Stumpside Chats #17

Random Thoughts On Star Wars [Aug 30, 2024]

I mentioned yesterday that I would be making some Star Wars posts soon. It struck me that I should probably clarify some of the finer points of the lore and some of the jargon used since it will be confusing to a lot of you if I don’t.

So I decided that this week’s Stumpside would cover the following:

1. Qualify my sort of autistic obsession with Star Wars with some tangible statistics.

2. Defining some terms and clarifying misconceptions about Star Wars in general, which will make the following posts easier reads instead of a [completely] autistic infodump that is illegible to most people.

3. My favorite characters, factions, material, etc. in Star Wars.

4. My opinions on Canon and Legends. This section will be relatively short since most of what I have to say will be in a later post.

Sometime next week I will post my Acolyte review and then after that I will discuss my general defense of Star Wars.

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Trust The Freaking Experts (Me)

As I have mentioned previously, before I was Polk on iFunny, my username was CaptainMarTuuk and I posted Star Wars lore. I also spent a lot of time “battleboarding” on iFunny, which is what we call fictional debates about who would win in a fight. For example: Superman vs. Batman, or Darth Vader vs. Count Dooku. Both of these things involved a pretty extensive working knowledge of Star Wars lore, especially battleboarding.

Lore posting is pretty straightforward. Pick a topic, (usually a location, vehicle, character, etc.) and do some research on it. Include relevant statistics, brief history, etc. and post. It’s basically a form of textposting.

We had a pretty large group of battleboarders at our peak with various franchises represented. Marvel, DC, Star Wars, various anime, etc. all had dedicated groups of people who did this stuff for fun. In fact, a handful of these accounts are still around on iFunny. Some of these people were part of the “League of Heroes” which focused primarily on Marvel/DC characters and all of them added the _LOH tag to the end of their username. Yes, IronManLOHH was also a battleboarder. Pretty sure I debated him once or twice. There were some other groups, such as GOLD and probably some anime specific ones as well.

The Star Wars group was unofficial for a long time, but eventually we founded The Archivists which focused on Star Wars exclusively, although we did still participate in crossverse (multiple franchises) debates with other people. We were just the go-to guys for Star Wars.

Battleboarding was actually a very formal set up, with a number of rules you had to follow similar to a proper debate. You had to be ready to cite some excerpt if asked to, you couldn’t just claim Count Dooku could teleport, you had to include the source (he can teleport btw). You also had to make decent arguments, you couldn’t just rely on having a stronger character. I’ve seen plenty of people lose debates despite picking a high tier character because their arguments were doo doo. As a general rule, matchups had to be pretty close. You couldn’t have a fight between Han Solo and Emperor Palpatine, because obviously Palpatine would win. You could do Grand Master Luke vs. Palpatine or Captain Phasma vs. Han Solo, however. This was facilitated by the creation of various ranking systems meant to create an objective power scale. Here is one that we (The Archivists) created: https://qr.ae/pGSUvO

The battleboarding scene died out on iFunny, though. What few posts you still see lack a real community around them and don’t have any sort of structure about them. More than anything else, this happened because we all got older and had less time for it. We tried to move The Archivists to Quora with some success, however Quora has its own problems and is basically just filled with normies who would rather post memes than actually engage in proper QnA, lore discussion, or debates. At this point, The Archivists basically just exists in the Discord server that I run, where it is basically just an informal place for discussion of Star Wars content.

This is probably an appropriate time for me to tell you all that you niggas better not brigade my little Star Wars fiefdom I have going on here. You can join if you want, but the server is explicitly non-political and I WILL ban you for your chuddiness. Got a lot of normies and even a libtard or two in the server and I just don’t want to deal with the drama. It’s still active, but it’s mostly me and 3 other guys who talk about stuff.

Anyways, the other groups followed similar paths. Some groups died out altogether, others moved to place like Amino or Comic Vine.

Naturally, I have CONSOOOOMED a lot of Star Wars media. I have probably close to 50 Star Wars books on my shelf, and I’ve read closer to 100 or more. I’ve seen every Star Wars movie (including the forgotten Ewok movies) and I’ve seen most of the TV shows, with the only ones I haven’t watched being the ones for REALLY young audiences. I’ve played a handful of the video games as well. I haven’t read many of the comics, though I’ve read the important ones like Dark Empire (the Legends story of Palpatine’s revival) and Tales of the Jedi (which sets up the entire Old Republic era).

I am reasonably certain that the longest writing piece I have ever done was an 8,000+ word essay meticulously cataloging the various continuity issues that Dave Filoni (creator of Star Wars: The Clone Wars) created. I had help during the research phase of this project, but I wrote everything myself. Hilariously, it is longer than anything I’ve ever written for college. If you want to read it, here it is: https://qr.ae/p2sG3p

Now I should clarify that I haven’t kept up with a lot of recent media, simply because I don’t have the time. I’ve kept up with the mainstream content like the movies, shows, and most of the video games, but not much else. I haven’t read a Star Wars book in years at this point, although I still retain all of my knowledge of the franchise.

