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Penny Arcade - Comic - Elder Magic
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Elder Magic
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Posts
Why dispense with when you can dispose of?
The sarlaac is right there
You told me when we got this sarlaac that we'd be using it every day, and it's been, what, forty years since we even threw anybody in it? And even then, it was such a huge hassle. We would have been better off just doing it by hand.
I'm putting it on e(mpire)Bay.
-Tycho Brahe
Yep.
Which is fine I guess, and I don't want to discount the good ideas Legends has on account of its many, many bad ideas. But also, I think many people were like me when Thrawn showed up in Rebels: we didn't geek out because he was a guy from the books, we geeked out because he was a great character perfectly portrayed who stole the show from the first moment he was on screen, especially as his reasonableness and long perspective was in contrast to the incompetent and myopic officers we are used to seeing.
If they somehow introduce Mara Jade and she's well done, great. But I can't help but feel that a lot of people would have felt very differently about Rey if she was depicted exactly the same, but was named Mara Jade. And that's a shame.
I'm pretty sure people like new characters, when they're done well. The Mandalorian and Andor are pretty good examples of this.
The sarlaac is right there
Look, we agreed to buy it because we agreed that we'd use it a lot. Don't put this on me. When did I ever stop you throwing anyone in the sarlaac? What's that? Never?
Look baby I don't want to fight with you. We're on the side side in the same team. Let's buy some enslaved rebels and feed that sarlaac and have a lovely outside evening drinking wine?
I think we're talking at different levels here. There's definitely different levels of SW fan, or just someone who wouldn't even call themselves a SW fan but just someone who likes good shows that are sometimes about wars in the stars. I know I've never seen the show with Thrawn in it. It's not that I didn't notice, but that the show didn't have as wide of an audience. I'm assuming they're now trying to put Thrawn in something that would.
Edit: And yeah, it seems Jerry noticed. From the post:
So he's also talking about Thrawn in a live action feature film, where not every niche of SW content is represented like it is in all the side projects.
Just accept, they don't give a shit about your Boba Fett toys, your Mara Jade fanfiction, or anything you want to see in a Star Wars movie. They. Do. Not. Care.
So, if the current iteration of Star Wars is not your thing. Move on. Read a new book (I just discovered John Gwynne, he's not great, but he's entertaining), dig up and watch a series you missed when it first aired (I just started Killjoys), take up a new hobby (Just rediscovered mountain biking and it is awesome) But for god's sake. Move on and stop expecting something different while knowing that you will just be disappointed.
Now, for those of you who have genuinely enjoyed the direction of Star Wars in the last decade, rock on. Enjoy what you love and don't dwell on anyone else shitting on it because it doesn't meet their expectations.
I'd be up for more of his adventures in Death Mountain
But he was banned from going to Death Mountain. I can't see him breaking the law even though all of his stuff is there.
Thank you! 100% agree.
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I mean, they literally dropped the name of the novel that introduced Thrawn, so I think they're definitely arranging things to appeal to those fans here. It may be a cynical plan to just try to attract more viewers, but they care, yes.
I'm no Star Wars specialist haven't even seen a most expended things in either the new or old canon, but from my experience of fandoms in general, I can safely assume that if Rey had been done in the same way, but named Mara Kade, the people who had a problem with Rey would've had a even bigger problem with her for "" ruinning"" a character they liked.
And, if I'm correct to assume that Mara Jade was different from Rey, even people who liked Rey just fine would've disliked her as Mara Jade on a "It's a fine character, but this is not Mara Jade at all" basis.
thoses with no previous attachement or Knowledge of Mara Jade would have had the same reaction they had to Rey as Rey.
A lot of film and TV is based on written works. That's just... how it is. The MCU is literally the same shit, it's a new reset canon with a lot of inspiration and characters lifted from old comics that had far less reach. Nobody gets up in arms about this (or at least they are not loud enough for me to hear about it) but when STAR WARS makes bad content it's, oh no that's the sacred thing, we have to JUDGE. Like, most media is just plain bad my dudes, for very mundane reasons, it's hard to make good stuff. There's nothing going on here except for the fans being super fucking weird about everything.
E: I mean even reading this comic I had to guess at who those characters even were, and I did guess right just because I know a lot of oldhead nerds who are super loud about these characters and just put two and two together. But the fact that these characters are just plastered on the comic as if they expect people to know what they're referring to is insane.
Guys, lots of people get into Star Wars *for* the side content. This has been like that since forever ago. Heck, you're basically talking about it yourselves. You can't go "haha, see, the EU was good, but also all those shows that ARE the new EU don't count and are stupid". Well, you can, but I'm going to laugh at you.
