EU/Legends set to return?! How I feel about it... how do you feel?

[Captain Crimson]

Hey guys, it's Captain Crimson, back with another thread! And, well, as you know, there's a lot of unsubstantiated rumors flying about a time like this, but one I'd picked up that filled me with both equal measures of dread and delight was one that the EU was set to return. And we all know to take this with a grain of salt, but given the JediPaxis leaks only last year, one has to wonder to the validity of the rumors. And from the article in question, there are many interpretations to what is being said even if it's true, so I'll just let you read it for yourselves.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/05/12/star-wars-rumor-grand-admiral-thrawn-to-make-the-jump-to-live-action/

Mr. Filoni and Mr. Favreau oppose Ms. Kennedy's "let the past die" management policy. I mean, I'm personally a little skeptical that Mr. Filoni feels that way, since he never struck me as a hardcore EU nerd past a few of his pet stories like TT and DE, and any references to much older lore he invariably screws up in some form, which is hardly a disqualification, although it's another way you can't say he's deep into geek culture. At the same time, though, I'd peg that he is far more familiar with it than Ms. Kennedy, even if he has been caught just skimming before.

Now, would I be happy to see the EU come back? Absolutely. I'd love more validation for the EU and more promotion for all of these great older stories to give to a new generation instead of pretending that they never existed. But! And this is crucial... I feel as if, and this might just be me, how the EU is to return may be the single most important thing above even having it back at all. For one thing, I feel as if how LF lies to the fans is very atrocious. To say the EU is not canon is false and misleading. "Canon" in this instance refers to the official production. Which yes, it was canon for its time. Worse is when hardcore Dave Filoni/TCW defenders will use Mr. Lucas's own words to try and prop up TCW as being somehow more canon than the EU had ever been. No, Mr. Lucas merely meant that he'd told his own story, which is six movies. That's all. By that same token, TCW would be on his second pillar as well.

I will agree LF employees have a point when they say the canon obsession runs too deep, but at the same time, it wouldn't even be a problem if they had some measure more of competence. The EU was canon for its era, and there is no shame in rebooting it. I'll also say this. There is something to be said for Ms. Kennedy's style in handling the IP. Keep EU stories under the Legends banner to bare minimum and focus on the new movies and TV shows. My big beef is LF has shown no interest with pursuing that objective, likely because none of them, even everybody's hero, Mr. Filoni, has a creative bone in their whole bodies. "The EU is coming" is quite vague and rather nondistinct. Do you mean stories under the Legends banner? If so, here's a few problems.

One would be, what medium do you want to bring the EU back in? And there lies a problem, as it is said that Mr. Filoni feels the future of SW is in the live-action line-ups. Big shocker he thinks that with his work on TCW, Rebels, and TM. Most EU fans I know aren't interested in the live-action shows, they just want more books. I've said this over and over. And while I hate repetition, it bears repeating. You know that old saying? The book is better than the movie. I feel the same principle applies to TV shows as well, especially because adaptations end up watered down. A continuation of the EU, I think, must adhere strictly to a novelized format since most EU fans I hang around with gush up that more refined aspects of the IP, not the more Disneyfied content we've been getting for the last few years.

I feel the same thing myself. I want more books. I don't want a live-action Legends series. And there are rumors of a KOTOR TV show in the works. I mean, while some casual SW fans may think nitpicking over continuity is irrelevant, I disagree. True geek culture thrives that way. Without it, you just get a bunch of mindless consumers. And I can't help but to wonder, how would these new TV shows, if they are adaptations, slot in the old hierarchy of canon? And this would be my big fear, that since they had to slap a T Canon patch job over Mr. Filoni's total disregard for the continuity of the second pillar, the T Canon label would be used here to say the TV shows take a higher priority over the source material. Would most older fans be happy if a watered down KOTOR TV show displaced both the games? I would prefer KOTOR novelizations and not a TV show. I think that this is seriously underestimating what the older fans want with our age demographics and the lore we love.

