This Is Why I Think The EU Sucks

[pixletwin]

Woman's intuition. My wife senses every time I don't take out the trash, I don't think she has the force.

 

[Batty]

Exactly... its like they have to tie everyone's personal motives somehow with Luke, Leia, Solo, or any of the other major characters.

I think people do this with the movies too... Not just the EU. People are always speculating why one character does one thing and another character does another.

 

[Darthrazz]

the destruction of IG-88, erm DS II.

So Luke was hanging from the TV antenna? I would have thought Cloud City had Digital cable?? Hmmm....who would have known. Is there any EU story that explains why they had a TV antenna, perhaps Lando didn't pay the bill??? Was that from "Lando Calrissian and the Scourge of the Imperial Cable Salesmen"? I didn't finish the book, but Dengars nephew, who dated Han Solo's sister was a pushy cable salesman who plotted Lando's death, because Lobot looked at him funny once and Lando laughed......anyway you get the picture.

 

[Darthrazz]

Woman's intuition. My wife senses every time I don't take out the trash, I don't think she has the force.

 

[Cocoboloboy]

Woman's intuition. My wife senses every time I don't take out the trash, I don't think she has the force.

Hopefully she's not your long lost twin sister either.

 

[Shalamar]

Very good point. The problem is there are obviously separate sets of criteria that LFL Licensing focuses on for EU versus licensed products based on the movies. It's clear that the EU fiction writers can get away with pretty much anything. Basically, there is a list of stuff they CAN'T touch on... like certain characters and time periods, etc. Everything else is pretty much open game and up to the writers and editors. It's my belief that this open canvas is what facilitates a lot of the suckitude that is the EU. If they were even half as anal about that as they are on things like 1/6 likenesses then the EU would be much better. Then again, it would also be a lot smaller with a lot fewer books and products, hence less $$ for Lucasfilm. Like everything else, just follow the money.

Not quite. Or at least, not recently. I had an interesting talk with Timothy Zhan about writing some of the Star Wars EU novels (I find his books to be among the best), and he said it can be actually quite restricting to write in the Star Wars Universe. Authors are approached asking if they want to write. If they agree, they are told certain criteria. The story has to start a certain way, certain things have to occur in the books, and it has to end a certain way. Moreso if several authors are writing different books in a series. I believe he's said he's turned down Lucasarts a couple times.

I still think that Timothy Zhans 'Thrawn' trilogy is the best I've read in Star Wars EU. It 'feels' like Star Wars to me.

 

[ProgMatinee]

So Luke was hanging from the TV antenna? I would have thought Cloud City had Digital cable?? Hmmm....who would have known. Is there any EU story that explains why they had a TV antenna, perhaps Lando didn't pay the bill??? Was that from "Lando Calrissian and the Scourge of the Imperial Cable Salesmen"? I didn't finish the book, but Dengars nephew, who dated Han Solo's sister was a pushy cable salesman who plotted Lando's death, because Lobot looked at him funny once and Lando laughed......anyway you get the picture.

You try dropping cable from a treehouse 6000ft into the atmosphere.

 

[tylerd]

So there is some talk at rebelscum about Dengar being the next armored fig from Sideshow. I knew nothing about him aside from the fact that he was one of the bounty hunters on the executor in ESB. So I figured I would read up on him.

This is what I found...



This is the gayest bio I have ever read. Especially the bit about Boba Fett serving as best man at his wedding.

It pretty much sums up why the EU sucks to me.

definitely reads like it was written by a woman or a very feminine man. arghhhh.

 

[Shai]

definitely reads like it was written by a woman or a very feminine man. arghhhh.

Maybe Medicom's owner ?

 

[ProgMatinee]

Maybe Medicom's owner ?

Too much.

 

[Mooncat]

Thought when I read the header Pixel was slagging off the European Union

 

[pixletwin]

Thought when I read the header Pixel was slagging off the European Union

Moi?

 

[DarthTrafford]

The EU isn't bad at all.
It bought us great characters like Mara Jade and Prince Xizor.
:chew

 

[darthviper107]

And the Yuuzhan Vong war, and Solo's kids. And more Wedge Antilles.

 

[ProgMatinee]

The EU is great. Its full of things like not choosing sides and mass denial.

I kid.

 

[IrishJedi]

The EU isn't bad at all.
It bought us great characters like Mara Jade and Prince Xizor.
:chew

To each his own, but I for one hate both of those characters. :emperor

 

[galactiboy]

I never felt much like wading through all the EU stuff... usually seemed kinda goonie and not all that interesting. The Dengar stuff is particularly terrible though.

But personally, I'd still buy a figure of him. He is after all an OT Bounty Hunter... sure you only get a glimpse of him, but what else is money good for

 

[ProgMatinee]

SW collecting has always been largely about obscure and side characters. As boring and insignificant as these characters are Hammerhead, Snaggletooth and Dengar were always in my setups as a kid. So they'd definately take a strong place in my SSC collection (just as Bib Fortuna is).

A big part of what made these figures fun to play with as a kid was the unknown and so thats really why I won't touch the OT EU books. I don't need anyone to explain to me who these guys were.

Going forward with PT stuff I don't have that same kind of attachment, nor the imagination, so I don't mind having it drawn up for me in the CW cartoons for instance.

This is an aside, but as a kid I always felt like GI Joes had a little more freedom to play with because I didn't feel the need to recreate a particular scene. Maybe I was just not creative enough.

 

[piccolodaimaoh]

I have really only have experience with Shadows of the Empire in the EU and I loved it when it came out and always wished they did a cartoon movie or something like that.
When it comes to Clone Wars I always that it was canon, considering the series was created so the chapters would flow right into Episode III. The Lucasfilm Ltd logo appears before every episode and though some of the character designs were not created by Lucas himself all of them had to be approved by him as well as what happened in the stories. Lucas was also executive producer on Clone Wars.
Finally, in my opinion, the Clone Wars series is better than any of the prequels so we should be proud to include it as canon. There, I said it.

 

[Amir]

I read the Timothy Zann(i think that's how you spell his name) Trilogy of books picking up right after Return of the Jedi, although the force repelling creatures were a stretch (and bad) the main characters were very well written, I think he said in an interview once that he spend hours upon hours listening to the OT on tape while driving and that helped him really catch all the subtle character traits of the OT heroes and he used that when writing the characters in his book. Aside from that the other stuff is pretty bad (but its all really a matter of opinion some people love it some not so much).