I was just thinking of how I disliked the characters and premise for the new Disney 'Rebels' cartoon, when it occurred to me that I'm absolutely fine with that. I mean, I'm not the target audience, and that's cool.

Somewhere between a skinny tomboy being taken to a cinema in Newport and today, I grew up, and realised I'm actually 45 years old this year. Still into Star Wars, still a passionate gamer. Hell, I just calculated that there is now more time elapsed between now and the day I walked into that cinema, than the time between that film and the second World War! I mean, that's ancient history, right up there with Rome and 1066, the world was black and white back then... But Star Wars is closer to Hitler and Hiroshima than the I-Phone 5. Scary.

And I'm happy that it's become such a broad church. I haven't much cared for the directions SW has gone in the last twenty years. I've never watched Clone Wars and I won't watch this series, and I almost certainly won't watch Disney's sequels. But that's fine. 'Rebels' is a kid's cartoon, it's not aimed at me. And it's amazingly cool that 37 years after Han Shot First that new stuff is being made and new fans are being bought on board.

I'm perfectly happy to have a franchise that has 'Ewoks Teach Your Five-Year-Old To Read' at one end of the spectrum and naked DeviantArt fanservice at the other end.

However, I should also point out that I'm very grateful that EoE (and a few years back, KotOR) brought me back into the fold. SW predates even D&D for me, my two childhood sweethearts, the two things that stayed with me through my adult life, through all the distractions.

Though there's nothing that prevents kids playing EoE, the look and feel of the games seems to be aimed at grown-ups. There's very little that feels twee or trite to me here - the artwork, the stories, the fluff. Even things like Drall and Selonians that could be cutesy are presented here seriously. It squares my eight-year-old self with today's version, and there's not many things that still strike a chord with me almost forty years later.

Maybe one day some guy will be playing Virtual Reality games and telling the new kids how he first got on board watching 'Rebels'...

Not sure but, like in Clone Wars wars series, the first impression was that it was teen/child oriented but far away from that main idea.

Of course there where a lot of chapters more young-plot oriented but also a few more sad and hard episodes. Childs uses to buy toys, so is the prior target but probably Rebels will have also some other targets.

Just speculation but its the main sensation. Not everything can be be sparkles, pink graffity, funny droids, rough space cowboys jokes and Jar Jars while there is a nazi/sith empire out there.

Rebelion Era (or pre) is my favourite one, and I have some spectatives on the series. Maybe I'm wrong but I have hope

Until now, CANONIC SW material haven't deceived me. Also I consider that Lucas stories (SW, Indiana Jones) are more (in general) family oriented.

Though there's nothing that prevents kids playing EoE, the look and feel of the games seems to be aimed at grown-ups. There's very little that feels twee or trite to me here - the artwork, the stories, the fluff. Even things like Drall and Selonians that could be cutesy are presented here seriously. It squares my eight-year-old self with today's version, and there's not many things that still strike a chord with me almost forty years later.

Yeah, they've done a great job presenting the universe (and bridging some of the continuity gaps) in a serious manner while staying true to the original feel of the setting. There's something for everyone, both in Edge and in Star Wars as a whole.

As far as Rebels go, it may not be such a "kiddy" cartoon as you're convinced it will be.

Greg Weisman has done some very good and intelligent work on his past series, stuff that would fly right over a child's head yet an adult would find interesting/entertaining. Gargoyles and Young Justice are good examples of that, particularly as Gargoyles made many references to Shakespeare as well as having leading villains that were psychologically very complex individuals, with David Xanatos leading the pack due to his affable nature, not being a card-carrying maniac, and not being hung up on a single method for a plan to work, the point that he's perfectly fine if a larger objective got thwarted since he'd achieved one or more lesser objectives at the same time, to say nothing of the line "Revenge is a sucker's game." And while I didn't watch the series, as others have noted The Clone Wars got fairly dark in later seasons, a lot darker than a mere "children's show" would go, an acknowledgment that not all their viewers have yet to hit puberty.

