One minor detail that the seemed to have fixed from Lucas's own nonsense is the Jedi look, however. In the first Star Wars movie, Ben Kenobi is wearing that rough-spun brown robe because it was what the locals wore because of the climate on Tatooine. In High Republic, the Jedi have both temple robes, which are more formal looking, white and gold, with a kind of action-oriented pope vibe to them, a little bit (actually, they also remind me a bit of the Eternal Empire outfits from that part of Old Republic) but also "on assignment" robes. The difference between military dress or parade uniforms and BDUs, I suppose. The "Jedi BDUs" seem to have a kind of leather look to a lot of them, to give them that brown look that people have come to expect, I imagine, yet without looking exactly like they're just wearing "poor desert planet peasant" as an actual uniform, which was always really stupid, and only a feature that Lucas did for the prequels and beyond.
That's... the good, I suppose. The rest of the story is told in this graphic, taken from the launch trailer (and marked up by Yellowflash 2, and I'll talk about it just a bit.
Let's go through what it says and see what we think about this, from a "diverse" writers built by committee approach to Star Wars.
Fiction
—Authentically lived in—this is of course a good thing, and has always been one of Star Wars' strengths. However, SJWs don't authentically live at all; everything to them is some kind of mental distortion, emotional mirage, or social construct. I actually saw the picture of the writers, and... well, let's just say, physiognomy is real and those are the faces of SJWs, so I doubt that this will be a goal that they accomplish, no matter how much they write it on the white board of their desired outcomes.
—Surprise—this one isn't a bad thing, unless, of course, it is debased to merely mean "subvert expectations". And, I've said it before and I'll say it again, a less surprising but well-executed fiction is much better than a surprising but poorly executed one.
—Diversity—I can't roll my eyes hard enough, but the fact that they want to highlight this already means that the project is probably doomed already.
—Actual ending—I'm not sure what they mean here, but it kind of makes me laugh. Especially considering the irony of Disney taking an actually ended saga, tacking on some poorly related sequels, and then pretending that they are just as much a part of the larger saga as the stuff that was already done which was actually ended already. And, in addition to that, they left a little bit of a cliffhanger on their fake ending as it was. Unreal.
—Feelings—oh, please.
—Relatable characters—like Rey? Like Ezra? Like Sabine or Satine (actually, I can't remember which one is which, but neither are relatable at all.) Star Wars has struggled with this since the original trilogy, and they don't seem to be on the verge of cracking that nut any time soon. Especially not with this crowd of writers, who just at a glance I can tell I don't really relate to very much myself.
—Sweeping/epic—to be fair, I'm glad that they see this, because a weakness of much of the Expanded Universe stuff. Picking out some random extra and trying to tell his story has been uninspired, for the most part, especially when the sweeping/epic scale was part and parcel of the original trilogy's ouevre.
Star Wars Heart (rolleyes)
—Not pro-war—what? Aren't the crazy SJWs following the zeitgeist? Ever since Orange Man Bad said that he wanted to get us out of wars in strange places that nobody American can articulate why we're fighting, being pro-war is what is Right and True for an SJW! Anyway, this is Star Wars. Being heroic means fighting evil, and that means accepting that war is a reality that should be avoided, but only so far, and not feared. We are talking about heroes, right? Oh, right. SJWs. r-strategests. Of course.
—The rest of these.... I don't really know what to say about them other than that they are a basic iteration of some elements of Star Wars that are iconic. OK, yeah—good idea to list them if you're so disconnected from the franchise that this isn't terribly obvious, but if you are, then you are not a good candidate to write for it then, are you? I will say, though, that the elimination of the concept of a single main character or small set of main characters is a good move. That wasn't a problem with the story arc of the original trilogy, but it was a problem when the prequels and even the sequels, as well as most of the spin-off stuff, couldn't really let go of them or their immediate families.
Star Wars Wishes
—High Republic—I'm not sure what this means other than its I guess an attempt to suggest that they'd like to show a functioning Empire (even though, yeah, they call it a Republic. That's what people say about the United States too, and it's been a functional empire since 1865. Even SJW history textbooks talk about Imperialism being a major force in America between the Civil War and the World Wars, although they neglect to mention that our behavior since has been more Imperial than it was during this so-called Imperial phase.) Whatever. No doubt, it will be much like it was in the Clone Wars era and the Old Republic where it was allegedly a mostly benevolent Empire—allegedly—yet plagued with self-righteous anxiety and corruption. Kinda bored with that particular message, to be honest with you. It says way too much about the SJW state of mind and what they really feel towards people other than their allegedly elite little in-group.
