>>51184
There a lot of problems with the EU honestly. This is a giant pile of different interconnected tales and books and comics and games from different creators. Some were close to each other, some not so much. Some are great read but contain something meh for overall universe logic, some are mediocre but safer and don't have out of place stuff. And answering this question is hard because there is something popular and great, for example, KOTORs, games that are good by themselves, however, they turned lore direction in a very meh direction and added a lot of bullshit and retcons that I not happy with, but to explain why and where you need to play/read all that crap to see the overall picture. In addition, there were after-retcons. Encyclopedia books, big official articles, tabletop stuff that tried to summarise, add and fix timeline which by themselves add to perception how you observing information in a new context. Most of the EU-assburgers are just constantly creating their headcanons and argue about everything on the internet. So this is what the EU is in reality: a giant half-organized pile of information where you creating your favorite universe. You can imagine it as Star Trek - classic shows are great, but they have crap and unconnected episodes.

So well, where to start... there are a bunch of great places. For example, something close to the movies, which would be nice without context.

Star Wars Empire - there was a bunch of comic series in the "main timeline" - from the old days of the republic to the far future, however, they came out in different times and there is no need to start from 35000years before. I like the "empire" series (not long before and sometime after Episode 4). Some of its arcs, like Darklighter, add to Episode 4 so much, that without this parallel story I can't imagine this movie at all, it feels unfinished without the story of Luke's best friend.

Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Leader - there was an actual X-wing Rogue Squadron comic series and books, but comic books are not the newest things and their stories contain a bunch of weird stuff. It is a fun read overall, but you may like to start from this prequel-mini series, set right after Episode 4. Short solid story connected to the movie makes a sort of introduction to the whole post-Endor situation, which in this universe ended in the fall of uni-galactic state and actual constant galactic civil war for years.

Star Wars TIE Fighter - 1994 videogame, part of the X-wing simulator series. This series of games is stuck between actual complex serious simulators and more arcade stuff, being more complex than wing commanders but not as complex as an actual flight sim, these series actually based on LucasArt's WW2 simulators. X-wing being the first game, TF was the second one and the best in the series. These games, using actual sources and existing at the time board games and EU tried to create a more serious, technologically depth approach to starfighters, ships, space combat, and tactics. TIE Fighter combining it with a deep political plot, showing galactic empire and its political and economical problems from inside. Set between episodes 5 and 6, it shows that this state was kind of doomed and without the rebels. The full CD version came out in 1995, in 1998 came out Windows hardware-accelerated textured version. The Windows version is broken as fuck, but you can fix it with wrappers, mods, and tweaking and it makes it the best version until the XWVM team will finish their remakes (not soon). If you are interested, I might post a guide.

Star Wars Shadows of the Empire - SotE was a multimedia project, created in times when Lucas came back to SW and was kind of part of "Special Editions" projects, expanding the story between Episode 5 and 6. Unlike mentioned above TIE Fighter, it focused on the main characters and main plot of the movies, in addition to a bunch of new heroes. The multimedia project consisted of a Book, a Comic series, and Videogame which add to each other. What I want to recommend the most here is the comic. I think, it is self-contained enough and you'll understand everything without additional sources and there is the most content that related to the movies and connects them. Game... well, I was not sold on the new character and its presentation and this is an N64 game. Meaning that story is just out of context chunks with quite primitive gameplay. 64MB limitation is quite hard for a 3d adventure plot-driven game, you may try it if you want. There was a PC version with creepy pre-rendered cutscenes instead of static art images from N64.

Star Wars Clone Wars - not 3d The Clone Wars, with is childish teenager cartoon where marry sue teenager girl and "funny droids" fight in 9000 boring seasons and which is now in Disney Canon so I dismissed it from EU because it was inconsistent with it anyway. I not a fan of prequels in general, their concept and presentation, however, this 2003 Tartakovsky's cartoon is what elevates them to a new, enjoyable level, where clone wars shown as epic galactic wars. From short original series, was compressed 2 complete movies, that will follow you right from episode 2 to episode 3 opening scene. This is one of the rare reasons why I tolerate Prequels' existence. They are available on youtube https://youtu.be/g6-yclEOgR4 https://youtu.be/t1LK-JwKt2I Some scenes from here are pure platinum, real Jedi fights, real space army fights, highly recommended.

