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fandomhigh_ooc2008-11-16 10:14 am
weetuskenraider) wrote in fandomhigh_ooc2008-11-16 10:14 am
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Spotlight on Fandoms: Star Wars EU
Welcome to the giant patchwork canon-ramble of doom that is the Star Wars Expanded Universe spotlight, brought to you by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
all4thewookiees, weetuskenraider, trickster_twin/istoomyrealname, and momslilassassin!
So, Star Wars. Long time ago, galaxy far, far away and all that. Space battles and lightsaber swordplay and fifty million planets and fifty million races and the Force. If you've seen or even heard anything about the movies, you know all of that. So . . . why Expanded Universe?
Because the movies are only the start of it, really. And the novels are only part of the whole EU package; there's an ever growing selection of comic books and video games, all of which expand upon periods of time before, after, and between the events of the films, like the below. We collectively got pretty tl;dr through all of this, and it's only a sampling of the EU.
(We also got kind of dorky doing this, because in a canon this big, written by such a wide range of authors, let's face it: there's a lot to love, but there's a lot to mock. Witness the following exchange from while we were putting this post together:
all4thewookiees: [Kevin J. Anderson] would make the spotlight post into a Jedi.
weetuskenraider: And then Troy Denning would figure out some way to make it lose a limb.
trickster_twin: And maybe set it on fire.
weetuskenraider: Possibly with giant insects involved.
trickster_twin: AFSFHJGUHREGUFHERUGJSHGFSDJFVGRAHGOESGIHERAOGJEHGERTHUGAUHERGUHERUFUFGYFIGGWFGWEYI EW.
all4thewookiees: The Old Republic doesn't have giant insects.
Well, not THOSE giant insects.
Honestly, it makes sense. Sort of. Maybe.)
While the Star Wars movies started with the infamous words, 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,' one of the first things LFL did with the Expanded Universe was to tell the story of a whole lot earlier than that in a galaxy far far away. They did this primarily through a comic series called Tales of the Jedi, which told the story of one Jedi-Sith war after another thousands of years before the destruction of the Death Star.
Eventually this led to an insanely popular video game, Knights of the Old Republic, which then led to a sequel, an upcoming MMORPG, and another comic series. But let's start at the beginning.
TALES OF THE JEDI
The Golden Age of the Sith/The Fall of the Sith Empire:
It starts way back at the beginning, five thousand years before the Battle of Yavin. The Republic is first truly unifying, the Jedi are starting to really come into their own, and searching for new hyperspace routes is a good job for stupid people. Two such stupid people, Gav and Jori Daragon, find an empire way out in an unexplored region of space. This is the Republic's first contact with the Sith Empire.
The Sith are crossbred from evil Jedi who had been banished centuries before and big, tough aliens on this distant planet. They have a cracked out system of governing and were big on EEEEEEEEEVIL magic through the Force. Gav and Jori, being idiots, become a Sith and unwittingly lead the Sith back to the Republic so they could try to expand their empire, respectively. This ends with a great war over Coruscant, the home of the burgeoning Republic, and the complete destruction of the Sith Empire, save for their leader, Naga Sadow, who managed to land on a little moon known as Yavin 4 in the hopes that he could rebuild the Sith there.
The Ulic Qel-Droma Saga:
Ulic Qel-Droma is a powerful Jedi on the fast track to be one of the greatest of his era (around 4000 BBY). Then a disturbance on the planet Onderon comes to the attention of the Jedi; there's a civil war between the Republic-friendly upper class and Beast Riders who live out in the forest and the Jedi were assigned to help end it. As per usual, the people Ulic thinks he's supposed to help turn out to be evil and the supposed bad people turn out to be good, but the entire war is secondary to the fact that the ruling family of Onderon are secretly powerful Dark Side worshippers. Ulic has to stay on Onderon for some time, which slowly starts to taint him.
Meanwhile, a woman named Nomi Sunrider is moving to a Jedi training school with her Jedi husband and her baby daughter when her husband is killed. Long story short, Nomi turned out to be a very powerful Jedi in her own right. Eventually, when her training is complete, she and Ulic are teamed together a lot to try to stop a new wave of Dark Side cultists. Ulic's descent continues until he was firmly no longer a Jedi.
ALSO MEANWHILE, a fallen Jedi named Exar Kun basically just wanted to become a Sith (he's not a terribly deep character), so he found the ghost of an ancient Sith Lord who named him the Dark Lord. Ulic became his apprentice, and they got a bunch of Jedi to come over to Team Sith. And then there was a lot of fighting, especially at that vany little moon called Yavin 4. The good guys eventually won, as you might expect, but it wasn't a neat victory at all. A lot of people were dead and Ulic had returned from the Dark Side after doing something so heinous that his connection to the Force was forcibly severed. He eventually found redemption, but only after a many sucky years. I swear that the very end of TOTJ is suitably Star Wars happy, though.
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC (comic):
The comic series called KOTOR takes place about 20 years after the end of TOTJ and focuses on a society that's come a long way after rebuilding from the devastation of Kun's war even as it heads into war with the nomadic Mandalorian army. The lead character is a Jedi Padawan named Zayne Carrick who is not very good at his job. Despite having what several people refer to "a special relationship with the Force," Zayne looks like a complete washout. His use of Force powers is shaky at best, his plans are terribly flawed, his lightsaber skills are subpar... But he's a really likable kid.
