Lit So if the EU was still going right now where do you think they would be?

I don’t think Palpatine “needs” an origin and it’s not something I’d automatically chase, but what was presented I liked because I don’t think it necessarily stripped the character of his mystique or diminished his role as the primary satanic figure of the saga.

 

Him being some random spoiled psycotic noble child robbed the character something I feel... but that´s a personal opinion.

 

You say spoiled psychotic child, I say the Damien Thorn of Star Wars. Luceno wasn’t exactly subtle with his Anti-Christ allusions.

 

Pun intended?

 

Somewhat

 

Eh I'd say the Denningverse tried to do two things-re create a prequel aesthetic(if not atmosphere and tone), and appeal to OT fans. It didn't really aim to appeal to just EU fans, especially with the NJO being left in a corner.

Imagine a Lucasfilm that however catered in 90% of its activities to EU fans and their interests-that would include the Denningverse, but it would also cover a broad enough grouping that you and me might fall under.

 

I don't want Lucasfilm catering to anyone, even me.

 

To take the risk of being called selfish and narcissistic, I absolutely would love Lucasfilm to cater to me, call me selfish or egotistical if you like-I'd love it if they did.

 

And that's how a franchise dies.

 

So be it. As selfish and perhaps as silly as it sounds, I want to be listened too and have my personal fixations and interested catered and feted.

I'm just honest about it.

 

That's what fanficiton is for my friend.

 

More stories following the characters/timeline/Universe I've followed and grown up with since the late 90's, please.
And not afraid to branch out.
Comedy and dealing with health issues like Allston.
Lore with Luceno.
Horror like Joe Schreiber.
Westerns with JJM,
Romance with David Wolverton.
Psychological thrillers/Philosophical with Stover.
Military with Stackpole and Traviss.
And more.

 

I don't think Legacy would've been retconned. HandofThrawn's EU continuation fanfic has them flow pretty well together, and I would argue in terms of tone and feel, they're very much the same. In fact, I find it weird that an off-hand comment by Denning led to everyone suspecting that Legacy's going to get retconned. Instead, its most likely that the "retcon" would be that Darth Krayt and knowledge about him persisted before him becoming Galactic Emperor and couping the Fel Empire. Much more likely you'd have a Fel-Sith open alliance in a Cold War against the GA-Jedi. So I guess something a lot like SWTOR's setting. I think we can look at SWTOR and how that's gone on for how the EU might've spanned out.

Its very hard to think how that would go with the modern zeitgeist, because as someone pointed out, Legacy/LOTF/FOTJ is very similar in tone to the 2000s, like with Nolan's Batman trilogy for example. So its kind of like imagining what would the DCEU look like today if it continued on from Nolan's Dark Knight as the basis, rather than Man of Steel. I presume eventually the Felpire/Imperial Remnant would be painted as more of a take on Putin's Russian Federation (Putin was viewed as a potential partner for the West/NATO in the early-mid 2000s, and transitioned into Hitler with his invasion of Ukraine, so I guess it fits), and One Sith infiltration of governments post and after Legacy would be kinda like the rise of far right parties? I don't know, very hard to gauge. Its not unreasonable to consider that the Imperial Knights might've become outright villains for a cast of Jedi/GA/Light-aligned characters post-Legacy. Legacy Vol. 2 was definitely not going to end up the same way were it not for the Disney buyout.

TCW continues for longer, and probably ends differently than it did. Lucas still forces a lot of retcons about minor things around, Moraband probably gets mentioned in an Essential Guide and how the rename came to be IU and such. There is probably still a rendition of Rebels that comes out, which is a lot more similar in tone to late-mid Lucas era TCW. Maybe Legendsverse Rebels ties in with Force Unleashed more, and Sam Witwer plays an animated Starkiller. The Maul hype still continues, since its driven by Filoni and I don't see that changing even with no Disney buyout. May or may not eventually lead into that planned Legacy Era Maul game, which story-wise would fit (long-lived individuals are a staple of Legends - Boba Fett in his 80s playing out as no differently from Boba in his 40s, Big Three still doing missions in their 70s, immortal Darth Krayt himself, etc), but I'm not sure it'd work out considering Star Wars gaming seemed dead before the Disney buyout, and isn't looking much better now.

I'm not sure we'd have gotten a Sequel Trilogy at all, since the Lucas ST seemed, if anything, just a bunch of notes George crumpled together from a lot of his concepts, like using Darth Talon in something. If there was a ST though, it wouldn't have resulted in any Kelvinization. Much more likely you'd have gotten a lot of source books, retcons and essential guides, but ultimately it'd still be one single universe where everything from the Marvel comics to Dark Empire and Legacy still exists in the same continuity.

Maybe Underworld eventually happens, and its Legendsverse's equivalent of The Mandalorian as Star Wars' entry into the streaming services. But at the same time, its also possible that Star Wars remains a book/comic franchise with the occasional animated show, as it was in the 2000s.

 

Agree, more than two decades of his life between the second and the third part of the novel are largely unexplored, and in this time period he obtained power and knowledge, became Yoda-level Force-user and basically the very Darth Sidious from the films.

 

They also imply quite a few times that there was something off about him from birth, or even pre-birth with all the local Naboo mythology that gets mentioned about House Palpatine’s role in the apocalypse. He’s still every bit the satanic being Lucas depicted him as in the films.

 

It was made to appeal to one fan fist, Denning.

But I don't think just trying to please fans is a good thing.

