Nick Hwang

It used to be a tiered system where movies and tv series would trump anything else, but otherwise everything was regarded as canon, and anything said by Lucas was also given precedence. It’s not completely clear what is going on in this transitional period but Lucasfilm has created a group responsible for maintaining the canon. They have yet to make any official statement as to what changes are being made.

Fortunately it looks like you’re covered on both female and alien characters on the main crew with Hera, Sabine and Zeb. Hera even fills both categories!

It depends on which era you’re most interested in. If you want to start post-ROTJ then Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy starting with Heir to the Empire would be the place to go. The X-Wing series is also pretty standalone and a damn good read in my opinion. For Clone Wars I don’t think chronology is as essential since most are standalone, and books from other eras, such as The Old Republic, can generally be read alone as well.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_books#Pre-Republic_era

I find that timeline to be very helpful in making sure things are read in sequence, but the Thrawn trilogy is universally regarded as a good starting point I believe. In general while works may include subtle references to events in other stories it’s almost never REQUIRED that you’ve read the others. If you follow publication date or chronological sequence to some degree you’ll be completely fine. I myself had a rather poor starting point with the Young Jedi Knights series and am none worse for wear.

I understand where you’re coming from and there are definitely some works that I wouldn’t shed a tear for if they were excised. My fear is more focused on the possibility of all the good works being destroyed in one simple action. If they introduce Solo and Skywalker kids and they aren’t Ben and Jaina then practically all the post ROTJ EU is invalidated and we’d lose some great characters in the process.

I don’t want the new films to adhere to the EU so much as acknowledge their existence, I want to make clear that I’m a huge fan of The Clone Wars and liked how they did things, making small mentions of EU works that fans would grin at if they were knowledgeable. I agree that Luke and the others should be allowed to die if the story calls for it but I’d like to see him serve as a Yoda figure. My biggest concern is once again how the children are dealt with, but as for other EU stories I’d be more than happy if a character just mentioned them off-handedly, e.g. referred to the Thrawn campaign without further elaboration at some point. Thanks for commenting!

You may be interested in Star Wars: Allegiance and its sequel Choices of One. They don’t take place after the Empire’s defeat but they do feature a squad of stormtroopers that end up deserting. Both novels are written by Timothy Zahn of Thrawn trilogy fame and also feature Mara Jade!

I went into this show cautiously optimistic and was absolutely floored by how much I enjoyed it! First time in a while that a show kept me consistently excited week after week! While it strays a biiiiit too close to the Dark Knight trilogy sometimes it does make the series very strong. Manu Bennett and Summer Glau are just bonuses! I still laugh at Ollie’s Mandarin though, hopefully his Russian is more accurate?

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald

That actually is very interesting now that I think about it. That’s the only generation where player characters had both parents around!

Eureka Seven remains my absolute favorite anime series to this day so I was positively exploding with excitement with the announcement of AO, and the high octane first episode gave me high hopes despite the very confusing setting. However this excitement steadily turned into greater and greater disappointment as it became clear AO was largely a monster of the week format show with very little relation to the original.

With this write-up I did consider AO on its own merits and it isn’t the train wreck I initially held it to be. Visuals are amazing and music undeniably strong. I still feel nearly nothing happened for much of the series as it just dragged us along with red herrings and little payoff to fans of the original. (Type TheEND anyone?) I absolutely hated how the sequel had to ruin Eureka and Renton’s happy ending as well as reversing the entire message of coexistence from the original. Absolutely no news of Holland and the others either, and the glimpse of Renton and Eureka’s post apocalyptic world were not encouraging. While I still strongly dislike Ao for souring my favorite series I have hope its popularity results in an improved continuation one day.