Lit The Official StarWars.com Blog Thread - That's right, I went there

And now they are creating a new EU - which will be called "canon" until that becomes inconvenient.

 

There is no EU, there's only Canon. That can be anything from movies to comics or games. It's now all part of the same overarching story and timeline.
The EU was a term used for things that were not the movies, but that's in the past.

 

Lots of franchises have an EU. Some EUs were canon - some weren't - but the term is valid for all of them.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExpandedUniverse

 

No one is using that term for SW any more, that's why the new canon definition exists.

 

Don't know about no-one - I expect that most "movie purists" will be calling TCW and Rebels "EU" even if they're canon - they'll just make a distinction between "canon EU" and "non-canon EU".

In the film forums, when the mods say "This is not the place for EU-centric threads" - this will probably include TCW, Rebels, and new novels. Maybe Darth_Nub could clarify what will count as EU in those forums?

 

I'm talking about Lucasfilm, couldn't care less what board members call it. There's no more EU, therefore no more separation between films and all the other stuff Lucas didn't pay attention to.

 

Does Lucas "pay attention to" anything these days, now that he's sold Star Wars to Disney?

However - since "canon debates" are discouraged (which might possibly include debates over the definition of what constitutes an Expanded Universe).

- maybe we should return to the thread topic - of stuff from the SW Blog.

New interview, about Rebels:

http://www.starwars.com/news/interview-simon-kinberg-star-wars-rebels-executive-producer-part-1

 

What does Lucas have to do with current Lucasfilm policy?

Here's an interesting article about the new vice president of development of SW stories. Nice remark on developing more parts of the timeline, no parallel universes like Lucas claimed: blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/10/02/meet-disneys-star-wars-maestro-kiri-hart/

 

Seen it. Wasn't particularly impressed by it.

 

I can't speak for the film forums cuz I'm still avoiding them like rush-hour traffic, but in the JCC (Community forum) a lot of them group anything TV-show related with the rest of the EU. I mean to them it's probably not much of a difference... Ventress and Falleens in one, Ventress and Falleens in the other. Mandos everywhere. Spider-Maul comics, Spider-Maul show.

 

Good point. "New EU" seems like a good placeholder though.

 

Maybe follow Lucasfilm's lead and just say "Canon". Which is what they keep saying when fans responds.

"That's not Canon, that's Legends" or "The Expanded Universe is not Canon, it's Legends".

You know, the standard responses they give after April 25th.
Doesn't matter what fans call new books and comics and games after this date, it's all canon now. Tarkin mentioning a Victory-class Star Destroyer is now on the same level as Jar Jar getting farted on before the podrace. Let that sink in.

 

My own approach has always been that the film forums are for discussions about the films only (Eps I-VI, then eventually eps VII-IX), the rest is merely supplementary material and spin-offs, or 'EU', if you like, with a handful of such sources given a slightly higher status, due to the nature of their creation.
The actual 'canon' status is somewhat irrelevant, as non-canon sources can still be relevant to certain discussions (e,g, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, abandoned ideas in the SW novelisations etc).
Discussion about, for example, a TCW-only topic doesn't belong in Saga, it belongs in Star Wars TV. Bringing up a TCW explanation to illustrate a point during a discussion in Saga where the films don't offer one, however, is fine - but movie-only purists can take it or leave it as they wish.

That's been the policy up until now, but the entire SW franchise is in the middle of a massive change, and the lines are getting very blurred. Up until now, it was easy to apply terms like G-canon to the films and so on, but what about the new films that GL's own ideas will have less and less impact upon? Will the Saga forum include the spin-offs that don't bear an episode number?

I'm open to suggestions - it'll be time for a lengthy debate in the Communications forum soon enough - but I still think keeping the film forums separate from Literature, TV shows, games and so on, is the way to go for now, and probably will continue to be so. It provides a sort of level playing field for discussion.

 

Leaders. Call it Leaders.

