Tag Archives: column

Star Wars, Marvel, and the Multiverse

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In the Star Wars fandom, there’s always some war of words brewing between fans. We’ve seen the Ship Wars, the Prequel Trilogy consternation, the Clone Wars skirmishes. One that has been on slow simmer for years is cold war between Expanded Universe Completists and Film Purists. Countless words have been written defending the merits of one and tearing down another.

To say things have blown up since the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney and the announcement of the Sequel Trilogy would be an understatement. There seems to be a belief among the most ardent of Star Wars fans that the Expanded Universe and the Sequel Trilogy cannot exist simultaneously. One has to vanish in order for the other to thrive.

To borrow a phrase from Nanci earlier this week, I say bullshit.

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The Clone Wars Ending and Silver Linings

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tcw_s5logo_smIf the rumors and reports are to be believed, The Clone Wars has aired its final episode. What was billed as merely the season five finale has, unfortunately, become the series finale. Understandably, people are upset. With the promise of a sixth season that was nearly finished with its production and the talks of a seventh on the horizon, fans, perhaps justifiably, feel as if they have just been prematurely robbed of something they love.

There’s really no way to try and completely diminish that if this is true*, it’s lousy news and incredibly disappointing for many TCW fans. There was little reason or the show to simply end in this manner, particularly if the reports that season six were almost finished are true. For Disney and Lucasfilm, it makes sense to have Star Wars on the air in some capacity until at least 2015 when the first of the sequel films hits the silver screen. For Cartoon Network, it makes sense to be able to make at least some money off of the finished season six episodes. Failing to air these episodes (if they are actually done) is an unfortunate and seemingly irrational outcome, but it wouldn’t be the first time Hollywood has behaved in a less than rational fashion.

*As my own note, I’m still not entirely convinced that this is the case. Even if The Clone Wars officially ends, I think there’s a distinct possibility it appears on another network as a re-branded show. At the very least, I just don’t see them permanently tabling all the work they’ve put into season six.

Still, as much as this may hurt if all of this proves to be true, there are some silver linings for TCW fans. To the jump.

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Tosche Station’s 15 Best Things in the Expanded Universe

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Last time around, we shamelessly ripped off io9’s piece and discussed our own list of the 12 Worst Things in the Expanded Universe. After that, you may be surprised to find out that we actually do love the EU. Dearly. That’s why we couldn’t quite neck this list down to an identical twelve selections.

Without further ado, our list (in no particular order) of the fifteen best things the Expanded Universe has to offer. To the jump!

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On True Fans, Gatekeepers, and What is Real Star Wars

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be-authenticNow that we’ve had some time for that to settle in, let’s do a rambling, winding follow-up*.

*But everything you write is a rambling, winding follow-up, you say! I’m not going to dispute that.

Just what is real Star Wars?  That is, what counts? What’s okay to invest time, money, and emotional attachment? If you want to stop reading at the end of this paragraph, the short answer is whatever resonates with you counts. It doesn’t matter if your preference lies in the films, television, books, comics, toys, games, Disney rides, or even fan works. There’s no singular right answer or a universally accepted truth as to what is worthy of your own personal fandom. In other words, if you enjoy it, it counts.

Still with me? Let’s have a chat about gatekeepers under the jump.

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The Sequel Trilogy Isn’t Real Star Wars

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star-wars-episode-vii-logoSequel trilogy fans need to grow up.

All the excitement, all the speculation, all the angsting. All for something that really doesn’t matter. It’s absolutely baffling why so much thought and effort is being put into something so meaningless. It kills me to see people wasting their time on all of this because, come on, let’s be perfectly honest.

The sequel trilogy isn’t real Star Wars.

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Continuity and Perspective in the Expanded Universe

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I just don’t care about continuity like I used to.

The fiery passion I had for it years ago isn’t there anymore. I used to scour over Wookieepedia to try and see how things pieced together. How did this book tie in with that comic, or how did that obscure background character from that film work in this book? There’s a part of me that still really enjoys seeing the minutia of the universe fit together, but over the last few years I’ve noticed that my insistence that everything mesh perfectly together has more or less vanished.

I got worn out fuming over how The Clone Wars was treading on the Expanded Universe. I got tired arguing about how the prequel films trounced on the ethics and philosophy of post-Return of the Jedi  novels. At some point, I realized that the only thing that mattered to me anymore was that I was reading a compelling narrative. For a long time I had been prioritizing continuity over the story and it had gotten in the way of my enjoyment of the Expanded Universe.

While I may not be a continuity die-hard anymore, I know it matters to many fans. It still matters to me to a certain degree. That’s the great thing about fandom, because there are countless ways one can be a fan of something. We all weigh certain things differently.

However, because it’s very important for a lot of people and still matters to me somewhat, we need to sit down and have a discussion. Continuity fans, there’s some behavior and expectations that need to change.

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Rethinking Romance

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I read a lot—at least by any average person’s standards. Sure, there are plenty of people in fandom who can put me to shame, but I showed Brian my pinboard a while ago, and he commented that I’d read more fic in the past year than he’s read in his life—and that was just the fic. And I read everything from modern literary fiction to fanfiction.

