Speaker 1: Hello there, welcome to the ned Palty.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: This is Nick and Ostasium, lead editor and writer on
Speaker 3: mal Shadow Lord, and you're listening to Aggressive Negotiations.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the library section of Aggressive Negotiations,
Speaker 2: the Star Wars podcast on the Nerd Party Network that
Speaker 2: strives to expand your reading horizons and remind you that
Speaker 2: Jedi reading is fundamental. I'm one of your hosts, Jedi
Speaker 2: Master John Mills, and I'm joined with the erudite scholar
Speaker 2: of the Jedi, Jedi Master, Matthew Rushing. Matt, are you
Speaker 2: prepared to discuss an exciting surprise topic here on Aggressive Negotiations?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, sorry, John, I was just trying to be really
Speaker 4: quiet because the Jedi librarian just told me to shut
Speaker 4: up a few minutes ago, so sorry about that. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm actually really really excited to talk about this. Do
Speaker 4: you think we could find maybe a room where we
Speaker 4: could talk a little bit louder for our listeners.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you asked, Matt, because I don't want to
Speaker 2: balance this show and editing anymore than I have to.
Speaker 2: So we will start talking at normal volume now, and
Speaker 2: you know what, you can start leaving us reviews at
Speaker 2: normal volume in Apple Podcasts and give us a star
Speaker 2: rating and review, and go over to the socials and
Speaker 2: find us at the Jedi Masters on Twitter and look
Speaker 2: for at join nerd Party on Twitter and the Nerd
Speaker 2: Party on Facebook and Instagram. And I'll give you a
Speaker 2: little tease here. I downloaded TikTok the other day because
Speaker 2: my daughters send me so many things on TikTok that
Speaker 2: I figured I might as well have the app to
Speaker 2: make it easier to open them. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: I'm going to post anything anyway, Matt. This is just
Speaker 2: a random sort of thing. I was in a bookstore
Speaker 2: the other day. I know, knock me over with a feather.
Speaker 2: They reopened a Barnes and Noble near where I hang out.
Speaker 2: Totally mind blowing is I was like, wait, there's a
Speaker 2: new Barnes. What so, whoever's in charge of that chain,
Speaker 2: bravo to you. You figured out how to bring it
Speaker 2: back from the dead. Now, whoever owns borders get to work.
Speaker 2: So I'm in Barnes and Noble, and what do you
Speaker 2: do you walk into a bookstore? What is a section
Speaker 2: that you're inevitably going to gravitate over toward I know
Speaker 2: you go to one of the same sections I do,
Speaker 2: and drum roll.
Speaker 1: Please it is the sci fi section.
Speaker 2: Yes, because you're looking under s four what Star Wars
Speaker 2: books are there? Thank you very much. It's a compulsion.
Speaker 2: You can't help yourself, right, Sure, you have to. You
Speaker 2: have to gravitate on over there. And it was really
Speaker 2: interesting because one Sunday after church, we go over there
Speaker 2: and we're hanging out. I gravitate over toward the Star
Speaker 2: Wars section and I wind up embarrassing my kids because
Speaker 2: I strike up a conversation accidentally with this woman who's
Speaker 2: there with her husband and kid, and we just started
Speaker 2: talking about Star Wars books. And she, you know, most
Speaker 2: of the world is a little younger than me, I guess,
Speaker 2: and you know, we start talking about she he hasn't
Speaker 2: read Kenoby by John Jackson Miller. And she's sitting there
Speaker 2: She's like, is that a good one? I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: John Jackson Miller. I'm like, look for that name. He's
Speaker 2: good writer, you know, especially in franchise work. He's great.
Speaker 2: And I mentioned as Batman books that he's also written
Speaker 2: that are really good, Batman Resurrection and Batman Revolution, highly
Speaker 2: recommend them everybody anyway. So I'm like, oh, yeah, Canoby's good.
Speaker 2: And we start talking about the Star Wars books and
Speaker 2: I realize as I'm looking at the books on the shelf,
Speaker 2: everything's got legends on it. There's like one or two
Speaker 2: High Republic books on there, and then there's like Mask
Speaker 2: of Fears on there, but almost everything is legends. And
Speaker 2: so my question to you is, is Star Wars publishing
Speaker 2: in trouble? Like? Am I blind to an issue with
Speaker 2: Star Wars publishing? Why am I not seeing new Star
Speaker 2: Wars books set in prequel era or even an original
Speaker 2: trilogy era in this new canon? What am I missing?
