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Since the EU relaunched with Dark Empire/Thrawn trilogy, there's been a meteoric increase in Jedi wankery. Why isn't anyone sick to death of Jedi stories?

Where's the Han Solo type stories, or non-former Jedi, or non-dad-was-a-Jedi, or non-secret Jedi legacy bounty hunter or adventurer stories? Where the friggin' Empire stories, with Imperial officers fighting (non Jedi) battles?

So go ahead and write one.

Not nearly as much as I am sick of Mandalorians.

I don't think I could ever get sick of Jedi. The two main things I like about Star Wars are Jedi and the sweet ass ships in the Star Wars series. But mostly the Jedi.

Because lightsaber + telekinetic powers = awesome. Always.

NecronLord wrote:Not nearly as much as I am sick of Mandalorians.

Seconded. For a bunch of genocidal warmongers, the idea that they are wanked as honourable makes me sick.

I want to read stories about Clonetroopers during the Clone Wars, but I don't want Karen Traviss to be writing it.

But that's too much to ask, apparently.

I liked "Empire" stories which show the Imperial war machine in action without any outer inference (Rebels, Jedi). Out of that, Thrawn Trilogy put a decent non-Jedi adversary (also one of my favourite books). Others fell into "Jedi/Dark Jedi, wank wank wank"... most notably Dark Empire, KJA's rubbish stuff, "A New Rebellion" (that book... I want to burn, so much)...

The NJO was totally drooling over Jedis, and making them the key point of the series.

The EU is meant to explore Star Wars universe, not repeat the Jedi-Sith/Jedi-Dark Jedi war line from the movies in 90% of books and comics.

Seeing things from the grunts perspective would be more refreshing, less fanboy wank of Jedi/Mandalorians et al is always a good thing.

I agree it'd certainly be nice to see fewer Jedi / Sith around. Or at least less of them as the centre of the plot etc.

Stas Bush wrote:The EU is meant to milk the Star Wars cash cow

Fixed .

Broomstick wrote:So go ahead and write one.

I did.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

NecronLord wrote:Not nearly as much as I am sick of Mandalorians.

Seconded. For a bunch of genocidal warmongers, the idea that they are wanked as honourable makes me sick.

There's also the fact that they're wanked out over one minor bit character in the original trilogy, who did nothing besides look cool, follow the Millenium Falcon, and die an embarrassing death.

Hopefully, the live-action series will do just that and focus on ordinary people in the Civil War for once.

Some of the new comic series has some nice non-Force stories, but there's always some Jedi or Sith here and there.

Lord Poe wrote:Since the EU relaunched with Dark Empire/Thrawn trilogy, there's been a meteoric increase in Jedi wankery. Why isn't anyone sick to death of Jedi stories?

Where's the Han Solo type stories, or non-former Jedi, or non-dad-was-a-Jedi, or non-secret Jedi legacy bounty hunter or adventurer stories? Where the friggin' Empire stories, with Imperial officers fighting (non Jedi) battles?

You can't write those stories by running a search/replace on a D&D sourcebook.

The problem with non-Jedi stories as I see it, is that the Jedi are needed to attract casual fans. People like us (nerds) who follow the franchise and want to know about all the minutiae would be perfectly satisfied with stories about normal people having adventures in the Star Wars universe. People who follow the franchise with less intensity and just think Jedi look cool are going to want more Jedi all the time.

This effect can be observed in the prequels, which were all about pandering to a broad audience and became a story entirely about the Jedi. A lot can be said and has been said about how the prequels failed to reach people on a human level, so I won't go there. But the example stands.

Another example would be the Star Wars videogames, wherein it seems that playing a Jedi is the natural state of the games.

The point where they started putting Force-powers into every Star Wars game was the point where Star Wars games started to suck. We went from awesomeness like X-Wing, TIE-Fighter and Dark Forces to crap like Jedi Knight and Knights of the Old Republic.

