Originally this post rambled on and on and on about my philosophical opinion of canon, but I’m editing this to be less horribly off-putting, lol.
What is Death of the Author?
In short, it’s an attempt at our own fan-made Star Wars Expanded Universe entirely populated with fan-written stories, with a completely separate continuity from both the Old Legends EU and the New Disney EU. Everything from both continuities, all media, including all movies except for the Original Trilogy, is being thrown out. We’re starting from scratch from the Source Material.
Throwing out the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy entails writing our own prequel and sequel trilogies, which is our first order of business, but won’t be our only order of business.
I should note that this doesn’t come out of hatred for the prequels or sequels, or the New or Old EUs. We aren’t throwing them out as an act of criticism, but as an expression of creativity. We have fans and critics of the prequels, we have fans and critics of the sequels, and fans and critics of both EUs.
Why is Death of the Author?
There are a few reasons behind the creation of Death of the Author, and why you might be interested in joining.
We are canon anarchists. Cananarchists. We think individuals should be able to create their own stories set in a fictional universe they love, no one group should be able to determine what interpretations are correct and which aren’t. This is us taking canonicity into our own hands. This is also where the name comes from: While the concept of Death of the Author isn’t exactly this, the concept that there’s no authority who determines which interpretations are correct and which aren’t is one we agree with.
Many of us are also interested in creating a fictional history, an interconnected web of events in an ever evolving universe. Seeing how we fare as worldbuilders, in writing our own lore, will be an interesting experiment. This is especially true, since our motivation isn’t to put butts in seats or to sell books, our finished products will be very different.
We’re also interested in the collaborative aspect of this project. It’s one thing for one rando to write their own Star Wars stories, it’s another when an entire community of fans gets together to write their own universe. Apes together strong.
What’s in Death of the Author?
As of now, it’s still a blank slate, waiting to be written on. Obi-Wan says in the original Star Wars that the Jedi Knights defended the Republic for over a thousand generations, that’s a thousand generations of unwritten history to be filled, probably more going back further, absolutely more for stories after Return of the Jedi.
We have some broad strokes of ideas, which I’ll post about in a comment below, but as for definitive stories, it’s still waiting for you to fill.