So yeah, I know my stuff. A lot of niggas say that they “know a lot about Star Wars” but a lot of niggas ain’t me.

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Erm Actually

There are a lot of misconceptions that people have about Star Wars, with varying degrees of prominence and scale. I’ll just cover the ones that bug me the most and the ones that are the most relevant for upcoming posts.

Canon And Continuity

I want to start this off by saying anyone who tries to say that “Disney Star Wars isn’t Canon” or “Legends isn’t real Star Wars” or whatever is retarded and wrong. You can headcanon whatever you want, but its still just headcanon. What is now Legends was THE canon prior to the rebrand; it’s not non-canon entirely. It’s a separate universe from the Disney Canon, and it’s still actually getting developed in a small way via Star Wars: The Old Republic (the MMO RPG).

Anyways, now seems to be a good time to define the types of canon in Star Wars.

1. Canon- Capital C. This is “Disney Canon” and it what is actively being focused on right now. Capital C Canon refers to this, while lower case c canon does not (necessarily, anyway).

2. Legends- The stuff that was canon before Canon. It’s basically an alternate universe in the same way that Marvel and DC have alternative timelines.

3. Non-canon- Stuff that was never canon to either timeline at any point. The LEGO games are probably the most well-know example of this. There are a couple of Non-canon things that people mistake for Legends, such as the infamous “Skippy the Jedi Droid” is not actually a real thing in Legends, beyond being an in-universe tale of sorts.

Legends is only Non-Canon insofar as it is not capital C Canon. Legends is still it’s own sort of canon, which is qualitatively different from the LEGO games. So yeah.

Related to this is the “EU” or “Expanded Universe” which a lot of people use as a synonym for Legends. This is not really accurate, because Expanded Universe basically just means stuff beyond the mainstream content of movies and TV shows. Canon has its own EU content, with probably close to 100 novels at this point and I don’t even know how many comics. Regardless, a lot of people still use EU and Legends as interchangeable. This is mostly just a pet peeve of mine.

Tertiary Sources

A lot of Star Wars laypeople (lol) will rely on the Wookiepedia as a definitive source for Star Wars. I ran into this a lot when I would battleboard, because some normie would inevitably find our debate and start writing up their own retarded arguments.

Wookiepedia is not a good source. You remember when all your teachers told you not to use Wikipedia because it isn’t a real source? Well this is doubly true for the Wookiepedia. Wikipedia does at least have some degree of review for its edits, while Wookiepedia does not. Also, for some reason a lot of normies believe that Wookiepedia is officially affiliated with LucasArts or something, but it isn’t. LucasArts has their own version called the Star Wars Databank which provides brief overviews of characters.

Anyways, without boring you with all of the details, there is a lot of internal drama/politics to the Wookiepedia. For one thing, there is a substantial troon voice among the admins which is never good. Another thing is that if you try and edit an article created or otherwise “claimed” by someone who is favored by the site admins, your edits will be reversed regardless of whether or not you are correct. I know a number of people who are semi-regular editors of the Wookie or otherwise have dealings with the site staff and it’s basically just a nepotistic mess. As long as you cozy up to an admin, you can write pretty much whatever you want. I myself have seen a handful of claims that are just straight up wrong.

Basically take everything on Wookiepedia with a grain of salt. It’s good for a brief overview, but for any serious research you need to go directly to the source (just like the real Wiki).

Building off of this, the overwhelming majority of Star Wars YouTubers literally read off the Wookiepedia word for word to make their videos. The only ones that don’t are extremely niche channels with usually less than a few thousand subs. Channels like Generation Tech, Star Wars Theory, and EckhartsLadder all just read straight from the Wookiepedia, and in the case of generation Tech, makes stuff up half the time.

Polk fact: I used to be in EckhartsLadder’s Discord server where I would post a lengthy response to all of his videos detailing why he was wrong and illustrating how he copied from the Wookiepedia, until the mods banned me back when I was still in high school.

These YouTubers that post daily or near daily content literally cannot do the research required to make a proper video without skimming the Wookiepedia. This information is scattered amongst dozens of sourcebooks, novels, comics, etc. and doing a proper dive would take several days. Instead, the outsource to the Wookiepedia. It’s understandable as a business move, but it’s very infuriating because it contributes to the growing phenomenon of people who think they are lore experts because they watch YouTube videos. These types of people are a special sort of retarded.

Scope And Content

The Star Wars franchise is, quite possibly, the largest fictional universe out there.

