{"id":51,"date":"2006-04-16T18:01:51","date_gmt":"2006-04-17T01:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alertnerd.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/16\/eu-pronounced-ewww\/"},"modified":"2006-04-16T18:01:51","modified_gmt":"2006-04-17T01:01:51","slug":"eu-pronounced-ewww","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=51","title":{"rendered":"EU: Pronounced "Ewww.""},"content":{"rendered":"

I was so damned excited as a pathetic nerd boy for last year’s Star Wars: Episode III that I actually did something I never thought I’d ever do again: I read Star Wars fiction.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You know of what I speak. Those paperbacks that have their own set of shelves at Borders and inevitably find their way onto paperback racks at Rite-Aid and the airport…just like Harlequin romance novels. It’s the Expanded Universe, the world beyond George Lucas’ imagination that an army of hacks have been exploring for decades.<\/p>\n

I’ve always hated the EU. Star Wars toasts my bagel because it’s a mythic, epic story that sweeps and swashes with the buckle. It is NOT interesting to me because someone thought it would be a good idea to decide that Boba Fett should be the best man at Dengar’s wedding. (True story.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In other words, it’s all too damned incestuous. In three movies, I can buy that we only follow the same handful of characters; in hundreds of thousands of pages of comics and novels and short stories, it seems silly. And when they wander off onto Weird Alien #3 from the cantina sequence to explore his backstory, I don’t give a shit.<\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, I was so. Very. Tempted. I was thinking about buying the first issue of the latest Star Wars comics series from Dark Horse, Star Wars: Rebellion. I was thinking about it because I am weak, and shameless, and like to give money to others in exchange for goods.<\/p>\n

I’m proud to say I didn’t buy it. Not quite so proud to admit that I actually LIKED some of the EU dreck I read last year. But I’ll take what I can get.<\/p>\n

\"wiki\"WikiWikiWhack:<\/strong> Expanded Universe (Star Wars)<\/a>, Dengar<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was so damned excited as a pathetic nerd boy for last year’s Star Wars: Episode III that I actually did something I never thought I’d ever do again: I read Star Wars fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,6,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-comics","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}