The second problem would be... do you intend to implement what you have done with your new canon, except on a larger scale? Begin mixing both Legends and the Disney canon together? We know Mr. Filoni introduced time travel in Rebels, and to me, that's a gigantic can of worms you cannot open once you've done it. Imagine something like Ahsoka and Rey traveling back to the KOTOR era to help, I don't know, a black woman Revan in her war against the Mandalorians, or something inane like that? Time travel is always a bad idea to fall back on because then you have something where the situation always has an easy fix button to it, so you have to wonder why they don't press it, and IMOO, I think that this was done to get Mr. Filoni's pet character out of a jam. Mixing canons when that's been one of the primary complaints about it from older fans and long-term geek culture is a bad idea that I think would just ensure the spin-off media devolves into a chaotic mess it could never recover from.

I think that's my big issue, in the end. I feel as if a high percentage of LF employees don't have the proper qualifications, they're merely being hired for PC reasons or to fill some quotient like how you have a woman in charge, or an Asian-American, or something else. And I think that the lack of overall consistency is proof of that. People like Mr. Martin seem completely clueless to changes made to the production of new novels despite being part of the story group. I have no issues with Mr. Martin. I just tend to feel as if he's not the right fit for the job. I mean, when your answer is just to say you should drop a Gizmodo article onto inquiring fans because it's becoming too hard, what does that say about the future of the IP? It certainly won't earn you cred in long-time geek circles.

When you're trying to maintain a consistent continuity between wildly divergent media like video games, comic books, novels, TV shows, and movies, you need to handle it with care, not slam into it with a sledgehammer hoping it will all work out, and frankly, I don't have real confidence that anyone in LF has this sort of finesse and that calls for more EU under the Legends banner is just being ignored once again by tone-deaf business suits who only care about money and prestige or politics, and not an actually good story. I admit I might be in the minority here, but I'd honestly prefer for Ms. Kennedy to remain aboard, and continue printing Legends comics and books at a leisurely pace. TOR updates and a new comic in six years isn't enough, but a giant production in making new Legends content likewise is not an answer since that wouldn't work alongside whatever new material they come up with, which is where my fear in mixing canons comes from. And I know I'm not alone here, but it's just something I thought I'd bring up nevertheless.

But I wanna hear what you guys think? Do you feel as if I've brought up valid points, or do you disagree with me completely? Is the truth somewhere in between? How would you feel about the EU returning? Do you think it would be a good idea, or that how it comes about is also very important? Do you agree with me that it feels like no one at LF can appropriately do it justice at this stage and they are likely to botch it, or will it soar to new unexpected heights like never before? And should T Canon adaptations displace the novels? Or is it all a load of bull hockey in the end? Smash out a reply, share your thoughts down below, and I'll talk to you guys again soon.

[GreyICE]

Maybe it's my extensive background with RPGs, but I really don't like a heavy focus on continuity. I love good ideas, even bad ideas, as long as they're cool, but we don't need to establish a perfect timeline from KOTOR to the Yuuzhan Vong. Time timeline is somewhat nebulous, because it's not the sort of setting that really calls for it.

I've run Edge of the Empire before, and I'll probably run it again, and I've had all sorts of things. Hollow planets. Sentient dinosaur hive minds. Tatooine and most of Hutt space was sucked into a Hutt civil war as the death of Jabba caused a scramble for his resources that ended in assassins. Lots of assassins. My players killed a Hutt crime boss and got paid for it twice (by a rival Hutt and a group of escaped slaves).

But do I care if something in my games contradicts something in a novel? Not really. Do I care if some detail is inconsistent with some other detail? Not really. And you know what? Neither did Star Wars. The movie were ages before canon and continuity, and they were made because they were fun.

[Captain Crimson]

Maybe it's my extensive background with RPGs, but I really don't like a heavy focus on continuity. I love good ideas, even bad ideas, as long as they're cool, but we don't need to establish a perfect timeline from KOTOR to the Yuuzhan Vong. Time timeline is somewhat nebulous, because it's not the sort of setting that really calls for it.

I've run Edge of the Empire before, and I'll probably run it again, and I've had all sorts of things. Hollow planets. Sentient dinosaur hive minds. Tatooine and most of Hutt space was sucked into a Hutt civil war as the death of Jabba caused a scramble for his resources that ended in assassins. Lots of assassins. My players killed a Hutt crime boss and got paid for it twice (by a rival Hutt and a group of escaped slaves).

