 Hello, I am once again here to overthink a piece of pop culture and today that is Star Wars, so let's go. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now, Star Wars, I don't need to explain it to you. It is a huge, huge franchise. There's movies which were huge, they now have television shows which are spin-offs, they have video games, books, comics, all kinds of stuff which have spun off. And the expanded universe, which is basically everything outside of the movies, which is no longer considered canon since Disney took it over, is also just huge, but it's not good. Now, part of the reason Star Wars is such a big franchise is that the universe it takes place in is huge. I mean, we have an entire galaxy, which even then that galaxy is not completely explored. Like, you can look on maps of it and they have huge swaths of it or just unknown regions, but even in the known regions there's just thousands and thousands of planets and different alien species and all kinds of stuff to explore. And on top of that, it has thousands and thousands of years of history. Like, the movies, by the time those take place, the Republic is already like 24,000 years old, so you have a lot of room to work with there, but the lore goes back even further than that. Like, this world is huge and so it's easy to see how there's so much potential to tell other stories outside of, like, the main movie saga. Now, a lot of the movies are bad because they just kind of focus on this one family. You know, they have all this room to work with, but they just keep focusing on the same couple of people, which is very annoying. But the Disney stuff and the expanded universe are bad because they don't really add anything to this world. It winds up just being a history of the galaxy. Like, yep, here's this war and then here's that war that happened. Here's a time that the good guys came out on top. Here's a time that the good guys were on the back foot and they weren't doing well, but then they also came out on top. Like, at that point, it just becomes rehearsing a list of facts about the setting. Now, a lot of these stories are good on their own. Like, they're still good stories with good characters and everything, so they can be fun, but it's just, what's the point of them? Like, I have not read the Thrawn books, but I've heard they're very good and from what I know about them, yeah, they do sound really great. I've played The Old Republic, which is a very fun game with a good storyline, and I'll admit I do like the Rogue One movie. Like, I'm sure someone's already telling me to kill myself in the comments somewhere, but I mean, it's an okay movie for a long time and then the climax comes and it spikes up and it's just very good. It's very fun. And, again, these are all good stories on their own. They just don't add anything to this world at all. None of them make us see this galaxy in a different light than we were looking before. None of them adds on to the themes of the series or even tries to insert some different themes in there. It's just a list of facts to memorize about the lore, and while the presentation of those facts can be fun, that's all it is. And this does apply to some other franchises too, like some of them which have huge amounts of lore and a bunch of spin-offs and everything, it can just turn into reciting a list of facts about the history of this world and that sort of thing, which is just obnoxious and doesn't really add anything. Now, the Yuzhan Vong storyline, which I think is really good, does come close to this because the Yuzhan Vong, for those unfamiliar, this takes place after the movies and they are a race of aliens which come from a different galaxy and they come into conquer and all their technology is like biology-based, so like their ships and their weapons and everything are biology-based, which is odd, but what makes them even more odd is that they do not have the force in them, like the force is supposed to flow through every living thing and the Yuzhan Vong are living things but they don't have the force flowing through them. And this kind of makes us look at the whole universe and the whole mythos in a different way, like we thought that the force was some universal constant and it isn't, or at least this could make us look at everything in a different way, but they don't really do anything with that idea so the Yuzhan Vong just wind up being an unusual, very powerful bad guy for them to fight. And again, I do like that storyline, it just doesn't really do anything with that idea that it could have done. And this is kind of the problem with having a confirmed mythos in your story, like fantasy does this a lot, whether they will like have the gods that created the world or whatever and it's like, yes, they are real, this guy's the god of thunder, this guy's the god of death and so on and so forth. And just like, yes, this is the world, this is the universe, this is how it works, which is not how real religions and real myths works. Like those were created by people who were trying to make sense of the world around them and thus those different myths reflect the cultures and ideologies of the people that created them. So it's basically, they're all different ways of looking at the world. Whereas