Legends Library: Supernatural Encounters with Guest Joe Bongiorno

Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
You're a listening to Legends Library.Now here's your host. He's a mountaineer
and Kyle rawlins. Hi everybody.I'm Lisa, and I'm Kyle, and

(00:23):
I'm Joe, and you are tunedinto Legends Library. We are a podcast
dedicated to the Legends line of theStar Wars books and the expanded Universe.
And today we have an incredible,awesome episode and we've been building up to
this one for quite some time.So please everyone, welcome Joe to the
show. Yay. Yeah. Soall the listeners are are well aware of

(00:52):
who you are because we talk aboutyou all the time. So it's it's
really awesome to finally have you hereand to see your cat at the same
time. Thank you, Thank youLisa and Kyle. It's great to be
here. It's it's it's overdue.Strider is joining us for how long?
I don't know. I'm glad tosee you guys and to be here great.

(01:18):
How'd you have any brother? MSo the whole episode we're going to
be talking about supernatural encounters because you'rethe final edition is coming out this Sunday,
so hopefully we're gonna get this episodetimed at the same time. So
this will be a bit of aspoiler episode guys, of course, but
really to kick it off, wewant to know how you got started in

(01:41):
all this. Okay, so wehave to go back in time a bit.
Yeah, two thousand and eight.This is ah, this is back
when Star Wars the official site hada paid section called Hyperspace, which older
fans will remember. And I hadpitched to Pablo who was running it is

(02:08):
PubL Hidalgo, to bring onto itan unpublished story called Cult Encounters that Rich
Handley and I had written for StarWars Gamer now going back even further,

(02:28):
which never never got published. Andadditionally, there was going to be a
third part called Supernatural Encounters, whichwas going to deal with the sort of
the supernatural parts of the Star Warsuniverse. And both of these were going
to sort of tie in the oldMarvel series and and sort of sort of

(02:53):
develop what Archie Goodwin and Roy Thomassort of never got to develop, which
they were heavily hinting at. Soif you go back and read that run,
you can see you can see whatthey were dropping. So it basically
was going to pick up from thatand and developed that, and Pabo gave

(03:15):
the green light, and that's prettymuch how it all sort of began.
It was at that point, andit's developed. It's developed ever since then.
Hyperspace unfortunately was shut down before itwas completed, so it went It

(03:36):
went into limbo for a time,and then in twenty fourteen, I approached
Dan and Matt at Lucasfilm to seeif they were interested, and they expressed
interest in publishing it on the StarWars blog in increments because they're like,

(03:57):
wow, this is really long,and hell is it for listeners. It's
over a thousand pages at the timeit was. It was admittedly shorter at
the time, but I had saidto them, it's not done. It
needs work. It's just it needsdevelopment. Are you guys on board with

(04:23):
me doing that until you put iton the schedule, which is the same
thing I had said to Pablo yearsearlier, and they agreed. They they're
like, yeah, that's fine.But as as we all know, Lucasfilm
took a turn towards, you know, sort of away from what they now

(04:44):
call legends and towards the new canon, and so it went into limbo again.
But I set out to fulfill myend of the bargain, which is
to complete it properly. H Andthen because the fans suggested that, you
know, oh, wouldn't it begreat if it had illustrations, So you
know, we raised money for illustrations, and we also added end notes,

(05:12):
and it kind of exploded into thissort of larger thing where there's there's now
Corey, who's one of my editors, is working on an atlas. Several
have spoken about and the you knowappendices. I mean there's well, there
are appendices actually, but I meanspoken of rather than like an index,
because it is so it covers sucha long span of time, like sort

(05:36):
of eons, So there's a lot. It's it's it's dense, it's it's
not light reading. It's it's MattWigin has called it, which I appreciated.
He called it the Silmarillion of sports. Honestly about to say that,
yeah, yeah, that's that's howit reads. So it's it's a it's

(05:56):
a challenging and that's just the nature. I mean, that was the nature
of it from its outset. Itwas intended to be uh structured in the
way it was structured, which isnot like a novel you wouldn't write a
novel this way, I mean notif you want people to read it.

(06:17):
You know, it was it waswritten, you know, it was again
it was conceived for Star Wars Gamerand then uh for for Star Wars Hyperspace,
which you know catered to more ofa niche sort of audience of hardcore
Star Wars fans that under you know, had read a lot of the West
End games materials and and you knowthe older EU like you know, going

(06:42):
back to the late seventies and inthrough the eighties, you know, knew
the Ewoks cartoons and whether they lovethem or not, had seen them.
So you know, that's it's that'swhere it was drawing from. It was
drawing from a lot of the thefar of corn of the EU and sort
of bringing it, Oh, howdoes it tie into the mainstream all these

(07:08):
books that you see behind Kyle?How does it tie into this this overall
story. And and that's where thesort of the legacy that series right there
next to Kyle, like that withAbloth, that sort of that was the
big sort of tie. And soif you've read those yeah, if you've

(07:28):
read those books, and if you'veread the Alan Moore Devil World stuff,
the dark Horse reprinted. Then you'vegot this sort of foundation for where this
goes theoretically anyway pulled it off?How did how did you two meet?

(07:53):
I don't actually remember that story,Kyle? Do you remember? I didn't?
I did? Actually, yes,it was. It was at least
a year before we sort of startedworking on it with and what's of third
four years something like that, allthe same. It was Cora. It

(08:16):
was on Kora, and at thatpoint in time, I was still a
fan. I was better by then, but I was still one of those
those people who were just spiritually scarredfrom like and it's because it's like,
okay, yeah, they say,like, don't take things so seriously,
but it's just like, hey,it's taking the expanding the universe really hurt
my heart because there's some there's somethings that you just want to rely on

(08:41):
and and I know business is business, but it just happened in such a
way and then you're just like wow, really, and that like just really
stuck with me. So in otherwords, long story short, I was
that fan who would just be likeI would see somebody say something positive and
it's just like mhm, you know, right, And Joe's just like,

(09:03):
well, hang on a minute.It's something random that I said on Cora,
and it's just like wait, It'slike, I know, you know,
because I've been like looking at thethe timeline Star Wars timeline dot net
since I was at least in middleschool checking that out. That's just like,
wait a second, and exactly whereyou are. And we started talking
from then and I stopped being solike you against the grain, so to

(09:26):
speak. It's just like listen,it's you know, just it just happened
back then anyway. It's like it'sjust a couple of years deep. It's
just like all the movies were stillcommon. It's just like, well just
see you to see what's gonna happen. That was really good. He You
don't often see that on on anysocial media or online forum where the person

(09:52):
writes back and says, actually,you've made a you know, a good
point. I hadn't thought of itthat way. And that's how Kyle was,
which I was really impressed by,because you know, these these things
tend to devolve into fighting, youknow. Yeah, I mean, ever

(10:15):
since the Internet, you've had that, but it's it's gotten much worse.
So I was I was impressed byby that, just how reasonable he was
and how nice he was. Anduh, at some point, I don't
know if you volunteered or you didn'tvolunteer, if I asked, it was

(10:35):
one or because I needed you know, I needed someone to proof reading,
to edit, and he's like me, you know, please bring me on
board. And honestly was the bestdecision I made, because because Kyle went
above and beyond like you know,what I expected or anyone would expect.

(10:56):
I mean, he this thing,like I said, it's a thousand pages,
and he just read it and rereadit and notes upon notes upon notes,
you know, all of which waslike super beneficial because I'm not a
clean writer. I'm a fast youknow, I'm a fast I have to
get get the ideas out and moveon before it's no longer there. So

(11:24):
I leave a lot of wreckage behindin the map, all of which Kyle
had to had to sort of likeyou know, go through and be like,
well, you know you could fixit, you know, this way
and that way, and here's anotheroption, you know, which which was
amazing because no, you know,that's what every writer wants, is an
editor who says, here are youroptions as opposed to this is how it

(11:50):
is supposed to be, you know, done or written, particularly like modern
editors who don't who haven't because I'mwriting in a style that's a bit older.
So going back to like the pulpera is sort of that's where I'm
drawing from because that's what I read, that's and that's that's what I love,

(12:11):
and that's what comes out like that'swhen Nashville cops out, and so
it's not but it's not how modernwriters, right. Uh So you know,
Kyle had to deal with that andand and you know, tackle tackle
that, and it was a fun. We had a blast. I mean,
just going back and forth with time, I'm like, well, actually

(12:33):
you know this, you know this, this spelling of this word, remember
is it? You know it's ourchay. It goes back to you know,
and I would I would an examplelike, oh, if you read
Clark Ashton Smith, he used thisword in this context and he's like duly
noted, you know it was.It was that's fun. You know,

(12:58):
when you have that, you don'tyou don't get that often in in whether
that's professional publishing or independent publishing.You really often don't see that unless they
you know, have a sense ofwhat you're doing. But like even even
Jara or Tolkien when he was writingThe Silmar Early and candid his editor a

(13:20):
copy of forget which book it wasBuddhish from Lord Dunsany, and he said,
this is what I'm doing, thisis what I'm going for. So
it's it's a challenge on both onthe part of both and you know,
as as a writer. And thisis sort of advice for for all those

(13:41):
writers out there. Don't be tooprecious about your work. You can't,
like you listen to your editor.You don't, it's you're a proof for
you. You don't always have tolike follow them. But don't be so
precious about what you're writing as ifit's like so you know, wonderful and
grand. I mean, like ninetimes out of ten they're pointing out something

(14:03):
for a reason. So because I'vecome, I've I've you know, I'm
i want to pull a small presspublishing company as well. So I've seen
I've seen that, you know,not thankfully, not not terribly often,
but I have seen writers who justreally are very resistant to any kind of

(14:24):
advice. Yeah, I could,I could see that. I'm a little
guilty of that myself, which iswhy I have five unpublished books that are
just kicking around. So but Ithink it's also because like you're your own
worst critic, so like it's neverquite good enough. So like when someone
else comes in and goes, oh, this isn't good, you're like,
I know, like, but Idon't want to like change it because I

(14:46):
haven't figured it out myself. Solike, yeah, that's that's what takes
so long, is figuringing out yourself. And this this can be this can
be law related, or this canbe pros related in terms of like,
you know, how do I wantto construct or work? How this paragraph

(15:09):
reads? Or you know, storywise how you know, how do I
want to develop this? Do Iwant to develop this? Should this be
developed? Should this be cut?These? These are all These are all
the things that are writ or wrestleswith, and an editor can sometimes be

(15:31):
act as if they have the solution, and sometimes they do and sometimes they
don't. So you know, youyou take that time that you need to
go in your direction because ultimately itis your work, so you have to
make it ring true. When you'rewriting in a shared universe, that adds
an additional layer of complexity because itnow also has to fit if you're a

(15:58):
writer that cares about these things,which I am, and I think anyone
who's writing in the Expanded Universe orany shared universe should care about this,
which is does it fit? Howdoes it fit? And if you're going
to bend the lore, make surethat that works, Like make sure that

(16:18):
that you're you're bending in such away that the reader says, oh,
Okay, that's a twist I didn'tknow about, but it works, because
you know, story isn't story ismalleable. It's it's not. It's not
even even real history in some regards. There are things we discover that we
think we're true, but then welearn a wrinkle about a certain figure in

(16:41):
history or certain event in history.It happens all the time, So you
don't want to be rigid either whenit comes to to to lore. You
know, you can definitely add thingsand add these wrinkles in, but the
reader has to be able to comprehendthat. And because if it's a contradiction

(17:03):
and there's no good reason for it, well then you've not done your job
and you can't. You know,oftentimes a writer will leave it to the
editor to work that out, youknow, and I'll take that on.
But you really shouldn't because the editormay or may not know you know the

(17:27):
history as well as he or sheshould, because oftentimes, like you know,
you're working for a publication and they'vethey've got lots of different stories.
It's not just Star Wars, youknow, or whatever the property is.
It's lots of things they don't alwaysknow, you know, something that came
out in nineteen eighty. So youshould behooves each writer to do their research

(17:53):
and to listen to others when theyoffer and say, hey, actually you
forgot about this, Which is whyhaving Kyle and Patrick and Corey and Harry
and Robert and Ed and Ryan,I think I got everybody you know there

(18:14):
to to oversee this thing and andpoint out, you know, potential discrepancies
or even just to run to havefeedbacks to bounce off of. You know,
that's you. That's a resource.That is a gift. And when
you when you're given a gift,you appreciate it, you know, you

(18:37):
don't you don't rail against it.So I'm you know, I was really
lucky in that regard and blessed tohave have all of these, you know,
these guys on board that I mentionedeverybody, Kyle, I leave somebody
out. Even before like before theseguys came on board, you know,
there was you know, there wasLuke and Matt and I'm sure I'm forgetting

(19:03):
Oh I am sorry, it'll it'llcome to me during the course of this.
But yeah, there was you know, there was another group of guys
you know who helped out. Soit's just been it's been a blessing.
Apologies. When how did you actuallyget started with Star Wars as well as

(19:29):
a writer or as a fan.Well, both actually start start with being
a fan first. Well that thatgoes back, That goes back to the
release of a New Hope in theaters. That was That was my friend across
the street, Joe Lotspoto, whopopped over. We had just moved in