And then the first issue ends and suddenly he's a fugitive trying to clear his name after being accused of a horrible crime. The Republic is after him, the Jedi are hunting him, and he keeps on finding himself facing off against the Mandalorian forces that are invading the Republic. I'm not going to spoil too much about the book since everything hinges on the end of that first issue (and it's a doozy), but the book is really a wonderful prequel to the KOTOR games, setting up many of the events referenced in them. Also, it's one of the best comics out there from any company.
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC (video game):
KOTOR I is a PC and XBOX game set another five years or so after the KOTOR comic. Two Jedi Knights, Revan and Malak, turned the tide of the war against the Mandalorians, but were so tainted by the Dark Side during their crusade that they formed a new Sith Empire, declared themselves Dark Lords, and went to town trying to take over the galaxy. Malak betrayed Revan and took the Sith Empire for himself, and beginning to focus less on control and more on destruction.
The main character is a Republic soldier with latent Force abilities who meets up with a rag-tag bunch of soldiers, Jedi, droids, and street urchin and goes on a quest to stop Darth Malak and his Empire. To do this, the crew needs to journey across the galaxy in search of Star Maps that will reveal a superweapon under Malak's control. Again, skimping on spoilers for maximum enjoyment of the game, but the canonical version is that the good guys win. And that the PC is a dude. But if you've read anything with Jolee talking about his canon or saw anything with Jolee's guest over PW, then you're spoiled. Sorry!
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II: THE SITH LORDS (video game):
KOTOR II takes place another five years after the first game. After the player character saved the day, got the girl, and was regarded as a hero, he went off to confront an even greater threat tham Malak's Sith Empire. Meanwhile, a group of Sith Lords have used the chaos following the previous war to purge the remaining Jedi in the galaxy with impressive efficiency.
Before long, the remaining Jedi Masters are in hiding, a new era of Force sensitives needs to be established, and the only hope is a former general from Revan's anti-Mandalorian army who refused to join the Sith and was kicked out of the Jedi. She (the canonical version of this character, the Jedi Exile, is a female) ended the Mandalorian War with an act so extreme that her connection to the Force was severed, leaving her as a wound in the Force itself. She spent years away from the center of the galaxy, but when she's brought into the mess, she too forms a ragtag band of Jedi, soldiers, robots, and bounty hunters in a quest to stop the Sith and maybe, just maybe, bring back the Jedi from the brink of extinction.
I'm not concerned with spoiling this one since every twist is either completely anti-climactic or completely obvious from the first half hour of gameplay (one word: Kreia). But I'm not going to spoil because it's LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME. Seriously, Tracy will back me up on this. Suffice it to say, the good guys more or less win, but it's not like the game has a real ending or whatever.
THE OLD REPUBLIC:
This is an upcoming MMORPG from the people who made the first KOTOR game. Set around 3000 BBY, TOR focuses on the coming of the Sith threat the KOTOR player character went off to fight between the games. According the the history laid out on the game's website, this hidden Sith Empire came back to the Republic with a strong enough force to split the galaxy in half. And then there's fighting. Massively Multiplayer Online fighting.
Yeah, there's not much about TOR out there yet. Can you tell?
***
And that concludes the Old Republic section of this spotlight. We're skipping over the Darth Bane novels (which depict the establishment of the Sith legacy that Palpatine and Vader were part of) and the Prequel Era comics and novels and cartoons for now. Maybe we can fill in those gaps in a future Spotlight. :D
Onward in chronological order!
The Force Unleashed is a multimedia event (comic, video game and book) not only newly represented IG, it's also new canon. Also, kind of a retcon. See, about three years before Episode IV, we find out that apparently Darth Vader was training his own Sith apprentice to try and overthrow the Emperor the whole time. The apprentice goes by the code name Starkiller (true geeks will recognize this as being Luke's original last name in the waaaaaay early versions of SW) and is dispatched by Vader to go and hunt down some of the surviving Jedi, assigning Imperial pilot Juno Eclipse to fly him and his training droid PROXY (whose primary programming is to kill Starkiller- it's twisted, yes) around to do so. Without spoiling anything, things eventually change course, there are crosses and double crosses and by the end it's covering the very first days of the Rebel Alliance.
And then in two years we meet ourselves a Luke, and you know that story. And it's not EU, anyway.
And now we jump ahead to the New Republic, and take a quick detour into a part of the novelized AU where the books are a lot thinner and the print a lot bigger.
JUNIOR JEDI KNIGHTS
Yes, I stole large chunks of this from my app, and the writeup I did for that was this flippant. For this series, it was the only way to go.
The Junior Jedi Knights series of books, by Nancy Richardson and Rebecca Moesta, are . . . oh my god, kind of a trainwreck. Seriously, this series (published by Berkley Books, who had the old contract for the young-reader SW books) is like the unholy bastard child of Star Wars and the Babysitters' Club. No, wait. The Babysitters' Little Sister series. JJK focuses on the adventures of Han and Leia's youngest son, Anakin, when he turns eleven and goes off to Yavin 4 to be the best Jedi he can be. Why "Junior Jedi Knights?" Well, he goes into the Junior Jedi program. Duh. Luke doesn't revive the Old Republicsummer camp tradition of naming the different level classes after animals until somewhere between NJO and LotF.