But do I care if something in my games contradicts something in a novel? Not really. Do I care if some detail is inconsistent with some other detail? Not really. And you know what? Neither did Star Wars. The movie were ages before canon and continuity, and they were made because they were fun.

Normally I'd be the first to agree with you on that, but on the issue with Legends, I think there is a substantial difference that has to be addressed.

Take the ST novels. They are not consistent to the TV shows, which is perfectly fine. The TV shows are all-important, and the novels exist within their own separate continuity. But there is a world of difference between a shared universe that is spread across so many different mediums like comics, novels, games, TV shows, and movies. And people like Mr. Filoni and Mr. Martin seem to share that view, don't think so much, just enjoy.

When you're balancing a continuity between all those divergent media, however, higher continuity is required. I get the argument that continuity doesn't always make a good story, but when you don't at least try to keep this consistent between the comics, games, novels, TV shows, and movies, then the overall quality and cohesion of the work breaks down, and it becomes harder and harder to maintain the longer it goes. Eventually it could break down to the point you have several different continuities within one just medium, pick-and-choose without regard for what is lost along the way, so that good and bad blends together and becomes indinguishable.

That is what made the EU special. This effort to be consistent between a world that was building off and expanding only six movies. As I have said before, I think that what the EU did G Canon, the SG TV shows did for just one theatrical film. That made the EU stand heads and shoulders above others. And it seems as if your viewpoint is one the creators share as well, as noted by Mr. Abrams and Mr. Martin, who tell the fans don't think so much, just consume and enjoy, and use whatever headcanon you want if you don't like this part of the story. When you take that approach, how can you hold the end result to the high standard it needs to reach the heights it did under Mr. Lucas? I can't see a way to do so. Which is what the point of my thread was.

But feel free to disagree, of course! That's what makes geek culture so great.

[GreyICE]

Star Trek has had comics, games, novels, TV shows, movies, computer games, even a [fan produced radio show](https://starshipexcelsior.com/). There's more Star Trek media than Star Wars media by any possible metric, except maybe video games. And that's because LucasArts would license Lucas properties all over the place.

As for Star Wars canon, you've got some rose-colored glasses if you think it was all high quality. The Suncrusher? The way they awkwardly wrapped up the big event they were building to, the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, because it was not popular with the fans, leading it to simply being an aborted arc? The hard-to-ignore fact that the Yuuzhan Vong were anthropomorphic Tyranids, down to the fact that they were not connected to the Warp, I mean Force and the fact they had genestealer cults? Remember the time the Emperor's ghost possessed a star destroyer? The time they made a death star laser out of a cigar tube even though the laser clearly fired from multiple points in the sphere not one? Oh gee.

And yet for all of that it produced some amazing stories. The Star Wars galaxy is so, so big in a way the Star Trek galaxy isn't. The Star Trek world, if the Klingons and Federation show up somewhere, they're the big deals. When Anakin and Dooku are on a planet, who knows if they're the biggest deal on the planet? They could bump into a civilization that is squatting in the ruins of some age-lost ancient power that could render both of them harmless. The galaxy is ancient, and full of secrets, and anyone who claims to control it has no idea what they're talking about.

Star Wars really does deliver on a galaxy of mystery, wonder, and adventure, in a way the rather bureaucratic Star Trek universe never quite did. Star Trek was always too clean, too pristine, too shiny and mapped. I could never run a roleplaying game there. Q tells Jean Luc there's a galaxy of wonder out there, but it always felt like a toybox, not wandering into a jungle you might never wander out of. KOTOR is 4,000 years before the events of Star Wars. 4000 years! And yet in many ways the Republic was a recent event. It truly makes the galaxy feel millions and millions of years old - a galaxy that has kind of reached its tech and social peaks, and fallen from it, and reached it again, and fallen again, different paths branching out in ways we can't imagine

But does the canon events matter to me? No, not at all. The more canon they put out, the more events they pin down, in some ways the smaller the universe became. No thank you. I like my galaxy mysterious and wild and layered with history atop history, ancient evils and ancient civilizations and long-dead alien species and strange critters that live in asteroids, brains in jars, alien temples, all of that. I like how no one really "governs" it, that there's no Federation or Klingon Empire, that the nominal territories are all barely controlled, that even the Empire was just one big fish in a large lake.

