Stuff

[drakyndra]

Eeep.

This was going to be a post where I did that wish-list whatsit for the Christmas exchanges that everyone is setting up now, before wandering around my flist and finding people to swap cards/pressies with, but The Sick thing has made me grumpy and less focused. Instead of doing actual sensible things, all I want to do is wrap myself in blankets, have something hot to eat, and read Star Wars fanfic. Particularly with the weather going mental lately - hail and all, WTF?

So, that's been put off a little longer, alas. The computer seems to be being a bit slow to update to the next lot of broadband, too. Odd, that.

In any case, my Awesome Awesome thing arrived. More about this later on, perhaps.

Oh, and mina_de_malfois has been updated, so more reading goodness. Definitely check out the newest footnotes, m'kay?

On the subject of reading matter: Anyone up to rec me some more Star Wars fic? I haven't the faintest idea why, but I am drifting in that fandomly direction again.

Comments

[xwingace]

I won't say that I like everything (I don't), but Tim Zahn has always been remarkably good at knitting stuff back together into decent stories, and I've always liked Wedge and Corran (hello, username...), so that puts me right for the X-Wing stories.

I discovered those books when I was on a high of the movies, having just discovered them (this was before the special editions, I'm reasonably sure), and I just devoured anything I could get my hands on. So it all got integrated into my perception of canon. Of course, that only lead to more disappointment when the prequels came out...

I can understand the desire to keep to movie-only, but... No scratch that, I can't, not really. Sorry. Parts of the EU are too ingrained in me. I don't think most of the books really contradict movie canon, though (one of the few things they *don't* contradict), at least not that of Episodes 4, 5, and 6.

If you want the prequels to hang together as well, though, then I suppose you'll have to condemn the version of events as described in the EU books because they pretty much contradict them. But then exactly the stories that directly contradict the prequels are actually much better *stories* than the prequels themselves...

Right, that was far too long. Moving on:

That's mind bendy in all the wrong ways, srsly.

Yeah, I know. But it's still mind bendy, no?

My intarweb claim to fame

I thought that was 'Doctor Who Killed Snarry'...?

XWA

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

I didn't even know there were Star Wars spinoff books until after the first or second of the PT came out (until then, my only real involvement had been watching the movies). I was only, what, 12 when TPM came out? Something like that. I suppose I was the other way round - for all the flaws, the first one or two of the prequels were too engrained for me. But of the books, I think the X-Wing ones are rather fun. Zahn... let's just say that he writes good stories, but I don't entirely agree with the direction he takes some things. Mara Jade is one of my EU issues.

And one can have multiple intarweb claims to fame, I suppose...

[xwingace]

Huh. I'm not that much older than you, am I? I recall going to TPM with my current BF (who was also my BF then, I just wasn't ready to admit it yet...) I must have been about 16?

At that point I'd been reading SW books for at least two years, having discovered them sometime during my second year in the local equivalent of High School. Starting with Tim Zahn's trilogy.

(I recall surprising my 2nd year English teacher by asking if I was allowed to read one of Zahn's books as part of our assigned reading. He was mainly surprised because the book was so thick. Assigned reading in foreign languages had a set number of books/pages, but generally the teachers didn't care so much about the literary value of the text so long as it wasn't aimed at three-year-olds. Most people picked the books with the least number of pages instead of stuff they might enjoy.)

It must make for a very different experience indeed, finding those books *after* the movies, and I can understand the sentiments then of not being able to make them quite fit, and preferring the movies in the end.

What exactly is your issue with Mara? She could be seen as Sueish, but there are other SW writers much more guilty of *that* sin, even for Luke himself. (Even Michael Stackpole with Corran. Objectively, especially from I, Jedi onwards, Corran's a Stu. I still like him, but he's a Stu.) Or is it that the position of 'Emperor's Hand' doesn't really fit with what we know of the Emperor's character?

And one can have as many claims to fame as one can manage, truly.

XWA

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Let me put it this way: I was a girl living on a farm in the middle of nowhere. No-one in my family had any interest in sci-fi whatsoever. The school library didn't have any Star wars books. The town library had a total of three, I think it was - none of which were Zahn's. The only way I could get others, was with inter-library loans. Which cost money, and they still had only a limited selection. I was 17 before I had access to copies I didn't have to pay for, and that was my final year of school, so I didn't have time to read many.