Honestly, I think you're letting yourself succumb to a degree of "hipster elitism" in regards to the newer Star Wars material, in that the only good stuff came from before the Prequels and Star Wars re-entered the mainstream media consciousness. That's your call to make, but I think you might wind up missing some pretty cool stuff as it comes out in the years to come.

After all, nobody (including the director and creator) thought Star Wars was going to be the big hit that it was back in 1977. Folks, including a number of skeptics, were willing to give it a try, and it turned out to be a pretty **** good movie. Same theory with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who started out with Iron Man (not one of Marvel's better known heroes by far) and there was a lot of talk of this just being another forgettable comic book movie... and instead we got one of the best **** superhero movies of the century, the other two being Avengers and Dark Knight (due largely to Heath Ledger's amazing performance as The Joker).

And while Disney may project a "sweetness and light" public image (which seems to be one of the major foundations of your dislike of the new Star Wars material based upon your posts), their films can get pretty **** dark, particularly when it comes to the villains.

Seems like Star Wars has always had that kid flavor, my wife loves to comment on that.

"Look, nobody even got blown up!"

"But he got his hand cut off by his dad!" (spoiler alert!)

I am old enough to have seen IV in the theaters when it first came out, and I too am pleased by the continued interest in the setting. In fact, I'm eagerly awaiting my nephew's first viewing!

I was just thinking of how I disliked the characters and premise for the new Disney 'Rebels' cartoon, when it occurred to me that I'm absolutely fine with that. I mean, I'm not the target audience, and that's cool.

Somewhere between a skinny tomboy being taken to a cinema in Newport and today, I grew up, and realised I'm actually 45 years old this year. Still into Star Wars, still a passionate gamer. Hell, I just calculated that there is now more time elapsed between now and the day I walked into that cinema, than the time between that film and the second World War! I mean, that's ancient history, right up there with Rome and 1066, the world was black and white back then... But Star Wars is closer to Hitler and Hiroshima than the I-Phone 5. Scary.

And I'm happy that it's become such a broad church. I haven't much cared for the directions SW has gone in the last twenty years. I've never watched Clone Wars and I won't watch this series, and I almost certainly won't watch Disney's sequels. But that's fine. 'Rebels' is a kid's cartoon, it's not aimed at me. And it's amazingly cool that 37 years after Han Shot First that new stuff is being made and new fans are being bought on board.

I'm perfectly happy to have a franchise that has 'Ewoks Teach Your Five-Year-Old To Read' at one end of the spectrum and naked DeviantArt fanservice at the other end.

However, I should also point out that I'm very grateful that EoE (and a few years back, KotOR) brought me back into the fold. SW predates even D&D for me, my two childhood sweethearts, the two things that stayed with me through my adult life, through all the distractions.

Though there's nothing that prevents kids playing EoE, the look and feel of the games seems to be aimed at grown-ups. There's very little that feels twee or trite to me here - the artwork, the stories, the fluff. Even things like Drall and Selonians that could be cutesy are presented here seriously. It squares my eight-year-old self with today's version, and there's not many things that still strike a chord with me almost forty years later.

Maybe one day some guy will be playing Virtual Reality games and telling the new kids how he first got on board watching 'Rebels'...

I agree. Much as it pains me, we all wouldn't be having this conversation without the prequels. The story has to be moved forward and at times there will be good and at times there won't be good.

I like some stories in Clone Wars, I disliked others. Rebels dropped quite a bit in my eyes when they released the tagger girl character with a Mandalorian helmet, but again she isn't aimed at my demographic.

Simple fact is to continue the story it requires profit and that requires regular infusions of new product. I read a business article on GL that tempered my dislike of the way the story was being milked as it pointed out to defend the IP is a monumental litigious task and that requires money. So a lot of GLs motivation in the article was for just protecting the IP. That will be something Disney will have to do as well moving forward.