Canon and storylines are no more central to Star Wars than they are to Star Trek - it's the setting that matters. See Discovery, and how they absolutely and completely fail to grasp this, to the detriment of their show.

[Captain Crimson]

This isn't about me thinking all the stories in the EU were gold, which they weren't. It is about holding it to a higher standard as part of a shared universe so the final product in other areas can reach the same peaks which they did beneath Mr. Lucas. To say it had a few bad stories - which is highly subjective, my friend, really goes without saying! - as being the justification for sloppy continuity, which is what we've seen in the new canon, is a fallacious line of reasoning. The difference between the ST video games and the literature, which you'd brought up, is there was no overall attempt to remain consistent as a shared universe. With SW, there absolutely was, but the new prima donnas brought into the fold don't want to be tied down by continuity that way, which is why we see stuff like Mr. Abrams putting in little potshots against Mr. Johnson in TROS. I am saying that for the spin-off media that's part of a larger world, make an effort to be consistent. Or there is no future for that spin-off media as a shared universe.

[GreyICE]

Star Wars was never about a consistent universe. Most of the "Extended Universe" grew out of the Star Wars roleplaying game, which was... fanciful. It just took little tidbits from the three movies, and turned them into entire ideas. Many Bothans died for the information? Bothans are spies! Not like, some of them, all of them! It's an entire culture built around spying, with information being a currency, and them having entire hierarchies of spies (which are filled with... spies. Of course). Jabba was a crime boss? The entire race of Hutts are all criminals! They start out smaller (only 800 lbs or so) with incredibly tough skin that can repel blaster fire, can squeeze so thin they can slide through air vents, and are deadly assassins and enforcers. Then they grow as they age, and if they survive they become crime bosses! Boba Fett? He was awesome, so he has armor he scavenged from an entire race of awesome people, called Mandalorians, and they used to hunt Jedi (which is just about the most awesome thing ever).

This is fun. It's not meant to be overthought. Is an entire race of criminals going to evolve? Eh... probably not. I mean someone's got to make something worth stealing. Is an entire society built on spy networks actually a viable form of civilization? Like... no. Not at all.

But what this is is inspiring! It was 1987. No toys, no books, no video games, they were making an RPG out of a movie series they loved. And what they didn't want to do was make D&D, where the elves, the dwarves, the humans and the halflings are all just people in a magical land. Oh no, these were going to be aliens, and they were going to be strange and wonderful, to give you somewhere to go. There was an entire feud between the Lizard people (based on a bounty hunter from the scene who says nothing and does nothing) and the Wookies! Because the lizards hold the Wookies are non-sentient, and make great eating, and the Wookies don't like being hunted and eaten. Their planets aren't even adjacent (either in realspace or hyperspace - that can vary) but oh well. They're close enough, and it's fun! They wove in subtle nods to other science fiction things they liked, took every scrap of information and turned it into something your players can go visit.

It's not a continuity, it's a box of chocolates! It was never meant to make 100% sense when put together because you, the GM, were the one tasked with making it all make sense. What they gave you is something lovely and imaginative.

So no, to me, continuity matters not one jot, because it never has. The EU I love was born out of a place that rejected that sort of thinking. The only continuity that exists is the one you make - either for yourself or your players. The most anti-Star Wars an idea could be is not "breaking continuity". It's to be boring. A boring idea is one that's anti-Star Wars.

So is there some awesome, totally epic idea that happens to change what we know about the Rule of Two or the Sith race or Lightsaber crystals? Is it fun? Is it neat? Does it make a great story? Then go for it. And if it does none of those things, it won't enter my canon. Because me and my players are the only ones who have ever decided what's in our canon, and that'll never change no matter what group I run it for and what set of rules I use to run it.