when you have one, which is just confirmed, then that's just like, okay, yep, this is the world and how it works. So there's no real different interpretations that can be had there, it's just like, yep, here it is, it's all given right to you. And this is not even counting the bad Star Wars expanded universe stuff like Emperor Palpatine cloning himself and then inserting his soul into that clone and taking over the remnants of the Empire. So that kind of defeats the whole purpose of the last movie. And then he builds another fucking Death Star, which the rebels have to take out by launching a daring assault on it, which, oh, well, break the creative bank there. Like, you know, there's a lot of expanded universe stuff, which is just dumb and bad period. And I mean, that just goes without saying now the one really, really good thing in the expanded universe. Well, okay, it's really two things, but they're kind of connected. I'll get to that in a minute. But the one really, really good thing in the Star Wars expanded universe is Knights of the Old Republic, which is an old video game. And it's not just one of my favorite Star Wars things, or rather my favorite Star Wars thing, but it is also one of my favorite video games of all time period. It is amazing for a variety of reasons, which I could frankly make an entire video about, but I'm not going to get into that. It's just a very good game. If you haven't played it, check it out. The story of the game takes place 4,000 years before the films, and it's basically just about a war between the Sith Empire and the Republic. So it sounds pretty standard at first. And in a lot of ways it is, you know, like there are two different endings to the game, but the canonical ending is like the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and the day is saved. And obviously it's about the journey, not the destination. And so like meeting all the different characters along the way and fighting enemies and stuff like that's what makes the game good, but it is pretty standard in some ways. What makes it not standard is the way it deconstructs the whole idea of the Jedi and the whole idea of this universe. The Jedi are not just pure good. Like, they are, you know, fighting against the Sith, and they are trying to protect like freedom and protect innocent people from being killed and all that. So that is good, don't get me wrong. But they are also religious zealots with very, very strict codes of conduct that they follow. And they tend to be isolated from the Galactic community at large so they don't really understand what it's like for regular people to live. And then you also have the Republic itself, which, again, it's better than the alternative, but it is still a deeply, deeply flawed institution. And then it also takes a deeper look at the Sith, because before this the Sith were just the evil guys. Why are they evil? Because they're evil. But in this, again, they're still bad. They are still terrible people, but they have an actual ideology. Like, this is where we see the Sith Code. I don't know, for certain, it's the first time we see the Sith Code. But it was definitely the first time I was introduced to it, and it's one of the first times that it was ever really utilized to its proper potential. The Sith Code is pieces of lie. There's only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. Like, this is an actual ideology that these people follow, and what leads them to commit a lot of their heinous actions. This alone takes them from being just two-dimensional evil bad guys, to being an actual force in this galaxy, and becoming more three-dimensional and a bit more realistic and more realized, I guess would be another way of putting it. We also get introduced to the Dark Jedi, which are different than Sith, and they're kind of doing their own thing. Like, they have their own ideology and everything. And they're not that interesting, to be honest, but just the fact that they exist really emphasizes how this is not just a two-sided black-and-white situation. Like, the real world is more complicated. So this whole game, as amazing as it is for like, you know, gameplay and the smaller details and everything, the main reason I love it so much, and why it works really well as a piece of the expanded universe, is that it actually adds depth to this world. And not in a way where it's just like, yep, here's another historical factoid, or here's another planet and the kinds of animals that live on it. It actually adds something to it. Now, the second part of this is that with the game, in order to help promote it, they also released a trilogy of books called the Darth Bane trilogy. And they are fantastic books, by the way. You should check them out if you haven't. These take place around a thousand years before the movies, and they're basically about the rise of Darth Bane and how he's just a very good character on his own, and also how he took the Sith and brought them to the current form that they are when the movies begin. Now, not only do these books go more into the ideals of the Sith and why exactly normal people would follow them, like, it spells it right out for you in the second book. Like, the last line of the Sith code is, through victory, my chains are