At the Academy he ends up BFF with another brand new Jedi trainee named Tahiri Veila, who somewhere in the middle of a whole bunch of words tells him she's nine. (By "ends up BFF" what I actually mean is Tahiri is persistent and follows him around until he gives in to the inevitability of the BFF-itude.) The two of them proceed to embark on a bunch of young-reader-level adventures of the kind you can only expect two kids that age to have if they're in the Star Wars universe: discovering souls that had been trapped by ancient Sith Lords and could only be freed by Force-sensitive kids, getting into trouble all over Tatooine and managing to survive it all (including fighting a krayt dragon), retrieving Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber from the galaxy's most technologically-advanced snake-oil salesman on a "no, really, this was just supposed to be a FUN VACATION, NOT INSANITY, HONEST" mission. You know the type. The type you get if you hang around with someone whose last name is Skywalker or Solo, and especially if they're both. Oh, sure, sometimes there's adults tagging along, and Artoo Detoo gets used shamelessly, but we know who these particular books are all about. Kids whose parents, in any other world, would have had ten nervous breakdowns by now.
Seriously? I'm pretty sure there's an inverse plausibility-to-book-length ratio at work in JJK. BECAUSE HONESTLY. But it's Anakin Solo, who is kind of the Doogie Howser of the post-Imperial universe, so it's sort of okay. Even if he and Tahiri blow off what seems like half their classes to have adventures way bigger than the font size on the pages.
Oh, and by the way, the books never want you to forget that Anakin has ice-blue eyes and messy brown hair that falls into his eyes. Seriously. His eyes come up at least five times at the beginning of the first book, before he even arrives on Yavin 4. Then, within four (very short) sentences of Tahiri's introduction, guess what comes up? Eye color. Yup. And again a few paragraphs after that. And then throughout the books, there is third grade level expository recappage of movie canon! A lot of it! Like every time Luke's teaching the wee baby Jedi!
But if they're so bad, why do I read them? I don't know. Completion's sake? Because Anakin Solo's kind of awesome even at young-reader level? Because Tahiri at that age is fun? For the trainwreck?
Or maybe it's the crack.
I hadn't even mentioned (asall4thewookiees put it) Master Hoppy the Jedi Bunny. Anakin and Tahiri, you see, ended up as the charges of Ikrit, a wee floppy-eared fuzzball of a Jedi Master (that Purge really didn't work as advertised -- there's like a dozen Old Republic Jedi who survived by hiding under a rock or something) who'd sworn not to wield a lightsaber again until he found worthy students. Guess who ended up wielding a lightsaber? Yeah.
Or the MIGHTY MORPHIN' JEDI MERMAID.
Yeah, it's totally the crack. Because you can't be over the age of twelve and take these books remotely seriously. Eh, they're out of print anyway. The Young Jedi Knights books, geared toward slightly older readers, are written by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta and focus on Jacen and Jaina Solo and their friends (who do not include a Jedi bunny or mermaid, but do include a centaur) at the Academy (otherwise known as the Praxeum in all the later adult-level books). Although they don't attend classes at the same time as Anakin does, so there's very little overlap between the series. YJK's much more readable than JJK though, and introduces a number of characters who come back to play pretty prominent roles later on in the next series we're covering.
Further ahead into the post-movie EU, it's the NEW JEDI ORDER.
Now we come to the New Jedi Order (wherein a spotlight has been done before, la). This is the series of nineteen books published when Del Rey took over the Star Wars contract, taking it from the massively wtfy continuity mess that was the old Bantam run and turning it into a more cohesive, linear story where the continuity errors were due to the authors not always communicating, rather than them trying to retcon the stupid stuff.
At the start we're introduced to the Yuuzhan Vong, whose own galaxy became unlivable, so they decided to just invade another one. Deeply focused on their gods and goddesses, and also on pain and self-mutilation to achieve higher status, they also have their hate on for technology (they use living ships and weapons) and regard twins as sacred. This becomes important later. As of the first book they've already started invading, unleashed biological weapons including a fairly terminal disease that infected Luke's wife Mara, and have just basically been bastards about it. Then they go ahead and smash a planet with a moon, thus killing off Chewbacca, which caused a fan revolt and basically said "Yes please don't get attached to ANYONE, WE MEAN IT." And damn did they mean it.
Not exactly your parents' Star Wars (or hell, yours), this series had no problem killing off multiple characters in a single book- usually violently- which even included Han and Leia's seventeen-year-old son, while sending one of their twins off to be tortured by the freaking Jedi chicken while turning the other one to the dark side. Say what you will about the darkness of the series, they were definitely willing to go there. As the story unfolds, planets are wiped out and changed over, the Jedi Academy is captured, the big three regain the personalities they'd lost in the Bantam books, Han and Leia split up and get back together, Luke and Mara have a baby (hi Ben!), Coruscant is captured, the government collapses, Jaina gets a little hisem of guys who will follow her around for the next fourteen damn years, Tahiri has an emocoma, and a lot of stuff that hasn't happened in game yet. ; )
But if you really want to know how it turns out... well, Ben's still around, you know?
And TECHNICALLY, the NJO era in the timeline also covers the Dark Nest Trilogy, written by Troy Denning. If you've paid attention to OOC or therapy posts, you might recognize the words "the bug books." These would be those books. Essentially, Myrkr comes back to bite everyone in the ass in the form of a species called the Killiks which are giant bugs. This leads to several of the Jedi Knights from that mission being brainwashed and becoming Killik Joiners, being joined at the brain and making them technically part of the hive. And there's "we" instead of "I" and creepy sentence finishing and forearm rubbing and throat clicking and IT IS SO CREEPY I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THAT. [Note from Shanie: CREEPTASTIC. YES.]
