Recently, the official Star Wars website stated what is canon and what is not canon its stories. In a nutshell, most everything after the “Return of the Jedi” movie has been wiped out. How come this was done is up for speculation. The official “Star Wars Story Group” (SWSG) made the final decision and presented to Lucasfilm and Disney, which gave the approvals.
What is now omitted is the “Star Wars Expanded Universe” (SWEU), which includes the novels, the reference books, the comics, the games and several other pieces of literature. Several beloved characters are not considered canon at the moment, such as Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade. However, if the official writers in SWSG want to use any of these well-developed characters in the SWEU, they can as a resource, but the main plot of those stories do not necessarily have to be included.
Wookieepedia has released their position on the canonicity on their site and how they will parse key areas to explain the “new canon” to all those interested. Their article is easy to read and make sense of this developing situation. It is highly suggested all Star Wars roleplayers consider reading the Wookieepedia’s opinion for furthering roleplaying storylines or fan fictions.
As understood, the canon stories are as follows:
- All 6 Star Wars movies are considered canon.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie and television show that started in 2008 is considered canon as well as any resulting comics, such as “Star Wars: Darth Maul – Son of Dathomir” is canon.
- Star Wars Rebels television show is considered canon and the compendium books as published at a certain date is canon, i.e. “A New Dawn”.
- Star Wars Episode VII is canon, which is set ~30 years after “Star Wars: Episode 6: Return of the Jedi”.
The aforementioned above is canon and the list can increase under SWSG stipulations.
It is unclear what is not canon, such as “Star Wars: Ewok Adventures”, “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” or “Star Wars: The Old Republic.” These stories may or may not be considered canon and it is unclear.
The way that the Star Wars Actors Guild 77 (SWAG 77) views this predicament shows us the basis of our roleplay performances by our characters on social media. SWAG 77 strongly supports literature reviews with books and latest official Star Wars news. A well-read roleplayer performs with accuracy, strength and authentic portrayal of a canon character. Without reading, the roleplayer and the group suffers in performance because the story elements, exposition and theme of Star Wars can be corrupted. Due to the inherent psychological attachment with social media as a technology, the roleplayers need boundaries to maintain the “worldbuilding” of Star Wars as established. SWAG 77 will strongly encourage roleplayers to read certain novels, reference literature and understand concept art in the Star Wars Expanded Universe and will continually provide these titles in our roleplay reading list.
As a Star Wars roleplayer in SWAG 77, our group to writes posts, blogs, short papers, and fan fictions from our RP performances as the basic foundation. A good literature review helps us design performance scripts to perform on social media. Our theme changes because of the exclusive content from the official Star Wars site. SWAG 77 does not have a creative license for our work. We comb through the literature and create hypotheses based on the evidence of how a story will be written on several proprietary factors. From that point, we give an accurate, strong and authentic portrayal of Star Wars canon characters.
- An accurate portrayal is a performer that understands canon, continuity and timeline with in the entire story of Star Wars – a person who ignores these elements does not understand the in performance roleplaying rules.
- A strong portrayal is a performer that has the attributes (tempo, beats, demeanor, mannerisms, sounds, etc.) of the Star Wars character – a person who does not do that is godmodding in roleplaying.
- An authentic portrayal is one that does not change major character attributes in order to fit in any situation or story in Star Wars – what is called a “Mary Sue or Gary Stu” in roleplaying.
Story elements are consistent for most creative writing projects. SWAG 77 supports the efforts of our content creators. They are professionals who write and produce major media projects.
SWAG 77 is working with young people at 13 years old and older, many who have not been exposed to creative writing. Formats, concepts and basic Star Wars ideas have to be taught on social media because that is where these young people are. With the a supportive safe space, many young people flourish in the SWAG 77 program to move on to greater aspirations, such as film school, creative writing programs, and the arts.
Without these efforts by SWAG 77, there is no safe-space that is productive with verifiable results. To keep our track record moving, it is our position of the Star Wars canon changes that we must encourage young people to read the literature, to write articles and to perform scripts on social media.