Star Wars The Thrawn Trilogy - sigh Well, this is the book trilogy most of us started from, a long time ago when EU was a mainstream, before dark, Disney times. And they actually nice adventures, with great scenes, great new additions to the universe, and a nice read overall. This is the sort of safe sequels many people wanted to, and I'm not surprised it still one of the most known and beloved Star Wars media pieces. Of course, I'll recommend reading it to a new person. However, this is one of the things I mentioned above, about where I think some stuff might be overrated, I have questions for a lot of characters and ideas on a universe level. Seeing that Thrawn's character was used by Disney for their morning cartoons and it incorporates everything worst I have complaints about for original books, making him some sort of caricature on himself. But more about it later, if you'll be really interested in all that crap, I'll make my giant wall of text especially for you, after you'll read all things mentioned below and above lol.

Star Wars Republic Commando - another star wars game set between 2 and 3 episodes, in clone wars. It is a nice atmospheric shooter where you are controlling the squad of Republic Commando clones in multiple missions. One of the nice and still known Star Wars games. There are RC books but.. eeh... even I didn't read them :\

Star Wars Empire At War - the best RTS in a Star Wars series, have a campaign and galactic conquest modes, with a kind of total-war style galactic map. Standalone addon Forces of Corruption is much better in my opinion - it adds 3rd side to galactic civil war, adds a lot of mechanics that make this game more deep and interesting to play. This game using a lot of EU stuff and addon elevates it to a new level. This game is from petroglyph, former Westwood developers. Zann Consortium music for addon was composed by Frank Klepacki.

You can ask me about any comic, or in general, things I mentioned. I have the great English scans of Omnibuses and what was translated on Russian for the most part if you need this also.

>>51190
I not against black people, not against women, but I know what these people from pictures will write, and this is will be "as predicted". I don't want to be preconceived, but we don't live in a bright world of the future and I saw the previews.

>>51197
Okay, down into a Rabbit hole. If you want more, I moved it to the next post to avoid creating a too big wall of text and mark what secondary.

Star Wars Dark Empire - comic trilogy, one of the things that founded EU as we know it. From here starts the history of Dark Horse Comic as owners of SW license for the next 20 years. Created more on enthusiasm and ideas than for money, this comic is one of the things that resurrected star wars, abandoned by its creator after Episode 6. This thing for me, written by Tom Veitch and illustrated by Cam Kennedy is the best piece of the Star Wars media as a whole. Unlike the Thrawn trilogy that was written alongside it, this is in my opinion is the true sequel trilogy. So why I have not put it right in the first list of recommendations? Because it is something, that puts people off, a comic that not trying to explain itself, and often the careless reader will see it more as random junk with questionable plot and ugly style. Its main premise "the Palpatine returns!" sounds silly and a lot of its elements look weird. However, this is one of the best stories, that in reality created actual lore - about force, about siths, and universal balance. In this dark style, it actually changing the movie's story about son-father into the end of a 1000 year arc. In this short review, I can't explain everything, but this comic first created Old Republic lore and most of the lore about the force and the Palpatine, not original movies which actually not explained or showed much in this regard. Everything great in Star Wars was created here, and its designs, concepts, scenes, ideas are perfect for an actual movie adoption.

Star Wars Tales of the Jedi - comic series that go full nuts into actual Old republic. Some of the creators of Dark Empire alongside some other names made actually full-featured comic books about days of the Old Republic. 5000 and 4000 years before the battle of Yavin. Inspired by Dark Empire lore, weird french science fiction, and fantasy, Sword&Sorsery, expanded the universe for thousands of years. Showing far past, long times with spaceships with sails, with primitive blasters alongside animals and steel blades, when the force was a mysticism, galaxy unexplored place of wonders and adventures. All this lore actually Lucas borrowed to create prequels, however, Lucas failed to properly understand what this and Dark Empire and other EU at the date created. So everything great and backstory, lore, and concepts of prequels is actually dumbed down content from TotJ.

