The 2-1b Weekly
The Throes of Legacy
July 21st, 2023
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the losses sustained during the Disney overhaul of what was considered canon, and I took a considerable amount of time to gripe about a single bland story as if that was enough proof to constitute what I believed was a good move by Disney after all these years. I did receive some feedback detailing some concerns that I had not thoroughly validated my point and that there was overwhelmingly more good than bad. Okay, okay... messaged received. Well, for those of you who really believe that the old canon wasn't full of more shit, buckle up.
The Crystal Star was a novel written by Vonda N. McIntyre in which Leia's children get kidnapped - great! And while that's going on Han Solo and Luke Skywalker are investigating an interdimensional being who influences stars - cool! In this book, which takes place 14 ABY according to our beloved Wookiepedia. I read this about 15 years ago, so I'm a little fuzzy on the details but allow me to basically give you a run down. Leia's children get kidnapped while Han and Luke are on a vacation. Chewbacca and Leia go on an adventure to get the kids back and eventually do, but the guy who kidnapped the kids in an effort to restore the Empire (conveniently called Empire Reborn) is also tied the this crystal star which could destroy the universe and it's got a bunch of mythological creatures in it, a severe continuity issue which you can read about in the article here on Wookiepedia, and a less than compelling narrative which takes place in between two books that did much better than this one.
Some of you who just did a google search found out that it was a New York Times best seller, to which I'll add this book came out in 1994 and it was the sixth consecutive Star Wars book to make the list, to which I'll also add that making that list was the Twilight series and Fifty Shades of Grey. Before you attack me, I'm not hating on these books (here anyway) but it really is just a numbers game. I'll post this quote here from a 2013 article titled The Twelve Worst Things in the Star Wars Expanded Universe "The most derided novel in the entire Expanded Universe, Vonda McIntyre's The Crystal Star includes both centaurs and werewolves (spelled "wyrwolves," because SCIENCE FICTION), and they still aren't the dumbest things in the book. No, that honor would go to a surprisingly bitchy Luke, who — and this is all post-RotJ, by the way — joins a transparently evil cult led by a golden blob. The reason he does this — he's sad because he lost his Force powers because a sun died nearby, which is even more insulting than just joining a cult led by what is for all intents an purposes a Star Trek villain. Add the Solo kids getting kidnapped for the umpteenth time and the millionth leftover rogue Imperial officer, and you have a book whose only distinguishing characteristics are its terrible ones."
Moving on, the next on this list is a personal favorite of mine, by the sweet sweet title of Red Harvest by Joe Schreiber. Do you like The Walking Dead? Are you also an Island of Dr Moreau fan? Would you like to see a all this attempted to be sweetly wrapped up in a Star Wars novel? Good news! Red Harvest was released in 2010 and did not find itself on any best seller list. It did receive a shit load of bad reviews though! One from goodreads says this "Nothing interesting and a chore to read. But the problem here is not just the plot, which is basically a Sith Lord who takes students and he's trying to perfect an older formula from another Sith Lord(?) for trying to achieve immortality and he ends up making the Sith students zombies. Let me say this once: Star Wars + Zombies = NO." This book is located in 3645 BBY. For those Legends continuity hating folks, that's the Old Republic. Which means this book was surrounded in the timeline by very very excellent ones. HELL YES i'm talking about the Revan novel!
Notably, the authors previous entries into the Star Wars universe at the time were better. I'm talking about the Death Troopers novels, but Red Harvest was an obvious flake from The Walking Dead craze which burst onto AMC, I shit you not, three months before in October 2010. There's also an obvious grab from the movie Taken starring Liam Neeson where he says the famous line "I will find you and I will kill you." The book isn't a very hard read, and there are mixed reviews on this title if you search reddit. But here were are again with another continuity issue involving the destruction of Coruscant in the time of the Old Republic which you can read about by clicking the link to this title below.