So, while I’m certainly not qualified to comment on a lot of things about literature and stories, I do feel comfortable talking about why I read, and why I think a lot of people do. It’s an escape, certainly—last night I was unhappy and I immediately went after charming short stories that I knew would cheer me up while distracting me from my own life—but it’s also a reflection of the human condition, pretentious as that sounds. Stories are interesting because the people in them are interesting, because they have lives and struggles and triumphs and failures.

And here’s the thing I think we forget sometimes: romance and love are huge parts of the human condition. People fall in love every day, at parties and jobs and while walking their dogs. They also fall in love during wars and natural disasters, and they will continue to fall in love after the world ends. Girls fall in love and boys fall in love; teenagers and thirtysomethings and senior citizens all fall in love; deaf people and blind people and smart people and ignorant people fall in love. Sometimes the love is requited and sometimes it isn’t.

(More under the jump)

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Natasha Romanoff Is Better Than You

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There’s a scene in The Avengers where Black Widow is fighting Hawkeye. He’s being mindcontrolled by Loki and is trying to kill her; she just wants to incapacitate him. A few minutes before this fight scene, she hurt her ankle and was visibly limping when she was fleeing the Hulk. She volunteered to go after Hawkeye, despite being understandably shaken by her encounter, and the fact that she and Hawkeye clearly have an emotional bond.

Oh, and the fight? She won. And she didn’t win because Hawkeye was distracted or something happened that got his attention or he was wounded from a previous scuffle. She won because she’s better. There was no reason for her not to—Hawkeye is an archer, not a hand-to-hand expert. If it had been a contest of marksmanship, he would have won, and rightly so. But it wasn’t, and she won by simply being a better fighter.

The best part, though, was probably when he looked up at her, after being hit in the head, and said “Tasha?” A lot of people would have stopped fighting then—I probably would have done—but Natasha Romanoff is a trained spy, and she just clocks him in the head again. It’s the choice of someone whose job is to be suspicious of other people, regardless of what they might mean to her.

This sums up a huge part of why I love Black Widow—Natasha Romanoff—so much: she is a professional and she acts like one.

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Star Wars Needs To Learn From Korra

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Meet Korra. She’s awesome.

I honestly hadn’t planned to chime in on this.

By now I imagine most of you are aware of the Great Gender Kerfluffle of 2012 that cropped up in the Star Wars fandom over the last few weeks with much being said about the need for more well-developed female characters in this franchise. Emily chimed in last week and eloquently put things into perspective. Frankly, people far more knowledgeable and better with wordy-like-thingamawhatsits than I am said what needed to be said. Still, as I was reading through things on the sidelines, I ran into one comment in the Club Jade post that got my gears turning. I can’t even remember what exactly it was or who posted it, but it set off a bit of something in my head that needed to be addressed. Well. Three things, specifically. A trio of arguments that I’ve seen recycled numerous times during the recent dustup and over the years.

While I was turning these arguments over in my head, another thought hit me. There’s a television show, a current one, that has addressed these points that were troubling me. Then it all clicked.

Star Wars has a lot to learn from The Legend of Korra.

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Retro Review: Darksaber Part II

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For those of you that have looked at my reviews in the past, you know that I have a propensity for hyperbole.  And snark.  Lots of snark.  Kevin J. Anderson is a writer that I’ve thrown a lot of flak at in the past.  Really, he’s been one of my favorite targets, and I’ll say this, he really does seem to bear a good bit of it.  At a time not so far back, I’ve referred to him as being a kind of nemesis to me.

But to be honest, that was before I read some of the SWEU material that I was steered around the first time I was going through the Bantam/Spectra era books, which has been a long time ago.  You know that the last review I did was for Children of the Jedi in a series of posts that went on for a bit too long.  Barbara Hambly is likely not as bad a writer as she came across in that book, but it really seemed like she was pretty far outside her wheelhouse.

That book gave me a big dose of perspective for the concept of bad Star Wars.  I had held that Anderson’s books were bad Star Wars up to a point, but something else has come to my attention.  There’s a difference between bad Star Wars and not good Star Wars.  Children of the Jedi was bad.  Darksaber isn’t bad Star Wars; in fact it fits in with my usual prerequisites for being pretty good, but it has a pretty long list of bad features that throw it out of that.

I can say something good about Kevin J. Anderson up front.  I swear, just watch.  The Jedi Academy Trilogy established some very important aspects of the Expanded Universe at large.  I didn’t like it.  I didn’t like the way it was written, but for anyone who is coming into the EU from the start of the Bantam/Spectra era, it’s pretty much required reading.  For anybody who is wondering where the Academy came from, it’s important.  Let’s be honest, if you’re looking at anything except the core of the New Republic Era, anything later pretty much encourages you to read it.  The characters and concepts that get to be important later on have their sources there.

Now, you don’t want to read this; it isn’t the funny bit.  Me talking about the stuff that’s wrong–that’s what you want.  So, here’s where we stand, I’m going to break this down into just two parts, I’m not running a page by page analysis, you’re going to get the problems at large as I see them.  For me, Darksaber has two fronts of problems.  There’s the distinct storytelling issues and there’s the technical issues.

For today’s post, we’re going to focus on the latter of the two.  Hit the jump to see the story elements of this book that crawl under my skin.

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