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Comments
>Toonami coming back.
For once I actually regret getting rid of cable.
^^ Me, although I've been inactive lately.
chivalrykeep.tumblr
come back, alex
we're talking about your fave subject
western comics
you love western comics right
follow'd
anyone else
i have one
but i pretend it doesn't exist
and i forgot what it even is
> I mean the only class tangentially related to mathematics (arithmancy) is an optional class.
If only they knew just how powerful calculator mages are.
wut
The "calculator" class in Final Fantasy Tactics. I hear it's practically a game breaker if you set it up right.
you monster
you have no room to be calling me a monster, tumblr-user
join the tumblr collective
resistance is futile
^^never
So, I'm reading a thread on The Old Republic's forum.
This thread posits the question; is Star Wars canon over-explained?
Discuss.
As I like applying mythology storytelling philosophy to everything, I feel that Star Wars canon should be approached as such (IE: All stories are true and at the same time, none of them are. All that matters is what you enjoy and what you care about)
I'm pretty sure this can be boiled down to "fuck yes". Star Wars canon is oversaturated with itself and is now far, far removed from the endearing fairy tale that was the OT.
On the other hand, without this oversaturation, we would not have games such as Knights of the Old Republic, which are great games in and of themselves, and are made better through their connections to Star Wars canon.
Yes, but it doesn't make the oversaturation complaint any less valid. It just means there are collateral benefits.
also malk no malking
I'd say yes, in that there's a looooot of shit there, but there's also some really great stuff too. And nobody's forcing you to pay attention to the dumb stuff, I guess.
also
>reading the tor forums
in a bit of a wild tangent: if there is a thing I miss about TvT, it's being Obi Juan Kenobi.
that sockpuppet was fun.
But if there are benefits, then does that not mean that the oversaturation is not so clear-cut? I mean, it takes away some of the allure from the original trilogy, but it also brings us some other great stories of its' own.
where else will i go if i want to read really stupid opinions
What makes the KotOR games work on the level they do, though, is that they take the framework of Star Wars. I went into those games having seen the films and having played the last two Jedi Knight games -- that was the entire extent of my experience with Star Wars.
My experience with KotOR didn't suffer at all for it, because they explained themselves in context of what they were. And that's all they needed to be. They were self-contained and focused. Contrast that with stuff like, say, The Force Unleashed, which inserts itself just prior to the OT storyline with things that really don't belong. Darth Vader having another apprentice who is a clone, who can move Star Destroyers with the Force and goes on massive killing sprees and so on and so forth.
With the recent talk about JRPGs and assumed knowledge, I realised that Star Wars works on the same basis. The Jedi Knights are good, 'cause they're knight-samurai, and those are good guys in the stories. Vader is the black knight, Leia is a princess, Han Solo's a crook with a heart of gold and all those cliches. But those cliches help contextualise the story, because we know the general shape of things even while we're being flung into a galaxy far, far away.
For the most part, the Star Wars EU has been adding lore that doesn't really make strong contributions, more or less flying in the face of that initial simplicity and accessibility. Lightsabers were once just laser swords, but now they apparently have some kind of gyro-whatever element to their technology that makes them difficult to use for non-Force wielders (despite the fact that Han used one just fine to cut up the Taun-Taun), and the Sith (a term which didn't exist in the OT) have a massive history and what we see in the OT is the conclusion of a long-lasting pattern. Except it's not really a conclusion, because the EU repeats the formula.
I feel as though a lot of what was special in the OT was trivialised by the EU, so I mostly tend to ignore all that extra stuff. It just weighs the whole thing down, from the lore to the fandom. I want to see space knights ally with space cowboys to fight space wizards while having space dogfights and saving space princesses. And that OT was pretty much that -- pulp sci-fi brought to a new level of accessibility, relevance and quality.
i am not reading that until you give me a tl;dr version.
True, I suppose, but what I'm getting at is that stories like KOTOR and TOR are not really the norm in terms of the EU.
star wars is simple and endearing
the eu is complex and pretentious
Yes, that is true. From what I'm aware, most of it is... mediocre. Stories like that of Revan and Kyle Katarn are few and far between.
Vader was referred to as a Dark Lord of the Sith in both the original novels and one of the scripts for the original moves
Although the term wasn't actually named in the movies, no.
As to the rest of your points- a lot of the details are, I'll agree, unnecessary and don't really add anything to the story. Your lightsaber example doesn't add... anything, really, for example.
However, things like the expansion of the Sith Empire, the history of the Jedi Order, and how both have changed over the centuries, is something that interests me greatly.
For example; and here's a little detail from The Old Republic that I really like; in The Old Republic, the Empire uses the symbol that the Republic used in the original films. Why? We don't know. Which makes it obvious that shit got real at some point.
Well yeah it's fuck all big. But the fun thing is you can pick and choose which bits you pay attention too. Like the KoToR games and comics. Simple premises with Revan, The Exile and Zayne running around with friends trying to stop bad guys and do things along the way like find the Star Maps or clear their names. Or the Zahn books, which do a good job of hitting the tone and scope of the movies. Or the Rogue Squadron books where they drop the focus on space wizards and give us team books about misfit fighter pilots. Or the Crimson Empire comics for just over the top asskicking hijinks.
The rest is forgettable and can be skipped. Although some parts of the New Jedi Order were cool because the Yuuzhan Vong were like the first race of aliens in Star Wars that were fleshed out enough not to seem like humans wearing silly costumes with odd traditions.
Really the EU falters a lot when it focuses too much on the characters from the OT and their family's instead of branching off to new stuff. And a lot of that new stuff set in different eras fucks up by focusing on Force antics at the detriment to the plot.
Bad things existing in a shared universe does not negate the good. I mean I could never be a fan of superhero comics if I let the existence of bad things detract from the good things. I just take things separately and pick and choose what I want to care about.
My dad wanted to sit down and watch a history special on the mythological influences of LOTR. It was pretty awkward on my part as my dad was pretending the row we had last night never happened.
That aside, the special was pretty terrible. It, of course, ignored non-western influences on Tolkien and it got a whoooooole bunch of shit wrong (they say there are 'direct parallels' to the ending of the Hobbit and the ending of Beowulf. If they mean 'they both had a dragon' I agree with them.)
I thought that was because the Empire comes from the Republic.
A big part of my issue is the way these things are told, because we're typically given the answers at some point rather than much being left up in the air. Sometimes there's also a stupid amount of detail, like "protosabers" that needed a power pack on a cord to operate, which again contributes nothing. And the lightsaber combat styles, which are completely alex no alexing alex no alexing
The point is that much of the EU stuff just falls outside the tone and style of the OT, and Star Wars more and more is beginning to resemble contemporary high fantasy in space rather than old school fairy tales in space. And even most fantasy fans move on from Dragonlance and forget about it, but no-one forgets the tale of Robin Hood or King Arthur.