It was fun to discover Star Wars.
I'm 24 and I've loved Star Wars for basically my whole life. I've seen every movie more than I can count, and I can probably recite Episode I from memory (I was 9 when it came out, I'll love that piece of shit movie forever). However, I found my niche in the Expanded Universe. When I was eight I had an orange book that was filled with schematics and essays about all of the ships from all of the movies (at the time there were only three) and from all of the books. A water bottle once exploded all over it and I dried the pages by hand. I love that book. When I was eleven I stumbled upon the part of my middle school library where the actual Star Wars novels were kept. They blew my mind. I lost myself in the stories of Exar Kun, the Sun Crusher, and, of course, Grand Admiral Thrawn.
By the time I was eighteen I had the Star Wars canon locked in my head, encyclopedia-style. I could tell you what Jedi were the best at flying, what planets the Yuuhzan Vong conquered first, and what battles were most important in the Clone Wars. Karen Traviss, Timothy Zahn, and Kevin J. Anderson made me see things differently.
When I was nineteen, my rock-solid knowledge of Star Wars was rattled by the Clone Wars TV show. I was skeptical. Ryloth has days and nights now? Ok. Ships can make hyperspace jumps in an atmosphere? Alright, I guess. Mandalorians are now a peaceful culture who disavowed Fett? Oh hell no.
I came to resent any changes to the canon. Star Wars was perfect the way it was in 2007, there wasn't any need to change it. No need to grow. I was perfect in 2007. No need to change it. No need to grow.
I graduated college in 2012. That fall, Disney bought Lucasfilm and declared that they'd be making a new trilogy. I wasn't outraged, but I was far from happy. Where would these new movies fit? The canon was perfect in 2007! Would they cram the movies into the unaccounted for year or two between Endor and the March to Coruscant? What parts of canon would be obliterated in the name of Disney? And who in the hell did JJ Abrams think he was?! We didn't need a new Star Wars trilogy. I declared that I wouldn't be seeing these movies and I'd passionately argue this position to anyone who would listen (read: no one).
Yesterday, news broke that the new films would exist in a completely separate canon than the myriad of books, comics, and television shows that had already been produced. Everything I'd come to know and love about Star Wars was no longer official. I'd experienced this before with the Clone Commando books, but this was everything. Noghri gone, Mara Jade gone, Darth Caedus gone, *Eclipse* gone, everything gone. Gone. 2007 Charlie would have lost his shit. But, 2014 Charlie simply sighed, looked at the Thrawn Books he had on his iPad, and smiled.
Disney and Abrams washed their hands of the admittedly-confusing EU canon. At the wise old age of 24, I realize that I should too. The new Star Wars movies are coming. There's nothing I can do to stop that. And that's actually ok. You can't stop things from changing in life, all you can do is take it as best you can. I realize now that my experiences and history with the Star Wars expanded universe don't mean any less simply because someone erased them from the official history. I still read those books and they still made my brain what it is today. There's still a world of Star Wars that exists, it just looks and is managed differently than what I'm used to. I'm actually kind of excited to see where they'll take it.
It'll be fun to discover Star Wars again.