I don't think the characterization of fans who dislike The Clone Wars as "hipster elitists" is fair or even accurate.

I'm a huge Star Wars fan. That doesn't mean I have to love everything that says Star Wars, or that I can't hold the people who are tasked with adding to the Star Wars mythos to a high standard. I enjoyed the original movies, I enjoyed the prequels (though Episode I is probably my least favorite) and at least once a year I watch all six movies in a row. I'm a member of the 501st Legion. I loved KotOR I and II, though II was far better written, in my opinion. The rushed execution of the end of The Sith Lords made the game so much less than it could have been, and left me longing for an Obsidian KotOR III. When I found out that rather than making a coherent and well written KotOR III, Bioware was going to develop a WoW clone, I was upset.

I've read over a hundred Star Wars novels and own most of them in paperback. Some are better than others, but there were some really good stories that were spawned in the wake of Attack of the Clones. Some of the novels are atrocious and were released far before the prequels were a thing. I'm looking at you, Vonda McIntyre, Kevin J. Anderson, Michael P. Kube-McDowell and Barbara Hambly. Everything they wrote for Star Wars was categorically awful, and I need only mention Waru to make my point.

There's nothing wrong with targeting Star Wars material at kids. I was a very young child when I first saw the Star Wars trilogy and I was a fan for life. When I got a little bit older, I loved reading books from the Galaxy of Fear series. (Star Wars meets Goosebumps.) You can say that I dismissed The Clone Wars because I don't like it aesthetically (I don't) or that I've merely dismissed it as a "kids show." (It is.) But the thing is, the impression I got from The Clone Wars movie and subsequent TV series is that the people writing for the show either have no knowledge of or respect for the source material that they're supposed to be working from. I have no reason to expect Rebels to be any different.

All Mandalorians are pacifist now? (Yeah, I know they put a Band-Aid on that one after the fan-outrage.) The demystification of the so-called Celestials as a dysfunctional family? Anakin- who is so immature and whose development is causing serious concerns in the Jedi Order- being trusted with the development of an apprentice? Darth Maul is now alive again and half-mecha? One Darth Maul isn't enough, now we have two? And while making stories for kids is fine, the problem arises when material that's clearly written for the tween crowd ends up messing with the canon for "grown up" Star Wars, or when the focus on children overwhelms every other concern. Episode I's failure is probably a great example of the latter.

You see, I was content to largely ignore the bad writing and disregard for canon in The Clone Wars until the Star Wars series of novels that I was reading decided to take an abrupt left turn at Space Cthulhu and drive right into bad children's show tie-in. We'll never know how much better the Abeloth story line could have been without it being hamfisted into a plug for The Clone Wars. It certainly couldn't have been much worse.

So say what you will about how people who dislike low-quality, badly written Star Wars material are "hipster elitists," because from where I'm standing, a bunch of grown men vehemently defending a children's cartoon reminds me a lot more of bronyism than anything else. We don't get Star Wars: Underworld (yes, I know that's not actually the name) or Star Wars 1313, or Star Wars Detours because they'd rather give us Rebels?

/rant

Edit: Typos.

Bronysim....hahaha.... .....here's the 2014 award for best inclusion of a label from two unrelated genre............

And while Disney may project a "sweetness and light" public image (which seems to be one of the major foundations of your dislike of the new Star Wars material based upon your posts)

I've watched my share of Disney classics when I was a girl.

And my unwillingness to watch Clone Wars stems less from 'hipster' reasons than the fact that a) I dislike the cartoony look, it's too stylised for me, and b) my elemental loathing of the prequels, and everything I want excised from the franchise (clones, young Anakin, anime Jedi).

I'm not opposed to new stuff, I really liked KotOR before Lucas forced Bioware to make Revan canon. I missed Star Wars Galaxies, but by the sound of things, it would have been perfect for me.

And even if I don't personally like something, I'm cheerfully admitting that I'm not the target audience, and anything that brings in more SW fans has to be a good thing.

I'm thirty one.