broken, and it comes right out and tells you the dark side sets us free. That's what they believe. And just like that, a whole lot of things slide into place. Like, it makes sense why not only why so many people would be drawn to becoming like an actual Sith with like lightsabers and force powers and stuff, but why so many people would want to follow them even if they aren't in the best position in this new society. Like, even if they aren't the Emperor of everything, why they would still follow them, because they don't like being restricted. And this is exactly why people follow real authoritarian ideologies in the real world. And just like that, we get even more depth added to this world. You know, it's not just this ideology exists and some people follow it, it shows us why people would start to follow it. Now, the movies kind of did this with Anakin Skywalker. Like, it tries to show how he would go from just being a regular kid to being this evil enforcer of the Emperor. And I think, like, other issues with the movies aside, I think this is partially done well, like the birth of Darth Vader scene. And by that, I don't mean the one where he like first gets burned and you see him in a suit and everything I'm talking about from Attack of the Clones, where he goes off to save his mother and he's too late and she dies right there and then he slaughters all the sand people. That is the true birth of Darth Vader right there. Like, that is when he becomes this evil person and that's a fantastic scene, however else I feel about those movies. However, Anakin Skywalker's fall into the dark side is not really meant to be extrapolated to other people. That's more about just this one guy and how he fell into this. Or at least the way it's framed, it doesn't seem like it's meant to be extrapolated to other people. The Darth Bane trilogy actually shows how normal folks would get brought into this. And Darth Bane creates the Rule of Two, which is also the name of the second book in the series. And for those unfamiliar, the Rule of Two is basically that for a long time, the Sith, there'd be a whole bunch of them and they would all be led by this one leader, one strong man. But because they're all seeking power, that's basically the whole crux of their ideals and their ideology. They would eventually overthrow this guy and they would all fight amongst themselves and that would just leave them weak and divided and they just would not be able to defeat the Jedi. That's why they lost time and time again. And Bane realized this and so he not only killed off all the other Sith except for himself, he created a rule where there would be one Sith master and one Sith apprentice. And eventually when the apprentice got strong enough, they would kill their master and then they would take on their own apprentice. And this would continue on and on forever. And the idea was that the Sith would get stronger with each and each subsequent generation until eventually they were powerful enough to overthrow the Jedi and take over, which is exactly what happened with Emperor Palpatine. So Bane saw the flaws in the Sith ideology and then he changed that ideology. So we're not just seeing that these ideals exist, but we're seeing how they evolve and change with time. It makes the whole world feel more dynamic and a lot less stagnant. And that's part of the issue with not just Star Wars, but with a lot of these other big universes and big franchises that I mentioned. They just feel too stagnant. You know, there's very rarely a huge shift to the status quo, which turns everything on its head. And so yeah, the Knights of the Old Republic games and the Darth Bane trilogy actually do something different with the Star Wars universe and that's why they're pretty much the only really, really good examples of the expanded universe. And part of the reason I tied them together is because they came out around the same time and they were meant to promote each other. But also they were written by the same guy. Like the head writer on the game was Drew Carpeit, Carpeitian, and he also wrote the books. And I know he has left Bioware, but he's also written a couple of his own original fantasy novels, which I haven't read. I keep meaning to get to them. I'm sure they're good, but that's just because he's a good writer. And basically that's going to be my hot take at the end of all this. Like the only person who should be allowed to touch Star Wars from now on should be Drew Carpeitian because he's pretty much the only person that can do anything neat and original with it. And I'm sure there's a bunch of angry comments already, so I'll just see you later. Goodbye. Hello and thank you for watching this far. If you did, you have my thanks. And if you see all these names here, those are my patrons. My $10 and up patrons are Oppo Savalainen, Olivia Rayan, Brother Santotis, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Dan Anceliovic, Dark King, Echo, Flax, Great Griebo, Carcat Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Madison Lewis Bennett, Marilyn Roxy, Matthew Bodro, microphone, Peep the Toad, Return of Cardamom, Sad Martigan, Celia the Vixen, Tesla Shark, Vavixus and Wesley. All of you are great. 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