I find the combination of vaguely Sueish, and the Emperor's Hand stuff just rubs me the wrong way. Especially the combination of the two. And I dislike the way she was retconned into RotJ. And I know there are a lot of Sues in the books, which is why for the most part I tend to stay away unless they come highly recommended. (Luke gets a free pass, because he's my woobie.)

But for the most part, it's just the fact that most of the post-RotJ books keep on dragging out the war for so much longer. I know space war saga is a selling point, but in my little idealistic world, I always saw RotJ as pretty much the end of the war, and straight on to rebuilding. But the books kept it on for so much longer... Also, I read fic before I read most of the books. It may have biased my opinion, because certain fics gave me more what I wanted than the books did.

[xwingace]

My access was a little bit better, if only because I had better acces to bookshops (and a lot of that is just down to the fact we're living in very different countries). My family, though not completely uninterested in SF, didn't and doesn't have very many books on the subject, especially not in English. Nor did the libraries (they had those books everyone else picked for their assigned reading). Every SW book I've read, I've paid for. Like I said, I was a bit obsessed.

But it's a very different way to come into contact with the extended universe around the movies (in both EU and fandom senses of the word), definitely.

Mara Jade: The retcon into ROTJ isn't that important, and I'll agree it even strikes me as a bit strange. But I can ignore two lines of dialogue. The rest is indeed down to personal preference and interpretation, and I can't fault you for that.

The War: Yeah, and when they finally do get around to having an actual republic, there's another alien race along! I got bored with the books some way through that scenario, although I did make it up to the one where Corran goes up as the ultimate Stu...

The problem is that it takes real skill to make political infighting interesting if there *isn't* a threat to life going on somewhere. Most of the SW authors just weren't that skilled, especially not in that area. So a 'peaceful' Republic doesn't work that well, storywise. At least not for the large arc.

And if you 'ignore' the large arc, people are going to ask 'but what's happening to the republic, then?

Fanfic can focus on smaller moments, little bits missing from the movies and such more than the books have (while at the same time, in other fics, adressing that larger arc of events, but those can be ignored if you don't want them), and I can see the attraction in that. Even though when I first discovered fanfic, I went straight to those long, involved, destiny of the Republic (EU) fics. I didn't *want* to read the short stuff... I'd have that finished in minutes. I needed hours! Oh, how my fic reading tastes have changed :-)

So yeah. Very different fandom experiences...

XWA

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

I initially got swept in by a few epic AU fics - I still adore Star Wars AUs, because there are so many fascinating ways things can go. And, if you ignore the EU, than post-RotJ fic can do absolutely anything, really, including big epic long fics.

I'm just... I have very little interest in the whole endless wars schtick. I adore the ending to RotJ, and then endless war just felt like it... cheapened it, really. I know it wouldn't just end overnight, but it got to me, really.

And it all got terribly inconsistant, with one author retconning out anothers ideas and everything. And the bloody fact that half the freaking Jedi seemed to turn to the Dark Side at one point or another. So much for "forever will it dominate your destiny"

[xwingace]

(Look, I get the feeling I'm either putting my foot in it repeatedly, or just digging a hole that might get so deep I'll come up next to you, so...)

The Dark Side thing is funny, yes. Then again, there is that cave sequence in ESB that seems to imply that at the very least you'll have to face up to some version of the Dark Side before you're ever able to call yourself a Jedi.

Then again...Luke's Jedi training was very incomplete, so he probably wouldn't have been very effective in preventing others from going over to the Dark Side (or to stop himself from going over, even, though I haven't read that one). Also, even Darth Vader was redeemed at the end.

I had a point in there somewhere...

XWA

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

I just find it a little exasperating that it was a fucking huge deal that Vader came back from the Dark Side, and the fact that half the Jedi Order in later times seems to be goin through the revolving door in the Force with little or no consequences.

In the end, the EU is just another set of fic to me, really, and not my favourite - though it does have it's moments.

[xwingace]

You do have a point there.

This would be the point (if I shouldn't have mentioned it sooner) to mention that I discovered fanfic (in general) much later than I discovered the EU. I only really got onto the internet in a major way when I got to Uni. At which point I'd been reading these books for four years already. Up 'till then, I had no idea really that this 'fan fiction' thing existed, and I'd bought into this 'official' fic.

It does have its moments, and at the very least it's always properly spelled, formatted and with correct grammar. :-)

XWA