 

Part two of the Rebels interviews (I'm not sure if News as well as Blog articles from Starwars.com count for this thread, but I figured they might):

http://www.starwars.com/news/interview-simon-kinberg-star-wars-rebels-executive-producer-part-2

 

I think Sompeetelay may have forgotten to include one of the images. He labels two separate aliens both "#35". You can see that #34 in the image montage is an early concept that eventually became http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Neb_Dulo]Neb[/url] Dulo. Unfortunately, he labels Neb Dulo as #35 in his writing, and accidentally labels Makurth as #34 in the article, when there really is no "34" in the image montage. He then moves on to http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Soth_Petikkin]Soth[/url] Petikkin without correcting his numbering scheme and also labels Petikkin as #35, which the image montage shows us.

 

Y

yes I think you are right! Now I want to see the Makurth concept!

 

Hiding in Plain Sight: Shapeshifters

http://www.starwars.com/news/hiding-in-plain-sight-star-wars-shapeshifters

The new article on shape shifting aliens is cool - and, significantly, contains new retcons! I refer to the identification of the Dazouri as being from Gibbela, and there may well be more in there that I didn't notice on my first read through. Congrats once again to Kevin, another enjoyable read! I look forward to more.

Also loved the references at the end to the Japanese Star Wars game. I have my own theory about Sasouri that I'd love to share with the author

 

Amigos, what's up.

It's been a few months since I've popped in for a visit, but I wanted to let you guys know that a big part of that was because I was busy on my last Star Wars project, which just went up this week. I tracked down and translated two exclusive licensed novelizations from Spain of the Droids and Ewoks cartoon series. If you head over to StarWars.com, you can read the first of two articles I wrote examining the books (and some of the interesting information they introduce) and you can also download digital versions of the English translations.

There's a clearer breakdown of some of the more fanish bits in the second article to come, but please help yourselves to a jump start. Thanks, and enjoy!

Of Androids, Sidereal Beings, and Gourd-heads: Spain’s Droids and Ewoks Novelizations, Part 1

Take care,
Abel "Keepin' Kriff Real" Peña

 

I'm trying to catch up on some of these old posts ... with mild chagrin. Very much like looking into an EU time capsule.

Ah.... Feels like only yesterday when I was reading beautiful comments like this unironically.

Still the best GFFA bromance.

Exactly right.

Ruthless Mon Mothma is my fave.

Greg Mitchell is HedecGa on here. Here's his StarWars.com bio.

That's from the Farlander Papers included with the old X-Wing simulator game.

No, that's just a badass summary. **flex**

The Waru that can be named is not the true Waru.

I believe that name originated with James McFadden or even Dan Wallace, but I could be wrong.

Actually, I believe this was a retcon Pablo Hidalgo himself suggested very early in the SWFA's history -- I'm talking late '90s. He wrote the second edition of Galaxy Guide 3 and the rpg adventure that was included with it. Anyway, I remembered he said that and figured there was never going to be a better opportunity.

Now, I think that was actually something Craig Carey, Jason Fry and Dan established in the "Hoth and the Greater Javin" web supplement for Wizards.

That's good catch up for now.

 

Halagad_Ventor I would genuinely love to read any articles that covered things like X-Wing Alliance and/or Force Commander, cleaned up the Callista Trilogy, and/or the YJK/JJK era between Hand of Thrawn and Vector Prime. Slap a Legends logo on it, I wouldn't care.

Maybe join forces with Jason Fry, and combine a bunch of your articles and his end notes and cut content articles into a book, say "The Essential Guide to Legends" or "The Legendary Essentials"

 

Awesome article Halagad-Abel! I'm still somewhat surprised that the original authors of those comics haven't stepped forth after all those years, or at least someone who was involved in those comics' production who would have knowledge of their identities. Their translations of the "English" Star Wars names into a Spanish form shows they had spent some time thinking about the name changes ("Tulgah" to "Gula" definitely sounds like an intentional play on words, as does "calabaza" rather than directly translating "root-head"), so it's sort of sad they just disappeared off the charts. Especially if we can credit them with some of your proposed retcons (although I'm sure the Droids fans will love hearing their series had a nonlinear timeline rivaling that of TCW's all these years!)

 

Someone might've answered this already. Basically, the glove itself was a crushgaunt (established obliquely in History of the Mandalorians with the line, "One of Darth Vader's gloves is rumored to be a crushgaunt"). This correlation was made in order to account for or make plausible the indestructibility attributed to it by the Glove of Darth Vader series, but was actually only a later idea I had, and I didn't actually know if the "rumor" part would take in the fandom *or* in approvals, two different but often -- de facto -- equally powerful sources of canonical credibility. You've gotta remember that the name "Abel G. Peña" on a Star Wars product didn't come with the same set of assumptions in 2005 that it does ten years on.