I get the impression that the SW novels have been showing increasing wank of all kinds. Mando-wank, rebel-wank, jedi-wank, bio-wank, wankatine, clone-wank, wank of umpteen individual characters, a regular torrent of metaphorical masturbation. Perhaps it would be simpler to list what hasn't been wanked yet.

Pablo Sanchez wrote:The problem with non-Jedi stories as I see it, is that the Jedi are needed to attract casual fans. People like us (nerds) who follow the franchise and want to know about all the minutiae would be perfectly satisfied with stories about normal people having adventures in the Star Wars universe. People who follow the franchise with less intensity and just think Jedi look cool are going to want more Jedi all the time.

This effect can be observed in the prequels, which were all about pandering to a broad audience and became a story entirely about the Jedi. A lot can be said and has been said about how the prequels failed to reach people on a human level, so I won't go there. But the example stands.

Another example would be the Star Wars videogames, wherein it seems that playing a Jedi is the natural state of the games.

I don't think the Jedi are "needed" to attract casual fans at all. The original trilogy had lots of battles involving non-Jedi. Lots of games have been made without Jedi, such as the X-wing series of flight simulators, and the original Dark Forces. People identify SW with X-wings and Stormtroopers just as much as they do with Jedi.

Broomstick wrote:So go ahead and write one.

You Libertarian!

I'm more against the Sith-everything that comes with the games these days.

Jim Raynor wrote:

Pablo Sanchez wrote:The problem with non-Jedi stories as I see it, is that the Jedi are needed to attract casual fans. People like us (nerds) who follow the franchise and want to know about all the minutiae would be perfectly satisfied with stories about normal people having adventures in the Star Wars universe. People who follow the franchise with less intensity and just think Jedi look cool are going to want more Jedi all the time.

I don't think the Jedi are "needed" to attract casual fans at all. The original trilogy had lots of battles involving non-Jedi. Lots of games have been made without Jedi, such as the X-wing series of flight simulators, and the original Dark Forces. People identify SW with X-wings and Stormtroopers just as much as they do with Jedi.

True dat. While I always liked the lightsaber fights, the thing that got me into SW initially was the huge space battles. I wish they could have done more of the capital ship scenes. Just something about big explosions I guess

Jim Raynor wrote:I don't think the Jedi are "needed" to attract casual fans at all. The original trilogy had lots of battles involving non-Jedi.

With respect to the original trilogy you're talking about a story with multiple threads to the plot, the thickest one of which the story of the protagonist, the Jedi Luke Skywalker.

Lots of games have been made without Jedi, such as the X-wing series of flight simulators, and the original Dark Forces. People identify SW with X-wings and Stormtroopers just as much as they do with Jedi.

The first Dark Forces was made in 1995, X-Wing was made in 1993. It's also worth noting that Dark Forces 2 and 3 were Jedi games, and the X-Wing series is permanently defunct with the death of the Space Sim genre. All the recent, successful Lucasfilm IP videogames (Jedi Knight II, KOTOR, SW Galaxies) have had the Jedi element in them.

At any rate I wasn't actually arguing that the Jedi were a necessary condescension to the casual fan, and I apologize for expressing myself poorly if it seemed that's what I was saying. Rather, what I meant was that Lucas and the other people directing the franchise feel that the Jedi are the key to attracting more people, because the Jedi are the "coolest" part of the franchise. In the same film that Lucas gave us the noxious kiddy-pandering Jar Jar Binks, he also shifted the focus decisively towards the Jedi to the effective exclusion of non-Jedi characters.

It's not so much the Jedi as the lack of exploration of the difficulties Jedi face. It's not all that difficult to come up with an interesting Jedi character who, for instance, doesn't fall lockstep into the Jedi ideology, and has to struggle with prejudice from other members of the Order who assume that they are going to fall to the Dark Side as a result. Or perhaps a Jedi who is earnestly trying to be the shining beacon that represents everything positive about the Jedi, but for whatever reason doesn't quite have what it takes to pull it off.