A little about me:

Grew up with the original trilogy. Still the best Star Wars (Battle for Hoth is favourite in all my movie watching history) and I now enjoy the extended versions without feeling the added CGI has ruined anything. Love the prequel trilogy as I like a story to start at the beginning always, not at Episode IV. As for the sequel trilogy, I'm certain I will enjoy them just as much. It's Star Wars.

I'm currently planning on getting The Clone Wars. Not because I think that they're going to be as good as the movies, but because I want to see what happens between episodes II and III. Also thought it might give me some good ideas for missions and sub-plots in my RPG.

So for me it's not about serious Star Wars, it's just for a bit of fun and adding to the story.

Eeeeh... hehehehe!

I'm not even sure where to start, so I'll just skip ahead: TCW deserves no more or no less criticism than any of the other official audio-visual productions - preferring one trilogy over another because of [insert pathos induced opinion], boils down to some semi "hipster elitism" as Dono so nicely put it. It's fair and accurate, and it's something we're all suffering from, whatever sort of purism we adhere to. That's not to say it's necessarily a bad thing, it is from these things that stuff is produced and it is based on these types of discussions, email, surveys etc that the new Star Wars will be produced, to all the levels, or groups, of Star Wars fans.

GL worked closely with Filoni and most, if not all the stories got his stamp of approval. So criticising "those guys making up the stories" to have "no respect for the source material" is ludicrous. GL is the source material. Whatever Karen Traviss, Aaron Allston (may he rest in peace) or anyone else has conjured, from Mandoism (which was actually improved in some ways I think, they were given more depth, they went from an interesting, but quaint and quite one dimensional warrior focus, to have more ideological diversity), Space Cthulu idiocy and at best mediocrity (the Abeloth story line was actually improved by the TCW tie-in, without it it would have just been utter crap, now it only remains crap). Nothing of that is "source material", it is someone else's take on the universe and how they envision it, it served only to supply GL and Filoni with a starting point for the new stories.

One may not like the series or the new stories, I mean some of those stories weren't good, but overall I'd say that TCW has a better track record than the novels, I see Waru was mentioned also... but it is what it is, we all love it, for whatever reason, it being cute cuddly warrior bears, semi-pornographic twi'lek illustrations, cool scoundrels, daring starfighter pilots or noble knights with glow sticks, or whatever else it is one can like about it, the list is long. The strength of the franchise is its diversity, the many levels on which it functions and satisfies so many people across cultures, age and gender.

And even if I don't personally like something, I'm cheerfully admitting that I'm not the target audience, and anything that brings in more SW fans has to be a good thing.

Like me!!

Heck, I didn't know Allston was dead. I knew he'd been ill a few years ago.

I'm a colossal Mystara fan, it was the one D&D setting that really spoke to me, and he did quite a few of the gazetteers.

****. RIP.

Yeah he passed away Thursday. He was my favorite Star Wars Author though I was really disappointed by Mercy Kill. Not a bad book but IMO as part of the X-Wing series it should have had a lot more starfighter action than it did.

Somewhere between a skinny tomboy being taken to a cinema in Newport and today, I grew up, and realised I'm actually 45 years old this year.

Well, young lady, you have some growing up to do. I could have baby-sat you for a few years

One thing I'm learning from this and other similar threads is that "who likes what" in SW cuts across every personality and social boundary. I find interesting agreements on GMing style, play intention, plot building; or maybe other threads that hint at politics, cultural background, age, etc; and then it all falls apart when it comes to "who likes what". Hilarious.

I was 14 when E4 came out. Loved the OT (except E6 with the Ewoks), really enjoyed the PT too. But I can hardly watch the OT or PT anymore because TCW slays them both.

Here's what we're not bothering to ask each other (and it seem to be leading to some heat in other threads) is: what do you want out of it? For me, it's the background, the depth of the universe behind the main characters, the visualization of worlds. Except for E5, the dialog is terrible in the movies, and it's almost as bad in TCW sometimes...but that doesn't matter, because "what awesome-looking foliage" or "what a cool geological formation" or "oh, that's what the subways look like on Coruscant".