Also the Killiks have been pissing off the Chiss by trying to expand into their territory, which ends in a great big war. With bugs. To make a long story short, Jacen gets some (and slightly more than he bargained for) and that's a WHOLE other story to be continued in a bit, Leia finally becomes a Jedi, Luke names himself Grand Master (because assuming the title of Jedi Master himself wasn't a bad idea at all), the Jedi get to look like the bad guys again, and it continues to be creepy. There. Now I'll be itching all day.
And finally -- no, really, we're almost done --
Legacy of the Force, which can be summarized roughly as "Jacen Solo turns into a giant tool, original Jedi might've had a point about why they shouldn't get married because family tiffs lead to galactic suffering, Fry devolves into keyboard smashes instead of real words ."
We jump in with Luke being the (self-appointed, but that's a rant for another day) Grand Master of the Jedi Order, a new government called the Galactic Alliance, and Ben being informally apprenticed to Jaina's twin brother Jacen. Since it wouldn't be much of a story if everyone was getting along, it turns out that Han's home system of Corellia is chafing a bit at the limitations being put on it by the Galactic Alliance (unreasonable things like "no, you can't have your own space navy"). Since Luke and the Jedi work for the GA, this divides the family along Jedi/non-Jedi lines, with Leia being stuck in the middle.
Corellia decides to prove that they are Not To Be Messed With and tries to reactivate a world-destroying planet-sized weapon in the center of their system. Ahh, Star Wars and your planet-destroying weapons. The GA, obviously, is not thrilled by this and sends in a fleet for a show of force that goes (as you'd expect) terribly wrong and oops, now we're in the middle of a civil war that no one really wanted to start.
Both sides try to put the brakes on the escalation in tension, but the peace talks end when someone assassinates the Corellian Prime Minister. The clues left behind lead Jacen and Ben to find a mysterious, totally not a Sith woman who leads them to an asteroid that used to be run by a Sith Lord (some Sith run galaxies, others seem to be low level paperpushers. I don't ask). In a reveal that is only shocking to Jacen, turns out this woman who'd been helping them was actually a Sith named Lumiya, and then in a move that makes NO SENSE AT ALL, Jacen decides to learn the ways of the Sith. Because they're not evil, you see. Only misunderstood. Ben's memory of most of the encounter on this asteroid is mindwhammied away by his totally not evil, only misunderstood cousin.
As Jacen continues his fall to the Dark Side, he rises in the GA's government, eventually becoming the commander of the Galactic Alliance Guard (the GAG, and really, be more subtle, SW canon), the secret police. Ben, half out of loyalty to Jacen (not knowing about the Sith thing), and half because he wants to get out from under his father's considerable shadow, joins up with his cousin and starts kicking in doors and knowing about interrogation and torture techniques at 13. Nicely done. Along the way Jacen accidentally tortures Boba Fett's daughter to death, leading to a side plot with the Mandalorians that I don't care about. In other side plots I don't care about, there is a rogue Dark Jedi namedCrazyflakes McGee Alema who is trying to kill Leia. Since it's Leia, it's, you know, not going to work.
The war becomes a backdrop for Jacen's increasingly insane need for control while providing something that keeps the Jedi busy enough not to notice a member of their family turning all dark and Sith-y. Major characters are killed, Leia and Han are on the run for their lives again, planets are destroyed, Ben becomes a political assassin at 14, Jacen decides that only running the secret police isn't enough and plots galactic domination (as you do ) while giving himself the stupidest Sith Lord name ever (Darth Caedus. Really?), Luke gets to be an absolute badass, Jaina finally gets a plot about seven books into the nine book series, there are secret relationships and illegimate children and lots and lots of space battles, and the entire thing ends in tears and death and people limbless and on fire. Good times.
[Shanie would like to note that "Darth Caedus" is the kind of stupid Sith name you get when you hold a contest for the fans to vote on it, and also express her extreme displeasure that never mind that Tahiri's twice Ben's age; the writers seem to treat her like she's fifteen except for that one bit of OMGWRONG toward the end there. Ahem. Okay now.]
And wow. I think that's actually it. You know, for now. Because there's more canon coming out all the time, not to mention more official companions and sourcebooks than you can shake a gaderffi stick at. Want a sense of how expansive it is? Check out Wookieepedia.
all4thewookiees, weetuskenraider, trickster_twin/istoomyrealname, and momslilassassin! So, Star Wars. Long time ago, galaxy far, far away and all that. Space battles and lightsaber swordplay and fifty million planets and fifty million races and the Force. If you've seen or even heard anything about the movies, you know all of that. So . . . why Expanded Universe?
Because the movies are only the start of it, really. And the novels are only part of the whole EU package; there's an ever growing selection of comic books and video games, all of which expand upon periods of time before, after, and between the events of the films, like the below. We collectively got pretty tl;dr through all of this, and it's only a sampling of the EU.