Finally, the one I've had no problem jumping on since I've read it, The Glove of Darth Vader which is book one of the Jedi Prince series. Let me be honest, I've tried to write this next explanation but nothing I've written has quite captured the essence of what I'm trying to convey better than nowjustmaul's post on reddit. Under Worst Star Wars novel you’ve read by raccoonwitharifle, nowjustmaul writes "[The Jedi Prince Novels] take place after Return of the Jedi and they follow the story of Trioculous, the three-eyed mutant who claims to be the Emperor's son and he nonchalantly takes over the Empire or something and his one goal is to find the glove of Darth Vader. At one point Leia and Han go off to randomly elope at an amusement park but she gets kid napped and Trioculous tried to marry her but then she was replaced by Robot Leia who then shot him with his laser eyes and died. Then the biggest plot twist of my child hood: The main boy of the story, Ken, who believed he was Obi Wan Kenobi's grandson because his name was Ken, found out that he was actually Palpatine's grandson all along! His father was also a three-eyed mutant who was the son of Palpatine who was of no relation to Trioculous, who was just a random person. Also, Jabba's father and the prophets of the dark side were nonchalantly there."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
All these entries are loaded with continuity issues and shit that you just would never want to contend with in the Star Wars universe. When Disney created the Legacy timeline, yeah.. I was a bit sad. But then I realized... well... at least all the crap isn't in there anymore either. And when Disney released A New Dawn and Tarkin (novel)|Tarkin I realized there was hope. I'm not a schill for Disney, but I have faith and I love Star Wars, so I'm going to hope for the best and I hope we all find something to really cherish in this clean slate of canon.
Some other notable mentions of which I have not read/played all but trust the internet:
The Phantom Plotline and The Rise of Mass Appeal
July 14th, 2023
Looking back on 2017/2018 it all kind of seems obvious, but really, I think it really just seemed too good to be true. Disney had a very unheard of streaming service in Europe, they were acquiring 21st century fox, and Bob Iger had made it abundantly clear Star Wars was only just getting started. Streaming services were coming out of thin air fast and it only stood to reason that if Disney was going to rise out of the obscurity and get the people to buy in to what they were selling then their would have to be mass appeal. Not just to kids wanting to watch princess movies... but to the huge marvel audience and yes, of course the Star Wars audience too. There were faint rumors that Disney had plans to live action a tv show based on Star Wars which made a lot of sense. Mass appeal, right? It seems obvious now that they would want to jump into the streaming game with the biggest guns they could bring. Fast Forward a few years later and we have Disney+ and The Mandalorian. And what came after? A lot of other stuff too.
So okay, they have Star Wars fans by the balls right? But what if you could get more balls? Okay, I'm not fully on board with this analogy, but you get the point hopefully. There is a target audience, and if you could expand that target audience how would you do that? Like I said before, mass appeal. The Rise of Skywalker, comes out December 20th, 2019. Disney+ dropped December 12th, 2019. If you're the money loving satanists at Disney, your primal directive is to do one thing, make more money. This means you need new customers, not just existing customers. How do you do that? Mass appeal.
Say what you want about The Force Awaken, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. Say whatever you want, I don't give a shit - BUT - these movies were not just made for the people who were already going to show up to the movie theater. And we all did, didn't we? Disney doesn't have their sights set on us. They have their sights set on that friend of yours who you dragged into the movie theater because they don't get Star Wars, or that dad that saw the Phantom Menace in theaters as a kid and wants his kids to have that same experience. Disney and friends are not concerned with fulfilling your fantasy of making the perfect Star Wars film. Not that they could, because lets be honest, the people that talk the most shit about those movies were always going to do so. They were never going to be satisfied. And I realize I'm generalizing here, but in experience this has largely been the case. Disney does not give a shit about fan service when they make these films. They care about mass appeal. They have to be friendly to audiences who have zero f*****g clues about what's going on. It's about marketing to an audience who doesn't really give a shit to begin with. And if the movie only makes sense to us, who read the books and comics and all the other shit, while everyone else is lost in the sauce, well, that's just bad strategy. All three of these movies made over a billion dollars in the box office, so you tell me, does that sound like a movie that sucks?
But there is a silver lining here, and it's in the name of fan service. It's called everything else. What came after Disney+? What came after the multi billion dollar sequel trilogy? I mentioned a few last week, but literally a brand new season of Clone Wars? Hello? That was never going to happen. That Obi-Wan show? HELLO?? Demanded for years by the fans! The Bad Batch, Boba Fett? Ahsoka? Then there is Tales of the Jedi, Visions, Andor, The Acolyte (not released at the time of writing this rant), two more seasons of the Mandalorian, more comics, books, audiobooks (which are amazingly well done by the way), Video Games, and a whole shit load of other stuff. Most of which is directly in the name of fan service. So if you hated the movies, but claim to be a huge Star Wars fan, then what do you really hate? That you didn't get called by JJ Abrams himself and asked what you would like to see in the next feature film. Get the hell out of here. We got all of these things BECAUSE these movies were a little less intricate - BECAUSE there was mass appeal. Get it?