Speaker 2: What's the whole here? Or is this simply because I
Speaker 2: happen to look at the bookshelf at the wrong time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good question, And
Speaker 1: a big part of that is is you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're not wrong. There are not a lot of books
Speaker 1: that are coming out at the moment, and they're they're
Speaker 1: they're kind of few and far between.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 1: You know, in what's coming out, you know, you maybe
Speaker 1: get one or two a year, I think it most
Speaker 1: And so, uh, yeah, novel wise, I mean, yeah, the
Speaker 1: High Republic came out and and and did it finished,
Speaker 1: And you know that it wasn't necessarily a huge hit
Speaker 1: except for a small segment of fans which they liked it.
Speaker 1: That's great, more power to them. Glad you enjoyed it. Uh,
Speaker 1: But you know, in that sense, publishing had taken a
Speaker 1: big swing, right. They put a lot behind that, and
Speaker 1: when it did not do what they had hoped, I
Speaker 1: think they were kind of left a little bit high
Speaker 1: and dry.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The the other thing that's coming out, like you said,
Speaker 1: you've you've got the Dark Times series with like starting
Speaker 1: with Mask of Fear, as you mentioned, where we're telling
Speaker 1: stories for Man Mathma and Belle Organa and saw Guerera
Speaker 1: and you know, filling in the stuff that you didn't
Speaker 1: see for and Or Right, there's a lot there still
Speaker 1: for them, especially those early years that we don't know
Speaker 1: tons about. And then you know, like this year, this
Speaker 1: month actually at the end of this month as we're recording,
Speaker 1: is July, there's a book called Star Wars Legacy that's
Speaker 1: coming out, which is set between the Last Jedi and
Speaker 1: the Rise of Skywalker, and it's all about Lea and
Speaker 1: Ray training together. I mean, they did just put out
Speaker 1: and it's coming out. I have the review copy of this,
Speaker 1: and it's one I would ilokremen because it's great, because
Speaker 1: all the art of books are so wonderful. But they
Speaker 1: did the two seasons for and Or beautiful book and
Speaker 1: really well done, some amazing insights. And you know, whether
Speaker 1: you liked the show or not, the production value for
Speaker 1: that was bar No, the production.
Speaker 2: Value is tough. Not so yeah, I know the art
Speaker 2: of yeah, and the art of like you're saying, the
Speaker 2: art of books always do incredibly well with presenting, you know,
Speaker 2: the process with that. And I think anybody, regardless of
Speaker 2: what they think of the and Or series, you know,
Speaker 2: both seasons, would recognize the production quality on the show
Speaker 2: is insane. Yeah, Like it's really They obviously spared no
Speaker 2: expense in building that show. But I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: the larger thing is is I guess the philosophical question
Speaker 2: I would put out there is has the publishing arm
Speaker 2: of Star Wars lost sight of the fact that the
Speaker 2: way that you retain your active fan base is your
Speaker 2: cranking these out like the pulp novels that inspired Lucas,
Speaker 2: I mean, the salad days of the nineties. Listen, I'm
Speaker 2: going to preface this by saying, and I've said it
Speaker 2: many times, when Disney came forward before The Force Awakens
Speaker 2: and said they were throwing out the old expanded Universe,
Speaker 2: you can bear witness to this. Matt. My reaction was, Oh,
Speaker 2: thank god, I was so overburned with all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: I was so happy they were doing that.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely how you felt. I remember, and I
Speaker 1: am the conversations.
Speaker 2: I am not going to issue statements of whether in
Speaker 2: retrospect it was as good a decision as I think
Speaker 2: they thought it was right. That's immaterial. I think that
Speaker 2: I enjoyed coming up in the nineties, when it seemed
Speaker 2: that after they had success with the Zoon trilogy, they said,
Speaker 2: oh wow, we've got something here, and it felt like
Speaker 2: there was a new book coming out every six months.
Speaker 2: And some of them sucked, they really did, but enough
Speaker 2: of them were good that it was it kept you,
Speaker 2: it kept you going back. Okay, it's eight bucks, it's
Speaker 2: seven bucks, Sure, whatever, I'll spend it. It's a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks of entertainment for me because I'm a slow reader.