(We also got kind of dorky doing this, because in a canon this big, written by such a wide range of authors, let's face it: there's a lot to love, but there's a lot to mock. Witness the following exchange from while we were putting this post together:
all4thewookiees: [Kevin J. Anderson] would make the spotlight post into a Jedi.weetuskenraider: And then Troy Denning would figure out some way to make it lose a limb.trickster_twin: And maybe set it on fire.weetuskenraider: Possibly with giant insects involved.trickster_twin: AFSFHJGUHREGUFHERUGJSHGFSDJFVGRAHGOESGIHERAOGJEHGERTHUGAUHERGUHERUFUFGYFIGGWFGWEYI EW.all4thewookiees: The Old Republic doesn't have giant insects.Well, not THOSE giant insects.
Honestly, it makes sense. Sort of. Maybe.)
While the Star Wars movies started with the infamous words, 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,' one of the first things LFL did with the Expanded Universe was to tell the story of a whole lot earlier than that in a galaxy far far away. They did this primarily through a comic series called Tales of the Jedi, which told the story of one Jedi-Sith war after another thousands of years before the destruction of the Death Star.
Eventually this led to an insanely popular video game, Knights of the Old Republic, which then led to a sequel, an upcoming MMORPG, and another comic series. But let's start at the beginning.
TALES OF THE JEDI
The Golden Age of the Sith/The Fall of the Sith Empire:
It starts way back at the beginning, five thousand years before the Battle of Yavin. The Republic is first truly unifying, the Jedi are starting to really come into their own, and searching for new hyperspace routes is a good job for stupid people. Two such stupid people, Gav and Jori Daragon, find an empire way out in an unexplored region of space. This is the Republic's first contact with the Sith Empire.
The Sith are crossbred from evil Jedi who had been banished centuries before and big, tough aliens on this distant planet. They have a cracked out system of governing and were big on EEEEEEEEEVIL magic through the Force. Gav and Jori, being idiots, become a Sith and unwittingly lead the Sith back to the Republic so they could try to expand their empire, respectively. This ends with a great war over Coruscant, the home of the burgeoning Republic, and the complete destruction of the Sith Empire, save for their leader, Naga Sadow, who managed to land on a little moon known as Yavin 4 in the hopes that he could rebuild the Sith there.
The Ulic Qel-Droma Saga:
Ulic Qel-Droma is a powerful Jedi on the fast track to be one of the greatest of his era (around 4000 BBY). Then a disturbance on the planet Onderon comes to the attention of the Jedi; there's a civil war between the Republic-friendly upper class and Beast Riders who live out in the forest and the Jedi were assigned to help end it. As per usual, the people Ulic thinks he's supposed to help turn out to be evil and the supposed bad people turn out to be good, but the entire war is secondary to the fact that the ruling family of Onderon are secretly powerful Dark Side worshippers. Ulic has to stay on Onderon for some time, which slowly starts to taint him.
Meanwhile, a woman named Nomi Sunrider is moving to a Jedi training school with her Jedi husband and her baby daughter when her husband is killed. Long story short, Nomi turned out to be a very powerful Jedi in her own right. Eventually, when her training is complete, she and Ulic are teamed together a lot to try to stop a new wave of Dark Side cultists. Ulic's descent continues until he was firmly no longer a Jedi.
ALSO MEANWHILE, a fallen Jedi named Exar Kun basically just wanted to become a Sith (he's not a terribly deep character), so he found the ghost of an ancient Sith Lord who named him the Dark Lord. Ulic became his apprentice, and they got a bunch of Jedi to come over to Team Sith. And then there was a lot of fighting, especially at that vany little moon called Yavin 4. The good guys eventually won, as you might expect, but it wasn't a neat victory at all. A lot of people were dead and Ulic had returned from the Dark Side after doing something so heinous that his connection to the Force was forcibly severed. He eventually found redemption, but only after a many sucky years. I swear that the very end of TOTJ is suitably Star Wars happy, though.
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC (comic):
The comic series called KOTOR takes place about 20 years after the end of TOTJ and focuses on a society that's come a long way after rebuilding from the devastation of Kun's war even as it heads into war with the nomadic Mandalorian army. The lead character is a Jedi Padawan named Zayne Carrick who is not very good at his job. Despite having what several people refer to "a special relationship with the Force," Zayne looks like a complete washout. His use of Force powers is shaky at best, his plans are terribly flawed, his lightsaber skills are subpar... But he's a really likable kid.
And then the first issue ends and suddenly he's a fugitive trying to clear his name after being accused of a horrible crime. The Republic is after him, the Jedi are hunting him, and he keeps on finding himself facing off against the Mandalorian forces that are invading the Republic. I'm not going to spoil too much about the book since everything hinges on the end of that first issue (and it's a doozy), but the book is really a wonderful prequel to the KOTOR games, setting up many of the events referenced in them. Also, it's one of the best comics out there from any company.
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC (video game):
KOTOR I is a PC and XBOX game set another five years or so after the KOTOR comic. Two Jedi Knights, Revan and Malak, turned the tide of the war against the Mandalorians, but were so tainted by the Dark Side during their crusade that they formed a new Sith Empire, declared themselves Dark Lords, and went to town trying to take over the galaxy. Malak betrayed Revan and took the Sith Empire for himself, and beginning to focus less on control and more on destruction.
The main character is a Republic soldier with latent Force abilities who meets up with a rag-tag bunch of soldiers, Jedi, droids, and street urchin and goes on a quest to stop Darth Malak and his Empire. To do this, the crew needs to journey across the galaxy in search of Star Maps that will reveal a superweapon under Malak's control. Again, skimping on spoilers for maximum enjoyment of the game, but the canonical version is that the good guys win. And that the PC is a dude. But if you've read anything with Jolee talking about his canon or saw anything with Jolee's guest over PW, then you're spoiled. Sorry!
KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II: THE SITH LORDS (video game):
KOTOR II takes place another five years after the first game. After the player character saved the day, got the girl, and was regarded as a hero, he went off to confront an even greater threat tham Malak's Sith Empire. Meanwhile, a group of Sith Lords have used the chaos following the previous war to purge the remaining Jedi in the galaxy with impressive efficiency.
Before long, the remaining Jedi Masters are in hiding, a new era of Force sensitives needs to be established, and the only hope is a former general from Revan's anti-Mandalorian army who refused to join the Sith and was kicked out of the Jedi. She (the canonical version of this character, the Jedi Exile, is a female) ended the Mandalorian War with an act so extreme that her connection to the Force was severed, leaving her as a wound in the Force itself. She spent years away from the center of the galaxy, but when she's brought into the mess, she too forms a ragtag band of Jedi, soldiers, robots, and bounty hunters in a quest to stop the Sith and maybe, just maybe, bring back the Jedi from the brink of extinction.
I'm not concerned with spoiling this one since every twist is either completely anti-climactic or completely obvious from the first half hour of gameplay (one word: Kreia). But I'm not going to spoil because it's LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME. Seriously, Tracy will back me up on this. Suffice it to say, the good guys more or less win, but it's not like the game has a real ending or whatever.
THE OLD REPUBLIC:
This is an upcoming MMORPG from the people who made the first KOTOR game. Set around 3000 BBY, TOR focuses on the coming of the Sith threat the KOTOR player character went off to fight between the games. According the the history laid out on the game's website, this hidden Sith Empire came back to the Republic with a strong enough force to split the galaxy in half. And then there's fighting. Massively Multiplayer Online fighting.
Yeah, there's not much about TOR out there yet. Can you tell?
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And that concludes the Old Republic section of this spotlight. We're skipping over the Darth Bane novels (which depict the establishment of the Sith legacy that Palpatine and Vader were part of) and the Prequel Era comics and novels and cartoons for now. Maybe we can fill in those gaps in a future Spotlight. :D
Onward in chronological order!
The Force Unleashed is a multimedia event (comic, video game and book) not only newly represented IG, it's also new canon. Also, kind of a retcon. See, about three years before Episode IV, we find out that apparently Darth Vader was training his own Sith apprentice to try and overthrow the Emperor the whole time. The apprentice goes by the code name Starkiller (true geeks will recognize this as being Luke's original last name in the waaaaaay early versions of SW) and is dispatched by Vader to go and hunt down some of the surviving Jedi, assigning Imperial pilot Juno Eclipse to fly him and his training droid PROXY (whose primary programming is to kill Starkiller- it's twisted, yes) around to do so. Without spoiling anything, things eventually change course, there are crosses and double crosses and by the end it's covering the very first days of the Rebel Alliance.
And then in two years we meet ourselves a Luke, and you know that story. And it's not EU, anyway.
And now we jump ahead to the New Republic, and take a quick detour into a part of the novelized AU where the books are a lot thinner and the print a lot bigger.
JUNIOR JEDI KNIGHTS
Yes, I stole large chunks of this from my app, and the writeup I did for that was this flippant. For this series, it was the only way to go.
The Junior Jedi Knights series of books, by Nancy Richardson and Rebecca Moesta, are . . . oh my god, kind of a trainwreck. Seriously, this series (published by Berkley Books, who had the old contract for the young-reader SW books) is like the unholy bastard child of Star Wars and the Babysitters' Club. No, wait. The Babysitters' Little Sister series. JJK focuses on the adventures of Han and Leia's youngest son, Anakin, when he turns eleven and goes off to Yavin 4 to be the best Jedi he can be. Why "Junior Jedi Knights?" Well, he goes into the Junior Jedi program. Duh. Luke doesn't revive the Old Republic
At the Academy he ends up BFF with another brand new Jedi trainee named Tahiri Veila, who somewhere in the middle of a whole bunch of words tells him she's nine. (By "ends up BFF" what I actually mean is Tahiri is persistent and follows him around until he gives in to the inevitability of the BFF-itude.) The two of them proceed to embark on a bunch of young-reader-level adventures of the kind you can only expect two kids that age to have if they're in the Star Wars universe: discovering souls that had been trapped by ancient Sith Lords and could only be freed by Force-sensitive kids, getting into trouble all over Tatooine and managing to survive it all (including fighting a krayt dragon), retrieving Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber from the galaxy's most technologically-advanced snake-oil salesman on a "no, really, this was just supposed to be a FUN VACATION, NOT INSANITY, HONEST" mission. You know the type. The type you get if you hang around with someone whose last name is Skywalker or Solo, and especially if they're both. Oh, sure, sometimes there's adults tagging along, and Artoo Detoo gets used shamelessly, but we know who these particular books are all about. Kids whose parents, in any other world, would have had ten nervous breakdowns by now.
Seriously? I'm pretty sure there's an inverse plausibility-to-book-length ratio at work in JJK. BECAUSE HONESTLY. But it's Anakin Solo, who is kind of the Doogie Howser of the post-Imperial universe, so it's sort of okay. Even if he and Tahiri blow off what seems like half their classes to have adventures way bigger than the font size on the pages.
