Dear God, is there
any storyline so stupid or ridiculous that they won't use it for the comics?
Well, when you have Lucas as an iconic example of how much a correspondence course degree in script writing is worth...:``)
That said, I don't knock the fanfic for two reasons:
1. Story _telling_ is a dynamic art.
At least it used to be, as an oral tradition. Which is not to say that summating and finalizing a story as an editorially revamped work is not a good way to clean up 'the tradition' as a function of legitimated retcon (religions do this all the time, why can't we?). But rather that, so long as there is an experimentalist phase, those who write with big visions of small stories have a chance to add very special 'dynamic scenes' that might otherwise never -find- continuity in a larger story.
2. The Storyline _Is Awful_.
As it now stands, we have lost any and all affinity with The Jedi and The Force as a driving element of a grander theme. Something I hope to fix. And that can only happen if we acknowledge that, while certain themes will always be cool (Lightsabers, The Force, Interstellar War). The execution needs to be almost completely revamped for these to be integrated successfully into a larger universal dynamic.
As you yourself mentioned in another thread: What is it about The Force that makes it a religion or not? Is it a fear of proselytizing in a 'must meet all demographic wishes' sense of acceptable pablum?
IMO, that is cowardly. Becaues religion is about morality (or tries to be) and morality is not a fixed set of laws but a situational ethics driven sense of efficiencies. Efficiencies in turn are the stuff of evolutionary change. Both social and personal. And THAT is where Star Wars could speak. Not in an elitist fashion but still in a new edition one.
The EU provides, if not exactly a template for a brave new world of Star Wars to work from, then at least the backing proof that 'nothing is impossible if you accept this other...'stuff'' correlate.
Someday, the story will change. As people will realize that it no longer is cohesive with their own or any motive or morality. And then the EU will be the place to both harvest the best writers. And create an architecture for 'what doesn't work or doesn't need to be repeated' in the next edition.
That is, ironically, also why I applaud the other side of the street: For if you don't like what is done in the EU, then HUGE blocks of this 20,000 year old society open up to revisitation. And the farther away from BBY/ABY you get, the more the nature of the presented (cough, Lucas being Lucas, AGAIN) characterizations and environmentalism can be altered. Or even restated.
Is 20,000 years too long for a society to persist as only 'partly divine'? How about 5,000? 20,000 years ago on Earth, we hadn't made metal tools. 5,000 years ago we now know that simple bronze axeheads did exist (Otzi, the glacier guy). Along with various working levels of society (Egypt had tax labels on jars of goods) to differentiate the functionally primitive from the primitively advanced.
KPl.