Speaker 2: But have they lost sight of that? Do you think
Speaker 2: that's the issue, is that they're two in their heads,
Speaker 2: and they're not just cranking it out and just saying,
Speaker 2: forget trying to make an eight plus each time. Your
Speaker 2: batting average is what you got to go for, not
Speaker 2: a home run each time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just think that this is the thing.
Speaker 1: Like and Star Trek books struggled the same way in
Speaker 1: that sense, when you know the show was on the air,
Speaker 1: to write books that didn't cocked or dicked anything was
Speaker 1: really difficult because the show's doing written. You don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, you don't know where you're going right,
Speaker 1: and you know, the publishing arm had such a boom
Speaker 1: in the nineties because nobody thought more Star Wars was coming.
Speaker 1: They pretty much had free reign. There were some rules
Speaker 1: that Lucas had laid down about different things. You know,
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell a story about Yoda. You couldn't do
Speaker 1: this with these characters. You know, nobody could die until
Speaker 1: you know, famously with the New Jedi Order. Then you
Speaker 1: needed somebody to kill, and they decided on Chewy, and
Speaker 1: Lucas okayed it, you know, so or he came in
Speaker 1: and stepped in in that series and said, hey, I
Speaker 1: need you to kill Anakin solo because we're about to
Speaker 1: do the prequels and I don't want there being too
Speaker 1: competing Anakins. So that's the reason that character guide instead
Speaker 1: of his brother Jason, which you know that does not
Speaker 1: turn out well for that run of books anyway, because
Speaker 1: Jason turns into be a huge tool. That's not the
Speaker 1: point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make is is that which?
Speaker 2: But let me interject that feels really like Anakin could
Speaker 2: have done his grandfather's service by sort of repeating that.
Speaker 1: But hey, yeah, exactly. But I think think, yeah, it
Speaker 1: really is this thing where they're so afraid not to
Speaker 1: touch on anything that it's hard to tell important stories,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I think, you know, some of
Speaker 1: our favorite books obviously were the throng books that Zoon
Speaker 1: did and the way he was able to tie all
Speaker 1: that together. You know, there were some other books in
Speaker 1: the series earlier that I really liked. But it feels like,
Speaker 1: and this might be the thing. And I don't know
Speaker 1: it's because you know, they're still so active in that
Speaker 1: time period, but there are stories that seems like in
Speaker 1: the prequel era to tell, and even again even before
Speaker 1: the prequel era right in the sense of why can't
Speaker 1: you go back and tell the Obi Wan story? You know,
Speaker 1: like that seems to be the place where we're missing
Speaker 1: free reign, where it's like, you know, you have Filonian
Speaker 1: charge now of Lucasfilm Creative and and and this the
Speaker 1: co CEO of the company, and so he could easily
Speaker 1: tell publishing, hey, you can play in this part of
Speaker 1: the galaxy, and these are the if they're you, you
Speaker 1: have to run every story the idea buy me. But
Speaker 1: as long as I okay it, it's fine, man, and
Speaker 1: just go play with it. And until I say no, yeah,
Speaker 1: enjoy yourselves. You know, I don't understand why we're not
Speaker 1: doing that, because it feels like they keep trying to
Speaker 1: tell stories in places where it's difficult for them to
Speaker 1: get the okay to actually tell a good story there.
Speaker 1: I mean so that I don't know, man, it is
Speaker 1: a strange thing because like when we did that the
Speaker 1: the Clone War saves the you know, helped save Star Wars.
Speaker 1: I publishing I think helped save Star Wars in the
Speaker 1: sense that it kept it alive for fans and fan
Speaker 1: you know, people of this generation don't understand what it
Speaker 1: was like to go into the bookstore and see that
Speaker 1: there was a New Star Wars book there and realize
Speaker 1: that could be the only New Star Wars you ever get.
Speaker 2: Well, I can say that, and this will be a
Speaker 2: terrible way to put it, and people might groan, But
Speaker 2: sometimes the publishing could be the methodone to your heroin addiction,
Speaker 2: because you know you're like, okay, well I can't get
Speaker 2: the real thing, so okay, I'll ride this out. But additionally,
Speaker 2: I want to go back to something you said where
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, it's hard to tell an important story.
Speaker 2: The stuff in the nineties and even the two thousands,
Speaker 2: when they were playing in the prequel era, they didn't
Speaker 2: worry about the whether it was an important story or not.
