Pop-Culture AHC: Preserve the quality of the Post-ROTJ Star Wars EU

Through the post-ROTJ EU is what brought Star Wars into the public consciousness once more with Heir to the Empire, it has never been arguably able to maintain that quality bar set by Heir to the Empire, with criticisms of it, starting with the NJO, being too "dark" or "sad" or "ultraviolent"; that or the Post-ROTJ EU is a "festering ground" for "Mary Sues and Gary Stus". Some books such as Dark Empire have even fallen out of favor over time. By contrast the pre-prequel era EU with the KOTOR games, and the prequel-era EU with books such as Darth Plagueis and the The Clone Wars series have both become more favorable publishing eras. TCW is significant here because TCW has been actively praised by the media for "fixing" or "redeeming" the Prequel era and is one of the few things still canon from the old EU as kept by Disney for it's SWCU(Star Wars Cinematic Universe).

As such, with any PoD, have the post-OT era EU maintain the quality set by Heir to the Empire and the X-Wing books and not make the mistakes the writers of the post-OT EU made OTL. There of course will be bad and polarizing stories from time to time, but the PoD is to not let it be as glaring issue as OTL.

Bonus points if this allows Disney to have Star Wars Legends be updated assuming a buyout still happens(ie: SWEU existing alongside their planned SWCU)

One POD is that Karen Traviss stops writing in her prime(before she went Mando) and Mara Jade is kept alive, also have some of the better authors Zahn or Stackpole be a contributor or an "ideas man" for the EU over gradually stopping writing SW--they could give some of their insight or ideas.

Alternatively, a common complaint I get is that the post-ROTJ EU focuses on the trio too much, gets too dark or make other characters stronger than the OTtrio. If that is the case maybe they scale down after the NJO and focus on the smaller, day-to-day aspects of the universe- ordinary people going about their lives and their own personal stories, separate from the galactic wars and political machinations that define so much of the verse. That or less stuff like Legacy and more like Jedi Outcast, which focuses on smaller scale over large-scale threats.

Also maybe better Prequels, told more akin to TCW than what they were could help, maybe people's lack of intrest in the Post-ROTJ EU is because they wanted more from the Prequels, or something "redeeming" or "justifying" it's existence given the myriad problems of the films--and The Clone Wars fulfilled that demand. Maybe if the Prequels lived up to expectation there might not be a demand for quality stories in that era to "alleviate" for the quality of the PT.
 
I think this could all co me under the heading of needing greater oversight, maybe Lucas keeps in touch with some authors, and thus they're considered 'chosen EU'.
 
Over all, I thought that the EU was of significantly higher story telling quality than some of the other big sprawling sci-fi universes that existed around the turn of the millennium, such as Star Trek. The thing would improve that over all quality of the EU, however, would be to have much more tightly integrated narrative arc from the get-go, ala NJO-LOTF-FOTJ etc. X-Wing and Zahn are endlessly readable, but serve to anchor the post Ep.VI content, but some of the other offerings vary fairly widely. The other thing issue that would have to be settled early on is the canonicity of the EU.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
It might be overly specific of me, but...


...butterfly Karen Traviss. She's one of the worst, and is responsible for quite a bit of the fanwank stuff.
Plus it would significantly improve other SF series like the Haloverse, for which I can only be grateful.
 
I really like X-wing and Heir to the empire, and Star Wars has historically had good video games. part of the problem though is how is the target audience? Children, old time fans? Star Wars stuff can be all over the place and stuff that might appeal more towards younger kids might not be all that well received by older ones.
 
I think it would be good of instead of going from one grand big and dark storyline(NJO--Swarm War--Legacy) to another but more focus on smaller scale stories between the bigger epics such as how government is run or the impact of smaller-scale events on the galaxy at large.

That or have it be a multimedia project over having Del Ray do everything.

It might be overly specific of me, but...


...butterfly Karen Traviss. She's one of the worst, and is responsible for quite a bit of the fanwank stuff.
Plus it would significantly improve other SF series like the Haloverse, for which I can only be grateful.

While Traviss was one of the worst, you might have to arguably go back to AC Crispin and Bria Tharen as that character has been criticized as a Mary Sue by many, that or have Zahn continue to have more of an influence on the character development of characters such as Mara Jade, as some have argued that after he left SW there was a good amount of sueification with that character.
 
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Restrict it to a small number of good writers (Zahn, Stackpole, Allston, Stover, maybe one or two more) working together as in the later EU series. How to reconcile this with the understandable desire to publish many titles and sell many, many copies is a little tricky, I admit.
 
Restrict it to a small number of good writers (Zahn, Stackpole, Allston, Stover, maybe one or two more) working together as in the later EU series. How to reconcile this with the understandable desire to publish many titles and sell many, many copies is a little tricky, I admit.


That's why the post-ROTJ EU should have maybe be more of a multimedia project.
 
Restrict it to a small number of good writers (Zahn, Stackpole, Allston, Stover, maybe one or two more) working together as in the later EU series. How to reconcile this with the understandable desire to publish many titles and sell many, many copies is a little tricky, I admit.

No its not. Just have them do what they did later, but on a slightly smaller scale. Instead doing a series of 10-12 book publishing programs, have them write a series of trilogies that hinge off of each other. You also need to have Lucasfilm make definitive statement early on about the canonicity of the EU. Either its canon or its not.
 
No its not. Just have them do what they did later, but on a slightly smaller scale. You also need to have Lucasfilm make definitive statement early on about the canonicity of the EU. Either its canon or its not.

Yeah it's actually pretty simple, have Lucasfilm what they consider cannon. Or have the EU remain simply as fannon.
 
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