What Makes the Star Wars Original EU So Special?

[Captain Crimson]

I don't think it's a mystery at all why EU stuff was popular. The original film was the highest grossing film of all time. The original trilogy was structured in a way that would easily allow for future additions to the storyline, and the "lived in" aesthetic that Lucas wanted gave the impression that there was a story behind every little detail. It also catered to demographic groups most likely to invest themselves in a story's universe. Beyond that, the original trilogy was all there was for canon for a long time. Even the original Star Trek got a big boost in mystique for its relatively short run on tv, and that was still 79 episodes.

So with generations of fans growing up with Legends material being the only supplement to 3-6 movies, it's no surprise that the best of that material would be highly regarded. Even without commenting on the relative quality of EU stuff today, the amount of mainline canon material coming out now makes the EU feel more tangential (at least until they artificially withhold information from the films in order to stuff into comic books or whatever).

What makes the EU feel tangential? Have you seen the new canon content? Let's see... Rey is just a gender-swapped Luke Skywalker and renamed Jaina Solo in some LOTF/FOTJ fusion grafted onto ANH 2.0. RO is just DF grafted to the DS novel, except Jan Ors is renamed into Jyn Erso and replaced Kyle Katarn. The Solo movie is just the HST. And TROS is ROTJ meets the TT and DE. What definition of tangential are you going with? Because it's why many people say they don't have an original bone in their bodies, though something tells me it's just the pet stories the creative forces involved with the making of the ST were familiar with. Ironically, the most original movie of ST, TLJ, is also the most divisive. That should tell you something. And yet, it's all good if they'd only just continue printing EU novels under the Legends banner. That's not difficult at all, and they can't even do that for the fans.

I wasn't very clear. I mean the current EU feels more tangential (or supplementary, if you prefer) than Legends did in its heyday when it was the only new Star Wars content. Even if they end up borrowing EU content, it's not as centralized anymore since there's a more than decent chance that anything popular is going to make its way into live action television or film sooner rather than later.

Ah, fair point. My apologies for misinterpreting it! And I think that's kind of natural since the current composition of employees at LF now are non-fans, casual fans, and a dint of hardcore fans who have read more than ten books and read at least 500 pages out of the comics. That's going to lead to a lot of issues.

as ive said i just don't think that the rule of 2 works. thats just how i feel. and i just didn't read them because from what i saw of them and the bits i read that were pulled from it, i though the writing was weak.

I certainly won't deny that is a subjective and highly valid way to feel, though I think my larger point was that the EU makes it work in spite of itself, if you feel that way. But that might be speculative, since you've never read those.

[hammerofglass]

I think mainly the rule of 2 just gives them structure for the infighting. I don't know of a single canon Sith who actually followed it as written. Some of them had multiple apprentices and whoever won the resulting power struggle was retroactively the "real" apprentice, some of them did the "take your own apprentice while your master is still alive" bit, and of course the "use Essense Transfer to steal your apprentice's body" trick. All three of those showed up while Bane was still the master. Plagueis came closest with his "we're both going to be immortal so you're an equal partner, now shut up and do what I say" gambit.

[GreyICE]

Although it occurs to me in a bout of fridge genius that telling all your apprentices that there's one master and one apprentice and that's the Sith way really goes a long way to avoiding them all ganging up on you. I mean it's a fucking big galaxy, and communication is slow - Star Wars is not an ansible universe.

Actually I really like that. Star Trek is an ansible universe (minus Voyager), and Star Wars isn't. The difference goes a long way to making the Star Wars universe feel bigger.