#don't even get me STARTED on the tlj visual dictionary just point blank /rewriting/ poe's arc entirely

[poelya]

actually, speaking of lore consistency, i've been thinking about a lot of the tie-in material for the sequels here lately and i have to say there's a lot less consistency I feel like than there could have been. and i'm not just talking charles soule 'oh fuck what tfa said about the fall of luke's temple actually', but like...generally speaking i feel like so much emphasis being put on, at the time, that everything expanded 'verse worked consistently with the films, actually harmed the perception of the films themselves.

because when you divorce the films from their book/comic tie-ins, they flow very well. better than typical criticism will have you think (and before anyone brings up Rey's parentage, first off I lived through tasm2. that shit WAS nonsensical. second off, traumatized brains genuinely work like that. doylist explanation of the writers waffling - something very common in star wars, unless you've forgotten luke and leia's romance fizzling out because hanleia was more popular and george last second retconning them to be sibs - could be criticized, but the watsonian explanation that Rey's memories are that badly fucked up from trauma fits. source: my memories are that badly fucked up from trauma). the only thing is that the movies don't remain consistent with the tie-in material.

which, duh. they're the source material, not these one-shots. the opening scrawl of tfa says that leia has support of the senate behind her with the resistance, which is why poe introduces himself as commander of the new republic fleet. it's why the resistance is in dire straits in tfa/tlj, they just lost their support system. but tie-in material built off a deleted scene, where the senate largely doesn't take the resistance seriously. so we wind up in this bizarre land of "the senate didn't support the resistance but actually they did". if it had been better fleshed out, it would've worked (my partner came up with a great explanation for how both would work and it's simply not there in the 'canon' text). then you have the poe comics, which decides that despite tfa making it extremely clear that looking for tekka was ren's responsibility (with battlefront ii backing this by having him torture del), we get....random first order intelligence officer being in charge of the hunt, because soule was more interested in doing mission impossible-esque stories than the kinds of stories that would better fit the tekka search. this isn't even counting the back and forth of poe's character development in the comics (listen i love those comics, but there's a LOT of two steps forward, three steps back, especially in regards to Poe handing Tekka over. That arc perfectly set up Poe from BTA growing into the Poe we see in the films, annnnnnnnnnnnnd then Soule like. retracted it in the very next issue. This does not upset me in the slightest, why do you ask [chewing through drywall] and like. poe and leia have no familial dynamic to them in those comics either, to the point that watching tlj for the first time was a tRIP for me because i had a !!! oh!!! they're family!!! moment bc that's not present in the comics, with the exception of maybe l'ulo's funeral)

and of course my favorite example of the source material going "ew wtf" is tros just. point blank. saying "who the fuck is resistance reborn?" specifically through poe. iconic, showstopping, i love it to pieces because that novel deserves a slow death rotting at the bottom of the ocean.

the best tie-in material is often either ones built AFTER the films all released (looking at u free fall) or the rare time you can tell the author genuinely loves the characters/era and writing it isn't just a gig. my point is i think by having authors largely ignoring the canon text, and making this very inconsistent lore built around a deleted scene, etc, very seriously harmed the sequels.