(19:52):
where we are now, which ison Long Island in New York the year
prior so we were little kids,and he came over and he's running his
mouth about Obi Wan Kenobi and DarthVader and the forest and lightsabers. I
had no idea, you know,this was nineteen seventy seven. I don't
know what he was talking about yougot to see the movie. So that

(20:18):
was that was it? And uhand I have to credit my dad because
they after seeing it and completely becomingobsessed, like it took over too.
And I was I was prepped forit because I had I had been a
huge Lost in Space fan because Icome home from school and it was they
did back to back. It wasLost in Space and Land of the Lost

(20:41):
and nothing. My mom will tellthat story like nothing could come in the
way of that. She'd have asnap and they tried, like teachers tried,
and other students would try. Lostin Space and Land of the Lost
are coming on. So I waslike ready. I was like, like,
you know, I was geared up. So when Star Wars came out,

(21:03):
you know, you know, havinglike the sort of the special effects
that it did to make it sobelievable, and I was already on board,
ready to go. That was it. I lost my mind. So
my dad brought home the Marvel comicsand I'm like, wait, the story
continues, like you know, itwas Luke Bend, Leah Chewy, the

(21:26):
Droids, like that was it?Like, so the EU was already like
part of my zeitgeist. I'm like, yeah, this is this is very
continuous Splinter the Minds I came out, I grabbed it. That was Alexander's
department store, which no longer exists, but my mom that was her favorite
place to go and on the thirdfloor they had toys, games, books

(21:48):
and records. And I remember seeingthat when that came out, and I
was like, there's a novel andit continues the story like and I remember
in my head like trying to reconcileI like the Marvel comics with Splinter as
far back is like seventy eight.That's when that book came out, trying
to like, you know, howdo they all fit together? I was,

(22:11):
I was it was it took overlike everything, like my imagination was
like there with with that. Sothat's how that's how Star Wars started and
Return of the Jedi came out,and I kind of I lost interest.
You know, I was older andI was getting into other things, and

(22:33):
it was it was geared a bittoo young for me at an age where
I was kind of you know,feeling like a teenager getting into music,
and you know, horror was moreof where my headspace was at, you
know, horror and like you know, serious like high fantasy. I was
reading Tolkien and so you know,Return of the Jedi just wasn't wasn't doing

(22:59):
it for me, and so Ilost I kind of lost touch with Star
Wars for a bit until until DarkEmpire and Air to the Empire came in,
you know, And that was thissort of that magical moment where I
was walking into a comic bookshop I'mlooking for work because I and I did.

(23:21):
I didn't end up working there,but I ended up working at a
bookstore shortly afterwards, either b Daltonor Walden Books or one of those.
But I remember in that comic bookshopon the wall it was I think it
was issue three of Dark Empire whereit was Luke hovering in black and his
eyes were rolled back and Leo waskind of like you know in the in

(23:42):
the foreground, like cow not cowering, but like, you know, afraid.
And I was like, what's that? What happened to Luke? You
know, he turned to the darkside? What? And the comic bookshop
owner was like, yeah, hegoes. It's all in in in this
series. So that was it.And then of course then the Tim's on

(24:04):
books were out too. I'm like, wait, new books are out,
and then I rewatched the original trilogyand I was I fell in love like
all over again, like just asintensely as if it was you know,
seventy nine eighty, you know,like those years. And because I worked

(24:25):
at a bookstore, I had access. I had to contact dark Horse and
West End Games to get refills onbooks because I wanted to promote them.
Really it was cool actually, soI got to speak to people like Bob
Cooper and Bill Smith. And atthat point I was already I was furiously

(24:48):
doing the timeline to make it allyou know, fit, because it really
was no official timeline. So Iwas like, guys, I have this
timeline. So they were like,yeah, send it along. So that
was sort of the start of thewhole thing. And then with Bill Smith,
he invited me to write, youknow, an RPG adventure and I

(25:10):
was like, yeah, let's doit, and I did it. It
was for the game Master screen andit didn't get published in that although I
did get a thank you and Igot a ton of books, which was
nice, and dark Horse two sentme a ton of like free comics,
still have them, I do,I definitely, yeah, I kept I

(25:33):
kept all of that. So thoseguys were great, Like it was,
it was a different era like StarWars wasn't in corporate then, you know,
and the creators, the authors andand you know, the editors were
just they were more engaged with fansin a more real way. And so

(25:53):
you know when I said, yeah, yeah, I want to be a
writer and all of that, butthey were they were encouraging Bill Smith,
you know, was it spend along time talking to me about like what
was going on like behind the scenes, which was kind of a nice,
nice sort of insight into the lucasfilmsort of like machine anything you could share.

(26:19):
This was this was a time whenLucy Wilson was the head of licensing
and she was there with I thinkSue was there. It's a third guy
who is no longer there, andthat's a funny story too, if I
could ever remember his name. Butbut Bill had said was that the three

(26:42):
of them were like sharks in atank, you know, like they didn't
necessarily get along with each other,but they had to work together. So
I thought that was really interesting andinsightful. But my my concern back then

(27:02):
was the Marvel series. When arewe going to reprint this. When are
we going to reference these things?Because I was I was still up very
much obsessed with the work of ArchieGoodwin and what he had done to continue
Star Wars, because you know,you have to remember, like Lucas himself
and Bill Lippincott sat down with RoyThomas to discuss where the future of Star

(27:23):
Wars would go until the Emparty strikesback. And then when when Roy when
Roy stepped down, it was ArchieGoodwin who took over and he basically got
those instructions, so they had firsthand, you know, they sat with
the Maker himself and if not plottedout, at least discussed where they were

(27:45):
going to go and how it shouldgo. And while Lucas didn't care so
much for you know, Ray Thomasis sort of Roy Thomas. Ray Thomas
is from the moody Blues Roy direction. I do that all the time with
Jackson, like he didn't, hedidn't he thought maybe, which is ironic,

(28:07):
you know, like Jackson, andof course then he brought Jarjar on,
you know, like years later,it's like like Jackson wasn't even as
funny as funny as jar Jar was, but it was a different George Lucas
before he had kids in any case, So that's the reason that that he
Thomas stepped down and Archie Goodwin tookover. And Archie Goodwin really had a

(28:32):
background in the Pulps and he evengrew up in a similar town in situation
to Lucas himself. But he wasreally well read and he really understood what
space opera was, and man,those stories were whereas to me, there's
still some they feel so much likethat first the first film, the first

(28:53):
two films, like they just theyhave that spirit of where, you know,
where Lucas was kind of bringing StarWars because Star Wars came not it
didn't spring you know, out ofthe ground, out of out of thin
air. It comes from a traditionof space opera going back to you know,
the early nineteen hundreds, going backto Burrows and Lee Brackett and Edmund

(29:18):
Hamilton and Jack Williamson and you know, amazing stories and weird tales like that's
where Star Wars it's DNA is allright there. And Goodwin understood that a
lot of the early authors did theguy who wrote the newspaper strips before before
Goodwin and Williamson took over. Heunderstood that a lot of the early authors

(29:42):
did. Modern today's authors maybe don'thave that because you know, and we're
going back to a period that peopledon't read as much anymore, you know,
which is the nature of things.But they did, and I felt
like it was a neglectful on thepart of you know, the early the

(30:04):
early stuff to not reference it.And then finally you started to see it
happened like they started to bring theseolder stories into the fold, which was
amazing. But I think I've reallyrun past your question into whole whole other
year. So apologies because I can, I can run on, but yeah,

(30:30):
that's keep running. That was likeyou asked, like where, like
where my you know, how Igot into it? And that was you
know, that was that was prettymuch. That was my My focus was
that. And so when I gotthe offer to do Star Wars Gamer with

(30:52):
Rich Hanley, it was that firstissue, which was called Marvelous All Aliens.
I don't think we had to coveron that one. I think it
was Boba Fett was on the cover, but it was that was like the
biggest article in the issue was Mark, you know, and it was really
about those the aliens from the Marvelseries, and so the next piece was

(31:18):
going to be cult you know,Cult Encounters, and then the third would
have been Supernatural. So that wasalways my target, was these old stories
that I felt were kind of neglectedor just people didn't know about them because
they weren't in print until dark Horsefinally brought them in print. And so

(31:41):
yeah, it was it was seeingthat through which you know, I'm grateful
did come to pass finally. Yeah, he is at hand and here we
are now. Yeah, yeah,I really appreciate the insight I've given everyone

(32:06):
here. It's amazing. See hegot me too. You're like, that's
before Lucas had kids, and Iwas like, your insight, it's just,
well, Lucas changed. He did. He changed when he and you
can see that, you know,even with the Turn of the Jedi and

(32:28):
his you know, his view towardsviolence in cinema changed, and you know,
he had a certain perspective. There'sjust a lot of cats and our
videos always I understand. I understandhis perspective. I appreciate it that he

(32:50):
may have swung the pendulum a bittoo far in one direction. He agrees,
Yeah, I apologize. My catsare always up and down, wanting
cuddles still around, you know,in front of the camera, knocking stuff

(33:13):
over. It's just it's just whatcats do and knocking the doors. We
are we are slaves to them,and we're fine with that. So yes,
yes, yeah, so pretty muchown everything from the door knobs down.

(33:37):
I would love to start getting intothe story. So if you guys
could kind of kick that off aswell into the story. Yeah, people
ask people ask the question a lot. Yeah, do you want to kick
it off there? Stir sure.It's basically anyone who's who might have read

(34:02):
the West End Games material might recallthe historian our whole hextrophone, and he
was he was put in the earlyRPG stuff as a way to having an
unreliable narrator, I mean, areliable narrator, but one that that if

(34:22):
if things changed, you know,he could say, oh well we got
you know, we got the factswrong about a certain thing. And larn
Nal was the sort of second historianthat they used Varrenhal that very developed lare
wise, but our whole kind ofdidn't. So I wanted I wanted to

(34:45):
take him and have him be themain protagonist here and have him have composed
a work that was so off thebeach and so alien to what the mainstream

(35:07):
UH conservative scientists and historians believed aboutthe origin of the universe that they were
kind of up in arms a bitabout this thing. And he's not there
to even defend the work itself becauseas it's not I mean, it's not

(35:28):
really spoiled because it happens right atthe very beginning. He's dead, like
he's he hasn't survived this thing.So it's the work itself that that has
to do it. And those who'veread it and and and see it and
and see that what he said hasthe ring of truth to it versus those

(35:50):
who don't or who think this isridiculous. And the reason that had to
be done that way was because youhad two different kind of strains of thought
going on in the EU. Youhad sort of the Bantam and sort of
del Ray books, which and eventhe West End game stuff, which had

(36:12):
a certain concept of what ancient historywas or might have been. And then
you had the comics, particularly themore obscure ones and and specifically Alan Moore's
work. So it really was ifyou've read Devil Worlds, if you haven't

(36:34):
you should because it's Alan Moore,and it's it's brilliant. Alan Moore can
do in three four pages what authorsstruggle to do in two hundred. I
mean, he's just that brilliant ofa mind in terms of that. And
I had loved Alan Moore since hisswamp thing days, and I know,

(36:58):
like it's become a bit of acontroversial figure, and that's stuff that sort
of came out later, and that'sfine. We don't have to go into
that. No, no, noartist is perfect or lives a perfect life,
and we shouldn't expect that. Butin any case, he's he was
a brilliant writer. And I justlove those stories and they told a picture

(37:24):
of the ancient universe that was abit at odds with you know, Bantam
and and those other stories. SoI needed a way to to sort of
reconcile the two perspectives. And it'smore fun to sort of pit them against
each other and have that have that, you know, because it reflects real

(37:52):
life, you know, debates onsubjects of the origin of life and the
origin of anything going back in time. And and I my brain has always
sort of had had an interest inthat, so wouldn't it be fun to
put that in an EU context,and that was the sort of springboard for

(38:16):
this story. So you have thatframe story, which is the trial,
you know that where this manuscript isbeing read and debated, and you have
hextra fund story with his droid Qnine where they they their journey you know,

(38:36):
to to sort of discover this andthat that takes them into Other Space,
which again, if you've read theWest End game stuff, you'll know
that Other Space is this other hiddendimension behind real space and it always it
always puzzled me, like, sothere there are two RPG modules on Other

(38:58):
Space, and it was never reallydeveloped much beyond that the Cathol out Back,
which tims On had a hand anddelved a bit into that, but
not much like so like the mainstreamEU books, that never really got into
and I thought, Wow, here'sthis whole, this whole bizarre wild dimension

(39:22):
just sitting there and no one's tackledit. And it kind of shows you,
like how much creativity and wild ideaswere just running around in the EU
at the time that that, like, you know, like authors, you
know, there was so much youcan reach in any direction. You'd pull

(39:44):
something creative that you could develop andother space was was sort of like that
that went into sort of my territorybecause again, I have an interest in
the pulps and in weird tales andand those that love craft the end sort
of model that existed for weird fictionback then. So I this was a

(40:07):
great This was a great springboard twodevelop So there, so there's that story
that's our whole's story, and thenyou have now a third story, which
is what he discovers, which isthe ancient history of the galaxy. And

(40:32):
part of that is part of thatis what he learns on his journey,
and part of that, and thisis the part that becomes suspect, is
this vision that he's given that thatgoes into details that you know, he
couldn't possibly know, that no onecould possibly know, because it evolves,
you know, the dialogue between ancientbeings and some malevolent, some benevolent,

(40:59):
the celest chills, the architects,the old ones, all of which have
been referenced in the EU, noneof which was ever developed. So and
this tied into what Archie Goodwin andRoy Thomas and other of those early writers
were really sort of tapping into.It's that was that same sort of zeit,

(41:22):
guys. I'll be give you anexample for so in Splendor of the
Mind, Zie, you've got astatue of Pomo Jenna, who's described exactly
like Cthulhu. So it's all rightthere. And then when I'm forgetting the
illustrator's name when they adapted that series, the illustrator drew Cthulhu Tom Palmer.