Star Wars Darth Plagueis - another thing that elevates prequels in a non-direct way. This is the story of Palpatine's master, and Palpatine himself. Something what prequels actually should've been about, but failed to deliver and spent their time on random shit. This thing already bases itself on Dark Empire and Darth Bane stuff, explaining what is Darth Bane line, what is the rule of two, and what was Palpatine's role in it. I recommend reading it after everything above, it is another great EU piece that constructs logic and a big story from the mistakes of Lucas.

Star Wars Dark Forces-Jedi Knight series - this is one of the most famous star wars series of games and 3 books about Kyle Katarn. First Dark Forces is a great example of early plot-driven adventure FPS games, which made what build engine games did in the next years. Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight is one of the most ambitious games of the time. Full 3d plot-driven FPS game that marked very high standard. It is this game that ended the era of Doom clones and started the era of more modern, adventure-FPS games which will follow with games from Raven Software, Half-Life, Unreal, etc, but was in many ways above them. It also had one of the biggest in production live-action cutscenes at the time and 3 illustrated books alongside it. This game in story and presentation trying to follow the style set by TotJ, Dark Empire, and Jedi Academy Trilogy books. And the same time, while featuring stuff wat above anything Disney did in the terms of atmosphere, ideas, style, also has some floats because of lacks of the budget for the idea, silly moments and usual 90s FMV cutscenes problems, and some gameplay jank, being a 3d hardware accelerated FPS with abilities made in the mid-1997 by LucasArts on their custom engine. Later games, especially the last in the series, Jedi Academy, is the EU rollercoaster, basically very quality fan service for fans not more of movies, but everything I mentioned in this and previous list, this why I placed these games down in 2nd list.

There a lot more stuff, of course. Adventures, mediocre stories with good moments, great stories with a very specific context, weird stuff, basically 40 years of all kinds of content that formed this into the universe I loved in my teenage years and still have very warm feelings towards. But I think, I can continue like that to infinity and I need to put a stop switch somwhere.

Believe it or not, I actually finished this comic. Well, it's finished-ish. Even though I balanced the blacks and whites so that it wouldn't need color, I'll probably go back and add some later. But for now, I'm going to call it done.

The first page is my favorite, so if you're pressed for time then you can just look at that one and ignore the rest :D. When I started, that was actually the only page I was going to draw. At the time I had some brief notes for a story idea, and a visual concept for the opening, but not much else. Then, much to my surprise, I was happy with it. Weird. So I decided to just dive into the project to see where it would lead. And it led to this.

>>50814

>I like how the bees overlap the panels on the left

Thanks. I want to improve my page compositions, to ensure they read properly and are visually interesting. To that end, I was trying all kinds of tricks. Most didn't work, but a few did.

>>50872
Looks good. What are you using for the white lines?

>>51127

> tech

Eventually will have to deal with politics.

> art, music, culture

Eventually will have to deal with politics.

> video games

Oooooh boy.

If it isn't pissing of someone, it isn't meaningful, it doesn't say anything.

News isn't. Once it hits the aggregators it is old and new doesn't mean interesting. What is news for you isn't news for me.

But if you like to watch an Aussie explain 555-circuits go watch eevblog on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog

Or maybe you like type faces and semiotics
https://typesetinthefuture.com/

And a very interesting study
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/259073#1

>>51186
You can care about your things without a case, I don't buy a new phone every year, in the last 6 years I had 3 phones, the newest is just a few months old, the others were second hand, none of them has/had a cracked display and they sometimes fell on the ground, maybe they were built well.