• 14 Different movies

  • The 9 “Skywalker Saga” films

  • 2 “Anthology films” (Solo and Rogue One)

  • 1 animated film (The Clone Wars)

  • 2 Ewok Films (Legends)

• 14 television shows

• 9 microseries/shorts series

• Over 200 novels

• Hundreds of novellas

• Thousands of comic books

• Over 50 video games

• Dozens of Tabletop RPGs

• Dozens of radio shows/audio dramas

• I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many short stories there are

  • Including databank entries and other internet exclusive stories, some of which are lost to time

I think the only franchise that really even comes close in Warhammer, but idk enough about the franchise to really say. Even still, my money is on Star Wars.

This is all to say that there is something for everyone within Star Wars. You can spend hundreds of ours CONSOOMING without ever touching even a quarter of the universe. Much of this content is very keyed as well.

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My Personal Favorites

This was my lock screen for years.

Favorite Characters

1. Count Dooku- All time favorite character. My default pick in every battleboard I ever did. I know his powerset like the back of my hand, and I can confidently say he’s top 5 most powerful Sith of all time, Legends or Canon. I would recommend the Dooku: Jedi Lost audiobook for anyone interested in the character. It’s awesome.

2. Grand Admiral Thrawn- My favorite books in Star Wars are the “Thrawn books” which is basically any book written by Timothy Zahn (creator of Thrawn). They are basically a mix of Sherlock Holmes and military sci-fi.

3. Darth Plagueis- I really like his unique philosophy on the Force. The scientific/alchemical approach to the Force is very interesting and not something we see anywhere else (well, aside from his master Darth Tenebrous, but that doesn’t count since Tenebrous has like 0 content). The Darth Plagueis novel is the default read for anything about him, but his section in the in-universe sourcebook Book of Sith is also very interesting.

Favorite Faction

My favorite faction is the Separatist Alliance/Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS). Unironically, the nuance behind CIS statecraft influenced my idea of an ideal state. Specifically: a quasi-feudal state with a nominal Senate/legislative body which is actually subservient to a shadow government, ideally one where the head of state secretly has unlimited power but abstains from using it in all but the most important scenarios. I will probably go into more detail about what I mean here in a later post.

Without getting too into the weeds, the CIS would have won the Clone Wars like 4 different times if it wasn’t for the fact that Palpatine constantly kneecapped them to keep the war going. Also, in case it wasn’t obvious, the Clone Wars is my favorite era.

Favorite Media

Personally, I have never really cared that much for the movies. I’ve seen all of them and I like them, but the books were always what I enjoyed most. That being said, I generally believe that the Original Trilogy is the best. Most prequel hype is nostalgia bait, although Revenge of the Sith is a genuinely good movie. I liked the political intrigue of the Prequels, but it was stupid to put in a Star Wars movie. As for the Sequels, I think they are just mid. Most of the flak they get is sort of silly, but they aren’t particularly good either.

It’s hard to say what my favorite book is, but it’s probably one of these:

Prequel trilogy to the Canon Thrawn Trilogy, which goes into detail about the Chiss Ascendancy (Thrawn’s home faction), something never explored before (even in Legends).

The Canon Thrawn Trilogy, which solidified Thrawn’s character in Canon.

This is probably pretty obvious to you if you read my previous Star Wars post:

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Canon vs. Legends

I am really something of a centrist when it comes to Star Wars. I have read more Legends books than Canon, but I own more Canon books than Legends books, and my favorite Star Wars books are all Canon. I like both universes more or less equally.

It’s The Same People

What most normies don’t realize is that probably about half or more of the current writers were grandfathered in from Legends. The consequence of this is that you are getting essentially the same stories, but written by superior writers. The best example of this is Timothy Zahn’s work with Thrawn. Specifically, we can compare his work with the Legends Thrawn Trilogy and the Canon Thrawn Trilogy, which have about 20ish years between both of them. The Legends Trilogy was much earlier in his career and it shows. There are a lot of places where he writes himself into a wall, and he generally does not do a great job of explaining why Thrawn is a genius. Comparatively, the Canon Trilogy lacks these pitfalls. Thrawn’s reasoning is laid out for the reader in detail and you can see what makes him a genius.

You can see the growth in Zahn’s writing ability in the (Legends) book Outbound Flight which reads a lot more like his Canon work than his other Legends work. This same thing can be seen in other writers as well.

Wokeness

A lot of people (rightfuly) take issue with Disney’s increased wokeness. I can say that there is definitely more woke stuff in Canon than there was in Legends. However, that is not to say that Legends was free from this. There were a handful of homos in Legends, such as Ferus Olin (basically the Jedi guardian of Princess Leia) but it definitely wasn’t as common as in Canon.