The insertion of a Sith amulet into the glove I imagined as something Vader himself did. This was actually the idea I had first, even though it was published second. (History of the Mandalorians was written and published in 2005, while Evil Never Dies was written in 2001 and published in 2006.) The amulet angle was written to account for the glove's "indestructibility" to an extent as well, but -- and I don't think I've discussed this specific before -- also to simultaneously account for how Vader was shooting something like a Force fireball out of his hand in Splinter of the Mind's Eye during his confrontation with Luke and Leia. We saw Exar Kun do something similar against the Sith wyrm in Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith, so this seemed like a reasonable extension of that logic while killing two birds with one stone. I might've revised that portion of Evil Never Dies after taking the crushgaunt route, but the crushgaunt had an ambiguous state of being a mere rumor, and I didn't know if it would stick. All hail the Rule of Cool. I was still testing the waters in terms of how much the fandom would accept on faith or on the basis of intention. You guys gave me a lot of leeway over the years, so allusions in my work could become slicker and slicker and the intention would still be understood and interpreted as verified.

This unspoken understanding broke down a bit as interpretation seemed to veer toward literalism in an attempt to adhere to quasi-academic standards of citation -- on Wookieepedia, for instance -- and when the allusions were removed from the overarching context of my work, M.O., and relation to the greater EU generally, in many cases because fans just couldn't keep track of it all *except* via Wookieepedia. That was a practical consequence I didn't account for. That's why, I think, to a degree you see a swing back to overt referencing in my later work, though the problematic of getting approval for such obvious allusions to certain sources increased correspondingly and giving my work the "Abel flavor" became increasingly difficult.

That's not actually accurate. The Dark Empire Sourcebook attributes command of at least *some* Noghri to Palpatine again and again. It explicitly states that Palpatine "still had his Hands and his Noghri" which was alluding to an earlier sinister statement that "it was no accident Thrawn fell when he did," heavily implying in its Palpatine-as-Dark-God narrative that the Emperor had actually *planned* Thrawn's assassination. In this context, the Noghris' assassination of Oxtroe was intended to reinforce and echo this narrative.

Palpatine's control of his *own* Noghri was a thread that was never really picked up by other authors after the DESB (though a version of "The Emperor's Pawns" that I submitted in 2000 dealt with it quite heavy-handedly and was cut).

I vaguely remember writing that, and I believe it was a direct reference to "The Emperor's Pawns" stuff that didn't get through approvals. (Note that the content that was cut from "Who's Who: The Imperial Grand Admirals" was from our end, not approvals, because Star Wars Gamer went under and Dan and I had a more restrictive word count and format for Star Wars Insider to which we had to mold the original article. Sad to see some of that content go.)

Ah, there it is. I'm frankly just a little impressed I still remembered that quote so accurately.

Blackhole's allegiances really became questionable after Shadows of Mindor, whereas before his motivations were fairly ambiguous. But Matt did such a great job bringing the character to life he became a three-dimensional villain with his own agenda to rival Palpatine. My future treatments of Blackhole then had to account for that. But remember: originally, the Rebellion Era Sourcebook made Blackhole one of the Prophets of the Dark Side, and I had always been writing with Polyhedron's take on the Prophets in the back of my mind -- which was that the Church of the Dark Side was brainwashing Imperial citizens into believing there would be a Second Coming of Palpatine, an obvious (and playful) allusion at the time to the events of Dark Empire, which were chronologically a few years in the future. In that context, who better to serve as Palpatine's agent in setting up a *fake* Church of the Dark Side (in opposition to the real Prophets) than Blackhole: a former Prophet with deep roots in Imperial Intelligence?

That narrative became a lot more complex with Shadows of Mindor, which went in a very different direction. As a consequence, updating Blackhole's biography for Despoilers of an Empire took a healthy dose of creativity.

Indeed!

 

Fantastic! I'm rather sure I had these when I was a kid. I sure remember having a cute The White Witch ilustrated book (La Bruja Blanca!) that I think won in some kind of drawing contest. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Abel!