—Relic hunters—this can be OK... but it seems more video gamey than anything else. If we're already talking about a time far (enough) in the past, why do they need to look for relics from even further in the past? Because Indiana Jones was a fun movie, and nobody can think of anything else do to except copy it?
—University—so we can have Jedi Hogwarts, of course! Ugh. I don't know what these SJWs would want to do with Star Wars High Republic university, but I can't imagine anything that isn't cringy.
—Dinosaurs!—funny that they had so much trouble spelling that. Whatever. Aliens would be better, but big alien animals are basically dinosaurs to the ignorant and the non-discriminating, I suppose. Although other than visual window-dressing, I'm not quite sure how they would really make any difference on the setting.
—Representation/diversity—they have to mention it again? Tell you what; us white males wish you would stop trying to appropriate our own, specific type of fiction which is unique to us, and blackwash it, brownwash it, pinkwash it, or whatever else you're doing. It serves no purpose except to insult your fan base on purpose and rub it in our faces that you have the levers of control over something that we once loved, which was based on a vast body of (admittedly, mostly non-visual) work that was all explicitly written for white males by white males at a time when our country was still made up of white people and was a homeland for white people to practice white culture unmolested and uninterferred with by anyone else. This right here is exactly why Terminator, DC/Birds of Prey, Ghostbusters, and many, many more have bombed huge at the box office in the last few months. Just. Freaking. Knock. It. Off. You cannot really be so ignorant as to not notice that you have exhausted our patience with your constant covetousness, envy and ankle-biting about how you couldn't do what white males could do and you want white male culture to yourself, except with all of the white males thrown out. We get it. Now get lost. (As an aside, every time I read Isaiah, I get something new out of it. Caught this interesting gem describing the last days in chapter 13 verse 14, about the nations of the world and what will happen to them in the last days: "[T]hey shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land." Can't happen soon enough.)
—Arthurian legends—am I reading this right? I'm not 100% sure that that's what it says. That said, Star Wars has always borrowed from pretty much every potential swashbuckling and adventurous source that there is, so why not? Arthurian legends are so tightly tied to both the Norman-British nation and Christianity that it's a little hard to do them without watering them down to the point of silliness, in my opinion. UPDATE: Seen a bit more about this here and there, where the Jedi are supposed to be kinda like the Knights of the Round Table, with a stable Camelot in the center of the galaxy, I guess, and more "Space Wild West" on a much larger frontier area of the galaxy.
—Rival houses—Star Wars does assume princes, princesses, royals and nobles, so this is kind of a given that there should be some of this involved, or at least that there could. Given how much Star Wars borrowed from Dune, it's a little bit surprising that there really isn't any of this already integrated, to be honest. Unless they meant something like Gryffindor vs Slytherin, in which case blegh. And even if they don't, the whole "one house stereotypically and stupidly "good" and the rival "evil" is both boring and stupid and shouldn't be done that way.
—Sith Empire—they recognize that the Sith are just the perfect iconic villains and it's hard to do Star Wars without them. Which is exactly why the rule of two and some of Lucas' later decisions when applied to the prequels in particular were bad decisions. Of course, I don't know how they can do this without simply ignoring existing canon, but eh.
—Chaos agents—I'm not sure exactly what they mean by this; terrorists? The Joker? Antifa? In any case, villains that aren't either Sith or Hutts/gangsters would certainly be welcome. That's the kind of ACTUAL diversity Star Wars has always needed, hence my approach with Star Wars Remixed and later Ad Astra of a politically Balkanized galaxy with multiple rival empires and powers.
Anyway, there's a lot to be concerned about on that list, and a lot that's kinda a given and "duh". And, to be fair, a few ideas that are genuinely good, even if not exactly earth-shatteringly innovative or brilliant.
UPDATE: And, here it is.
https://disneystarwarsisdumb.wordpress.com/2020/02/25/project-luminous-hates-old-white-men/
UPDATE II: And I saw a screengrab that showed a line below what this one shows: for fiction it has Humor (OK, why not, I suppose), for Star Wars Heart it has Complicated monsters which is a major red flag to me (look at my complaints about a lot of the Paizo work, particularly in the Cult of Undeath project I did) and the Wish List had Splinter group force users (which, I've already done.) Not much to say about any of those. I still think the problem is in the link above; the writers who they caucused to do this are all super-woke retards themselves, so naturally, the end product will be as well.
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