Is it bad that after reading that essay from Traviss I actually appreciate her writing more . . . ? I agree quite a bit with what she says. I liked her portrayal of the Jedi from the RepCom series: it showed that it was easy to live up to the Jedi standards when there was peace, so easy that many Jedi had without them realizing it put up a false front. Then when the war broke out, you had many Jedi who began to "cut-loose" so to speak. Their true colors were exposed as heartless unfeeling jerks (I mean you even had that in TCW with the Umbarra arc). If this had been 1000 years earlier these tendencies would have been caught beforehand. But the Jedi grew too complacent and overlooked these flaws until by the time the war came they couldn't afford to pull any Jedi off the front lines for these reasons. IMO, the RepCom series showed how easy it was to BE a Jedi, but how hard it was to LIVE & ACT as one. Too many people think the Jedi are white knights; it's time to expose the dirt on the armor.

RepCom has always been head-and-shoulders above most of the CW-era fiction for that reason(even if I have a few issues with the later books), I just think she(and Denning) went full idiot-ball with LotF, but that's a risk whenever you have multi-author series like that, just look at early-half NJO before it was ironed out.

Human nature is such that if we find out someone who created something we enjoy is a huge d-bag, it effects our opinion of that work.

Which is why I choose to believe that Lucas was abducted and replaced by aliens sometime between Episode 6 and 1.

The story was fine, the game had some technical issues that were a problem.

The story was fine, the gameplay was entertaining, and it had polish in abundance. What technical issues did you have?

It's been a while, so forgive me if I don't remember things exactly. I had a lot of trouble with stuff being off camera and affecting me, it's just poor design. Controlling things with the force was problematic at times and a lot of the major boss encounters were just tedious. Oh, the platforming was horrible (but that tends to be true in 3D games)

Who cares if she broke canon if the books were good?

Everyone should, because without Canon we have nothing more then fanfic.

Here's a few things I found out, this mostly comes from the Legacy stuff... Which You and others have said you haven't read.

Jaina is completely flabbergasted by how armor and weapons that could block lightsabers “changed the game” of combat. The Mandalorians also have a super-technique that can let them disappear from the Force. Together these two factors, armor that can stop lightsabers and the ability to not be felt in the Force, completely confounded Jaina who had no idea how to handle it.

Yes, that is correct. Jaina Solo, the Sword of the Jedi. The person who developed the techniques used to fight enemies who had lightsaber resistant armor and weapons and who could not be felt within the Force had no idea how to deal with enemies who had lightsaber resistant armor and weapons and who could not be felt within the Force.

This all came from the book in which KT claims that Boba Fett killed more Jedi then any other single person... Even more then Darth Vader or Darth Sid. In fact Luke tells her that she must go train under Boba, because only he can give her the skills she needs to beat Jacen.

Master Skywalker the greatest Jedi ever, who became One with the Force, who had defeated Jacen in the previous book... Tells her that she must go learn from Boba Fett how to do what Luke had just gone done doing. Boba Fett, who's only on screen accomplishments were to guess what Han was going to do, then get thrown into the Sarlacc pit by a blind Han Solo winging a gaffi stick around.

Oh also I should point out that KT had admitted that even in the process of writing her own books, she had never read a single other Star Wars novel...

That does sound pretty lame. At the moment, I'm filling in the gaps with the random novels they released that are a bit spattered around the timeline before I tackle Legacy, although by the sounds of it, it might not be worth bothering with.

Wow that's...

Uh.

Awful.

EDIT: So we're complaining about the EU wipe... why?

EDIT: So we're complaining about the EU wipe... why?

There's a few gems being tossed out with the garbage. Those gems will be missed, while the garbage will be forgotten. With the garbage forgotten, all many will remember is how Disney erased the good stuff.

Hindsight isn't always 20/20.

Hey, as I've said before, I'll give up beloved things being canon for a clean slate.

TFU was pretty much as far from canon as you can get and the sequel was even worse.

And the Star Destroyer...that never would have happened. I don't care what Yoda said, sometimes size does matter.

There's a few gems being tossed out with the garbage.

The gems may very well survive. They said the EU is no longer canon, but any of it can be canonized if the story team approves it.

So canon can clearly improve or harm a product, and thus must have SOME level of intrinsic virtue. Ok, you've convinced me.

I think I just won the internet.

I agree that canon doesn't make or break a story, but it is a factor. As most of us know internal consistency is part of good story writing, no matter how far fetched or odd the premise is, as long as it's consistent then we can accept it. But when you have characters or events that are clearly not consistent and even in some cases contradictory, then you have at the very least 1 strike against the story.

"was an excellent book. Though it broke canon in places, it was still an excellent, fun, etc."

I'd go as far as to say that there's both degrees of breaking canon and "unpardonable sin" breaking canon.

Lets use Star Trek just so we can avoid discussing any SW book or author. Lets say there's a story in which Picard is left handed instead of right handed. That's a pretty minor thing, and wouldn't really detract from the story at all.

But on the other hand, lets say we have a story in which Spock has temper tantrums, sleeps around more then Kirk, is greedy and a slob... No one could read that story and accept it because it's such a massive break with the established character.

You've purposefully provided an example that sounds horrible even if you remove Star Wars from the picture.

True, but mostly I was trying to take the Force as far away from what it is established to be as possible. Kind of like the Spock example above.

I just don't think it's healthy, or even very honest, especially with fiction.

I'd agree it's not healthy or honest. But there is a point of the artist tainting the work, that goes beyond just disliking the person because they do something we don't like.