(41:50):
It was it Tom Palmer. Itmight have been oh, oh, all
right, well he'll be back.So he draws Cthulhu, you know,
so he picks up what Alan DeanFoster was doing. And so you're starting
to see the development of this wherethese authors are connecting Star Wars too,

(42:17):
if not directly to the Cthulhu mythos, then certainly to the weird fiction of
the pulp sort of era of whatTales was doing. And so and they're
not they're not alone. There's therewere others who were doing, you know,
kind of tapping into this as well. So it was just a matter

(42:39):
of making it more explicit, developingthis to the point where you know,
you know, fans can run withthis in any way they want to,
and maybe fans who don't like thatas much, can you know, put

(43:01):
that in its own category, itdoesn't necessarily The thing with crossovers, you
know, when you're they're done right, is they they fit together well.
When they're not done right, whichis usually for crass commercial purposes, they
stand out as not not working.And we've all read crossover stories that just

(43:22):
don't that don't make any sense.But I kind of wanted to go back
to an older model of crossovers thatwere done with love, and we're done
with like what I mean is likelove for the material, and done in
a way that that made sense somekind of sense in any case. But

(43:45):
I always left it in a waythat the reader could say, well,
it's not exactly that, it's it'ssomething akin to that. So you know,
if you absolutely hate crossovers, allright, well it's not it's not
the alien, you know, it'swell, you know, it's his creature
similar you know, you know,like much like humans in the first place,

(44:10):
right, yeah, humans, butwe're not the same until right exactly.
That's another thing. Like, yeah, like Earth was another tricky area
because there's a lot of people whodon't want it to be our earth,
you know. But Lucas has along time ago into galaxy far far away.

(44:30):
So oh, so our earth isthere in another galaxy. Okay.
So then that led to the questionof all right, so how do we
have humans? Like? All right, so when you read when you read
Stackpole's books, this used to botherme, and it doesn't anymore because they
worked it out. But when you'rereading those books, his humans and his

(44:52):
aliens behave very much like Americans circanineteen nine. Culturally, they just do
like they speak and they act andthe things that they do like it's all
culturally very akin to us in that, you know, being in the United

(45:14):
States in the nineteen nineties, andI couldn't I trouble wrapping my head around
that. But even even in thefilms like Hansolo, you know, I'll
see you in Hell Earthy and youknow a thing, and there's a lot
of that in the EU. TheEU's filled with stuff like that. And
again you could even find it inthe films. You can find support for

(45:35):
that hot chocolate, yeah, right, exactly right there, you know,
the start of the EU or themodern EU, you've got hot chocolate.
So I wanted to make sense ofthat because I thought you could, you
can make sense of it. Iwon't. I won't say how, and

(45:57):
I won't I won't even you know, say if it was if you know,
a reader will find it successful ornot. That's up to in an
individual you know, person to say, yeah, that works for me.
But it had to work for meand and you know, being being the
you know, my own harshest critic, Uh, it was the kind of
thing that I would spend, youknow, a long time pouring over does

(46:22):
this make sense? Does this work? And what does it mean? What
are the consequences of this? Youknow, moving forward? How does this
affect? And there's a lot becauseStar Wars, Star Wars, the EU
has a lot of these sort ofcrossover potentials. Will call them how and

(46:47):
you can ignore them and say,oh, that's just an in joke,
m but like what fun is that? You know, it's it's more interesting,
Like like so Lucas himself sets thepattern for that ET that is unequivocally
ET in the Phantom Menace a bunchof Yeah, you could argue, oh,

(47:13):
that's just him and Spielberg having fun, but I mean in the film
Et itself, you know, helooks back at the kid in the costume
of Yoda and says home Home.He recognizes Yoda as as a character,
as a person, as a race, and there they are in in the
pods. They are there. They'reactually there. So as much as people

(47:37):
want to argue that's an in joke, then how do you explain their presence
there? And it's fine if that'swhat you want to do, great,
you know, like like every personhas their own head canon, and I'm
all for respecting that. By thesame token, there are plenty of fans,
myself included, who want to say, yeah, this, these are

(48:00):
actual, these exist in the sameuniverse. So my my question and was
how how did these all fit?How does it make sense? Now?
The Star Wars universe is is oldand it's gigantic. You know, if

(48:22):
you look at the figures that WestEnd Games put to how many planets there
are and how many races they are, I mean these are astronomical numbers.
I mean, this is the largestyou know galaxy in in you know,
in fiction, it's just tremendous,and it's not it's not you know,

(48:42):
it's one galaty. Then there's sevenothers, you know, smaller ones,
but still galaxies are gigantic places.Planets are gigantic places. We forget that
sometimes, forget a little in ourset, forget that dook a couple of
factors over here, and it's justlike, that's a lot of space.

(49:04):
So yeah, they've took him twoweeks to get to best bend, you
know, like exactly sure, hyperdrive, you know, hyperspace has made everything
sort of you know, seems smaller. But I mean these are these are
gigantic spaces. So there's there's plentyof room for things to have happened in
the ancient past and for stories tohave a curtain, for empires to have

(49:28):
risen and fallen during that period.So there's a lot that could fit,
and and and so it's a matterof all than weaving, weaving that all
in and weaving it in such away that it makes sense. It makes
sense to the reader, and itmakes sense from a sociological perspective. What

(49:57):
are some of the crossovers you've included? Ah, because I know there's a
there's like a pre there's a prereading list to read Supernatural actoris like in
in that reading list, I leftout the crossovers because again, I want
to give I want to give readersto freedom to say this, doesn't you

(50:19):
know, I don't want this.I don't want this in my Star Wars.
Fine, So they have that freedomto do that, absolutely, But
for those who do, there's anotherreading list, and I did include that
in the end notes. There issomething called the what is it called,

(50:39):
I called the GUC the Grand Unification. Yeah, And with that is the
Grand Unification Theory, which is allthe things that were brought in that the
EU and the EU writers previously broughtin. Okay, and some brought a

(51:02):
lot names are escaping me at themoment, but one author in particular brought
in a lot of the stuff hehad previously worked on. So like you'll
see Black Star, the old animatedseries from the nineteen eighties, okay,
which I happened to love. It'sspace opera. I mean it's it's it's

(51:23):
early space opera, and it's it'sawesome. But there's a lot of those
kinds of things. So a lotare are like blink and you'll miss them,
and a lot are a bit moreobvious. So anything that Lee Brackett
wrote, because Lee Brackett is oneof the architects of Star Wars, absolutely

(51:45):
back. Yes, and and Ibelieve more. That's a that's a conversation
for another time. I uh,I want there's there's a there's a video
on YouTube that I would love morepeople to see called did Lee Brackett write
Star Wars? And it's really it'sLee Brackett and her husband Edmund Hamilton,

(52:07):
who's who's one of the architects ofspace opera, and he's one of the
first ones writing space opera in likenineteen twenty six, twenty seven and on
till till he died, And oncethey married, he and Lee would kind
of help each other on stories,so they both had role to play.

(52:28):
But Lee Brackett, who began hercareer in nineteen forties writing space opera in
a way that betrayed what a lotof the critics had were saying at that
time about space opera, that itwas derivative and cheap and hackey. She's
writing literature. She's writing great literaturethat also happens to be space opera.

(52:52):
She's not alone. Selmore, who'sone of her mentors, Seal Moore and
her husband Henry Kuttner basically took Bracketin and helped her to become a writer,
and they remained friends the rest oftheir lives. So you have this,
you know, you had this kindof literary thing happening at this time

(53:13):
where these writers are kind of helpingeach other out and befriending each other.
Ray Bradberry enters the picture here becauseLee Brackett mentored him. So here's this
lineage of writers who are writing atthis time, are writing against the Green.

(53:34):
And Lee then went on to doHollywood screenplays and became one of the
big names in Hollywood at the time, which is how she got involved with
George Lucas. And this video showshow it was actually much earlier than Empire
Strikes Back. This was like duringa New Hope, you know, seventy
seventy five, and provides the evidencethat she is much more of an architect

(54:00):
in constructing Star Wars, and weare led to believe, and so watch
the video make up your own mind. We can we can have a conversation
about that at another time. Butthe point is because I believe that she
is such an architect in this thing. Hern Hamilton and I brought in her

(54:22):
works, but Brackett also unofficially writingin a shared universe. She was writing
in the universe of Edgar Rice Burrowshis Mars and Venus and basically the Solar
system stories. She's unofficially writing moremore Mars stories. And she wasn't alone

(54:44):
in this. There's a whole listof people that we're doing is, including
cl Moore, including Clark Ashton Smith, She's uh Lynn Carter, Michael Moorecock,
the list. It's a long listof people that were unofficially writing,
you know, stories basically set inthis universe. They couldn't they couldn't legally

(55:06):
use you know, certain you knowraces and characters, but you could see
that they were skirting along the edges. And then I have a link to
that in the end notes for peoplewho are kind of deeper into that.
There are so many and before,Joe, you said it before, it's

(55:30):
just like y'all one of them.You got them there the bane of my
existence. Yes, you spent afew weeks in particular just and and they're
not they're not even as comprehensive asthey could have been. But I said,

(55:53):
you always want to leave room forothers to sort of develop more.
With a lot of the crossovers too, as many as I referenced in in
the end notes, there are othersI didn't reference because I think it's fun
for people to discover things, youknow, and to have that moment of

(56:13):
like, wait a minute, isthat is he referencing this? Maybe maybe
I am, Maybe I'm not.You know, it's it's you know,
it's the fun. It's just afun game, like once you get involved
in it, and it's such ait's such a rabbit hole, and it
the warrant goes from miles and miles, but it is a fun game.

(56:37):
And that's again I didn't originate it. I just I just ran with what
was already there in the EU.And again, if you don't like it,
great, you can completely ignore itcompletely. But if you love it,
you know, like some of usdo, it opens up. It

(56:57):
just opens up the galaxy to moreare so, you know, like in
your RPG games that you're playing,in your in your art and in your
your fan fiction, whatever it isyou do, you know what you're LARPing,
whatever, whatever you know, howeveryou express your fandom, the idea

(57:21):
is always to expand the universe more. You know. As a writer,
that's I think also partly your job. You know, you're not you don't
want to just fill in the blanks. You want to add more mystery,
you want to add more space forpeople to play with because it's a living
universe. And you know, whileDisney might have declared the EU over,

(57:47):
you know that's their prerogative to do, okay, but as fans, we
don't have to As fans and asas you know, as a writer,
like, our job is to keepit alive. Like we don't have to
like say, okay, it's done, because it's not done, you know,
I mean, it's done as faras you want it to be done.

