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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4423 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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I, Jedi

So, looking up the AI summaries for these books, this one says that "The story is unique for being the only Star Wars novel told from the first-person perspective of a character not seen in the films." That's uh, damning with faint praise. The others seem to be about either Luke going off to fight "the Empire Reborn" or him going off to fight a new big threat to the galaxy. "Luke Skywalker is guided to Bakura by a vision of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who warns him that the fate of the galaxy is at stake. "

I admit I haven't really read much of the star wars books or comics, but they don't exactly seem to be taking it in bold new directions.

That description is also untrue.

I feel like I'm only going to have to say this more and more in the future, but do not trust AI summaries about anything, especially not niche subjects. Come on, if you want to know what I, Jedi is about, the Wook has a detailed plot summary right there.

  • Truce at Bakura has the Resistance and Empire join together to fight off space dinosaurs that powered their machines with the tortured souls of harvested force-sensitive species, and really played into the Jedi as warrior-monks in the western-religious sense. Only mention of the Emperor is that he sold out the titular planet; Anakin Skywalker shows up as a ghost looking for forgiveness... and Leia tells him to fuck off. It was such a bold new direction that a lot of writers pretty carefully tiptoed around the whole thing for about a decade after.
  • Crystal Star is so weird that the only other EU book to mention it is only did so to glass the main planet involved. Weird cult sacrifices people to summon an extra-dimensional entity. Pretty sure it started out as a Star Trek novel and got lost somewhere. Not good, but definitely nothing like any movie.
  • I, Jedi focuses on an ex-cop-turned smuggler Force Sensitive working undercover to track down his disappeared wife and facing off against a pirate gang, while he Forrest Gumps his way through a bunch of post-Endor events. It's... actually a bit of a fix fic for the (tbf bad and very Empire Builds Another Superweapon) Jedi Academy Trilogy, so it's not the most accessible for people who haven't read others parts of the Expanded Universe, but it's a major point getting away from a lot of the trite Rebellion V Empire and Big Superweapons Go stuff.
  • Rogue Squadron (and the imo even better Wraith Squadron) books are a bit of a The Expendables: the stories are military fiction with high body-counts and more focus on intrigue. They're set against the Empire in most books, but the commanders are drastically different, and the closest thing to a superweapon is a not-very-special biological weapon more notable for its political impact.
  • New Jedi Order set a New Republic - which was mostly at peace with mostly-run-out-of-evil-people Empire since the end of The Hand of Thrawn series - against extragalactic invaders who were both religious fundamentalists and cut off completely from the force. About the only Original Series bit is the increasing use of planet-destroying superweapons, but that's a bit like complaining about oversized guns in Warhammer 40k given the topic focus.
  • Legacy of the Force falls after that, with the son of Han and Leia facing a force vision of the future holding that the only way to protect the galaxy and his daughter was to turn to the Dark Side and become a Sith Lord. Controversial, but there were some interesting bits: Jacen's a byronic hero/villain who genuinely struggles against the easy routes of power and hate and pride, and it's not a battle he can ever win... and then there's an Evil Bigger Badder Plain Evil Guy.

These aren't always good (I really dislike both NJO and LOTF for pretty dumb canned heat), and the ones that are good aren't always original (The Thrawn Trilogy's a send-up of the very 'Empire Reborn' stuff that you're criticizing and has to invoke it to deconstruct it, Wraith Squadron has a few comedic bits that are basically Down Periscope In Space). Sometimes they're even just plain weird: I'm not recommending Darksaber when I say it's the best Kevin James Anderson work, but it actually does pretty a good breakdown of why the Empire's whole philosophy is so fucked up even if it's so deep in Bathos that there are Austin Powers jokes.

So, looking up the AI summaries for these books, this one says that "The story is unique for being the only Star Wars novel told from the first-person perspective of a character not seen in the films." That's uh, damning with faint praise.

That is a pretty terrible summary of I, Jedi so you should probably not listen to whatever other summaries that tool gave you. The pitch for that book was that it took a character, Corran Horn (the one not in the movies at all that your summary mentions) who was popular from previous books, and wove him into an existing (well liked) book's story in a way that felt reasonably natural. Think something like the Back To The Future 2 scenes where they are playing around the events of the first movie, that is kinda what that book does.

There are also lots of characters in the expanded universe books who aren't in the movies (kind of by necessity), as well as characters who are technically in the movies (e.g. Wedge Antilles) but who aren't real characters and get fleshed out almost entirely by the books. So it's definitely not noteworthy that this particular book centers around a character not from the movies.