Most of the time, the only struggle the EU Jedi have to tangle with is RAR SITH LORDS!

Stark wrote:I'm more against the Sith-everything that comes with the games these days.

Sith Gardening! (I know the person who came up with this concept reads this board. I think he just lurks, though, so I don't think I can give him proper credit since none of you would know him. When you read this, hi.)

Pablo Sanchez wrote:The first Dark Forces was made in 1995, X-Wing was made in 1993. It's also worth noting that Dark Forces 2 and 3 were Jedi games, and the X-Wing series is permanently defunct with the death of the Space Sim genre. All the recent, successful Lucasfilm IP videogames (Jedi Knight II, KOTOR, SW Galaxies) have had the Jedi element in them.

Slight nitpick, in Galaxies haydays (IE Within the First year or two), the Jedi were nonexistent, well they did exist, but playing Galaxies to be a Jedi was about as pointless as playing it so you can be a droid.

The EU hard love of Jedi-isms seems to stem from current trends in geek culture that favor East Asian history and culture. Since the Jedi and the Force pretty clearly draw from aspects of Asian culture, it's hence, popular with the people the EU markets to.

Stark wrote:I'm more against the Sith-everything that comes with the games these days.

Republic Commando may have been a pretty mediocre title, but it DID have little to no Sith vs. Jedi force wankfests. That was probably the one good thing about it. The closest thing that came close to any kind of "zomg sith dudz" in RC were the fights with Grievous Ninja Droids.

Now if only they had balanced the weapons in the game better.

To be honest, the Jedi are the thing that resound the most about the movies to me. I agree that it would be cool to be just another trooper in a game for awhile, but that's really only well suited to multiplayer games like Battlefront. If you want to have a super character, you have to be either exceedingly well trained and equipped, like the Republic Commandos or the Mandalorian bounty hunters, or you have to be super-strong and badass, preferably an alien species like the Wookiee, or you have to be a Jedi. The current policy seems to focus on the Jedi. IIRC, in one of the making of videos for the Force Unleashed, the developers were talking about how they were actually going to make a game with a big bad Wookiee as the protagonist, but that was nixed in favor of Darth's secret apprentice from on high. There are other people who think like you.

I get sick of Jedi for the same reason I get sick of Q and the Ancients and such. They're plot devices that hang around to dick with the fun. To me they're like a GameMaster's self-insert supercharacter who always knows the One True Way to win--and suprise--it depends on him. The first Star Wars movie was decided by the Force AND teamwork, since without Han, it's likely Luke was going to be vapor. That's an awesome dynmaic that is carried through the other movies as well. The EU and games just strokes the saber way too hard though, bridging on a no-limits fallacy at points. Trying to quantify Jedi powers is extremely difficult, so invariably every game will include them, and they will end up throwing people around, yanking guns, throwing lightning, and generally looking so overpowered that they would have torn Vader apart in a heartbeat.

And while the Jedi in the prequels were, I think, fun to deal with, the Jedi/Sith in other media often end up being good at their powers for no reason, displaying a range or potency of power not even Luke did, and spending almost no time training whatsoever.

I was pretty sure that an untrained lightsaber-swinging Force User was a pretty clear shot to the Darkside, wasn't it? So why do these guys always seem to be violent AND not tainted? Eh.

It'd be like writing a story about this Badass Dude in Warhammer 40k, who is like the coolest soldier and then one day comes across his Father/Uncle/Brother/Grandfather's Necrodermis blade, and realizes he's a powerful natural Psyker, and despite being angry and often violent somehow resists singlehandedly the pull of Chaos. What?

Jedi are cool. But there's not supposed to be a million goddamn Jedi running around. I'd rather play as one of the Clonetroopers who shot a Jedi, decided to keep the Saber, and joins the alliance. Let me use the damn thing as a tool, but do I really NEED magic powers? Jedi have always been horribly wanky, and if Star Wars wasn't so cool in other ways, I doubt this level of nerdwank would have ever been tolerated.