Some of the most egregious stuff in Canon is the following:

1. The Aftermath Trilogy- Random homo characters throughout, and a pirate who used neopronouns (bruh) of zhey/zhem (bruh).

2. Jedi: Battle Scars- Made Merrin (from Jedi: Fallen Order) bisexual. This is particularly retarded because Fallen Order was very obviously setting up a romance between Cal Kestis (the player) and Merrin. In the book, there is a scene where Merrin is going to have sex with her lesbo lover (Chellwinark Frethylrin) and Cal is literally a big dumb retard who doesn’t realize they are having sex. Then, in Jedi: Survivor, Cal and Merrin start their romance with no mention of the happenings of the book. If you didn’t know about the book, you would never have realized any of this and it would seem like a normal hetero romance from the start.

3. The Acolyte- Witch Force cult of lesbians who created twins using unnatural Force rituals. Gross. This is clearly some sort of freaky metaphor for IVF or some other equally demonic “fertility procedure” used by homos. Not even the Nightsisters were lesbos; they reproduced with the Nightbrother clan.

Allegedly, Merrin was actually pansexual and this was stated by the game devs.

Merrin was originally envisioned as pansexual by the team at Respawn. So, that was an established thing when I came on to writing this book, something that the Respawn team wanted to explore with this book, and wanted to establish with this book was Merrin’s pansexuality so that it would be clear, canonical, and also is something that the book gives us a unique opportunity to explore.¹

I don’t really know if this is true or not. The author of Battle Scars claims this, but I’ve never seen anything else about it. Also, the author of Battle Scars (Sam Maggs) is kind of a freak:

It’s not that I have an agenda. But something that people know about my work, and when they approach me to write something for them, is that my work is probably going to be unapologetically feminist, it’s going to involve women working together, it’s going to have a feeling of hopefulness, it’s going to have a feeling of humor, and most often is going to have queer representation.²

This sort of thing is very common in Star Wars now. We all know of similar controversies. We also all know why this is, so I won’t retread that.

I will say, however, that there is still plenty of Canon material that lacks this sort of thing.

The Debate Itself

The Canon vs. Legends debate is frankly just something that annoys me. The main drivers of this debate don’t actually care about the lore. It’s actually a sort of microcosm of broader American politics.

The Legends side is essentially a bunch of NeoCons, while the Canon side is just a bunch of libtards.

Generally speaking, “Canon Supremacists” are literally just libtards who want to seem nerdy and feel heckin validated. They don’t read much of the material, and what they do read is basically cherry-picked to be exclusively from the woke type authors (who are all new to the franchise, by the way).

At this point, most of the “Legends Supremacists” aren’t even actual Legends fans. They are actually Dave Filoni stans who conflate Star Wars: The Clone Wars (TCW) with “authentic” Star Wars, and by extent Legends. In their minds, Dave Filoni is the savior of Star Wars (many outright say this) as opposed to people like Kathleen Kennedy or various woke authors.

The problem with this is that Dave Filoni is probably the reason why Legend was retconned in the first place. As I mentioned above, I wrote an 8,000 word essay detailing all of the times Filoni has wantonly retconed something (despite extensive measures by LucasArts to provide creators with a solid basis in the lore). Many of these examples are so specific that there is no way for Filoni to have retconned them without have read the story first. This trend has continued into Canon, as you can see in my essay. But that isn’t even the half of it. I haven’t made any additions to that essay in two years, and Filoni has continued to break stuff (including stuff about Thrawn himself, sigh).

Beyond that, Filoni is really just mid as a creator. It was pretty funny watching Filoni stans try to reconcile this. Filoni kept coming out with shows like Rebels, Resistance, The Bad Batch, etc. which were all overwhelmingly mid. It was fun watching people on Twitter try to contort themselves and saying outrageous stuff like Filoni actually had little control over these shows, which is why they were so bad or whatever. The reality is that TCW was also mid. The only difference is that TCW gets nostalgia boosted because we were all like 6-10 years old when it came out.

Therefore, by defending Dave Filoni and TCW as “true Star Wars” in spite of the generally mid writing and complete disregard for continuity, Filoni stans are basically the equivalent of NeoCons decrying the loss of “based old school gays who vote red.”

Both of them are just grifters, essentially. The true redpill is that, when you avoid the Blackrock-induced woke stuff, Canon and Legends are essentially the same. In fact, Canon explicitly canonizes a lot of Legends content on a 1:1 basis. But whatever. TLDR: not only should normies not be allowed to vote, they should also not be allowed to talk about Star Wars.

Anyways this ended up being longer than I expected, but I still plan on doing a few more Star Wars posts.

1. Alex Jaffe. “Star Wars character Merrin from Jedi: Fallen Order revealed to be pansexual in Jedi: Battle Scars” in Popverse (03/06/2023).

2. Ibid.