My little sister herself is a huge Star Wars fan by any metric that wouldn't make you a giant asshole to use, and she has never seen all the movies. In point of fact, she fell asleep during A New Hope. But believe you me that she has extremely detailed Opinions about Rebels and Bad Batch and Clone Wars, and loves the shit out of Mandalorian, and is very much looking forward to Ahsoka.
The right holders were the one to basically operate in a "the EU isn't that important and the movies take precedence over everything" . But then, they end up ascending things from the EU into the movies, thus basically saying "eeeeh, EU is important in the end. Lot of people are fan of it."
And I say that referring to EU as a whole, not one version speficically.
9 years ago they wouldn't have put EU stuffs in film prominently.
As someone mostly familiar with the movies (and the Genndy Tartakovsky cartoon, that last I checked was not Canon because it's not a movie and they can decide whenever they want that it doesn't exist anymore) I only vaguely knew who Ahsoka was by name. I had no idea who MJ was until yesterday.
Of course, rather than a vindication of EU, it's very likely Just a consequence of the fact that the line between EU and mainline is getting progressively blurrier nowadays, because the way people consume and have access to media has changed a lot in the last 15 years.
The rights holders didn't say the EU wasn't good. They just said it's not canon. And creating canon versions of some of its characters is not reversing that position.
It's not insane. It's standard practice at Penny-Arcade and has been since the start. It's just that it's usually about VG characters. I only "get" about half of the strips in the archive because I've never kept up with the latest video games and Tycho's posts are often impenetrable.
Powers &8^]
Thing is, that was the Old EU. Lucas was very much into the "levels" of canon, with the movies at the top. But Disney has been weirdly adamant on their Everything We Release In Our New EU Is Canon And That Is Diamond-Plated Fact stance, even when it would make more sense to, well, not do that, because every project this big will have a bunch of serious stinkers (and also desperate adherence to the idea of canon is kind of axiomatically stupid).
But what happens in Rebels or The Mandalorian is not considered less canon than what happened in, like, The Force Awakens.
Disney knows the breadth of their audience. There are a great number of Star Wars fans that won't touch animations. One of my best friends is one of them. Remember that the OT came out at a time when a lot of Gen Xers were kids who grew up with extremely vapid cartoons. My friend was enraptured seeing the first film in theaters on a whim as a child but didn't grow up with the likes of South Park or the Toonami block as a teenager so it's much tougher to get her into animation. She's joined me for various anime and other viewings but it's not something she'd gravitate towards on her own. She absolutely will watch live action series like Andor or The Mandalorian though.
The position is crafty one. They can canonize the good parts of the EU, like Thrawn or even giving suggestions that KOTOR happened by various references, while ignoring the really dumb stuff, like Han Solo punching a giant space otter.
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But speaking of the New Republic, would it be too much to ask for a show that's about, you know, the New Republic? I've enjoyed the "Dark Times" era (between Episodes III and IV) so much precisely because it's not just about the characters but also the Empire and later the nascent Rebel Alliance. Unironically give me prequels style scenes about the New Republic senate.
The comic comes with a newspost, which usually explains things. You might have to wait a couple of hours, I guess? I'm not sure this qualifies as "insane".
And it doesn't really matter if you know them. The joke is there's special characters that will make the fans happy based on how desperate Disney is.
And i did'nt say that they said it was'nt good either. Merely that they treated it as not as important as the movies. i did'nt say that creating canon version of the uncanonised character changed anything regarding the fact that the old EU is no longer canon either. What i said is that nowadays, they do cross-polination between what's considered EU and the movies, which does implies a change in position in how important non-movie stuffs are considered. There would have been a very low chance of a character from one of the animated show or book appear in a prominent role in a movie back in 2016-2017.
Which of course, (like i was implying) is a change in position that probably have more to do with the fact that the line between mainline and EU is more blurry now in a era where "people can access every show they make on VoD and shows or cartoons can be big budget productions" than in a era where EU consisted of "books of various level of obscurity that only a few particularly dedicated fans would go out of their way to buy".
That does sound like what they're doing. And in that case does invalidate what i said.
Though even working with this patern, it's clear that until relatively recently (When they started making big budget shows on Dysney+, which probably not-coincidentally is when the MCU also started making series more closely tied to the movies rather than insisting on keeping things separates like during the Netflix Daredevil era), they clearly weren't treating the "spin-off" shows with the same level of importance as the movies, even if they have the same level of canonicity.
So in this way, a character being given a prominent movie appearance was a huge ascencion for this character.
Even today, while a lot of people probably follow the animated show or series more than they follow the films, there's still probably twice as many people who have seen the movies while being only remotely familiar with the shows, and possibly even less familiar with the cartoon.
I precise that i'm speaking generally. Personally, i do plan to watch some of the animated shows at some point (being more into animation that live action shows).
So this is not the Mara Jade you're looking for?