The others seem to be about either Luke going off to fight "the Empire Reborn" or him going off to fight a new big threat to the galaxy. "Luke Skywalker is guided to Bakura by a vision of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who warns him that the fate of the galaxy is at stake. "

I mean, it's heroic fantasy. What do you want them to do? The genre is kind of defined by people going off to fight larger than life threats. You seem to have this idea that to be good, a new entry needs to go in a bold new direction, but that would in my opinion make it a terrible new entry. I don't want bold new directions from sequels; if I wanted something totally new I'd just watch(/read/play) something new. When I reach for a sequel I want something substantially the same as the first one, but with some new elements sprinkled in to make it interesting.

I'll have to yield to you on the books. Like I said I really haven't read much, and it was a long time ago that I read any.

I'm not saying that anything needs to be different in order to be good. Like I read a lot of manga that tends to stick to the same structure over and over again... I'm fine with that. Sometimes there's value in just finding something good and sticking with it.

I think Star Wars is weird because the Jedi are just inherently a bit silly. The originals somehow managed to make them look cool by only using their powers sparingly and not going into too much detail about their religion. But every time we see more of them, it starts to fall apart a bit. Their swords don't work very well for fighting in space, they talk a lot about pacifism but mostly they're going around fighting, and they never seem to achieve any sort of real lasting peace so they're just failing at their jobs.

The way I see it, it's sort of like a magic trick. It looks awesome the first time you see it. But when you go back to look at the same trick again and again, in great detail... you start to see the hidden wires and the magic falls off.

You haven't played Knights of the Old Republic 2, have you?

i have not. I played Star Wars: Jedi Knight but I don't remember any story from it.

Jedi Knight had some at-the-time impressive FMV bits, but the story was not exactly the core of the series. Knights of the Old Republic is much more heavily on the RPG side with correspondingly deeper story, and a lot of KOTOR 2 and especially its end boss in particular is focused on questions about the Force and its Dark Side and what that means to individual people force-sensitive or not (along with a bit of theodicy and anti-theism).

Pretty good game, too, if you're into the genre.

KOTOR 2 is my go-to shield when somebody accuses me of just wanting more of the same, or not appreciating the brilliance of subversion.

You could argue even that game is pushing against the limits of what the SW universe can really tolerate. But you never get the sense the writer is scoffing at the pillars he's working with.

Yes, you can have 'dark, questioning' Star Wars. But you need to be competent and respectful.

Kevin J Anderson (author of the Jedi Academy series and the I, Jedi fixfic written solely to close narrative loopholes) is one of the worst writers of the Bantam era of Star Wars Expanded Universe, and there are an incredible number of contenders for that title. Timothy Zahns Thrawn trilogy and the Michael A Stackpole series of X Wing novels were adrenaline shots for the franchise legacy, since much of the rest were middling quality and canon inconsistent.

The easy way to see which aspects of the canon worked are to see which survived the disney transition: Thrawn.... yea thats it. No Kaarde, Calisto, Xizor, Han Solo Twin Brother... most concepts are too dirt tier to be worth maintaining. There is deep lore here that is not worth brain cells to expound; suffice to say Star Wars was a limping property that needed the prequel trilogy to give narrative space for the key ingredient (jedi, superweapons, cool armor soldiers) to thrive in the clone wars narrative era. The dearth of sequel era works is precisely proof of the narrative graveyard that Disney ran the franchise into.

I remember deeply enjoying the Thrawn trilogy when I read it a decade ago. It's basically my headcanon Star Wars 7, 8 and 9. Perfectly captures the essence of the original trilogy, gives them a fantastic new villain who challenges them in devilish new ways.

And that's about as far as I got on my "Expanded Universe" exploration. I think I got through another book or two that failed to leave any impression what so ever.

I remember deeply enjoying the Thrawn trilogy when I read it a decade ago. It's basically my headcanon Star Wars 7, 8 and 9.

Same, which is made easier by only having seen pieces of TFA and not seeing TLJ and whatever followed it. After enduring the prequels, I decided I was done with SW overall.

And that's about as far as I got on my "Expanded Universe" exploration.

Also same, although I've read plot summaries of others, and there are some batshit insane books out there. I mean that as both a compliment and a criticism. Whoever was in charge of licensing wasn't afraid to let some authors go wild.

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