Disney Chief: More Star Wars 'Character' Movies on the Way

[Tyyr]

Canon get in my way? I've got the save games on my hard drive that prove Revan was a chick.

[Mikey]

I'm truly ignorant of the SW canon heirarchy. Which wins: games or books?

[Tyyr]

No clue, but if you want to compare sales I'm pretty certain the game's gonna win.

[stitch626]

Canon goes: live stuff, cartoon stuff (if declared canon), books and comics (except for a few), video game stories (not game play or player choices, so what gender you choose is not canon).

[Tyyr]

Revan. Is. A. Chick. If she was supposed to be a he then there shouldn't have been a gender option in the character creator. Yes, they wrote a book about Revan later in which they claim he was a guy, well guess what, even in Star Wars that's an incredibly niche bit of info not to mention sitting in a rather odd place in Star Wars as lots of people would play the game who would never read anything from the EU and who's really going to stop and read a book about a video game character that lived thousands of years before the current era and was so influential they were never even spoken of prior to the game? And seriously, what was even the point of that book? It spent far more time focused on everyone but Revan. So why did it even need to be made. KotOR II went out of it's way to NOT canonize anything about Revan so that it could accommodate however you happened to have played them.

Then five years later they come along and write a book (not even a game which is the original format of the character) about a different character and drag Revan in for some name recognition to try and sell copies which is just fucking stupid since book readers in general probably don't care about video game characters and video game players don't want to read a book about their favorite character who is nothing like their character and who they have zero control over. So again, I ask, why? Why canonize Revan's gender? There's no point, she's not coming back. KotOR II made it pretty clear that she's gone. The format's wrong, and the book ultimately wasn't even about the title character. So in the end all it was was a great big middle finger to everyone who didn't pick a male light side Revan. Fuck that noise. Revan was a chick.

And while we're at it let me clarify something. When it comes to Star Wars canon you have the movies and then you have everything else that no one cares about. You might throw the cartoon in with the movies, maybe but the reality is that the EU is a self contained separate thing that the people who make the movies and cartoon feel free to rewrite any time they damn well please. So can rank things by their "canonicity" or whatever but in the end there's the movies and there's everything else.

[Mikey]

I don't disagree with your stance, but if the overseeing authority has declared a canon heirarchy (of which there is one in SW, I'm just not familiar with it's details) then es o si que es. If in the SW milieu novels "outrank" games, then they do - whether or not there is a common-sense reason to take the word of a game over that of a publication. If a novel is "D" canon (I don't know that's what it is, I'm just using arbitrary levels for the sake of an example) and a game is "G" canon, then if the book says Revan's a dude and the game says that Revan's a chick... well, he's a dude. I don't like the fact that an after-the-fact novel can trump the game that introduced and popularized the character, but if that's the way its, then that's the way it is.

[Jim]

Google image searches... seems to be a dude... or a very VERY non-fem woman.

[Tyyr]

I'm in a bad mood and probably shouldn't write this but here goes.

NEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRDDDDSSSS

The "canon" rankings exist because on it's own the SW EU is either too large or too poorly managed to have maintained hard continuity within itself. Too many cooks, a singular kitchen, and everyone wanting to cook an entre and occasionally the head chef will walk in and do whatever he pleases anyways. So in order to try and establish what is truly "canon" a bunch of dorks built a heirarchy of what gets to be offical first. Endorsed or even originated from Lucasarts it doesn't matter much because it's a cludge to try and make everything canon rather than admitting that the EU is one big playground that is not as well policed as it should be if you want everything to be true. The heirarchy exists to settle nerd fights about which EU character that less than a 1% of Star Wars lovers even know about is better than another or which tiny bit of Hutt culture is accurate and which isn't even though it matters just about not at all in a fictional made up universe. I am one of those nerds but lets just be a tiny bit self aware and realize that it doesn't fucking matter.

Why doesn't it matter? Because no one who is really in charge gives a shit. Lucas doesn't give a flying fuck about the EU and never did. He has time and again gleefully trounced thing set forth in the EU, even stuff set forth in some of the most basic and fundamental EU out there like the Thrawn books. As far as he's concerned the EU doesn't matter even a little bit. Even when going along with it wouldn't need changes to be made in some other work like one of the movies or the cartoon he just flat out overwrites it because his attitude is "Fuck the EU." More bad news incoming, if you think Disney is going to be any different then I've got plans for a real working lightsaber to sell you.

So trying to pretend that the EU is in any way "canon" is just fucking stupid. The entirety of the EU exists solely at the whims of Lucas Films and so far all evidence points to him not caring about the EU AT ALL and feeling no compulsion to pay attention to any of it. Instead of canon level pissing matches just get over it and accept that you've got the movies and TV show and everything else is just for fun. Pretty much what Star Trek is. You've got the movies and TV shows and everything else it pretty much just out there as one author or group's take on something for fun.

So yeah, when someone comes to me and starts in with "Well published books are R8GV cannon level and video games are UR32VER canon level..." I just roll my eyes and start waving my hand back in forth in the universal symbol of jerking off because that's what it is.

Let me finish this with a couple things.
1) I conceed that per Lucasfilm's masturbatory canon level system Revan is male.
2) I don't give even a single fuck. As far as I am concerned she was, is, and always will be female.
3) I am a tremendous nerd. I get into nerd fights. I also realize that's what they are.
4) If you lined up 100 KotOR players and asked them how many played Revan as female you'd probably get about 20 raising their hand. If you asked how many read that stupid fucking book you might get one. Line up 1000 Star wars fans and ask how many played the game and you might get ten. Read that book? One, maybe.

[Teaos]

Symantec point modifier d6, No one played KOTOR once, everyone played through at least 2-10000 times in every combination of gender and job.

[Tyyr]

I never actually played a male Revan but yeah, I think I've got at least three full play throughs of it logged, maybe more.

[stitch626]

Hate to break it to ya... Revan is back in ToR (gender in game currently unknown as I have yet to complete the character that meets him/her).

Also, Revan was going to be declared male in KOTOR 2, but that was part of the entirely removed content that left us with a shadow of the originally intended game.
An then they were nice and added that bit when we meet Atton and talk about Revan.

[Mikey]

If you lined up 100 KotOR players and asked them how many played Revan as female you'd probably get about 20 raising their hand.

Wouldn't that mean that 80 played "him" as male? I know that's just an example, but that example would point to a Revan with junk.

You know, I agree 100% with all the reasons you give why SW canon is such a CF. Be that as it may, it's still the SW canon - no matter that it was created as a band-aid to put out all the continuity brush fires that the EU has created. I agree that a character that was originally created for a video game should take its strongest canon indicators from that game. However, my opinion of the way things should be doesn't mean dick to canon. You may "know" that Revan's a chick, and all your reasoning thereto may be right on the money; but when discussing the matter with other folks, canon is the only common ground no matter how flawed or facile.

[Jim]

If I say the sky is green... it doesn't mean that it is green.

[stitch626]

If I say the sky is green... it doesn't mean that it is green.

It is if canon says so.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

If I say the sky is green... it doesn't mean that it is green.

It is if canon says so.

Well, good thing for me I ignore the bits of canon I don't like.