(58:08):
It. If you feel it's over, I've had enough, grade that's
you. But if you want more, you know, Supernatural Encounters was a
way to really kind of blow thatup. Okay, you want more,
here's more, here's more in thisdirection, that direction, this direction,
going forwards, going backwards. Soso when you ask me, Lisa about

(58:35):
specifics, because I brought it,I want I want fans to sort of
like enjoy that on their own,Yeah, when when they come across it,
and and me not necessarily. Oh, there are certain things that are
explicit, Like you know we havexenomorph already in the EU, Yes,

(58:58):
we do so, and that sothat's not you know, that's not a
spoiler, that's already there. Ifthere's a xeno morph in the EU,
that means there's also a predator.That means there's also the engineers. So
my job is then just how doesit make sense? How does that fit?
You know? So again, butwe're dealing with the ancient past,

(59:21):
so there's there's room for that.I believe there's room for that, and
there's other things too, So I'lllet you guys. I'll let you guys
kind of discover Kyle knows already he'ssecret well the secrets that are there.
But I'll let you that. I'vebeen a trap the entire time, like

(59:45):
a little frustrating because I'm always like, could you know it's me? Who
am I gonna tell? Just tellme? Like I felt like I'm going
to record it and put it onYouTube or anything. But you guys will
have all all this, all theanswers this this Sunday Sunday Sunday Discord,

(01:00:15):
and probably on my website as well. The Facebook page is still down.
Oh ask me why. Yeah,that's a weird thing that happens that that
was taken down in February. Isuspect that a troll was involved. Chris
Nelson had a similar problem with hisYouTube channel, And so it takes is

(01:00:38):
a troll reports something and then botsdon't look into it. They just shut
it down. Who you know,you rebut that, But it's it's in
review and it's big review for months, and it's like I never violated any
community standards, not even close.So there's no reason that it should be

(01:01:00):
down. But you know, itis that these things happen in life and
you just kind of have to Youhave to work around them or get over
them and move on, you know, rather than letting it ruin, you
know, ruin your day, youknow. And fortunately the pause on a

(01:01:22):
Facebook page is not even merely closeenough to stop the buzz about your work.
I'm glad, I'm grateful to hearit. I'm grateful to the fans,
the contributors, and't really anyone who'swho's expressed interest over the years,

(01:01:42):
and it has been years, andeveryone's patience, you know, during the
process, because it is it isa process. Lisa, you understand,
Kyle, you understand you can't rushthis kind of thing. And I've worked
on it full time every day,every single day for years, because it

(01:02:06):
is such an expansive work and becauseyou have to have connectivity that makes sense.
It has to make sense with thelarger EU. It has to make
sense internally with what you're doing,which is not to negate the idea of
mystery. I'm talking specifically about internalconsistency, coherence, and then you know

(01:02:31):
things like things like dialogue, youknow in characterization like those are other aspects
that are very important and take timebecause you don't always know a character out
of the gate. That character hasto come to life on his or her

(01:02:51):
own. Oftentimes, I feel theyhave to speak to me rather than me
speak to that because sometimes you tryto control this is it gets into very
obscure territory. But let's just gothere. Yeah, sometimes you will try
to dictate what a character says anddoes, and a character will resist,

(01:03:15):
and it sounds super weird if you'venever written a story before. But they
they speak, they speak their ownlanguage and their own actions oftentimes, and
I'll find things shifting in ways thatI had not planned or anticipated, and

(01:03:36):
now I have to account for thatbecause often they're right, they oh that's
Kyle again. Okay, So whenI like for example, I've told this
anecdote before, but when I firstwrote the rough draft, the initial rough

(01:03:57):
draft poured out of me in anon stop two day period. It was
like I stopped, you know,to go to the bathroom and to have
a snack, which I had whileI was writing. Like I had researched,
I had done their research for fora few weeks prior, and then

(01:04:18):
when it was time to sit downand write, it just all poured out.
The basic the basic structure, andit's all still there, the vignettes
and and like the dial and allthat stuff that came later, that that
came, like the basic structure ofthe piece. It all just came out.

(01:04:39):
That's a that's a that's a blessingwhen that happens, because that does
not always happen. But so itwas like it was like the story was
telling itself and I was just theinstrument through which it was doing. So
it's it's a weird feeling and it'sa wonderful feeling when that happens, and
I just had to kind of getout as quickly as I could. H

(01:05:00):
It's it's you know, it justnever happens, it rarely, rarely,
ever happens like that, and I'vetried to do that oftentimes, you know,
you kind of have to plot itout and there's a lot involved.
Uh, And that's fine, that'sgreat. But that was almost a miraculous
event to have had that happen.So it was just building, building on

(01:05:21):
that spine is what I've been doingsince then and again allowing allowing characters and
stories to sort of tell themselves,you know, again within within the strictures
of what what the ego has alreadyestablished, and working with that and having

(01:05:45):
a dialogue with that. That's that'swhat's fun, is having a dialogue with
with the history with these races andthen going taking them, extrapolating and going
backwards in time, you know too, where were they back then? And

(01:06:05):
that's sometimes surprising. Yeah, Iyeah, i'd kind of laughing back there.
Ye, he's thinking of something,anything that you could think of that
you want to talk about. ButI'm I'm very very vague and obscure.
Yeah, I want you guys.Yeah, I love it when you just

(01:06:29):
just go because it's it's just likeI'm I'm right here on everywhere. Man.
But I was thinking because you saidthat, yes, you work every
day and it's just like I canpersonally attest that is very true. Yeah,
yeah, well, well thank you. But for you, would you
would write it would be three o'clockbecause that's the beauty of email and discords

(01:06:54):
and all that on stuff. AndJoe's just like three o'clock in the morning.
Be like, hey, you actuallydid live with these characters every day
and yeah, watching them them,bro, sir, I've been a privilege
on mynd. Thank you. Itwas was working with you and and and

(01:07:15):
all of you guys that that wasthe real privilege because that kept that kept
it as most writers work in avacuum, it's it's they're they're only within
their own thoughts. And I diddo that in the early periods of this,
but then once you guys were onboard, it was like having feedback,

(01:07:36):
a place to bounce ideas and doesthis work? You know? Why?
Why not? And it was greatthat you know, you guys had
the freedom to be honest and yeahand just you know, uh and go
back and forth and sometimes there weredifferent ideas on things. Yes, that's

(01:08:00):
it, the biggest, biggest Idon't want to call it a headache challenge.
We'll call it a challenge because theEU, the EU left us in
a state of bafflement. It wasa big confounding how the EU left off

(01:08:30):
with the ancient Sith and a lotof people have a lot of different ideas
as to how it all, howit all works out, and you can
go to the Coultur period, youcan go to earlier the Exiles, but

(01:08:51):
there just there wasn't a lot ofdevelopment, and that leaves room for fans
to sort of run with with things. Now, I had never played the
game. I had never played Touror cod Tour one or two, so
I was very much dependent on youknow, these guys too to talk to

(01:09:15):
me about that. And of course, you know, I researched it,
and I watched game plays on YouTube, and I read as much as I
could about it. But there's nothinglike having firsthand accounts. But it's it's
interesting the takeaways that different people wouldhave on certain certain characters. And I'm

(01:09:42):
glad, I'm really glad for that. As challenging as that could be,
I'm grateful too because then you havearound a more rounded approached. Well,
how how did the exiles actually,you know, how did they how do
they get to Coribon? Let's justgive you an example. Let's let's go

(01:10:04):
into how do they get to Caribonif they're prisoners? Okay, why do
they have lightsabers? How when theyarrive on Coribon? That doesn't make sense
because the Republic would not have andthe Jedi would not have allowed them to

(01:10:27):
have lightsabers on this ship. Sothat's that's the kind of thing I'm talking
about. How well, well,yeah, I mean, how does it
happen in real prisons? So thisis on the same page that we that
we were on exactly. That's soyou see where we went, you know,

(01:10:53):
that's it right there. But again, now, so how now we're
thinking about that? And that's itwas rey that I plan I'm putting in
my head today, you what Imean, like dil And there's a lot
of questions like that that I don'twant to say that the original ego writers

(01:11:13):
didn't necessarily think them through, butmaybe they never had a chance to to
explore those questions as well as theymight have. Let's just put spin on
that, right, But that leftit because now I'm writing about them,
and I don't have the luxury tojust ignore that question. I have to
find an answer for it. Youknow, how how do they this is

(01:11:39):
a ship that's supposed to just driftthrough space, so how do they navigate
to Corribon of all places? Right? Like that was another one exactly,
So let's just go conveniently, convenientforce. The force led them there conveniently,
but there has to be so thingbecause that's like the joke, right,

(01:12:01):
you know, and a lot oflike Star Wars novel students, it
was like a small galaxy. Youknow, you're just like, oh,
I look at that when just convenientlycame up fun checkpoint the next StarCraft like
you were saying, joy, likeyou have to have an answer now,
yeah, And there's a lot ofquestions and left, and it turned your

(01:12:24):
quest and turned like with the teamlike it. It made everyone like obviously
not scholars scholars, but yes,like Star Wars scholars, right because then
we were out there hunting answers andyou and and and and stuff like talked
to to a lot of people whohad worked in development with those games to
like get all of their end notesand all of their thoughts that they've had

(01:12:45):
from conversations together. And it's becauseall that stuff is like that I don't
think I'm using the correct term fourthdimensional art, but all that stuff that
gets lost in the sauce during theactual creation, right, probably not using
the correct term, forgive me.And that's what had to be fat sound
to even to develop from that andlike make it work. And that's that's
your your magical gift as a writer. Thank you for saying that. And

(01:13:11):
I won't take full credit because Ibeyond you guys, Like there were a
lot of fans with a lot ofreally good ideas on different forums that I
read because I'm interested in what thefans have to say about these things,
because I think they oftentimes have moreclever ideas than the creatives have, you

(01:13:35):
know, like those professionally in chargeof doing these things. So I've always
been in the mindset, listen,listen to what the fans are saying.
You know, they may not,you know, always be on the mark,
but a lot of times they are. And so with a lot of
these questions, and people would actuallyeven write to me and say, hey,

(01:13:56):
you know, I've always thought thatthis made So it's like, oh,
that's interesting, that's really clever.I think it's like a really clever,
you know, redcond for this thing. I even never thought of it
or I was thinking along similar linesto me, Like that's a healthier when
when when writers and editors and andyou know, those in charge have a

(01:14:21):
more open approach to fan them whenthey're in touch with fans. I just
think that's a there's a synergy thatyou don't get when the property just closes
itself off and puts a wall,you know, between the two. And
again that's not to negate the writer'sown sort of creative juices, like and

(01:14:47):
I've never felt stifled by continuity orby the rules that that came before,
like not once those things. Havinghaving a history in place actually allows you
to be more creative, I think. And yes, it requires research,

(01:15:08):
but that that's really when people saythat they don't like continuity, they're really
just railing against the idea of todo research. Yes, and they don't
want to do the creative freedom.Yes, I can just start from and
we're good. It's not a blankpage is a blank page, it's it's

(01:15:30):
it's you can stare at a blankpage for hours and you have to fill
that in when you already have amap, you know, when you when
when that's already there that's a beautifulthing because they don't. What you to
do is just add to it andexplore it because there are so many corners
and so many spaces I mean herelike dragons and you know, like what

(01:15:51):
what is it? You know,like there's so much room. As much
as it's been written in the youpeople think, oh, it's so crowded
little those books behind cloud as much, it's like as much as that,
that's like the tip of the icebergof what could be told because is a

(01:16:14):
giant place. Planets are giant places. History is long. I mean that
was like the mark of the ofgetting into this universe too, was the
fact that people can say what theywant but it was still formally license then
pushed out there that it was allconnected, and it's like that was the

(01:16:35):
beauty of this universe is because noother brand that I'm aware of has gone
to that extent anyway and being ableto keep it together, and that's why
it was a unique and be likethe whole dram that your dedication to it
seemed worth it because it's just likeit's so big, like even this entire

(01:16:56):
thing right here, it's just likeokay, so that's a couple perhaps one
hundred people out of trillions. Justlike you said, it's just like,
so, where's all the other stories? Because there's so much meet we could
have like eighty five novels right inbetween right here, and it would all
be relevant and completely separate yet connected, and like that's that's again, that's
the that's the reason why you fallin love with this in the first place,

(01:17:17):
is because you know that essentially it'sthe one thing that wouldn't end.
You know, we all know thateverything good comes to an end. But
the idea was, like what youloved is the purpose of it is to
continuously ever get bigger and bigger andfill you in and let you live there.

(01:17:40):
And that that was like a comfortfor a lot of people, I
think, and people who are investedinto anything like this, I think are
always invested into art, and theythey really sincerely appreciated the artist who made
this happen for us, and it'slike a a continue to show in our
community, and that's I think,that's like the whole reason why we're doing

(01:18:03):
like a lot of the things thatwe're doing currently is to make sure that
that stay is alive. And that'swhat we're celebrating and that's I think that's
that's what you're what your book showis like essentially celebrating too. Like there'll
be a lot of thoughts on it, and everybody's gonna be a critic and

(01:18:25):
there's gonna be those who love itand all that and hate it. But
at the same time, it's yourway of recognizing everyone. Somehow thousand pages
three books really manage this to tounite everyone, And I hope that people
really understand it and give a thoughtand like where you're coming from, hope,

(01:18:54):
I hope so as well. It'sjust it's just one part. It's
it's one part part of what we'reall doing. I mean, you know
what you guys doing Legends con that'sanother really big part because it king together.
It brings us, you know,to a physical location where we can
we can meet each other and wecan talk about the thing that we love

(01:19:15):
and we listen to panels and presentationswhere you know, this thing is celebrated.
That's really it's it's a huge Likelike you said, it's a monumental
endeavor that from nineteen seventy seven totwenty fourteen thereabouts, you know that you
had this one story that we wereall on this train as fans, like

(01:19:40):
we were all on this train enjoyingthis thing, or you know, maybe
not all parts of it. That'snothing because people were like, where we
are, it's fine. A certaintrain cars that you know, you that's
not for you. You know,whatever you don't you don't go in there.
You know that will be from whereelse in my two months. Don't
worry. But that's the beauty ofthe expanded Universe was and that there's people

(01:20:06):
who people who who haven't dipped intoit, or they only dipped into it
and they jumped out again. Theydon't realize like it does cater to every
kind of fan, every kind ofreader, because it has such variety in
it on a lot of levels,and because these are look at all these

(01:20:30):
different voices, they are all differentauthors, you know, and it gets
it went through the same approvals channel, but they were pretty loose with you
know, with with that they LucasFilm allowed a lot of different going way
back too, when Carol Teitelman wasfirst in charge. You know, the
only things that they prevented were thingsthat we're going to contradict the movies or

(01:20:57):
other things you know that can't theyou know, in place, and sometimes
things slipped through, and then youknow you had authors come in like able
and others. You know, it'ssort of patch patch those things up.
So you know, if you,if you were deep in the EU,
you saw that process happening, becauseoftentimes it would happen in the magazines,

(01:21:19):
it would happen at games inside.But if you didn't, if you didn't
go as deep into that, youdidn't you I don't want to say you
missed out, but you missed onseeing how those things occurred, all the
patches. You know, you missed, Oh well that was fixed. You

(01:21:41):
know it seems like a contradiction,but actually was fixed in this issue.
And you know, some people say, well, you know, I don't
have the time or I don't havethe money. That's fine, you know,
your again, your fandom is yourfandom. It's but it's enough to
know that it was fixed and thatand that this was a living universe in
which the authors were paying attention byand large, and the editors were paying

(01:22:05):
attention and trying to keep it allto keeping it feeling real. That's what
makes this, you know, soenjoyable. Ultimately, is that okay,
so in the Black Fleet Crisis,who's the author of that? That's QB.

