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You really have a way with words.

T’is a rare moment, indeed.

I hadn’t caught it the first time I read it. Coming back… OMG that’s adorable.

I was thinking, it looks like he might have lost some weight since the last time we saw him. Then again, maybe I’m just nuts.

In my rant I mentioned that I feel like ‘most’ books written in present tense are either by pretentious authors who think they’re being avant garde, or authors writing smut. There are genuinely great authors who really are or were avant garde who are totally justified in their prose because they’re masters of the writing craft. But, like abstract and modern art that breaks all the rules, the best avant garde artists are the ones who have already mastered all the rules. That’s why it’s genius when they break them.

Now, between Hunger games and 50 Shades, every YA teen angst dystopia series and BDSM fantasy book has to be written in the present tense, and my rage meter continues to rise! I think there’s a general consensus that neither of those book series pushed the boundaries of literature, even if they were commercial successes for the mass audience. But does that mean the mass audience loves present tense writing? Maybe, I dunno, but I’ve got to say that I certainly don’t, especially not in my kriffing Star Wars novels!!!

And I bet Aftermath sells really well because of its big advertising push, but it should come with the label ‘WARNING: Written in awkward present tense!”

Ah, the petard hoist. A fine staple of ninja stories.

If Disney kept all the lore intact, what would they do for new movies? The books have covered basically every major event in the lives of Luke and Co. for some 40 years following RotJ. Should Disney have made the Thrawn trilogy into episodes 7-9? If they did, they’d still have to change things up quite a bit to get them to work as movies. The more a movie tries to be a direct translation of a book, the worse it is, generally speaking. So what we’d end up with is an alternate version of these books, and that mucks up the canon anyway, because now the book would be secondary canon to the film versions of the book! And chances are the films would contradict other already published novels and then we’d have a subset of official and unofficial canon anyway!

This is why I’m fine with Disney throwing out the old EU. I didn’t dislike it, I loved it, but it was too bloated, it’d filled in too much history of the characters in ways that wouldn’t translate well to film without heavy revision. It makes more sense to build a new canon off of the movies, and Disney has the right idea of it by making sure everyone creating new parts of the EU are in contact with each other and making sure it all locks together. My big problem is that we’re getting too much of it all at once, no one person could reasonably keep up with it all!!

And I do think they’re respecting the EU, because so far the new books are using all the terms, locations, and character archetypes I’d become very used to in the old EU. In fact, they might be sticking a little too close to the old stuff. The Alliance is even adopting the title of “New Republic” in Aftermath. Maybe it’s only a matter of time before Thrawn and other negated EU characters show up, who knows. After all, is there any woman in the galaxy better suited to hook up with Luke Skywalker than Mara Jade? Oh wait, I think Luke’s like a hermit or something in Force Awakens. N/M.

Mith-Raw-Nuruodo AKA: Great Admiral Thrawn, the only non-human to reach such a high position in the imperial army.

I think Chiss are still officially canon. Did any Chiss make an appearance in the Clone Wars cartoon at any point? Just one brief appearance and we’re good! I’m still hoping that Thrawn and Jade will appear in the new canon, and maybe not die this time.

It’s totally unnecessary!

Nope. 😁