I'm assuming Rebels will at least have that, so I plan to watch it. I probably won't be as happy with it, since I doubt it will go as dark and edgy as TCW, but so be it.

So, what do you guys want out of SW?

I would have preferred if the Rebels characters didn't feel like a heavily reused batch of Star Wars RPG chiches. Maelora put up the list, and I agree with her that the initial setup doesn't sound all that interesting to me.

I have Dragon Magazine #1... I saw Star Wars 13 times when it came out. (Remember when everyone would stand up cheer and clap when the Death Star was destroyed?)

EOTE has certainly made RPGs better in my eyes.

And different strokes for different folks. Apparently small kids liked Jar Jar. One thing that I've heard is that Star Wars has done a good job of reigning in power and story lines compared to other games/comics. You don't see power creep anywhere. Heck the old Star Wars books look reasonably adaptable to EOTE. Few settings can really claim that.

You don't see power creep in Star Wars? Between what Jedi, Sith, and Mandalorians (among others) have become, there has been a great deal of power creep in my eyes.

HappyDaze does make a point in terms of power creep in how things were presented. However, in the Clone Wars, Mandalorians effectively tore themselves apart, destroying whatever power or influence they might have had in the galaxy. The Jedi were purged, leaving a small handful of very powerful individuals. If anything, as much as the power creep was there, the time period of Edge of the Empire has every one of those, including maybe even the Sith, as effectively nerfed. The reason I include the Sith themselves simply has to do with the Rule of Two.

I'm the same age as Maelora. For me, I enjoy all the films, and have become a big fan of the Clone Wars. I do expect to watch Rebels, because of what I have seen in the strengths of (most of) the storytelling in TCW. While I wasn't keen on Darth Maul's return, I think they handled it well, showing him to be far more than just a spinny-blade badass. While the Prequels weren't as good as the original trilogy, they still told the story of how the Empire came into being. My brother dislikes the prequels intensely, but he has come to appreciate the Clone Wars, because the character development has Anakin's descent into the dark side far more believable.

Where I am not as well versed is the books... I'll leave that for another discussion.

Where this is for me now, is my 8 year old daughter. She has seen the Star Wars films, enjoying them a lot, but also likes the Clone Wars very much. I expect she and I will be watching Rebels together, and I will take her to Episode VII a few days after she turns 10.

Somewhere between a skinny tomboy being taken to a cinema in Newport and today, I grew up, and realised I'm actually 45 years old this year.

Well, young lady, you have some growing up to do. I could have baby-sat you for a few years

One thing I'm learning from this and other similar threads is that "who likes what" in SW cuts across every personality and social boundary. I find interesting agreements on GMing style, play intention, plot building; or maybe other threads that hint at politics, cultural background, age, etc; and then it all falls apart when it comes to "who likes what". Hilarious.

I was 14 when E4 came out. Loved the OT (except E6 with the Ewoks), really enjoyed the PT too. But I can hardly watch the OT or PT anymore because TCW slays them both.

Here's what we're not bothering to ask each other (and it seem to be leading to some heat in other threads) is: what do you want out of it? For me, it's the background, the depth of the universe behind the main characters, the visualization of worlds. Except for E5, the dialog is terrible in the movies, and it's almost as bad in TCW sometimes...but that doesn't matter, because "what awesome-looking foliage" or "what a cool geological formation" or "oh, that's what the subways look like on Coruscant".

I'm assuming Rebels will at least have that, so I plan to watch it. I probably won't be as happy with it, since I doubt it will go as dark and edgy as TCW, but so be it.

So, what do you guys want out of SW?

I want the next antagonist and threat to be fresh without just being some poorly veiled allegory of current events.

I want the story to focus on the story.

I obviously want some new planets, areas, aliens created and presented.