(01:22:27):
McDowell. I think it's Michael QBMcDonell McDowell, Yeah, Michael,
Michael p Q mcdell murdered. Hesends this, check this out. So
he sends this proposal to Luca's Filmas to what the story is going to
be, and it's going to involveChewbacca's family. He he has a different

(01:22:51):
conception. He envisions Wookies as beingmore a polygamous. Lucas Film sends him
the Wookie story book from nineteen seventyeight, a Wookie story, but it

(01:23:12):
says, this is Chewbacca's family,So you know, you've got Lumpy and
you've got Malaya. That to me, that's what this is all about.
That's what makes this so amazing,is that that they would do that and
say, hey, no, actuallyyeah, we've got you know, Childe's
family was first established, you're backin nineteen seventy eight in this kid's book.

(01:23:35):
That's brilliant to me because that's whatcontinuity is all about. It's and
it's, it's, it's it's it'sa beautiful thing. And I've never understood
people who see it as some kindof impediment or because it's not. It
never has all right, So wedidn't get wookies as a polygamous race.

(01:23:56):
Okay, so you can develop anotherrace that is, you know, it's
not hampering creativity. You can justmake a new race because there's room for
that. There's room for anything underthe sun. That's what you know.
Space opera is unique in that regardsand that there are so many genres that

(01:24:16):
you can incorporate in it because thereare very few rules other than keep it
interesting, keep it entertaining, youknow, which is good literature should anyway.
So you can have romance, youcan have science fiction, you can
have horror, you can have drama, you can have all of these things,

(01:24:40):
you know, and have fun withit and and it all fits because
space opera is that kind of isthat kind of genre, you know,
and all voices are welcome in it. There's not there's no elitism. That's
I think the word I'm trying tosay, spending too long. Same,
You're okay, And it's like whenwhen people try to dismiss it, it's

(01:25:05):
just like if you can be likethe other the devil's advocate too it's just
like say, like, so forgetbecause everything you have said is is the
entire purpose. And I feel thateveryone involved with it, whether or not
they liked it, honor the administrationand we're there for all the right reasons,

(01:25:26):
right And then for the for thosewho dismiss all of that work that
they did, it's just like youcannot tell me that these people were all
employed with the intention of, yes, doing a good job and making us
money. And so for you tothink that like all of this was just
some kind of a sham and itwas just like everybody going and every which

(01:25:47):
way just to like, you know, crank something, it's just like you
all missed the point. And I'mreally sad that it's hard for them to
accept it. It's just like itwas a business as well, and everything
you just said, they were therefor all the right reasons. But it's
like, yes, and we're creatingthis to make sure that its succeeds.
So there's there's when they dismiss it. Anyway, it's just like, do

(01:26:10):
you do you think that they werejust purposely throwing money away? Like is
that you know, I'm not sureif I articulated that well enough, but
I'm just trying to say, it'sjust like, what are you talking about
that? It was all just likekind of pointless and whatever. It's just
like no, like from a businesspoint, they wanted us to have something
that we could invest our time andmoney in, and so they did it

(01:26:30):
very well. So all the spiritualismif even if those people who who just
like don't care about all of that, it's just like, well you can
you still cannot like just push itout the door because like money, you
know. I try to say,like, look at that angle too.
It was it was all done withintent. And the letters that Chris Nelson

(01:26:51):
pulled out not too long, Ibelieve, if memory served, and it
was the letters to like KB Toys. I think it was right when they
were introducing the Shadow of the Empireproject, you know, and fan relationship
is just like I look at allthose guys like, you know, trying
to like put this in very quickterms, but it's just like so and
so it's got this part, soand so the video game is gonna be

(01:27:12):
over here. It's all gonna beone big story and it's it's marketing.
And so for them to just downplayat all, it's like it just did
not even matter and it was justlike none of that. It's just like
that is just not true. Likethere's there is evidence and in ten and
a lot of money that was madeover the decades. Like people like to

(01:27:32):
say, what kept it alive?We did by saying, yes, give
us your money, this is awesomeand thank you for making it and so
so circle pretended it didn't happen.Sorry to circle back. I do want
to talk more about supernatural characters story. It's all right so that we got

(01:27:56):
a bit more of that, ButI would love to know who is your
favor a character that you wrote about. That's a good question. There's there's
a few, uh, all ofthe architects, the three of them,
Tolatney, Cold Danda Sign and Splendidapp They I just love those guys.

(01:28:24):
I love them when I first readthem in Alan Moore's Tolattney Throws a Shape,
And I loved spending time with them, like getting to know them.
Uh, they're they're so they're justso interesting and so quirky and and so
different, the three of them,and yet they're siblings and they you know,

(01:28:49):
like if you've had siblings that youdon't have your personality that you've had
to sort of get along with you. You'll you, you know, you'll
understand that. But they're powerful,so they're they have godlike powers, which
also makes them dangerous. It's sointeresting, so so interesting. So I

(01:29:15):
loved I loved working with them Qnine of course, and and Our Whole
sorry who you know, they're they'resort of the they don't like their journeys
only sort of part of the book. But I so enjoyed their conversations because

(01:29:36):
I like, I like dialogue whereyou have two different perspectives being discussed or
debated. I just like, Ilike that in anything that I watch,
because you get to hear different pointsof view from from characters that are both
both intelligent and both have a perspectivethat makes makes sense. And I we

(01:30:04):
don't, like we were saying earliertoday, like we don't get that as
much in the real world because everythingso quickly devolves into fighting and you know,
mud slinging. So it's a joyto see it in fiction where that
doesn't happen. And and you know, even there's a scene even not with

(01:30:24):
Our Whole and Q nine, butI forgot, of course, I forgot
the race. Now there there withan enemy, an enemy race has basically
come down to say do this ordie, or you will you will die,
we will literally set you on fire. And they have this conversation and

(01:30:46):
it didn't occur to me then,but it occurred to me now. And
then in the last draft I did, I was like looking at that and
I'm saying, oh, it's sointeresting, Like they managed even though like
this one group is an oppressor andthis other group is the oppress, Like
they managed to maintain a really interestingconversation and debate between them where they actually
can see each other's points of viewbefore it all goes to you know,

(01:31:12):
before the violence comes into the thing, and there's a couple of them when
they just come down to conquer.Because I'm like, are you talking about
the answer or are you talking aboutI'm trying to like I'm trying to figure
out which one exactly what we're talkingabout there. Yeah, because there's a
lot of this going as far asyeah, that's a's yeah, that's sort
of this. There's there's a lotof there's a lot of that because I

(01:31:33):
miss that, I miss like peopleactually talking about things that are important and
just again having different perspectives, sometimesvery conflicting. And that's that's one of
the running themes that throughout Supernatural EncountersThis is there's there's a running dialogue about

(01:31:54):
how how do you keep how doyou live ethically in a war that is
unethical in which death is the endof all things seemingly so like how there
are different answers to that question,like how do you how do you deal
with violence? Do you do soviolently? Do you do so non violently?

(01:32:16):
Are there times where violence is anacceptable response to violence? I just
those those That's why there's so muchdialogue, you know, within the book
is looking at that, like whatis what is the nature of government?
Is another one? What should bethe nature of government? When does a

(01:32:41):
government overstep their bounds? And whatdo we do about it? Like these
are questions Star Wars itself has raisedin the films, and so it's just
sort of taking that a step further. What is do you know is there?
And then then we go into themetaphysical realm? Is there a metaphysical

(01:33:01):
realm? And if so, whatdoes it mean? And what does that
have to do with our actions?So those are the kinds of questions that
I'm interested in and I wanted tosee explored in which this book does and
in a lot of different from alot of different areas and circumstances. So

(01:33:25):
I'm gonna I'll be curious to seewhat, you know, everybody thinks about
the sort of the more philosophical aspectsthat are put forward, because it's not
you know, anyone who thinks that'sthat Star Wars is just pupu or you
know, you know way I thinkmissing. Yeah, I mean, look,

(01:33:48):
you can, you can certainly enjoythe films on that level, and
there's nothing wrong with that. Youdon't you don't have to, you don't
have to get into all of thisthe books and in the deeper levels in
the films, like that's not arequirement. You know, everybody is on
their own journey. And I absolutelydon't mean to denigrate anybody who who that's

(01:34:10):
that's that's what they're into. Youknow. I'm you know, I'm I'm
a big fan of the band BlackSabbath, and I once had a conversation
with a guy who was another fanwho said to me, dude, because
I was getting into like the lyricsand like the depth that's there, that
Geezer Butler had brought to that andthe guy's like, dude, I'm just
into the music, you know.You know, and that's it took me

(01:34:35):
back initially, and then I thoughtabout it. I'm like, yeah,
that's that's perfectly legitimate. You know, then that everybody has to go deep
into these things. Oh, whenyou do go into literature, when you
do go into books, I thinkbooks have the opportunity to go there.
And that's what I've always enjoyed about, you know, when I read The

(01:34:58):
Lord of the Rings as an example, or when I read Clark Ashton Smith,
there are there are, there arethese layers that I find fascinating,
and I didn't necessarily catch them ona first reading or a first read through.
It was you know. And there'scertain films like that too, like
where I have to watch them afew times if you guys haven't had the

(01:35:23):
chance. Andrew Garlfield's Under the SilverLake there's one that I've I've been obsessing
over lately because that film is there'sso much going on behind the scenes,
and I could watch that over andover again. And I have David Lynch's
work, you know, watch andI have Melvet and Twin Peaks and Mulholland

(01:35:44):
Drive and yeah, where you know, watch them again and again and I
just get something different out of themeach time, and I just I like,
I like that kind of thing.The Shining Kubricks were eyes wide shut,
Like that's the kinds of things whereI just, yeah, I when

(01:36:08):
I first saw them, I enjoyedthem on a certain level, and then
rewatching them multiple times and I justwas able to kind of go down these
rabbit holes. So that's that's whatthat's what Supernatural Encounters essentially is sort of
drawing from It's it's that, andthen it's sort of you know, sort
of these ethical philosophical questions that havealways entreated me since I was a kid,

(01:36:33):
since I was since I was justI was telling the guys. Recently,
I got a chance to rewatched theBilly Jack series, you know,
loded with these these this dialogue,these you know, philosophical debates about you
know, how to live in thisworld under an oppressive you know system.

(01:36:56):
You know, if you've never seenthe original Lisa, You've got to see
original Billy Jack from nineteen seventy one. You know, Tom Laughlin who started
it, directed it, produced,it wrote. It changed the way Hollywood
films are actually distributed and advertised.At the time, they didn't they didn't

(01:37:18):
have universal advertisement on television. Itwas just local. He changed that,
he made that to what we havetoday. Same with distribution, it would
just kind of come out locally,you know, different theaters, and it
would expand. It's there's a documentaryon YouTube, a short one that that

(01:37:40):
you can watch which talks about that, and that's still one of the top
fifty all time independent no top tenall time independent films when adjusted for inflation.
But so anyway, that's it's thatkind of depth that I enjoy where

(01:38:00):
you can you can you can totallytake something on a surface level, have
fun with it and walk away,and that's great. But if you want
to go, if you want togo deeper, if you want to go
down the rabbit hole, it's there. Yeah, you know, That's that's
what it's about. So no shovelrequired. Yeah, So why is the

(01:38:24):
information that our whole brings, Whyis it put on trial? And who's
at the trial. So a lotof the historians that the EU has had
over the years are all there andare all very vocal. Uh, lay
is there because she's and Sindel isthere, Sindel from the Ewoks films.

(01:38:49):
Yeah, because they all have adirect connection to the things that our whole
or hex is is bringing out.Laya there because of to Lot and even
lay Yeah. So spoiler alert ifyou haven't read to Lot and he throws
a shape, Laya dies. Imean she she dies on screen. It's

(01:39:14):
such a shocking moment, like whenyou read, I'm like what and she's
all like twisted and yes, yeah, yeah, and then and then she's
she's brought back afterwards because it's it'sconsidered it's considered untidy, or it's it's
it's seen as a disorder. Sothe Architects have this kind of crisis of

(01:39:40):
conscience where their first sort of likelearning of their powers and seeing what their
powers could do and what it means. So they basically Horeless Horreless, who
I left out of my earlier mentionof the architects, although he ceases to
be he ceases to be part oftheir group, which is a whole other

(01:40:00):
story thread, but he basically andthe others say, yeah, we kind
of went a bit too far,So splendid up, can you can you
fix this, fix this for usbecause we're gonna head out now, and
he's like, I'm still learning thisstuff too. So that like again and

(01:40:25):
like these three four pages, AlanMoore gives us so much about these characters.
I was I was able to sortof develop, like where do they
go from there? When and whendid this happened? And what does it
mean? So in any case,so you asked, there is there sindials
there? What's his name? Theshape shifter h from the Galaxy of Fearbooks?