Speaker 2: It was just about producing a story. You look at
Speaker 2: the tales of the Empire or tales of the Bounty
Speaker 2: Hunters series. None of those stories were particularly important. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they were just there and it was just to keep
Speaker 2: the franchise alive. And I think it what they're sleeping
Speaker 2: on is there is a tremendous opportunity with the Mando
Speaker 2: series telling side characters. You could have a Grief Cargo series,
Speaker 2: you can have a Karen Done series. You could have
Speaker 2: whatever you wanted. You know what, you don't get to
Speaker 2: make Rangers of the New Republic. Turn it into a
Speaker 2: book series. Yeah, throw it out there. Do the book
Speaker 2: series thing. Have that do some of the lifting for
Speaker 2: the fans, and then just make the screen stuff accessible
Speaker 2: for everybody else, just like Lucas did, where it was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: the on screen stuff is accessible for everybody, but then
Speaker 2: you and me we could go to the bookstore. We
Speaker 2: could read Karen Travis's Clone series, which I really loved.
Speaker 1: It was really great.
Speaker 2: And you know, like I mean, it's just one of
Speaker 2: those things where it's like they're so precious about it.
Speaker 2: I think they just need to just lose in their
Speaker 2: sphincters and just let it go. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's hard, man, because I think too, and
Speaker 1: maybe this will change. And I think that you bringing
Speaker 1: up this question is a really interesting thing because I
Speaker 1: do wonder if this might change here as Folony fully
Speaker 1: cements himself being in charge, and I think it might
Speaker 1: be because he truly understands his vision for where the
Speaker 1: series is going right and the stories that he wants
Speaker 1: to tell and how it all connects. In that sense,
Speaker 1: like I think that there is a possibility that we
Speaker 1: might be able to see more in the publishing rather
Speaker 1: than less because of that possibility, because he can okay
Speaker 1: certain stories without worrying about stepping on the toes of
Speaker 1: anything that is planned on coming up right, even in
Speaker 1: it if it's in his mind as like a ten
Speaker 1: year plan, you know, like that's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: I want to hit. So I don't want people touching that.
Speaker 1: But hey, this over here that people might have thought
Speaker 1: is going to be out of bounds, No, that's totally
Speaker 1: in bounce, you know. So I do wonder. And that's
Speaker 1: the other thing, like right you you know, I I've
Speaker 1: talked to enough of the tie in authors on the
Speaker 1: Star Trek side to understand. I mean, for these guys
Speaker 1: to write a book, you know, it takes a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time anyway, and then it's got to go
Speaker 1: through the editing process, and so you know, you're talking
Speaker 1: like a year. It's worth of work. And so you know,
Speaker 1: now that Filony is in charge, maybe this will be
Speaker 1: something that will actually see a bit of a revolution,
Speaker 1: a bit of a resurgence because they understand the stories
Speaker 1: they can tell, which I think would be great, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like because like you you know, I one
Speaker 1: hundred percent under I one hundred percent love Star Wars books.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I have personally been reading through the New Jedi Order
Speaker 1: series this year because I haven't read it since it
Speaker 1: came out, you know, it's been a very long time,
Speaker 1: and it was just something I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back and reread that. So I bought.
Speaker 1: I've got the books for that. I've got the next series,
Speaker 1: which I think is a legacy in the Force, and
Speaker 1: then I've got Fate of the Jedi after that, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to go through basically
Speaker 1: the end of the Legends era and enjoy it. And
Speaker 1: like I'm a little more than halfway done through you know,
Speaker 1: New Jedi Order, and for the most part, most of
Speaker 1: the books have held up and I've enjoyed reading them.