It can be cute without looking like they bought some stuffed animals off the shelf of Toys R Us. R2 standing on his droid tip toes peeking in Yoda's hut is sufficiently cute.

C3PO as a sniveling foppish robotic dandy is fine, stupid one liners from him, no thanks.

I want stuff to looked used.

I want a bar fight.

I don't want typical relationship exploration BS. To me there are so many buckets of nonsense out there that are taking some sci fi background and then it just becomes this self absorbed relationship drama crap taking place in a sci fi setting. I don't want to see stupid stuff like Spock and Uhura having a lover's quarrel in the middle of being pursued in a tyrannical government's territory.

So, what do you guys want out of SW?

I want the writers to remember that the series is named Star Wars not Force Wars,

I enjoy many of the ground battles and some of the Lightsaber battles but it was the Battle of Yavin and the space portions of Endor that made me fall in love with the oT originally. And to be honest what space battles we got in the PT were disappointing. TCW had some nice ones in the first couple of seasons but after that the number and lengths of the space battles it showed starting decreasing and never stopped.

Also I would like to see more midsized capital warships in both Rebels and the ST. Pretty much every combat capital ship we saw in TCW was either a corvette class or a heavy cruiser class or larger though I suppose the Arquitens class might have been a Frigate-class since no official size has been established for it. Corvette seems more likely though based on what we know of their weapons and crew size.

The Munificent-class star frigates were Heavy Cruisers despite their name, the Corona Armed Frigate class was only shown being used by pirates, and the Pelta class Frigates were primarily focused on the transport or medical ship role rather than meant for frontline combat based on their statistics and the cases where we saw them in use. Meanwhile none of the combat frigate or non-heavy cruiser classes that the EU, RPG materials, or even Star Wars Insider established as being used in the Clone Wars Era ever appeared on screen except for Hondo's Corona.

Star Wars is a mythology.

I think people can relate to Star Wars in many ways. I have never imagined Star Wars outside the child-safe realm of the movies and cartoons and I don't look for it to solve complex socio-political issues.

To the five-year old me, that first movie and its two sequels took me on a journey of imagination that I have sought to prolong well into my (so-called) adult life. Some of the novels and cartoons and holiday special made me groan.

I accept that there is more Star Wars than I can ever consume. And I accept that there is more of it in existence than I want to consume.

But like everyone here, I consume what I consume, keep what I like, and discard the rest. The story in my head stopped syncing up with the movies, novels, games, what-have-you but I still seek those feelings of adventure and myth that I first saw as a precocious little ****.

I don't think the characterization of fans who dislike The Clone Wars as "hipster elitists" is fair or even accurate.

Being the one to mention "hipster elitism," I should also add that the label wasn't directed simply at anyone that disliked the CGI version of Clone Wars.

It was more of a remark that there seems to be a growing portion segment of the fanbase (at least from my own point of view), that seems to want to shove anything that wasn't directly tied with the Original Trilogy into the trash bin simply because it's not tied with the Original Trilogy or because it came out during the time of the Prequels, a time period that the afore-mentioned portion of the fanbase marks as the point when the franchise went straight to hell and became "popular" once more with a broader audience rather than the diehard fanbase.

I've had some of those same elitists denounce me as not being a 'true Star Wars fan' because I generally liked the Prequels and (aside from Han not shooting first) was okay with the changes made for the Special Editions or even the Blu-Ray versions, and anyone that knows me in real life knows I pretty much breath and bleed Star Wars. There's an entire bookcase (and not a dinky little one, but a six foot tall bookcase) that's packed with Star Wars LEGO kits, action figures, and lightsabers (including a couple Force FX ones, with a Obi-Wan Ep3 hilt with the detachable blade as the most recent edition), to say nothing of my library of Star Wars RPG books and novels. There are parts of the franchise/canon that I don't care for, but I judge those elements on their own merits. I hate the Vong and the New Jedi Order series, but I at least read Vector Prime and paid some attention to the series in the hopes that it might improve (it really didn't), and the series to follow after weren't exactly an improvement (though I do like the character of Ben Skywalker). I for one am looking forward to the new movies, if only because they will be a breath of fresh air on the cinematic front with a director whose movies I've generally enjoyed, even if the last Trek movies had plot holes you could drive a Super Star Destroyer through.