Look I get it. okay? I do. But part of the problem is everyone is a critic. I said this a few weeks ago, but the fact of the matter is getting three new movies at all was a miracle. That was never going to happen before Disney bought out Lucas. And since then they have handed the reigns over to people who have given us a lot of really good stuff. And here we are in July of 2023 and Dave Filoni, the God Father of Star Wars fans himself, is making a Star Wars movie. It remains to be seen if it will be as in depth as we all hope it will be, but I have faith. I really do. And you should too, it's the greatest time to be a Star Wars fan. We are in a Golden Age of Star Wars media in my opinion. I haven't even mentioned that Rogue One is sort of the exception to this trilogy nonsense. But that's a rant for next week.
Let me just say this. In a world where IP's are make or break, we have a huge influence. In this digital age, our voices can be heard by the very people who make these amazing things for us to consume at high rates of speed. Star Wars is no different. You are entitled to feel however you want to feel about anything, but really think to yourself, would you really trade those three movies for everything else? Would you rather subtract the mass appeal from the Star Wars movies in order to walk out of the movie theater with warm and fuzzies in your stomach and potentially sacrifice all the other great things that have come from their mass success? Not me. I'll take a less engaging, sometimes dumbed down, 2 hour film for the fifty plus hours of genuinely great television Disney+ subsequently came out with any day.
The Great Pissing and Moaning
July 8th, 2023
The year is 2012 and I am reading perhaps one of my favorite Star Wars comics of all time, Knights of the Old Republic. I've got KOTOR II booted up on the shitty dell computer in the corner of my room, and life is pretty much peaking. I remember walking down to the corner store where I used to live to buy some junk food I'm sure and very clearly I can remember the little radio they kept behind the counter which was suspiciously always tuned in to NPR. It wasn't even a headline, it was just an blurb really, almost said in passing: "Disney to buy Lucasfilm for 4 billion". I'm sure for the majority of those that just so happened to be tuned in (old people probably) it didn't even register, it wasn't important; for me, though, I was interested. For the last two years I had been combing through the Star Wars canon, now Legends Continuity, absorbing it in unhealthy amounts. From the Hyperspace Wars, to the Old Republic, to the Yuuzhan Vong War, I couldn't finish comics and books fast enough it seemed. On the way home from that store I remember thinking, this has to be great right? George Lucas had made it pretty much obvious that he really didn't want to make more movies, and it looked like the only thing that was really of substance in the last few years was the Clone Wars tv series and the Old Republic MMORPG which the shitty dell couldn't even run :( so sad. My first thought was, there is no way Disney is going to spend 4 billion and not make a movie. Seemed like good news to me. Keeping in mind the canon wasn't pissed on until 2014. I was optimistic buuut as I came to find out, I was among a very small minority.
That night I pulled up the 'pedia on the shit dell to find that it wasn't going over well. To their credit, the naysayers from the beginning we're very right - some of them anyway. The canon would suffer and they called it before the deal was even settled. And for some of these guys, they had put a lot of time and effort into keeping this shit straight. And their was a lot of shit. Lots and lots of shit. And I admit that I also got kind of butt hurt too. I loved Heir to the Empire, KOTOR, Han Solo Trilogy, Battlefront II Classic Campaign. It kind of sucked to think that all of that wouldn't count anymore and because I've always considered myself a completionist. And what am I supposed to do start over?. Hell, even the Clone Wars tv series it seemed was on the chopping block. Although fortunately it was one of the few surviving pieces. But when I really thought about it, I realized maybe it wasn't all that bad. Because, while their was some really really good stuff in there, damn was there a huge bag of crap in the canon too (See Glove of Darth Vader conveniently linked in last weeks post). Not to mention it was a mess, an actual dumpster fire in certain areas. You had all kinds of plot holes, and write outs, and just straight nonsense. I'd say for about a week I was sad with Disney and what everyone was predicting with the canon, but then I realized the possibilities.
