Thoughts on Legends
I’m sure you’ve seen the news. A group of Star Wars fans who want Lucasfilm to continue the Legends/Expanded Universe stories have purchased a billboard in San Francisco to raise awareness and place their demands in the public sphere. After multiple attempts at petitioning online and through letter-writing campaigns, this crowd-funded purchase was their next step. If the news reports are any indication, it got noticed. I know at least one Lucasfilm employee saw it.
https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/722239470695657472
Sincerely, congratulations on executing a successful crowd-funding campaign, although I believe that $5000 would gone a lot further as a group donation to Make-A-Wish or Force for Change, both of which are friends of the Star Wars brand. But, I digress.
I once had the greatest of respect for the Bring Back Legends petitioners. I still am a huge fan of the Legends/Expanded Universe stories because that is where I really dove into Star Wars after discovering the movies. I was there for Heir to the Empire – there should be a t-shirt for that – and for pretty much everything that followed, for better or for worse. I recognized how futile the overall campaign was in the post-buyout era, what with the marketing challenges and high potential for general audience confusion, but these guys were super passionate in their fandom.
They still are. That’s part of the problem.
Somewhere along the line, they started becoming aggressive toward fans and artists. They started harassing my friends and fellow fans, including threats of bodily harm, rape, and death. That aggression escalated when The Force Awakens premiered, resulting in some in this movement spoiling plot points on public sites until Lucasfilm relented. This actually caused some sites, including the official Star Wars Books page on Facebook, to shut down for a time because they couldn’t stop the flood.
The Legends movement became the face of ruining the Star Wars experience for all fans because it wasn’t the right canon.
Yeah, it’s the internet. No, it’s not right.
It wasn’t every Legends supporter, but this echoes GamerGate and the Mens Rights Activist movements (among countless others) in that a very vocal extremist minority has become the movement’s active voice. I’m sorry, but perception is reality, and right now, this movement is perceived as being a bunch of bullies.
I don’t stand for that in fandom. It has poisoned their efforts, and it has poisoned Star Wars fandom overall. It’s even driving away some of our best ambassadors.
As a Legends/EU fan, I share Chuck Wendig‘s sincere hope that the Legends movement gets some resolution. I firmly believe that more Star Wars work means more great mythology to enjoy, but I cannot find it in my heart to support the Legends movement because of this activity. They need to find a way to clean their house, excise the cancer, and make amends to fandom at large.
Star Wars is still forever, and it should be for everybody.
Creative Criticality 
Actually, the wrongs are shared.
When Disney/Lucasfilm announced that the Original Expanded Universe was discarded, some Expanded Universe fans voiced some mild mannered concerns about the future of the franchise. They were sharply told to shut up and to “get over it”.
The EU fans got shunned by Lucasfilm and many fansites.
So Disney triggered a “civil war” among the fandom, by discarding the EU and discontinuing it while the episode VII looks like a remake of “A new hope”. I can also talk about Rebels and Aftermath with their questionnable quality.
Many EU fans are getting trolled, harassed, bullied, and slandered by some hate pages on Facebook. So you CAN’T turn a blind eye on that.
And Did the “spoiler jihad” actually happen? I don’t think you need a disguntled EU fan to get spoiled on the internet…
Please tell me that you’re not trying to justify the wrongs I outlined with the “they’re doing it too” argument. Because that won’t fly.
Even if the pro-reset crowd is harassing Legends fans, the #BringBackLegends movement still have the burden of shucking their abusive members before I can take them seriously. No amount of “they’re doing it too” will earn back my respect.
“he #BringBackLegends movement still have the burden of shucking their abusive members before I can take them seriously.”
The pro-EU movement isn’t organized and centralized. And I only represent myself. There are many facebook groups, blogs and facebook pages.
So, what is “Bring back Legends”? Maybe a guy with some poorly written leaflets behaving badly at Dragoncon.
The spoiler affair seems to come from a closed facebook group called “alliance to preserve the expanded universe”. That screenshots where taken there. That group got a bad reputation, and, then, some facebook pages broke up their relation with the “Alliance” group for some other reasons.
The problem is that the media outlets did not try to check the facts or multiplying the sources. Clickbaits are more important than journalism.
So, for me, the “spoiler-jihad” affair is little more than an unverifiable half-truth.
“Even if the pro-reset crowd is harassing Legends fans, the #BringBackLegends movement still have the burden of shucking their abusive members before I can take them seriously. No amount of “they’re doing it too” will earn back my respect.”
And that problems of harassment isn’t only because of Star Wars, but it’s because of the Internet: People, behind their screens, are doing things they wouldn’t do in real life such as harassment, insults and so on…
And that’s how your friend got harassed.
On the other side, some Disneyverse fans are acting like high school jocks cornering a nerd.
The police and the Judicial authority can’t keep an eye on everyone.
And that’s how a “civil war” was triggered among the Star Wars Fandom. And as long as most of the EU fans won’t feel respected by Lucasfilm, it will continue. So the only way to stop it is to continue the Legends Timeline, or, at least to wrap it up, because some story arcs were left unfinished.
PS: Excuse me for my broken English. It’s not my native language.
Disney triggered a civil war is the most mind-numbing thing I’ve ever read on the internet