But another aspect of that "elitism" is simply glancing at something that we don't have a lot of information about (Star Wars: Rebels in this particular case) and just dismissing it whole cloth simply because it's animated and showing up on a Disney TV station. I saw a lot of folks knock The Clone Wars for the exact same reason without ever having watched more than a few seconds of clips. While I'm not a fan of the series either, I at least gave it a fair shot, and simply decided that while there were elements I liked, I simply couldn't tolerate Ahsoka or the heavy focus on Anakin and Obi-Wan enough to stick around for those elements. Had the show been less "the Adventures of Two Canon Characters with Script Immunity guest starring their scrappy teen sidekick" and more about the war itself, I might have stuck around past the first season.

Then again, maybe I'm too much of a kid at heart and an optimist when it comes to a franchise I very much love and enjoy gaming in, that anytime there's something new on the horizon, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt instead of just cast it aside with the rationale "it's not my Star Wars" or "I guess I'm just not the target audience."

It's interesting in terms of your thoughts about the Clone Wars. Truthfully, while I liked some of the Anakin/Ahsoka stuff, I found the episodes that dealt with other characters to be intriguing. I enjoyed Cad Bane, for example, because he proved to be more than simply a substitute for Jango/Boba. This was a bounty hunter capable of negotiation, leadership, and even had his own sense of honour and fair play. The story arc where Obi-Wan goes under cover I quite liked, and it also helped explain why he would later adopt the name "Ben." Snippets like this I found intriguing.

I'm willing to give Rebels a good chance. Script-wise, this group has cut their teeth on The Clone Wars, and as such I think it has potential.

GL worked closely with Filoni and most, if not all the stories got his stamp of approval. So criticising "those guys making up the stories" to have "no respect for the source material" is ludicrous. GL is the source material. Whatever Karen Traviss, Aaron Allston (may he rest in peace) or anyone else has conjured, from Mandoism (which was actually improved in some ways I think, they were given more depth, they went from an interesting, but quaint and quite one dimensional warrior focus, to have more ideological diversity), Space Cthulu idiocy and at best mediocrity (the Abeloth story line was actually improved by the TCW tie-in, without it it would have just been utter crap, now it only remains crap). Nothing of that is "source material", it is someone else's take on the universe and how they envision it, it served only to supply GL and Filoni with a starting point for the new stories.

I submit to you that at some point, Star Wars became bigger than George Lucas. I question how much his opinion, approval, or "vision" really matters at this stage. The man doesn't even own Star Wars anymore.

And while I'm as thankful to Mr. Lucas for giving us the Galaxy Far Far Away as the next guy, I also would like to point out that George Lucas, like nearly every other human being, benefits from having his work critically peer reviewed. I present The Star Wars as Exhibit A. It is a wonderful glimpse into what Star Wars could have been, and an even more wonderful reminder of how thankful we should be that early on, George Lucas had people to tell him "no."

Just because he approved a story, plot, or "episode," doesn't necessarily make it good, or make it fit with the rest of the Star Wars universe. At the risk of being accused of blaspheme, George Lucas' opinion on what is or isn't, or should or shouldn't be Star Wars doesn't (and shouldn't) matter anymore.

Perhaps I wasn't clear when I said that writers of The Clone Wars were disrespectful to the source material. Perhaps I could have said that the writers for The Clone Wars had no regard for established canon, whatever the quality. There's more to it, though, than merely the gigantic middle finger to every other Star Wars author out there. I'll have to think on it more and offer you a better explanation when I've had time to better articulate it.

