or something.

 

If only psychology were a real science....

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There just has to be some kind of original psychological phenomenon at work here!

 

Well, a twist on an old psychological phenomenon anyway. Basically I'm saying that the EU used to be primary in my schema for Star Wars. With it being banished completely out of canon, its placed in my Star Wars schema has irreversibly been altered. The EU isn't psychologically in the same place anymore.

 

That's how I'd put it anyway.

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If you can't pretend that a piece of pretend is not unpretendable I feel really sorry for you.

Odd statement coming from a writer. You're not fully mindful of the fragile dance of keeping your audience in the moment and fully invested in your pretend character and setting when you contemplate your screenplay? Isn't it usually the goal to make the characters as real as possible, to make the audience so invested in them that if you have a character do unusual they would immediately pick up on it and feel uncomfortable? For that matter, isn't your writing better when the characters and settings feel real to you?

 

Maybe it's BECAUSE I am a writer that I have no problem making distinctions. Stories are experiential in and of themselves. Trust me, the fan in me fully understands the frustrations of discontinuity-- I've been an X-Men fanboy since 1985 so the amount of retcons and alternate timelines I've been drug through is countless... but nothing is invalidated.

 

I can look at a story and appreciate it in the context it was presented in. No one can tell me it doesn't count. Batman: The Killing Joke is no longer official canon but that doesn't make it suddenly NOT the best Batman graphic novel ever to me. I can still read it and enjoy it.

 

And I also get that Star Wars was a singularly continuity for so long that it is jarring for it not to be-- but ironically, that is exactly what myths do, and that's what Uncle George intended.

 

I wrote a prequel movie in a franchise that is technically the 8th installment-- but will only be one of 3 films considered currently canon. That said, all those other films are still part of the zeitgeist and DNA of what I wrote even if it technically didn't happen.

 

Your version of Luke Skywalker is yours and yours alone. You can pick and choose what defines him to you because he isn't real. People take the concept of canon far too literally.

 

That I feel differently about something when its entire place within the larger lore has changed is no failing on my part. Fiction is supposed to be an emotional experience (at least in part). Emotions can hardly be flitted away with calls to look at things more rationally, and I'm not really interested in trying. If the whole context of what you're reading changes, my emotional response will change as well. Downgrading the novels down to "Legends" status constitutes a massive belittling change in context.

But why does somebody else changing the context suddenly make it not count for you?

 

Let me give another example. I am a giant lightsaber nerd. One of my prized possessions is my lightsaber prop that matches Luke's saber in ANH. This particular lightsaber can be acquired a few ways. Master replicas has made various versions that cost hundreds of dollars. They aren't supper accurate, but collectors pounce on them because they have an official Lucasfilm stamp. These guys value it for that reason alone and think a home-made version is worthless.

 

And yet, there are countless prop nerds who will blow hundreds of dollars on eBay for the antique camera flash that was used by the original propmasters. They will hunt down the original parts (a piece from a 70s era TI calculator, and some 60s cabinet track from the UK) and try to make the most screen accurate version possible-- (which is impossible given that the prop itself varies from scene to scene). These guys want accuracy and legitimacy and could care less about a Lucasfilm logo.

 

Me personally-- I've got mine fitted to resemble the ANH version-- but it isn't perfect. For one, I found it in 1994 before there was enough info out there to be accurate. So I cosmetically altered it in ways I can't go back on. Specifically, I tried to rivet on 6 grips like the saber has in ESB, but really in ANH it had 7 grips and they weren't riveted on. So while my version looks accurate it's not worth much to the official collectors OR the prop nerds. But it's special to me, cause I found it before Star Wars hype was back, and I was one of a few people that knew what to look for. To me, it was more about claiming a piece of the world building by making my own prop from a movie that defined my childhood. I could give a crap if it isn't "official" or "screen accurate" it's special to me because of my experience of finding it and working on it.

 

There's no reason the context and fun you had reading Heir to the Empire for the first time has to change just because officially it doesn't count. They can't take that from you. If them saying so can effect you, then yes, I do feel sorry for you. They can't un-canonize your feelings.

 

 

 

 

Also, tell me about the great responsibility and pressure of never being wrong about anything ever.

At the moment you're challenging my feelings and saying you feel sorry for me because I'm not pretending the right way. Is this really the time you want to be making that accusation?

 

Fair enough-- this should have gone into the bathroom thread. I'm being flip-- but debating is fun, and obviously I don't mind being bullheaded-- but you never, EVER, seem to be willing to be wrong about anything. Or even consider an alternate point. Debate is one thing-- but you're outright dismissive to everyone. Even I can (sometimes) graciously agree to disagree, or even admit I could be wrong, but you relentlessly must be right at all times to the point that the debating stops being interesting and becomes tiresome. I debate in hopes of actually learning something, not to just be right and win at all costs.

 

I'm not sure what your goal is if you just want to be rude and dismissive to everyone that disagrees with you.

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No trolling Driver, I'm honestly curious, the PT couldn't rob your enjoyment of the OT any more than TFA should be able to rob their enjoyment of the EU and yet you're all talking to him like it's 2 different things. You were so royally pissed at the PT for YEARS when all you had to do was not watch them and just watch the OT. (I get the point about Lucas not making the versions you like readily available but I'm talking big picture)

 

You do mention being able to relate to him so you get the parallel but specific comments like "You can still read the books" beg for the comeback "you could have still watched the OT but you didn't leave it at that"

 

You're a friend so this is me trying to understand the hypocrisy, not burn you at the stake for it.

 

Z, where you lost me was with that "FU" shit. That was you crapping all over OUR enjoyment of the new stories just as you accuse us of crapping on your old stories. Out of misplaced anger directed at people who didn't make this decision you crapped on our emotions first.

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I'm not sure what your goal is if you just want to be rude and dismissive to everyone that disagrees with you.

 

Actually, I think I've been pretty fair. If anything, if you catch my posts immediately after posting and click on them again a few minutes later, you'll find that I even make a habit of scrubbing out things that might be personally confrontational in edits to tamp down on hurt feelings. And, for the most part, I’ve avoided the Lyceum until the bathroom thread. I’ll grant you I recently confronted Mara on her always bringing up Rey’s gender (coupled with the bathroom thing it was a busy weekend), but if I were just looking for trouble I would have done that back in December when I first got here.

 

As for my being rude and dismissive, of the two of us, which has tried to spread a reputation of the other person taking things too literal? Which has posted eye rolling gifs. Which of us applauded Cerina for outright being dismissive of my opinion because I’m a guy in the hours before posting this? Which of us intimated that I was screaming into a pillow in rage simply because I walked away from a discussion when I saw you were becoming overheated?

 

But even with that, I didn’t join Justus in calling you a SJW when he came around in that other thread. I even asked you to stop attacking yourself on my behalf a few months ago. So, again, which of us holds more right to grievance?

 

Anyway, I need to get to work, so I can’t complete my thoughts. But just to answer your question, my goal is just to put my thoughts out there into the universe. I’m not even trying to change your mind directly. It’s more a hope that people read it, think about it later, and consider it outside of the heat of the internet.

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