Yeah we lost Thrawn, and Revan but what did we get in return? Well we got Thrawn back, in a much more nuanced way too! And I'm believing for Revan to grace the stories once again. But we also got The Mandalorian, Doctor Aphra, Kal Kestis, Rogue One, Obi-Wan spinoff (WAKE UP PEOPLE), a more streamlined Tarkin, the Aftermath trilogy, live action Ahsoka, Galaxy's Edge (the actual place you can go to), more Clone Wars seasons, and look, maybe you don't like some of that stuff, but this is way better than the alternative. If Disney never acquired Lucasfilms, we would only have what we had in 2012. And if by some miracle, someone came along and made another Star Wars movie, do you really think they would have given a single shit about the precious canon. I think we all know that the answer to that is probably not. Say what you want about the Sequel trilogy, I'm sure that's the argument that most will take up, but three movies are better than none in my opinion - and none is most likely what we would have gotten. Shit all over Disney all you want, but they have to make money and making those movies more marketable to audiences who aren't Star Wars fans is how they have to go about it. It's how they make a billion dollars a movie so they can make shit like Andor and all the other aforementioned crap possible. But I'll gripe about that next week... the short of it is this. There was a great pissing and moaning when the canon was cut. Especially on Wookiepedia. I saw it back then before I was ever editing, and it was from a lot of people. And frankly, I think it was misguided. Because what came out when the dust settled was more coherence, more adherence, and an actual standard of canon.
Maybe you haven't been here that long. Hell, most of the time even I've been just the casual observer. But Disney buying Lucasfilm was the best thing that could have happened to Star Wars. It was necessary. Otherwise, George Lucas would have passed on in due time and so would any chance that I would get to take my kids to a theater to see a new Star Wars movie. There were those who said that Wookiepedia wouldn't survive and that their would be no more moderators and editors that would be willing to work the new canon. But here we are nearly ten years later and this place is thriving; and it's better than it ever was. Now for years and years to come, Star Wars has a future and that's something that I have a good feeling about.
The State of It,
June 30th, 2023
Okay, it's been a hot minute since I've opened up the butt pain that is HTML source editing, but when I had finally gotten around to restoring the Clinic on my Wookiepedia profile page from inactivity once more (I think this makes twice now ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ but who's counting.) I was reminded how much I used to care, and for no good reason, right??. I can still remember editing the Nukapedia webpage all those years ago and getting reported because I was linking everything just for the edit count (I didn't know any better). Flash forward to a few years later and I was fleshing out vast articles for the newly released New Vegas. In those days (and I realize I'm showing my age here) I always imagined Wookiepedia as this sort of Holy Grail. It seemed like I needed to be the best of the best - for some reason - to even just look at the source for an article here. But after the great "pissing and moaning" that occurred when Disney bought Lucas out and then raised the proverbial axe to the neck of the continuity; everyone held their breath. The Force Awakens teaser was revealed and soon after the Legends Continuity. Quite a few sniveling editors (and moderators) felt like their life work was ruined as if their editing on this page had been an extant dissertation - Spoiler alert it wasn't. There was now a brave new galaxy far far away for us to explore, and one that no longer had The Glove of Darth Vader. Yeah... I'll link that one below. But I'll talk more about The Great Pissing and Moaning next week.
Point is, there was a need here for people who would be willing to look at the new continuity and embrace it. And so I hitched up my late 2010's dell computer, created the anonymity known as DoctorMax and soon found myself joining groups to focus on Clone Wars, obscure short stories, and cleaning up stubs. We didn't even know what "years" things were taking place in those days for the new canon. Do you know how many Clone Troopers died in the Clone Wars Tv series? Alot. And when we were finally gifted a calendar in which to base these events on and the "years", you can imagine what a pain in the ass it was to add EVERY FRIGGIN DEATH. I'm kidding, it wasn't that bad. But the point is, this community is so much more refined and has better writers, and editors than it ever has, and Disney has shown no signs of pumping the brakes when it comes to putting this stuff out, and I've never been more excited to be back doing anything. I'm by no means a veteran but I totally just nailed italicizing that on the first try and it's been literal years. So, yeah, a week or two getting back in the saddle I'll be out there pissing off a moderator in no time.