Oh, and by the way, the books never want you to forget that Anakin has ice-blue eyes and messy brown hair that falls into his eyes. Seriously. His eyes come up at least five times at the beginning of the first book, before he even arrives on Yavin 4. Then, within four (very short) sentences of Tahiri's introduction, guess what comes up? Eye color. Yup. And again a few paragraphs after that. And then throughout the books, there is third grade level expository recappage of movie canon! A lot of it! Like every time Luke's teaching the wee baby Jedi!
But if they're so bad, why do I read them? I don't know. Completion's sake? Because Anakin Solo's kind of awesome even at young-reader level? Because Tahiri at that age is fun? For the trainwreck?
Or maybe it's the crack.
I hadn't even mentioned (as
all4thewookiees put it) Master Hoppy the Jedi Bunny. Anakin and Tahiri, you see, ended up as the charges of Ikrit, a wee floppy-eared fuzzball of a Jedi Master (that Purge really didn't work as advertised -- there's like a dozen Old Republic Jedi who survived by hiding under a rock or something) who'd sworn not to wield a lightsaber again until he found worthy students. Guess who ended up wielding a lightsaber? Yeah.Or the MIGHTY MORPHIN' JEDI MERMAID.
Yeah, it's totally the crack. Because you can't be over the age of twelve and take these books remotely seriously. Eh, they're out of print anyway. The Young Jedi Knights books, geared toward slightly older readers, are written by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta and focus on Jacen and Jaina Solo and their friends (who do not include a Jedi bunny or mermaid, but do include a centaur) at the Academy (otherwise known as the Praxeum in all the later adult-level books). Although they don't attend classes at the same time as Anakin does, so there's very little overlap between the series. YJK's much more readable than JJK though, and introduces a number of characters who come back to play pretty prominent roles later on in the next series we're covering.
Further ahead into the post-movie EU, it's the NEW JEDI ORDER.
Now we come to the New Jedi Order (wherein a spotlight has been done before, la). This is the series of nineteen books published when Del Rey took over the Star Wars contract, taking it from the massively wtfy continuity mess that was the old Bantam run and turning it into a more cohesive, linear story where the continuity errors were due to the authors not always communicating, rather than them trying to retcon the stupid stuff.
At the start we're introduced to the Yuuzhan Vong, whose own galaxy became unlivable, so they decided to just invade another one. Deeply focused on their gods and goddesses, and also on pain and self-mutilation to achieve higher status, they also have their hate on for technology (they use living ships and weapons) and regard twins as sacred. This becomes important later. As of the first book they've already started invading, unleashed biological weapons including a fairly terminal disease that infected Luke's wife Mara, and have just basically been bastards about it. Then they go ahead and smash a planet with a moon, thus killing off Chewbacca, which caused a fan revolt and basically said "Yes please don't get attached to ANYONE, WE MEAN IT." And damn did they mean it.
Not exactly your parents' Star Wars (or hell, yours), this series had no problem killing off multiple characters in a single book- usually violently- which even included Han and Leia's seventeen-year-old son, while sending one of their twins off to be tortured by the freaking Jedi chicken while turning the other one to the dark side. Say what you will about the darkness of the series, they were definitely willing to go there. As the story unfolds, planets are wiped out and changed over, the Jedi Academy is captured, the big three regain the personalities they'd lost in the Bantam books, Han and Leia split up and get back together, Luke and Mara have a baby (hi Ben!), Coruscant is captured, the government collapses, Jaina gets a little hisem of guys who will follow her around for the next fourteen damn years, Tahiri has an emocoma, and a lot of stuff that hasn't happened in game yet. ; )
But if you really want to know how it turns out... well, Ben's still around, you know?
And TECHNICALLY, the NJO era in the timeline also covers the Dark Nest Trilogy, written by Troy Denning. If you've paid attention to OOC or therapy posts, you might recognize the words "the bug books." These would be those books. Essentially, Myrkr comes back to bite everyone in the ass in the form of a species called the Killiks which are giant bugs. This leads to several of the Jedi Knights from that mission being brainwashed and becoming Killik Joiners, being joined at the brain and making them technically part of the hive. And there's "we" instead of "I" and creepy sentence finishing and forearm rubbing and throat clicking and IT IS SO CREEPY I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THAT. [Note from Shanie: CREEPTASTIC. YES.]
Also the Killiks have been pissing off the Chiss by trying to expand into their territory, which ends in a great big war. With bugs. To make a long story short, Jacen gets some (and slightly more than he bargained for) and that's a WHOLE other story to be continued in a bit, Leia finally becomes a Jedi, Luke names himself Grand Master (because assuming the title of Jedi Master himself wasn't a bad idea at all), the Jedi get to look like the bad guys again, and it continues to be creepy. There. Now I'll be itching all day.
And finally -- no, really, we're almost done --
Legacy of the Force, which can be summarized roughly as "Jacen Solo turns into a giant tool, original Jedi might've had a point about why they shouldn't get married because family tiffs lead to galactic suffering, Fry devolves into keyboard smashes instead of real words ."
We jump in with Luke being the (self-appointed, but that's a rant for another day) Grand Master of the Jedi Order, a new government called the Galactic Alliance, and Ben being informally apprenticed to Jaina's twin brother Jacen. Since it wouldn't be much of a story if everyone was getting along, it turns out that Han's home system of Corellia is chafing a bit at the limitations being put on it by the Galactic Alliance (unreasonable things like "no, you can't have your own space navy"). Since Luke and the Jedi work for the GA, this divides the family along Jedi/non-Jedi lines, with Leia being stuck in the middle.
