EU novel verse broke a canon rule of the OT of "you're not bound by destiny." And yet Luke of all people was browbeating his son, grandson and great grandson with you will become a Jedi as it is your destiny and fuck your free will to choose otherwise.
Luke isn't lecturing Cade as a ghost about having to fulfill his destiny or whetever. It's because Cade is inadvertently creating more problems by running away from them. Which is a constant point of immaturity for Cade, and ultimately bleeds into harming other people around him...as my next coverage will showcase at great length. Also, as I've mentioned on this thread below, not every member of the Skywalker/Solo lineage is forged with some galaxy-altering destiny in mind. Some don't even possess the Force.
Ania Solo is alive at the same time as Cade, and she's just a run-of-the-mill scoundrel, with zero Force Affinity, and whose only "destiny" is to keep herself alive with a massive target painted on her back.
Nevermind EU novel verse long before Furloni ever tainted it, centered mostly on the Solos, Skywalker and their close associates. To where one might as well replace all of the Star Wars soundtracks with "It's a Small World After All" on infinite repeat.
...you say this, but what about the entire narrative corner dedicated to the characters of the
X-Wing series? The countless books dedicated to them, or the narrative real estate in every subsequent series dedicated to Corran Horn (who literally appeared in every major event through
Crucible)?
What about the long character journey of characters like Tahiri Veila, who
outlives the Solo Child she was written to be a love interest for, and embarks on a tumultuous arc involving wartime trauma, personality disorder, betrayal and eventually redemption? Most, if not all of that, is centered squarely around her, and served as an ongoing subplot for nearly eighteen books.
And then you have the new characters like Vestara Khai, introduced as late as
Fate of the Jedi, whose narrative utility isn't just to be a counterpart to Luke's son, but an exploration of cultural indoctrination, family abuse, and paving good intentions with morally dubious acts--all of which involves the authors getting inside
her head, and reserving her some personal drama, rather than making her play second fiddle to the drama of the Skywalkers.
I can agree that the main Solo and Skywalker family unit occupied a good chunk of the main stakes of the late EU novels (which is to be expected, considering Del Rey literally had the novels locked down as the
exclusive place to publish new adventures with these characters, superseding both LucasArts and Dark Horse), but the authors were very tasteful in allowing other, newer characters to enjoy a healthy portion of personal drama and stakes reserved for them exclusively. If anything, SW was constantly growing in the novels, folding in new characters with personal journeys at breakneck speed. As someone who's dabbled in the post-Endor EU in its entirety, I can assure you that I wasn't reading out of personal investment in the old heroes.
It was investment in the new ones--which Del Rey and the authors were cranking out constantly, and handling with reverance and nuance that neither Disney nor Filoni ever spare for their OC's.
Unless you'd like to regale us all with the kind of meaningful journeys Finn and Ahsoka went through.
It's really not some great secret that I'm misinformed on the post Hand of Thrawn stuff. I've said again and again that I was a kid when I was reading that stuff, and so of course my memory is incredibly foggy, really only jogged by the occasional wookiepedo lookup on other things that overflow into that.
So why are you commenting on the quality of stories where Caedus and "Space Devil" exists when you haven't read them?
This is like me going into the comics thread, and shitting all over Grant Morrison or Alan Moore's work, only to be confronted by people who
have read them and defend myself with a sheepish utterance of: "w-well, I haven't actually
read them, I just read a synopsis on Wikipedia. That's basically the same thing, right?"
I'd get laughed out of the thread, and rightfully so.
I'll tell you a secret though: I don't like Black Fleet Crisis either, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. As much as I like Callista Ming, I also understand that her trilogy was also a bit of a filler arc; I just think the books are fun.
I'll return
your secret with another secret: books like
Black Fleet and
Darksaber make up 2/3rds of the 90's era of SW publishing. So, if you axe the subpar or shit books from this period, you're left with., what?
The Thrawn Trilogy, the
X-Wing novels, and
The Hand of Thrawn Duology. That's a microscopic selection of novels, and a painfully short span of continuity. So it's hard for me to take opinions on the EU seriously when a lot of it is colored by nostalgia, and the dismissal of further content is rooted in misremembrance, inexperience, and Wookiepedo articles.
And no, this conversation isn't just about what you find or don't find fun: you literally stated that the EU novels as a whole "should have ended after
The Hand of Thrawn Trilogy". Now, I expect that kind of statement to be backed by more than the five books you read from the Bantam Era, because that accounts for less than 5% of the EU at large.
The Del Rey novels consist of the next 95%, which is why the notion of the entire continuity ending eight years into publishing is so bizarre, and needs more credibility than "I read on Wookiepedia that the
Legacy comics are stinky."
I don't think the Vong books are fun, I don't think Dark Nest is fun, I really don't think GCW2 etc is fun, and what little I know about Legacy makes it seem ridiculous.
You haven't read the last two, and frequently mischaracterize or get shit wrong about the first two. You'll have to forgive me if I find your consensus on quality dubious at best, when you can't even remember most of the books you're critiquing, and the rest come from a cursory glance on Wookiepedia. Not exactly an "informed" opinion.
As an aside, I found all of the post-Hand of Thrawn books immensely fun, even
Dark Nest. I'd take a whole book of Han and Leia engaging in Starship Troopers antics, standing back-to-back and reducing Gorog forces into heaps of insect gore. Because if any part of those books are legitimately good, it's the fight scenes.
Which is more than I can say for a lot of the Bantam-era books, despite boasting brisker pacing and some better fleet battles (which don't interest me in the slightest).
I'm here to have fun. I don't care how you have your fun, so don't get weird at me for answering a question.
Hey, I dunno about you, but I'm having all sorts of fun picking through your bewildering posts. It's like engaging in a debate with some hobo on the side of the road, babbling about things he doesn't quite understand or only half-remembers, but gets everything so spectacularly wrong that I can't get help but keep listening.
I appreciate your corrections, though, and I'll not be so flip about my dismissal of the things I choose not to acknowledge in the future. Except the Disney stuff.
You can be as flippant or blunt as you like about the EU. Lots of people do that on this thread (fuck, just take a gander each time the "Imperials: Racist or Not?" or "Mando" debates pop up in this thread. No one's afraid to be candid about SW around here, least of all me).
But having any credibility when talking about the EU, and not being laughed at like an amateur, is kind of vital when making big claims about it. Especially around people who have actually read it.
No one goes to the comic store or RPG forum, croons a bunch of misinformation, and then acts surprised when they get dogpiled by other autists in the hobby. Welcome to fandoms. I hope you enjoy your stay.