(01:40:49):
Who was there? Man man amil a great character. I had
fun writing he's there with his wife. She turned out to be kind of
Uh, she's great. She she'sa contribution. She was a contribution from

(01:41:13):
Natalie aspland I believe, who's agraphic artist and illustrator. She's going into
animation in Canada, so watch outfor her because she's amazing. So watch
out. Early on, when Iwanted to get Supernatural Counters illustrated and wanted

(01:41:33):
to raise money for one of thetop tier perks of contribution was being able
to kind of have you know yourown character or name or kind of idea
in the book, because it wasI had so much I had so many

(01:41:54):
characters that either didn't have proper namesyet or didn't have names at all,
And so she she told me aboutthis sort of fan fiction character that she
had created, and it was amazing, and she had illustrations of them,
and I was like, yeah,let's let's let's why not, let's let's

(01:42:14):
incorporate that. And there's a lot, there's a lot from there's a there's
a lot from different like fan thingsthat I wanted to bring in, or
things that were question of questionable CannonCity. Why not bring it all in
if if it can fit, andthat everything can. But if it can
fit, why why are you?Why are why are we being so exclusive

(01:42:36):
and exclusionary to these things? I'venever understood that. You know, for
me, stories are about it wasparticularly in a shared universe again, quality
and continuity, and if it hasthose two things, why are we saying,
oh, no, we are notsure what the continuity level was on

(01:42:59):
this particular magazine from nineteen eighty whocares? Who cares? Bring it in?
It's it's it was written to bepart of this thing. You know,
it's in this RPG magazine. Justjust bring it in anyway. That
was my approach to to all ofthat, because I you know, these
these these fans count, These storiescount. You know, when you when

(01:43:25):
you love the community and when youlove story, you don't you don't leave
people out of it, you know, as you know, again, as
long as they're playing by the rulesand the whole thing. So what happens
with the trial, what happens isthey are they're furious at the idea that

(01:43:45):
this manuscript that Heck's left behind hasany legitimacy to it whatsoever. It upends
their theories about you know, whatthe ancient past was and theories. Yeah,
yeah, like this is it's alljust fantasy to them, like like
this is a fairy tale. Whywhy why are we taking this seriously?

(01:44:09):
You know, we know and youknow we see this. We see this
in any in any institution you knowthese days that isn't open to new ideas.
We see it in this establishments,you know, we see it across
the board. So it was youknow, it's very realistic depiction of of
this sort of phenomena that we don'twe don't want to be challenged on this

(01:44:32):
point. We think this is ridiculous. We have our own books and studies
and things that we're promoting that youknow, we have accepted. So that's
that's the debate. Uh, andit's it gets very heated, which I
you know, it's fascinating, butI also think it's important to present other

(01:44:56):
perspectives and so everybody gets their say, you know, maybe maybe Hex,
maybe Hex did lose his mind,you know, maybe maybe it is all
a fever dream or parts of it. You know, as the reader,
you determine what makes sense for youand you know, and what doesn't ultimately,

(01:45:18):
but so they read, they readthe manuscript through, you know,
from pretty much from beginning to end, with occasional interruptions in between, you
know, from those who are justlike, this is ridiculous. Why are
we wasting our time here with this? Lots of outrage, and that's I

(01:45:42):
won't go beyond that because that thereis a there is a culmination point to
this whole thing, which I won'tget into because that comes sort of at
the end and would would be spoilerish. But yeah, so that's that's
what the trial is about. Isthere a judge that you created or is
it someone that was already existing?Ten Alice already exists. Yeah, yeah,

(01:46:09):
yeah, So pretty much most ofthem already existed. There was then
a few characters I introduced and someof that because that we're fan introductions,
but by and large they're from theEU and they they have they have to
have their say. I thought,all this was a good choice. Yeah,

(01:46:32):
would you think it was a goodchoice, Alice? Oh yeah,
Ten was pretty Yeah. It waswaving his tentacles about. There was a
lot of there was a lot oflittle cameos when you're just like, well,
I'm sorry. Yeah. So forfor the listeners, when was this
story set, Like when was thetrial in place? In Kyle? You

(01:46:55):
can double check me on this.Is it thirty eight a by practice for
darkness? It's yeah, I thinkit's after darkness, but before the legacy
of the That's where it stands.That's where it stands now. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, that'sthat's right. Yeah, because we have

(01:47:15):
all the basically there, there's asome arguments of why they're getting too things
now and you know all these revelationsthat even occurred. They're like, well,
yeah, well why didn't we talkabout it years ago? And it's
just like, well, because itkind of had like the uprising with the
Chess here that whole situation. Yeah, you know, yeah, which because

(01:47:39):
people people to have a tendency tolike look at darkness. I think you,
Troy, You're a great guy.I love your work actually a lot,
But I think that yeah, wetalk about yeah, yeah, he's
one day I'm gonna come on andjust bringing us and I'll give him full
permission to say whatever he wants becauseit's but but the I personally really enjoy

(01:48:01):
a lot of things that he does. And the purpose of that book wasn't
all about Jackson, but that's whatthat's what affected the events of supernational Encounters
too. But the fact that youknow that that almost skirmish with the Chis
and all that occurs was definitely themodern topical events that just simply gotten the

(01:48:25):
way of getting shaking all this stuffout. So I think that you use
that in in a decent way tokind of like because that's what's happening in
real time now. You know,we have a lot of serious issues as
a nation to get to, butit's there's so many other things that are
just sorry, Like mean, wecan only get to one crisis at a
time, we can only get toone mystery at a time. We can
only invest so much time into everymystery we find. And I think that

(01:48:48):
was kind of a really good topicalsmokescreen, so to speak to to set
the stage, if you would.There was a question that some fans had,
like because Abo is a character,Yeah, and why didn't they know
about Ablof if she's mentioned in Hexa'smanuscript. And that's because Abo is known

(01:49:14):
in Hexa's manuscript by her original nameto h I won't say, not to
confirm or deny. It's where Iwore green today. I'm celebrating to lot
nice, very cool. I lovehow Toltani's hair just sort of like,

(01:49:35):
yeah, it's always flowing and stuff. It's like a river of fire,
Yeah, yes, like fire orwater, you know. And her temperament
is it's both. She has.She has chaos elements about her because she
is so impassionate. Oh and thenand that's when you understand why she is

(01:49:59):
so she is the way she is, you starts, I think better understand
who she is, you know,and why she does the things she does,
why they all do the things theydo. I endlessly fascinating. The
whole thing and the seeds of itare all are all in Moore's work,
but and you kept that the samething that we see with with his work

(01:50:24):
is something that you kept there too, as far as there's an innocence about
them, Yeah, you know.And it's yeah, I think he touched
on a lot without giving a lotof things away. It's just like trauma,
like you said, And it's justlike the fact that that pain calls
growth, but it doesn't always growin the right direction. And yeah,

(01:50:48):
and and and he stayed true tothem, because that's like when when they
kill Leia, it's just like,oh that's death. Oh gosh, and
I feel bad. Oh like fixit. But I don't care enough to
do anything about it right now,because I'm not going to admit that I'm
I feel anything. But you doit, and I want you to for
reasons that I can't explain. Andthat their little sibling rivalry is so fascinating

(01:51:13):
to me, you know. Andand there's so what what More was doing
with that? I wrote an essayabout this in one of the Squart and
Star Wars anthologies, which is thatMore was kind of having each one represent
different art styles. So Toelatney istraditional art and cold Dan the Sign is

(01:51:39):
data art. And splendid app isabstract art horless horless is it's escaping me
at the moment. The names,but they each each represent these different art
periods and the argument that aficionados ofthose styles would have with each other.

(01:52:04):
He kitty, he grabbed me ignorethem, and also the relationships that he
had with each other. And that'sagain he does. It's in like four
or five pages, and it's alllike really like legit, like it's legit
argument about art and when they emerged. So that was fascinating, and it

(01:52:28):
also like propels like their their rivalry, like how they view themselves, how
they viewed each other. Look like, I don't know, it gets very
deep, but it's really really interestingif you, you know, have a
proclivity towards getting into the weeds.I don't know what we were talking about.
I just completely went off the enginethere just because like then, these

(01:52:55):
characters tend to do that when Italk about them, I go my mind
goes to these into the weeds.You know. She started with with the
innocence of the subways and then wejumped to there. Yeah, yeah,

(01:53:15):
yeah, that's so that's another Sothey're if they're if they're innocent and even
though they do things that are thatare really harmful. So they're not are
they true? Are they're not thetrue antagonists in this story. And that's
another thing that you learn, soif you've only ever read the beta version

(01:53:39):
that was released online, that thatextra layer of who the actual enemies are
in in the story, like theSo the Cosmic Wars, which Archie Goodwin
started off, I hit cats screaming, l I don't know someone else is

(01:54:00):
getting okay. So the Cosmic Wars, it was never really defined in in
the EU other than the name ofit. So I broke it down into
three basic wars, the Imperian Wars, the War of Temporal Planes, and
then the Twilight Wars. But there'sa catalyst to these and the readers of

(01:54:24):
the beta version will will naturally assumeit's the Architects, and it's te Latini
and that gang, and there's certainlya large part of it. But there's
another underlying factor and that was alsohinted at in issue five of the original
Marvel series where Darth Vader references theimmoral gods of the Sith Okay, and

(01:54:45):
this again, this is one ofthose throwaway lines. No one ever picked
up on that or went anywhere withit throughout history. You but I had
the opportunity to actually make them charactersand and and show what their role was
and their connection to the Sith,and their connection to other ancient races.

(01:55:08):
And this is what this is whatpropels the cosmic wars. This is where
sort of the ends the sort ofperiod of innocence and and brings on a
period of basically eternal wars, youknow, not eternal, but ongoing as
the pantheons converge. Yeah. Yeah, So those those are the main players

(01:55:36):
in this thing. And and theirunderlings, so the old Ones being a
part of you know, one ofthose underlings, which ties and the Old
Ones of course tie into sort oflike love crafty and sort of a fiction
which is another which is another opencrossover. Because again that's that's the old

(01:56:00):
this EU crossover is that, Sowhy not make sense of that? Why
not bring that into greater focus?And if again, if you've never read,
if you've never read, that's sogreat, it's it's fine, it's
all you won't be lost. Butif you have read it, any of
that stuff, then you'll see,you know, you'll see it you know,

(01:56:23):
in a different and yeah, andI think by saying it that way
too, it's just like, yes, that is one of the oldest crossovers,
and it's it's not ironic that thator I guess it is ironic,
rather that it's so it's survived inpresent canon. You know, typho Jin
was brought along into the present canonfor a very direct reason. So yes,

(01:56:49):
yep, yeah, that's it's astory for another day. But yeah,
yep, yep, yep, yep. Jim was was my was it
my careerian? It was the nameI gave to pomo Jima. Yeah too,
because Pomojima has a very tribal soundingname, and if you understand the
coway, you know, and whathad happened to them, it made sense

(01:57:16):
that he would have another and earliername. And of course if you recognize
it, he's Cthulhu, then hehasn't even earlier name. So again,
it's it's just building, it's buildinglayers. That cats is too cute for
us, A cuddle buddy, Yeah, gotta pay attention. I'm sorry,

(01:57:36):
it's just oh, don't the doordown to get in here? Four on
my own, So yeah, oneP four as a tall order, sir,
I had I had six for almosta year at one point. Yeah,

(01:57:57):
fourteen fourteen right here, so uhyeah, yeah, yeah, you
love to tell me your secrets.There's a lot of work, there's probably.
Yeah, I'm fought over often,so you know, at least I'm
popular some words. It's with allmy animals. So, Kyle, I

(01:58:25):
were talking about some things before wegot started today, and I don't know
if you want to talk about thisor if you can talk about it,
but the Gungans they kind of havea random start in history that I thought
was just kind of interesting that ifwe could talk about that. Did you

(01:58:45):
get have you gotten to the chapter? No? I'm sorry that was that
was actually a one off in ourconversation today too. I think that that
hasn't been gone over quite yet before. It's up to you there on that
one. Joah, Yeah, we'venever we've never discussed the Gunghans, that

(01:59:11):
is right. I just you know, Lucas saw them as a noble race,
and you know, every everything thatthat you do, when you're extrapolating
from another person's work, you haveto seriously pay attention to what that person's

(01:59:34):
intent was and what their themes arethat are important to them, And in
the end notes you'll see you'll seethe connections there in terms of where certain
themes do go directly back to Lucasand the things that interested him and the
things that he felt were important.And they may surprise people who haven't read

(01:59:58):
a lot of his interviews. I'veonly seen a few things. He goes
deep. So the Gunkans was inan area where you know, you could
easily be like, oh, jarJar was not popular and was considered ridiculous,
and you know, blah blah blah. I don't I don't personally care

(02:00:18):
about that. Like whatever your opinionor my opinion of jar Jar is,
has nothing to do with this.This race, we're portrayed as a noble
race, and I thought it wasimportant to maintain that their origins be noble,
their story be noble. And thenultimately, I think the Argar,

(02:00:42):
you know, for all his silliness, you know, is has noble intent.
Yes, yeah, I mean heart, he's got a good heart.
You know, his his mind isin another matter. But you know,
he was made a senator and hemade this this to give Palpatine power,
you know, and it was thewrong decision and that you know Lucas.