 

I mean they did bring back Jedi vs Sith and Empire vs Rebels after people had complained about the Vong. They removed the controversial Jacen in a way to satisfy fans, first make him a Sith to **** on him and his mindset, then have him die explicitly unredeemed and end up in hell. They made Ben the new prota and wrote him just like Luke and also moved various other characters in place as clear big 3 clones/replacements. After Mara´s death was a major upset they brought in Ves as a replacement.

 

I've often heard it remarked upon when discussing the films of both the 2000s and the 1970s in retrospect that a lot of them had the message that, essentially, everyone is equally terrible and the closest things to genuinely "good" people were the ones who at least weren't utter hypocrites about it. The fact that this cynicism coincided in both decades with a cultural landscape defined by international conflicts regarded as the epitome of "evil versus evil" is, I assume, not a coincidence. Things like the invasion of Ukraine have served as reminders to people that there are in fact conflicts where one side does indeed have the moral high ground.

And there's some interesting Star Wars connections here - one of the reasons ANH was so successful was that it was regarded as a breath of fresh air in the '70s, with its idealistic messages and well defined good and evil actually being pretty unusual in the zeitgeist of that time. And much later, TLJ lampooned the "every side of every conflict is equally bad, full stop" attitude with the character of DJ.

I hope that mess of over-analysis vomit makes sense!

 

I agree with some of that.

Ben is very inconsistent, he maybe does more dark stuff than Jacen.

Ves was, apparently, never going to become a jedi. For the same reason Jacen would never be redeemed 'it's repetitive'

 

Aside from the unexplored eras being completely fleshed out by now, as 2012 was 10 years ago, plenty of time for Dawn of the Jedi and the New Sith Wars to become as big as the KOTOR timeframe, maybe with the same popularity if it did video games and iconic characters much like Revan was (i'm thinking a spiritual successor to KOTOR might be in place), the post-ROTJ era from 1983-2012 already covered until 45 ABY, with 10 more years of continuous publication, had there been no stopping points or big ST retcons, we might have gotten to 65 ABY in the ten years that passed, with a new generation consisting of Allana, Chance, Ben, Vestara (and Jaina as the mentor) in front and center with the OT heroes permanently retired or dead (especially Han, who is 10 years older and doesn't have the Force), i think this could have made for great stories with original takes on Star Wars archetypes.

I'm thinking that a lot of new characters would have been created by this point, similar to how Corran, Kyp, Kyle Katarn, Cilghal, Winter, Mirax, Booster, Borsk, the Wraiths etc. were created as peers of the OT heroes age-wise in the EU, maybe the earlier cast of supporting characters would have been eventually forgotten or relegated to stories set earlier in the timeline, given we had Mercy Kill as a passing of the torch for the Rouges, maybe we would have gotten new stories with the future generations of them in X-wing novels.

I mentioned a stopping point, i wonder if they would have ever gone "ok, we've gone far enough in the timeline" and left the "immediate" post-ROTJ intact, never diving too much into Ben and Allana's time, leave the post-NJO era, have a time of peace in the middle of that and Legacy, and focus on other time periods, maybe post-Legacy, Dark Times, etc. this would be a possibility especially if they were still not allowed to kill off the big three, the coming of Underworld, Rebels, and others would have been a well of new material to pull out tie-ins from, TCW alone brought an excessive ammount of material, from comics, tie-in novels, UK magazines, video games, etc. SWTOR material was very short-lived as the EU ended a few years after the game launched, if the EU continued while SWTOR still kept going a lot more of SWTOR tie-ins would have been released, as much as we had with TCW.

Maybe over time the EU would become more low-key in how big the developments of the eras are in the books and comics, work more as supplements for the audio-visual works like they are in Canon (even today the post-ROTJ is left to TV shows, the books barely touch that) rather than having so many big sagas like Legacy of the Force, New Jedi Order, etc.

Regardless, i think Zahn would have continued to do his own thing, and Luceno would have done a Darth Sidious book covering from AOTC to ROTS, after making the Legends version of Tarkin, of course.

 

One could only hope that the books would give up the Big 3 in the year of 2021 had their been no stoping point or ST retcons.

One would think that would be the logical thing....But marketing and Big Three love overrides logic.

I would also hope that maybe they stop doing big events in the Post Endor era and back to more one and done stories...Not everything has to be a big status quo change.

It reminds me of how Marvel comics are very event heavy.

Makes yuh wonder if the EU would have gotten a second wind?

 

Marvel comics are very event heavy, unfortunately that’s looking to be how things are going with the current Star Wars comics they’re publishing too.

 

True, but in this scenario if Lucas is still in charge i don't think they would have changed to Marvel again, considering they only did that because Disney already owned Marvel so it didin't make sense to keep it in Dark Horse.

It is interesting how now, in the more A/V driven Canon EU, comics are far more event driven than in the Legends EU, where the only big comic event was Vector, in spite of the interconnected world, publishing wise it was all just ongoing series that never crossed over directly, even though some got very close to being crossovers (Jedi series with Republic).

This does raise the question of how it would have looked had Disney decided to keep the EU, make the Sequels but make them fit with it, and still changed Dark Horse for Marvel.

I think it may have gotten the EU a bit too crowded, with Marvel trying to do it's own big events and differentiate it's content from the previous Dark Horse material, might cause issues with how they both fit together.

 

Oh there is no way they would have done that for a variety of reasons.

Biggest is I think Disney wanted a clear BREAK from the past and wants to build it's own audience.

Sure start off with getting some old OT fans but then over time build new audiences from the new generation of Star Wars kids who will only know the Disney Era stuff.

EU was always DOA if two things were to happen. Lucas makes more movies (or honestly live action anything) and obviously Buyout.