Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

Yep. the intervening century is vague enough in the actual text of Legacy that it's certainly salvageable.

 

With the retcons TOTJ has lived through, Legacy has nothing to worry about.

 

Interesting hypothetical: what if they wanted to set Episode VII in 137 ABY? In other words, would you rather lose the NR era and retain Legacy, or vice-versa?

 

Retain Legacy at all costs. It remains the only series to capture both the spirit of the Original Trilogy AND show the true effects of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion on the galaxy. For me, this series is essential reading.

--Adm. Nick

 

What Yuuzhan Vong invasion?

 

The one mentioned in Legacy, that could have been totally different to the one depicted in NJO.

The Thrawn Trilogy survived the Clone Wars being completely different to the Clone Wars Zahn imagined at the time; the same works with Legacy, and that alien invasion that happened long ago having been very different, and any specifics cited in the comics riddled with historic inaccuracies and hearsay, just like happens in real life.

Aside from "there were once these aliens, who were mean and captured A'Sharad" there's not much written down in stone in Legacy about what happened, so for all anyone who hasn't read the NJO knows, it might have been nothing more earth-shattering than the Yevetha crisis. (Even the plants on Coruscant don't automatically mean the whole galaxy was once ruled by self-mutilating barbarian hordes, just that someone dropped a biowarhead in the sewers once.)

 

You can't have Legacy without the Vong War, as it was the catalyst that really started the whole chain of events. Without the Vong, you have no issues with Krayt, no need for an Ossus Project, no source of tension between the GA and Empire, etc.

In short, your premise doesn't work.

--Adm. Nick

 

It would be much easier if the ST was set that far in the future, though. That way, it'd be very easy to simply say that Legacy is one possible outcome and the ST is the other. The way it's likely to go, I imagine some stuff will be thrown out, but some will be salvageable. I don't envy the guy who's going to have to clean up that mess.

 

I love how you both argued with me yet contradicted each other quite precisely.

 

Zor, I admire your optimism but nineteen books, several short stories, an ongoing comic, and a short comic in Tales are a little harder to sweep under the rug than the scattered references to the pre-2002 Clone Wars.

 

Welcome to the Lit Forums.

--Adm. Nick

 

yeah for some reason i was thinking the movie. um 15 aby.... what happened in 15 aby? Backfleet Crisis??

 

abe. yeah for ahwile in the bantam they seemed to go by abe in the timeline, but now its aby.

 

But I'm unaware of Legacy spending a whole TPB giving a blow-by-blow summary of 19 books?

Because Legacy is still in recent memory, it's easy to forget that 100% textual fidelity has never been the case in practice after a story has entered the back catalogue. KOTOR doesn't need TOTJ. TOR doesn't need KOTOR. Like Legacy and NJO, you could obliterate the foundations and, but for a couple of remarks of no immediate relevance to the narrative story being told, the underlying story remains entirely workable.

And the story is always more important than whether Naga Sadow was really a human magician. Even if there'd never been a Darth Revan or Jedi Civil War, you still can have the Sith Emperor return from the brink and bring the Great War upon the Republic.

If that wasn't the case for Legacy, people who hadn't read NJO wouldn't have understood it. That's what made Legacy so successful: because it didn't focus on what came before it, but on the story it was telling. Unlike Del Rey's obsession with trying to force readers into needing to delve into their back catalogue to make sense of things (something books like Plagueis get criticised for, even if all of us loved it), Jan and John made Legacy readily accessible to all new readers.

Look at the Original Trilogy itself. Lucas threw out and contradicted countless ideas he had had back in the 70s and 80s when he finally wrote the prequels. But it doesn't stop people watching the prequels, even if there are errors or omissions that people can pick up. Because Leia never having been able to know her real mother is a trivial detail, just like whether some guy called Darth Caedus existed does not prevent you still enjoying Legacy and just ignoring that sole mention. It recontextualises the story, certainly, but it doesn't outright prevent it.

 

That way they could stay true to those old concepts where Palpatine survives ROTJ.

 

The Worrt burp is the Superboy Punch of the GFFA.

 

He burped at the Wall of Reality?

 

You should see the thing he coughed up once--it started calling itself Waru.