(02:01:08):
Lucas did that on purpose. Youknow, he's he's purposely putting up a
good hearted but ultimately foolish person ina position of authority who can be manipulated
into doing something that has dire consequences. So, but the Gunghans have a

(02:01:29):
storied history that is interesting and thatis I don't know, I think fascinating.
I don't want to go into thespecifics of it, other than if
you've read any of the any You'reany eu stuff that goes into some of
their ancient lore that's all there,but extrapolated, but given more a depth

(02:01:57):
and breath and story to go alongwith it, because a lot of times,
a lot of things get lost inmagazine articles or mentions here and there,
and you've got to like to putthem in a narrative framework. You've
got a you've got to take allthose pieces, you've got to put them

(02:02:17):
together before you and then you've gotto say, okay, now, how
how how did this work out chronologically? Where do the pieces fit? What
does it mean? And then howand then from there you can then flesh
out a story. Yeah, andyou know, like supernatural encounters that didn't

(02:02:38):
have the space, all these thousandpages didn't have the space to flesh out
things to the point where you know, like like a novel could, but
at least put them all in,put them all in the same place where
now you can follow the story ofthe Gungans, and then if somebody ever

(02:02:59):
does want to write a novel aboutabout their history, it's it's there they
can expand even further on that.You know, up and tells me that
there will be that will indeed happen. Now there's a lot of football now
I think that we will definitely seesomething. There's a lot of races that
are like that a lot because StarWars has tons and while my focus is

(02:03:27):
more on the lesser known, oneslike the Cephi play a lot, just
play a huge role. I mean, look Leland, she determined that every
pointy eared, you know, humanoidrace was a Sephi and in the comics
are very very elvish. So andand that Darko McCann when he wrote Jedi

(02:03:53):
Versus Sith kind of he plays onthat a little bit. So again you
just all right, so if that'sthe case, then how you know,
how does how does the Cephi behaveyou know, as an ancient race.

(02:04:15):
I know. So, yeah,they are. They're told in that sense,
they are told Kenny and influences there. It doesn't mean that they're the
same, you know, they're not. They're not told themselves, but they're
inspired, you know, they're inspiredby because he's the first one to basically
define, you know, what thisrace is. And like give you an
example is the Netti. So theNetti are tree race named after the Ends.

(02:04:42):
They just they just scrambled the lettersand added the eye for the plural.
So now, but it doesn't meanthey are ends. They're not.
They're not ends because the Ends havetheir own history in the ancient past.
Because remember like Middle Earth is ourEarth in the ancient past. So they're

(02:05:03):
not ends. And the Cephali arenot. They're not no old or they're
not you know, Queen Ya,they're not the Queen is the language.
They're not. They're not the theyou know, the ancient Elves of Tolkien's
Middle Earth, who are based offof Finlanders, by the way, because

(02:05:25):
he studied he studied the Kavada,which is like a two thousand verse epic
poem from Finland. It's like ourkind of like version of would be like
Norse mythology, it's it's Finland's versionof that event. So Phanominon is what
Gandolf is based off of. Event. Like, there's there's a lot of
things that are like you know thathe took. And then when I first

(02:05:46):
watched it on screen and then theyhad the Elvish language, I was like,
oh, hey, they're just speakingFinnish like but yeah, that's why
they're all blonde and in the woodsand antisocial. It is so like the
Landers. Well that's why. That'swhy his story has such such depth and

(02:06:09):
such richness to it is It's comingfrom a lot of places, logical places,
biblical places, and even which alot of people don't know about,
but even contemporary fantasy, science fiction, and horror, which Tolkien read.
Tolkien was actually a lot more wellread than people credit him for. There's

(02:06:31):
a new book out called Tolkien's ModernReader or Modern Reading, which goes into
the books on his library. Soyou see, Smith is one of those
books, and the writing styles arevery similar, and some of the story

(02:06:53):
points, some of the story beatsare not the same, but you can
see where he's drawing inspiration and LordDunsany another one. So Tolkien had a
rich well upon which to draw,and I think that is a great example
for anyone who wants to be aprofessional writer, which I know right now

(02:07:16):
because of the publishing industry is soridiculously hard to break into. But regardless
whether you self publish or whether youdecide to, you know, try that
route of getting an agent and breakingin is to be well read, you
know, to follow follow Tolken's exampleand read as much as you can from

(02:07:38):
different genres, even outside of sciencefiction, fantasy and horror, just to
have that, to have that inyou, because that all that all somehow
comes out like if you if you'vedived into those things, those things will
all come out unconsciously nine times outof ten, and sometimes consciously as well.

(02:08:03):
So I've come across things I'm like, oh, that sounds at fault
like this, you know, AndI didn't realize it wasn't conscious. It
was like, oh, all right, I must have ye been thinking somehow
about that thing. Yeah. Iwanted to talk a little bit about the
the introduction of humans into the galaxyand how that kind of came about.

(02:08:28):
Bump bump. So the idea wasbasically that so Star Wars has all of
these Earthian things to it, Anddid we discuss what were you discussing this

(02:08:52):
privately earlier about you know, Stackpolesbooks. Was that well, oh no,
that was I think that was onon this episode here, because I
don't like, I think we actuallywalked down another rabbit hole and didn't come
back to you, right, Ithink that's what we did. So there
has to be a reason. Yeah, there has a reason why you have

(02:09:15):
humans and you have human Earthyan cultureand Earthy in terminology. And it's not
just it's this isn't just a translationof uh, you know, English to
Basic or Basic to English. Itisn't just that. Because if you were,
if you or I were to goto Micronesia right now and spend time

(02:09:39):
with the natives there, you wouldfind an extremely different culture. And you
would here, I mean, ina lot of parts of the world that
aren't uh westernized, you're going tofind what appears like very alien like cultures.
But when you when you read throughthe EU, when you see star

(02:10:00):
or Is, what you see isvery it's very western. It's very Western
humans in many regards. Why thatwas the question that I had set out
to answer and the answer that Ihad found, which has to do with
Tolatney in the Architects, was thefact that they brought humans here. They

(02:10:24):
started that, and they started thatwith a very specific purpose in mind,
which is maybe maybe too complex tosort of go into here, but which
which the book goes into great depthsabout. There is a reason that they
do this. They bring humans,you know, to its chaos or just

(02:10:50):
that's a part of it. Likethat's a large part of it is to
introduce so Tlatney, to go verybasic, So Tlatney feels like she's been
robbed. She's been robbed of herrightful destiny as ruler of ruler of you
know, the galaxy of what's knownas Sky River. Sky River, by
the way, comes from the Eve, comes from the old Marvel comics.

(02:11:13):
That's that's the name given to thegalaxy. So she believes that her father,
who is a celestial, basically deniedher this. Okay, not only
that, but like violently, youknow, try to kind of cut her
off. So she's got she's gota chip on her shoulder, and she

(02:11:39):
wants to set up a scenario inwhich the celestials are displaced and she can
come in as sort of the saviorafter the galaxy has turned away from the
Celestials as as being ineffectual, becauseyeah, they're they're completely non violent.

(02:12:01):
They won't lift a hand, accordingto her, to do anything about the
problems, the problems that she introduces. So there's there's a little bit of
a false flag thing happening there withher, which she sets up, which
but she was eka It's like,it's not so simple that, like,

(02:12:24):
you know, her intention is notjust to destroy them or to defeat them
per se. It's too it's toonullify it is it is. It's it's
to nullify their power because she believesthat they're evil because of the treatment that
she herself has received. Now thefact that that's a misinterpretation of events doesn't

(02:12:50):
matter, because she her mindset becomeso she's so driven and so almost one
one sided in in the way sheviews things, and there's there's an element
of fear that she doesn't want toshe doesn't want to feel like she's wrong.
She's been wrong. She's the victimhere, so she's never going to

(02:13:13):
let that happen again. She isgoing to be the victor. So I
feel like she's she's very relatable,and then I feel like she is.
I think a lot of people canrelate to her and to all of them.
And it's not, by the way, it's not that there's a misconception
that all villain sort of oh misunderstoodmissent thropes. That's not the case.

(02:13:39):
Some people don't, simply don't theyare villains because they don't care about the
question. They don't care that somethingis right or wrong. They only care
about their own self aggrandizement, andthey will step on and destroy anyone that
gets in the way of that.So I do believe in that idea that
there are actual, you know,villains, and there are actually evil people.

(02:14:01):
I just don't think Telatney and theArchitects are in that category. So
so she wants to create a scenarioof chaos, you know, where the
galaxy will see the truth and thenshe will come in as savior and they
will they will elevate her to herrightful place. Yeah, but she doesn't

(02:14:24):
love it, right, Yeah,exactly. Card is actually you know named
after her, the queen of Queenof Light and darknesses. I forget the
name of it. In any case, your viewers will know. But she's

(02:14:45):
there's a Pandora's Box element to this. That's why I brought up humans because
I was My next question was wasit just men or was women introduced afterwards
like Pandora m No, it wasboth both humans. Humans were brought human
and women because he wanted them topopulate. Yeah, okay, she kind

(02:15:09):
of she kind of helps that alonga little bit too. She wants Yeah,
she definitely pulls up. No,that's a really rough reference. I
was gonna say, she pulls upwith the van. Basically, you know
that's what they do because they don'tthey don't just take them out. Everything's
deeper, Like, they don't justnecessarily kidnap them. It's not her style.

(02:15:33):
She's just like you will want todo this, and that seems to
be her her true power. Yeah, she's like she doesn't want she doesn't
want it easy. Well, here'snothing. I mean, they see,
they see again. It's it's acase of like there's always this partial information.

(02:15:54):
They see what's going on. Sobecause they come to this earth,
our earth, they see the situationhere. So they're clearly like, oh,
we can do much better. Wecan do better for these people.
And this will also serve our purposes. So it's not like they're completely using
humans in that regard. They actuallydo believe that they're giving them something greater.

(02:16:18):
It's just that they don't realize thatthey're unleashing something else because something happens
when they do that. That's relatedto what we were talking about earlier with
the immortal gods of the Sith,because there's a direct connection between humans and
them. So they Telti creates ascenario that she wasn't quite prepared for.

(02:16:39):
Things are not as simple as shethought that they would be. And this
also creates a bit of a fractions. All right, we're a bit of
a dissension between her and her siblings, you know, who have their own
interests and have their own ideas aboutwhat they want to do, you know,
with this life that they have.And then this is lost brother of

(02:17:01):
theirs, Horaless Horeless, who youknow, has created this other sort of
dilemma with them, and it's partof their brokenness. So it's it's such
a there's such a web and it'ssuch a it's such a mess that's created

(02:17:24):
and it leads to this great tragedy, you know, which is the cosmic
wars and the roles that the racistplaying it, what sides they take.
So you know you've got what Iwhat I delineated us four different approaches to
how how do we deal with thisnow, this the sudden change, this

(02:17:48):
war that's come about, you know, do we do we just maintain a
passive pacifist stance, not necessarily apassive one, but a pacifist and not
violent one. Do we get involvedand violently oppose this oppressive force that that

(02:18:09):
that the architects have unleashed on thegalaxy? Do we join with this power,
this rising power in the galaxy?Maybe maybe they're right, Maybe Tilatney
and the architects are right. Theyknow Tlatney is horight, by the way,
which, if you remember from theold Marvel comics, was the Goddess

(02:18:33):
and just later on the name Horii Vanish and it was just the Goddess,
which entered a lot of different culturesand races. And the fourth one,
do we withdraw from all of this? We don't want anything to do
with any of the rest of you. Now we're going to become completely insular.