Corellia decides to prove that they are Not To Be Messed With and tries to reactivate a world-destroying planet-sized weapon in the center of their system. Ahh, Star Wars and your planet-destroying weapons. The GA, obviously, is not thrilled by this and sends in a fleet for a show of force that goes (as you'd expect) terribly wrong and oops, now we're in the middle of a civil war that no one really wanted to start.
Both sides try to put the brakes on the escalation in tension, but the peace talks end when someone assassinates the Corellian Prime Minister. The clues left behind lead Jacen and Ben to find a mysterious, totally not a Sith woman who leads them to an asteroid that used to be run by a Sith Lord (some Sith run galaxies, others seem to be low level paperpushers. I don't ask). In a reveal that is only shocking to Jacen, turns out this woman who'd been helping them was actually a Sith named Lumiya, and then in a move that makes NO SENSE AT ALL, Jacen decides to learn the ways of the Sith. Because they're not evil, you see. Only misunderstood. Ben's memory of most of the encounter on this asteroid is mindwhammied away by his totally not evil, only misunderstood cousin.
As Jacen continues his fall to the Dark Side, he rises in the GA's government, eventually becoming the commander of the Galactic Alliance Guard (the GAG, and really, be more subtle, SW canon), the secret police. Ben, half out of loyalty to Jacen (not knowing about the Sith thing), and half because he wants to get out from under his father's considerable shadow, joins up with his cousin and starts kicking in doors and knowing about interrogation and torture techniques at 13. Nicely done. Along the way Jacen accidentally tortures Boba Fett's daughter to death, leading to a side plot with the Mandalorians that I don't care about. In other side plots I don't care about, there is a rogue Dark Jedi named
The war becomes a backdrop for Jacen's increasingly insane need for control while providing something that keeps the Jedi busy enough not to notice a member of their family turning all dark and Sith-y. Major characters are killed, Leia and Han are on the run for their lives again, planets are destroyed, Ben becomes a political assassin at 14, Jacen decides that only running the secret police isn't enough and plots galactic domination (as you do ) while giving himself the stupidest Sith Lord name ever (Darth Caedus. Really?), Luke gets to be an absolute badass, Jaina finally gets a plot about seven books into the nine book series, there are secret relationships and illegimate children and lots and lots of space battles, and the entire thing ends in tears and death and people limbless and on fire. Good times.
[Shanie would like to note that "Darth Caedus" is the kind of stupid Sith name you get when you hold a contest for the fans to vote on it, and also express her extreme displeasure that never mind that Tahiri's twice Ben's age; the writers seem to treat her like she's fifteen except for that one bit of OMGWRONG toward the end there. Ahem. Okay now.]
And wow. I think that's actually it. You know, for now. Because there's more canon coming out all the time, not to mention more official companions and sourcebooks than you can shake a gaderffi stick at. Want a sense of how expansive it is? Check out Wookieepedia.
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WHY I <3 JACEN SOLO, by Pard
What started as strong affection for a PB 9 months ago has grown into what some call Love as I've been forced to read a variety of books from the SW EU. Here is my list of reasons for loving Jacen while others wish he'd died in a fire years ago.
1. Jacen Solo can kick your ass! He might even cut off your arm while he's at it.
2. Jacen Solo is the king of one night stands. He'll get you so pregnant the baby won't be born for a FULL YEAR after he sleeps with you. Trufax.
3. Jacen Solo is a better fighter pilot than ANYONE. ANYONE. He doesn't care what training you've had, his Force abilities trump all.
4. Jacen Solo will use your love against you. Sorry Mara, was that Ben you almost killed? Hesitation never hurt so many.
5. Jacen Solo is the Best Son Ever. He doesn't let pesky things like familial love get in the way of the difference between Right and Wrong.
6. Jacen Solo is the Best Brother Ever. Fight with you little bro and involve yourself in ways that potentially led to his death? That's just playing the Devil's Advocate, man. Having your sister's rank suspended to help your cause? Priceless.
7. Even after he's dead, Jacen Solo will remain the focus of your life. He's just that important.
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I'm never even gonna read these books and I love Jacen Solo.
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Jacen Solo is love. I am actually listening to my computer read me one of his early books right now. I should hook you up.
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Jaina: SygsiaHDGYSAFGEWTFYWRFGWYIAECWRGIFYgGFUIHWGYFYUIAERHFGYEAR7GFAERT4643Q86R473RGRPFYARFRWA
WGFIYWGRFWRGFGBWRGVWAGYFGYRFHAIRT7GQ3YTGYFAEFAFQWHFaghfrwh
And FURTHERMORE, HASDAUIYSFEWYHGYRWGFHRWUIFGAYHygyhaifhsifisyghuwrthwrtuwhrtgsdgs.
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(This is a fact.)
OH WHAT SOMEONE HAD TO SAY IT.
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And yes, I do have two Trek apps I have been working on. :)
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*cough*
Not that I was ever a Trekkie. Ahem.
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I'll see what I can do. :)
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One of these days I'll be brave enough to attempt to round out my Trek collection.
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PaperBack Swap
Since I lost all of my SW books when my storage room got broken into, I am having to start all over again with getting them.
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