I'll agree with you, though, that Traviss' mandophilia got old quickly (as much as I enjoyed her Clone Commando series) and the Abeloth storyline wasn't all that good to begin with. Not much post-Endor Star Wars fiction is any good. Whether a giant The Clone Wars sticker being slapped on it made it worse or was merely polishing a turd is a matter of opinion, I suppose.

I think the concept of an ancient, extinct alien race building incredible mechanical constructs with unknown motivations and for unknown purposes is a fantastic one. It's one that Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect capitalized on quite successfully. (Which isn't a surprise, when you consider how much Mass Effect "borrowed" from Star Wars.)

I think the idea of something out in deep space that this ancient, advanced race was scared of or concerned about is a great idea too, if not overdone. The problem was that the execution of both of those concepts in the Fate of the Jedi series was lackluster at best.

It's a common problem with Star Wars- great concepts with terrible execution.

I don't think the characterization of fans who dislike The Clone Wars as "hipster elitists" is fair or even accurate.

Being the one to mention "hipster elitism," I should also add that the label wasn't directed simply at anyone that disliked the CGI version of Clone Wars.

It was more of a remark that there seems to be a growing portion segment of the fanbase (at least from my own point of view), that seems to want to shove anything that wasn't directly tied with the Original Trilogy into the trash bin simply because it's not tied with the Original Trilogy or because it came out during the time of the Prequels, a time period that the afore-mentioned portion of the fanbase marks as the point when the franchise went straight to hell and became "popular" once more with a broader audience rather than the diehard fanbase.

I've had some of those same elitists denounce me as not being a 'true Star Wars fan' because I generally liked the Prequels and (aside from Han not shooting first) was okay with the changes made for the Special Editions or even the Blu-Ray versions, and anyone that knows me in real life knows I pretty much breath and bleed Star Wars. There's an entire bookcase (and not a dinky little one, but a six foot tall bookcase) that's packed with Star Wars LEGO kits, action figures, and lightsabers (including a couple Force FX ones, with a Obi-Wan Ep3 hilt with the detachable blade as the most recent edition), to say nothing of my library of Star Wars RPG books and novels. There are parts of the franchise/canon that I don't care for, but I judge those elements on their own merits. I hate the Vong and the New Jedi Order series, but I at least read Vector Prime and paid some attention to the series in the hopes that it might improve (it really didn't), and the series to follow after weren't exactly an improvement (though I do like the character of Ben Skywalker). I for one am looking forward to the new movies, if only because they will be a breath of fresh air on the cinematic front with a director whose movies I've generally enjoyed, even if the last Trek movies had plot holes you could drive a Super Star Destroyer through.

But another aspect of that "elitism" is simply glancing at something that we don't have a lot of information about (Star Wars: Rebels in this particular case) and just dismissing it whole cloth simply because it's animated and showing up on a Disney TV station. I saw a lot of folks knock The Clone Wars for the exact same reason without ever having watched more than a few seconds of clips. While I'm not a fan of the series either, I at least gave it a fair shot, and simply decided that while there were elements I liked, I simply couldn't tolerate Ahsoka or the heavy focus on Anakin and Obi-Wan enough to stick around for those elements. Had the show been less "the Adventures of Two Canon Characters with Script Immunity guest starring their scrappy teen sidekick" and more about the war itself, I might have stuck around past the first season.

Then again, maybe I'm too much of a kid at heart and an optimist when it comes to a franchise I very much love and enjoy gaming in, that anytime there's something new on the horizon, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt instead of just cast it aside with the rationale "it's not my Star Wars" or "I guess I'm just not the target audience."

It seems I misunderstood your original post, and I apologize for taking offense. Don't misunderstand, though, I wanted to like The Clone Wars. I really did. I certainly tried to. I think most people here who are dismissive of Rebels, though, are making an educated guess based on what they've already seen in The Clone Wars. After all, many of the same people are working on it.

Right now I'm just thankful that the people at FFG have taken a mature (not "grimdark" or "adult," mind you) look at the Star Wars universe, and I really hope that continues.