At work a few weeks ago I had an idea for a recontextualizing of TFA’s backstory that might be doable in a fanedit?
Sounds like a pretty good idea. You’d have to heavily edit the dialogue, but it’s doable.
Not sure if you’re into the expanded universe but the official canon portrays a very similar scenario. The New Republic was split in two parties: there were those who appreciated the old regime and wanted a centralised government and more powerful military, and there was the faction led by Leia that favored liberty and autonomy of individual planets. Some of Leia’s political allies backed the Resistance, while many opposing Senators eventually defected to the First Order.
Honestly man, I wouldn’t really think hard about canon in the fanedit community. JJ, Rian, KK…they all sort of did their own thing and broke canon whenever it served their story. Most of the EU stuff from TFA to ROS contradicted itself after each new movie came out, worse than with Lucas and the fan community’s “S tier / A tier” canon stuff back in the day. It’s pretty clear that even after Disney wiped the EU clean to get a clean non-muddled united continuity…they actually didn’t care and it’s gonna become the same mess of licensed fanfiction.
In 2020, no one at Lucasarts cares about canon except Dave Filoni and crew.
So what I’m really saying is that faneditors should be free to do whatever they please, we should encourage total artistic freedom in this medium.