Speaker 1: And so like maybe that's why too. You go to
Speaker 1: the store, right, and you know, those books just continue
Speaker 1: to be popular. There's enough of them out there for
Speaker 1: them to be popular, and they obviously still make enough
Speaker 1: money that they are, you know, putting them out with
Speaker 1: a new cover, you know, and because they've been redoing
Speaker 1: a bunch of those books with in the trade paperback format,
Speaker 1: because a lot of them just came out originally in
Speaker 1: the mass market papermacs, which nobody buys anymore. Everything's trade
Speaker 1: paperback now, and so they, you know, have a reason
Speaker 1: for people to come and pick them up again. And
Speaker 1: so I don't know, man, it does go to show though,
Speaker 1: you know, those those books that really stuck with fans,
Speaker 1: then it's interesting to see them still stick with fans now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that the last call I would
Speaker 2: make is that fans themselves need to unclench their sphincters
Speaker 2: about continuity because first and foremost there were problems with
Speaker 2: original EU continuity all over the place. It was one
Speaker 2: of the things that got tiring for me, was carrying
Speaker 2: one way or the other. But like you know, even
Speaker 2: when continuity got over written by something on screen, that's
Speaker 2: what people really need to just step back from. Because
Speaker 2: I could, you know, I could talk about you mentioned
Speaker 2: the Zon trilogy, Spardy Cylinders. I look those up, kids,
Speaker 2: Like the whole history of the Clone Wars was completely
Speaker 2: different in your head.
Speaker 1: Came back to it.
Speaker 2: You know, I always complained about Boba Fett's history, or
Speaker 2: the Mandalorians, or the history of the Jedi or anything
Speaker 2: even number of things, and then you bring in you've
Speaker 2: been on a rereading the New Jedi Order, and you're
Speaker 2: going on the legacy of the Force and everything. My
Speaker 2: whole thing is, I've been rereading the graphic novels or
Speaker 2: the graphic trade paperbacks, the collection, the series collections and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, and it's fascinating to me because there
Speaker 2: are so many great ideas just in those that you
Speaker 2: could mine. And I'll tell you a Star Wars legacy,
Speaker 2: which was its own series.
Speaker 1: I remember that. Yep. I read the whole thing Man.
Speaker 2: Comics, and it kills me because what they've done on
Speaker 2: screen means that they can't possibly really adapt it unless
Speaker 2: they go back and ret on the idea that Luke
Speaker 2: had a kid we didn't know about by the time
Speaker 2: we met Red and it's like that that's a little heartbreaking,
Speaker 2: but you know what, you could still work, although they'll
Speaker 2: never work in Mara Jade, because it seems like Lucas
Speaker 2: that was the one thing he dug his heels in.
Speaker 1: He seemed to really hate her, and.
Speaker 2: I maybe we need to look up if his heart
Speaker 2: was broken by a Redhead at some point in the past.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's maybe that's the problem. Maybe if we changed
Speaker 2: Mara J to a brunette, we can get her through
Speaker 2: the process. Here, let's let's discuss this, you know that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But you know, Matt, if people want
Speaker 2: to discuss any other type of hair color that mar
Speaker 2: J could have to get her worked back into continuity.
Speaker 2: Where could they find you online?
Speaker 1: Well, you can find me all over the place on
Speaker 1: social media and the named Matt Rushing zero two here
Speaker 1: in the network did a show called Outposts about every
Speaker 1: single chapter the Harry Potter series. TFM Network got a
Speaker 1: bunch of shows talking about Star Trek with my good
Speaker 1: friend Chris Jones, and then I'm over there as well
Speaker 1: on the six of two club talking about all the
Speaker 1: franchises we love outside of Star Trek. But John, if
Speaker 1: people wanted to talk about, like what you're reading next,
Speaker 1: and maybe I don't know, maybe even get a hint
Speaker 1: about what might be coming up here soon on aggressive negotiations.
Speaker 1: Where could people find you?
Speaker 2: Well, gosh, you can find me as Kessel Junkie on
Speaker 2: your social network of choice. I'm most active on Goodreads
Speaker 2: and Letterbox because books and movies are what I love.
Speaker 2: And you can find me here on the network, co
Speaker 2: hosting a show called house Lights with Tristan Radel and
Speaker 2: Darren Moser, where I educate them on film technique, film process,
Speaker 2: and film history. It's really a masterclass that I offer
Speaker 2: to the two of them, because it's all about walking
Speaker 2: them through so they understand what's happening. Very very difficult task,
Speaker 2: but I'm pleased to do it.
Speaker 1: Matt.
Speaker 2: At this point, though, I realized that I did not
Speaker 2: turn on the dehumidifier, so all of my books Back
Speaker 2: of the Temple are starting to win built from the
Speaker 2: humidity on Coruscant. So I think it's time to close
Speaker 2: these negotiations.
Speaker 1: John, negotiations are closed. Join the Revolution, Join the Nerd Party.