>>51176
Dude you read the wrong history books, history can be written in many variations, you just well for le strong political men make history trap, it's a hi**STORY** and not reality, common sense in history today, you cannot know how the past really was as your only access to it are some writings, many, many gaps, millions of gaps appear while writing history. It just fits your worldview, cognitive bias. And if you want to be on the winning side, whatever that means, you should abandon that topic all together and invest our energy in sorting out your life better as in get done what you want to get done. First of all you should not waste time on social darwinism, even if it is true (it isnt, read something against it to challenge yourself mentally), it does not help you any bit. You care about the wrong things and I tell you this as somebody who will likely never appear in any history books ever. Do I care? No, I have other priorities. I certainly don't care for Germany in some national ranking, 19th century tier, just like social darwinism. Euro countries hate Germany for its strong position within the EU. You think yuropoors will be losing against USA and Chinas as the super innovators of the future, while you probably have no clue about science policy and products made in Europe, all you see are jokes about our dated infrastructure and Neuland. Even in the 1980s it was the same rhetoric (Wirtschaftsstandortdebatte), and 40 years later Germany is still a major economy. The computer manufacturing is scattered across the planet, with rising nationalism/protectionism countries try to become autonomous, even the EU, there are plans for a Germany lithium refinary, why? Because the EU just like other "superpowers" try to get its share and become more autonmous. Just move to China if you want to on le winning side, if you care about belong to a country that is a supposed superpower.

What you need is some meta perspectives on what you say and where that positions yourself in various contexts. You take things at face value, but sciences have corroded for 100 years know le all knowing subject, get yourself some (historic) epistemology to understand why you say what you, it's meta before any content, it asks why any content is that content to us and if we can actually believe it. You can then comeback and explain the world to us, this is inevitable anyway, but it might help to understand yourself and the world better.

>>51081
Please be considerate of EC culture sir. The sole reason I didn't close it immediately is because I know who laowhy86 and serpentza are, despite the fact I'm also aware poltards caught onto them. It doesn't help just posting random youtube videos. Again had I not known who this guy is I'd have said the same thing.

>>51083
[tile painting intensifies]
Sir this is a gentleman's club for serious discussions, not shitposting like it's vierkanal.

>>51080
It's the "I'm American here's my Chinese wife" guy who married a native Chinese woman and lived in China for awhile before getting butthurt about China.

I ain't watching it but to your point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syUPXdgZEpM

It's still ultimately just some butthurt vlogger but I'd take this guy more seriously for his "foreigner living in China" take on things
https://www.youtube.com/user/serpentza
He actually did put out a couple good videos at the start of the pandemic about that. I'd still take it with a grain of salt though.

Fuck it's also setting in real hard now the actual bad situation in my country because we have no vaccines. We're out. There never was a stockpile and we literally ran out of all vaccines, and the virus is still mutating.

Fortunately President Biden just dropped a bunch of air travel restrictions again
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jan/25/coronavirus-live-news-biden-to-reinstate-covid-travel-ban-as-world-nears-100m-cases
oh wow AMLO is positive now too

Finished St. Augustine's Confessions a while ago, the autobiographical chapters were interesting, even if just because they're rather relatable and also clearly well written. Only skimmed over the latter chapters with the theological & philosophical arguments though, as I couldn't really get much out of it.

Read the minor works of Venedikt Erofeev, had a blast. Despite being completely different types of texts, they share being incredibly funny but equally depressing at the same time.
Walpurgis Night, a tragicomedy play set in a Soviet madhouse. The main character, a Jewish alcoholic, tends to break out into shockingly well written iambic pentameter at the seemingly most inappropriate times, and Erofeev somehow manages to elevate this beyond just being ironic.
Vasily Rozanov through the eyes of an eccentric - an essay/short story where the main character wants to kill himself until he reads the complete works of infamous Russian reactionary writer Vasily Rozanov
My little Leniniana - a collection of Lenin quotes, mostly from his letters, contrasting demands for people to be executed if they don't comply to some of his ridiculous demands with mundane musings about riding a bike with his wife.
The former is already available in English (though I can't vouch for the translation quality considering how much wordplay is involved) I'll probably do some quick translations of the latter two.

Also read Sasha Sokolov's A School for Fools, absolutely wonderful & unique book. Really liked the second chapter which is the shortest and consists of a bunch of microfictions of unrelated or side characters, think I'll have to reread it.

>>50866

>Genesis and Exodus were quite interesting

I was planning to read th OT cover to cover last yera and really enjoyed Genesis, Exodus initially too, but the whole tabernacle
I've been meaning to look up whether there's some guide to which books/chapters are "filler", but it's a nightmare trying to research theological stuff, maybe I'll just have to read a by-chapter summary and go from there