Enders Game being a prime example, the fact that he doesn't support *** marriage should have no impact on our opinion of the story, since that issue isn't even touched on in his book or the movie. It has literately zero bearing on the story, so it should not be a factor.

But lets say I wrote a story in which the female characters were badly mistreated. I mean makes GoT and SoT look tame bad. But it was an amazing story... People may be willing to look past how I treat the women in the story. But lets say that it was discovered that I was a huge misogynist. Then rather then accepting the work for what it is, many, perhaps even most would start to assume I'm simply getting my jollies vicariously though the story.

Re: Upcoming Rebels TV.

I'm going to watch it, if I can. I'm going to be excited if Gozanti-Class Cruisers come into play in X-Wing Miniatures, and I'll keep an eye out for any ship designs from the series that might not come out in FFG rules but which still might spawn a toy here or there in roughly 1:270 scale that I can stick on a base and use house rules for.

However, I'm a bit dubious about the preview. A lot of the things I thought were cool about Star Wars and its associated franchise as a kid came to bother me later on. In the movies, we had heroes who really felt like underdogs, who might make wisecracks in the face of danger, but didn't seem especially cruel about it. In a lot of the spin-off stuff (or the various bits of fiction which were RIPPING OFF Star Wars), I would run into tropes where we get to see cocky, always-winning heroes who blast faceless minions and crack jokes while doing so.

In that 7-minute preview, we get to see that Imperial officers are evil, petty, puppy-kicking jerks.

And then, 3:15 into the preview. Our Mando-in-pink saunters up and plants a device on a bike. (Can't anybody HEAR that high-pitched whine?) Now, look at the reaction of the trooper. He notices her, turns, raises a hand as if to say something, then lowers it. Oh yeah, and then he gets blown to kingdom come.

Who the HECK was animating that guy? if we're supposed to be all "Yayyyy!" about Stormtroopers getting fragged, couldn't they make this guy a little more, oh, I don't know, EVIL? Just look at that body language. If he weren't wearing a face mask, this would be the least threatening Imperial I've seen yet. I can practically imagine something going through his head like, "Hey, who's that in the pink armor? Do I know you? Hey-- No, can't be. No sense in making a fuss..." -- *KABOOM*

And then at 5:35 in, we have the speederbike chase, and the trooper catches up to Kanan and it's like, "Oh! Here, I surrender! Just kidding!" *bomb toss* *KABOOM* (Seriously, if someone tosses you a hand grenade while you're riding a speeding vehicle, AND YOU CATCH IT, wouldn't the natural response be to toss it rather than hold onto it for several seconds until it blows up in your face? And the timing! Kanan could've caught his buddy in the blast if he were off by a second -- or, you know, the trooper had tossed the hot potato.)

It bothered me as a kid when I saw Return of the Jedi, and C-3PO falsely claiming to surrender and then -- surprise! -- it's an ambush. Since when did we get the idea that it's a heroic thing to feign surrender and then use that as a pretext to kill the enemy? And the whole time, our cocksure heroes are smirking and joking with each other, because killing people is FUN. (Gadzooks, but in most of the promo material, the preferred facial expression for most every character is a SMIRK. At least the robot can't smirk.)

If Rebels is supposed to give me that "Original Trilogy" Star Wars feel, I'd like to get introduced to a situation where I can at least pretend that our heroes are the underdogs valiantly struggling against a scary, evil Empire -- not a bunch of cocky psychopaths to whom it's just jolly good FUN to blow someone into chunky giblets with a thermal detonator.

I don't want to root for Imperials, but with an intro like this, it's setting off my instinctual "root for the underdog" tendencies in a bad way. STOP MAKING ME FEEL SORRY FOR THE BAD GUYS!

Don't get me wrong: I'm going to buy the merch regardless, and I know I'm probably over-thinking it. For a 7-minute preview it only makes sense that they'd pick something with lots of flash and bang and "high adventure," and Star Wars is practically ALL ABOUT our lovable heroes picking off Stormtroopers and blowing up TIE fighters. I just think that Clone Wars did a much better job of making me feel like there were real stakes involved (especially any episode focusing on the Clone Troopers, who most individually DID NOT have "plot armor"), and I hope that this preview isn't a fair sample of the quality of writing and characterization for the new series.

Oh, and while I'm stepping in it ... I enjoyed the Republic Commando series, and Karen Traviss's writing in general. She's my second-favorite Star Wars EU novelist. Still, I would've liked it better if she presented us with more sympathetic Jedi characters. I get it that she thinks the Jedi were flawed, and I think that's a fair take on it -- especially as I recall reading elsewhere, BEFORE her work, that the Jedi Council had become "corrupted" and "complacent" at the time of its fall. But there should still be some GOOD PEOPLE, and surely someone can be a competent voice for the Jedi viewpoint, if for no other reason than to make it clear to us that this is taking place in the same Star Wars universe. (A Jedi who renounces Jedi status and becomes a Mandalorian -- or who secretly has a baby with a Clone Trooper -- doesn't count.) I have some reservations here and there (I'm picky that way), so I can understand folks who've given up on Traviss's works entirely.

I was a bit put off by the Clone Wars treatment of Mandalore -- especially presenting them as a bunch of blonde, blue-eyed pacifists, and "Jango Fett? However that MERCENARY got his armor, I've no idea!" All the same, there had to be a better way for Karen Traviss to deal with it, rather than "stomping off." She wouldn't be the first Star Wars contributor who's had to retcon a few things in light of further "canon" development.

(Timothy Zahn, my favorite EU novelist, would present a prime example, I think, on how to roll with it in a shared-universe creative setting.)