(02:18:56):
So those are the four different approachesthat the races take and that that
interaction is what you know, takesup sort of the bulk of the ancient
stories of the ancient past as wevisit with different races, sometimes just for
a moment, and sometimes we're alittle bit of more of an extended vignette

(02:19:20):
to see like what what it meansand how it all led to how we
know them in the present. That'syeah, that's that's why this thing is
a thousand pages because there's a there'sa lot involved. I mean, I

(02:19:43):
think you handled back pretty well there, but had Lucasfilm and if they Lucasfilm
ever does come back on board,because you know, they did sign off
on this. I did sign licensing, you know, papers which I have
and I have shared. But hadthey in on board with this, this
is something that we could have developeda whole new era. You know,

(02:20:05):
the Cosmic Wars is a whole newera in which you could have a whole
bunch of books. You know thatdifferent things and fans want to do that
on their own, and I've alreadyheard that some are you know that's happening.
Yeah, I mean great, I'mI'm I'll like I have so Star

(02:20:26):
Wars Timeline dot Net is my it'smy site. That's the site I've had
since ninety two ninety three. Yeah, that's an old old Yeah. I've
been visiting since Twining Game. Itcame after it came after Mike Bidler's timeline,

(02:20:54):
it came after Jason Fries, andit came after Rich Hanley's card Safe
one. I had seen those threetimelines when I first got online, and
I'm friends with all of them,so I can say it is I didn't
like any of them. I hadnot used with each one of those.
Like Jason left out Splinter the Mind'sEye. He's like, oh, I'm

(02:21:16):
like, no, it absolutely.Rich Hanley and Mike Biler were like very
They kind of denigrated the Marvel seriesa lot. They took it like it
was like oh ha ha, andthe early newspaper strips Russ Manning, who's
one of the early architects of EU, who also had his hand in the
pulps. But I loved all thatstuff. I'm like, you can't denigrate

(02:21:41):
this. Let readers. Let readershave their own opinions on them, don't
don't make their opinions for them.Because society tends to have a follow follow
your leader mentality, So if somebodypublicly says, oh, this this is
stupid. Yeah, it is stupid. Everyone else exactly. They may not

(02:22:01):
even have even read it, ormaybe they read it and they thought,
I didn't think it was so bad, but because the consensus seems to be
that it's stupid, like but youknow, so I don't. I don't
like that. I like people tomake up their own minds and and sha
share and debate those opinions, absolutelyso. So that's why I didn't like

(02:22:24):
this. So that's what I waslike, I'm gonna make my own timeline,
and I'm gonna make it as comprehensiveas possible, and I'm not going
to denigrate anything. It all happenedin the Star Wars universe somehow, So
that site has now expanded to includelost works. Did I know that mine
was going to become one of those? But at least I had I had

(02:22:48):
a place for it. I mean, Heart the Jedi comes from that,
and Rider Wisdoms unpublished Adventures in hyperSpaces on there, and a few other
lost things the adventure journals. Ohyeah, there it is. Yeah,
I've got two completely and nothing suspiciouslove. I loved working with Ken on

(02:23:13):
that book. He he was thebest, he was is the best.
He's still with us. He's ahe's a great guy. Yeah, finds
behind my desk star. You've putit in a bag too. I love
he was just it was that wasserendipity or synchronosity, one or the other,

(02:23:35):
you might say. I said,I just got to be some remnant
of this story online, and Iwent searching for it and had just at
that time, Ken had released thefirst chapter on some something somewhere online.
No one had seen it, nobodyknew about it. And I immediately wrote

(02:23:58):
him as it, Ken, sinceyou're interested in putting this online, let's
do it right. I'll edit it, I'll get it out there, the
whole nine yards. And he wason board. That's awesome. Great,
it was a great experience. Soyeah, you've got to preserve. You
got to preserve these things. Youknow, people wrote them, their licensed,

(02:24:20):
they built, they belong in thefold. Yeah, I'm so glad
that, like so many people likehave copies. It's like I can't remember
what Yeah, yeah, there wassomething I was researching one day. I
can't remember what it was exactly,but like I couldn't find a reference anywhere

(02:24:41):
because it was like, oh,defunk link deep funk link. People look,
and then suddenly it took me toyou and I was like, of
course Joe would have it like yes, like thank you Joe, like you
are you're the true keeper of thehelicron at this point, so thank you,
thank you. Was it Skywalkers thatwas a big problem my gosh y

(02:25:03):
off of able site. So Iwas like, oh, well he put
it out there. I'm sure hewon't my ables as a friend. Yeah,
I remember we actually talked about thatone too, because I was like
Joe like, look, I know, but you know, you know and
whatnot. But it's just like hishis website is down, and the only
version of the book that I couldget was it was off of a foreign

(02:25:26):
website, so bot's clickbait and whatnot. And it would open up in a
very archaic viewer. And I'm sureyou saw it when when you were looking
it up there, Joe, andit was just you had to like tab
each page over to be able tocontinue the story and it would refresh,
and it was just this is theworst way to ever read. And then

(02:25:46):
if you close your browser start over, you couldn't just type the page number
in either it's like, oh mygod, this is just this is ridiculous,
and say it was like that fortwo because that one was almost lost.
Yeah, we have to preserve thesethings because if if the fans don't,

(02:26:07):
the powers that be won't. It'sjust the reality. I mean,
it's it's this is legal. It'scalled archiving because these stories will disappear.
I don't just mean the lost ones, which, by the way, I'm
when I see John Whitman at LegendsCon, that's gonna be the first question
I asked him, because I spoketo John years ago and I said,

(02:26:28):
if you ever find the lost Jinaand Hannah Deck story that you wrote.
He wrote two and him was Jasonand some other creature. If you ever
find them, let me know.But I lost his email because I try
to looking for him job and it'sjust it kept waiting the dead ends and
people are saying pretty much like justget off the beat and trail. Yeah,

(02:26:52):
So I'm gonna ask him, didyou ever find these stories? Because
I want to get him out there. We've got to get him into the
public's hand ends, because it's tooeasy for things to get lost, and
to me, they're valuable I don'tcare if it's a kid's book. It
doesn't it's valuable. It's a story. It's the story matters. That's just

(02:27:16):
the bottom line. Like if youif you have the same passion, if
you're if you're watching us right now, then you do you understand this that
you know all of these books thatyou see it behind Lisa, behind Kyle,
they matter, they have meaning andthey have relevance and we need to
keep them alive. And they alot like those those are being kept in

(02:27:37):
print right now. But there's alot that's not. There's a lot that
has gone out of print, wentout of print years ago, long before
Disney even was in the picture.There are people doing this with with even
the video games. I need toI need to track them down again.
I had a link to some ofthese games because some of the platforms are

(02:27:58):
vanished. Yeah. I was goingto say Jude Watson's yeah, and Yeah
and Adventures. Yeah, they broughtit back in what the E format And
it's like, that's not that's notthe same as that's not this. Join
join our discord server, you know, be a part of that, because
we are, you know, weare preserving these things. And I will

(02:28:20):
try and keep keep them all onmy website, you know, and and
take them, take them, youknow, download them and keep them,
share them with your friends. Andthat's that's how Supernatural Encounters is being distributed.
It's it's it's free to the public. Uh, you know, it's
because it belongs to the public.These stories belong to them. It belongs

(02:28:43):
to you guys, all the fans. And you know, if Lucasfilm decides
that they do want to do somethingwith this, great they still have that
opportunity too. And I will reachout to Dan and I keep saying,
Dana is Dan and Mat to see, you know, if they're if they're
interested. But I know, youknow, like with the current administration at

(02:29:05):
Lucasfilm, that doesn't seem likely.Yeah, but administrations change, so there's
always a hope that you know,the the EU can be greenlit again and
that things can move forward again.But in the event that they're not here,
we are. We're each doing ourpart, you know, and every
fan does by by by being apart of the community. However however you

(02:29:31):
do it, you know, whetherthat's just you know, sharing your books
with friends, you know, whatever, whatever the cases, Keeping nights at
the diner when you're just why arewe still drinking coffee? Because you say,
and we have to settle this,you know, Like for me,

(02:29:54):
I went down my own kind ofrabbit hole of of I wanted to write
a story about Obi Wan and thennow I'm helping start a convention and it's
just like wait, what just happened? Like how did my life just go
from here to here to hear tohear? And it's just like, Okay,
I'm going to California in two weeksago. That that's great. Yeah,

(02:30:15):
I mean, that's that's what Imean. Like, you know,
we we can all contribute in someway, shape and form, and again,
even if it's just to keep italive in your own heart. And
then the thing about like community isimportant because not everybody has friends at home
or in their family that they canshare this stuff with. And some Facebook

(02:30:37):
and some public online forms can gethostile and can get become places that are
unwelcoming, So, especially if they'reunmoderated, moderation is important. Over moderation
is a problem too, But lackof moderation is a big problem because then
you have trolls and bullies coming intothat space and ruining it for people who

(02:31:00):
really just want to express their loveof this thing. So we have a
discord server that you guys are welcometo join, and there are I'm sure
there are other spaces. Join somecommunity that you feel safe in and be
a part of that, be apart of, you know, this,
this fandom that is still alive.And I think in some ways is maybe

(02:31:24):
this is this will sound controversial,maybe healthier than it was before the buyout.
And I say that because so I'vebeen a part of the fan community
for a long time and sometimes wegot myself included unnecessarily vit like just like

(02:31:48):
needlessly argumentative and negative. And Idon't see that as much now because we've
watched it, you know, toappreciate something until it's gone. And so
in some ways I think that weare stronger, those of us who who
are still involved and and you know, I don't know, active, and

(02:32:13):
it's more engaging, and I thinkthat's a beautiful thing. At least that's
my experience, that's what I'm seeing. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm
not saying that there aren't still,you know, problem areas out there,
because clearly there are when you're dealingwith humans, you're going to have that.
But I'm very proud of at leastthe community that I'm a part of
on Discord and elsewhere. And let'slet's keep that fire alive. You know,

(02:32:41):
the Legends con is going to bea big, big part of that.
Whether if you can't go, great, they'll be someone will be taking
videos and such any of us.Yeah, I mean you're open to communication.
I know, Kyle is I am, Yeah, uh modover at the

(02:33:03):
channel, so just the Discord server, So just come talk to us.
Yeah, you know, and andI I probably don't have to go this
far, but so just like becausewe're on the topic two and like everything
that you're really pushing for jazz,just like because you you do your best
and your damned just to make surethat no matter how heavy it is or

(02:33:26):
what they're even saying to you personally, you're just still like, if you
want my hand, like, youcan take it, you know you can.
Oh got hurt, here is thehand. You can still take it.
And I will still talk to you, Oh my god, I will
still talk to you. And wetalked about it earlier how we met,

(02:33:46):
and it's like that that's like whatthat saved my fandom, you know,
because I was looking in a darkspot and you mentioned community, and it's
just like hell, yeah, youknow, we don't have to get together
to hate, but we can definitelycome together to heal and like do more
things. And it's like for thesake of community. I mean you actually

(02:34:11):
technically we talked about it earlier,but it's just like directly too, like
my my being inspired by your positivitythat you put into the community inevitably led
to legends gone. And that's that'sthe truth. I mean, I think
you know, we talked this longabout in this open about so many things
that it's like I'll say that too, because you actually gave me a number

(02:34:35):
for a person and we got involvedwith these folks, and I brought in
other members of our editing team andthen Liza yep and and we we met
other people there and then there wasa talking about the subject. It was
just like there was a situation andwhich like okay, so we grew in
a different direction. But the wayI got from it and the reason why

(02:34:58):
I like me and my business partnerlike put our names on this big risk,
this huge risk as far as likea con like an LLC is going
to actually do this and up againsta very very very lovely but damaged group
of people, which I was like, you know us as fans, like
you know, because we are we'vegoing through it. I was inspired because

(02:35:22):
of your good will and it's justlike you know what, let's we're gonna
put our financial futures on the linehere, We're gonna sign the paperwork and
we're gonna try to get these peopletogether and just take a chance on the
fandom and believe that that everyone willcome together for all the right reasons and
like preserve what we love even ifnot everybody understands it like people do.

(02:35:46):
People get it, and like youknow, you all know who you are
if you're listening. And I hopethat today like us getting together to talk
about something so awesome as far assupernational encounters like being available to you now.
But there's like a spirit to itthat may not come across through text,
you know. And I just Iwanted to spend a couple of seconds

(02:36:07):
just saying I appreciate you for forthis and for doing your damnest to save
the community or at least just understandit. Like even if you're not trying
to save it. It's like,look, there's a raft. If you
want one, it's here. Andthat's that's all that anybody could ever ask
for it And and I hopefully peoplepick up on that it is there is

(02:36:28):
I cannot tell you how many haveemailed or messaged me and said, I
got turned off by you know whathappened, you know in this community or
that community, or you know,by the ugliness that emerged in the wake

(02:36:50):
of the Disney buyout, whether it'sby anti EU fans or even by EU
fans who are maybe very pure intheir stance, and whatever the case might
be. I mean, don't stopseeking out a community just because one isn't

(02:37:11):
the right one for you. Youknow, find another one. There are
others out there, Like we've we'vemaintained a pretty good one overall. Nothing's
perfect, but so don't look forperfection. But by the same token,
don't quit on the fans just becauseyou had a bad experience. That that's

(02:37:31):
basically my message there, because thereare are good ones out there. We're
all we're all part of one rightnow, and maybe we're part of a
few others too. I don't Idon't know, but it's important. It's
important to have, you know,because this is this is a thing that's
meant to be shared, this joy, in this passion and this love that

(02:37:54):
we have. Uh we You don'tneed the official powers that be to sanction
something for it to be real,for it to be good. It doesn't
matter. I mean, Disney is, you know, great. They're all
doing their own thing. That's cool. And maybe you enjoy that too,

(02:38:15):
that's also cool. Whatever the caseis. You know, we're all here,
you know, we're all here.We're keeping this alive. So if
you've looked like you did, ifyou've lost your faith in this thing,
you know, and you're watching thisfor the first time, come on back,
you know, come back. Thedoors are wide open, and there

(02:38:39):
are such great people and in thiscommunity, you know, you guys and
many many more. So, Yeah, agreed. One thing I saw a
few years ago at celebration when theybrought Ahmed best in and obviously you know
he went through hell and back throughhistory men, and which is so so

(02:39:01):
upsetting that you know he contemplated suicideand stood on the bridge and then and
then watching the community just shout hisname and cheer and he's just on stage
and like it still gives me chill. It's just like seeing his like his
face up, just like utter shockand just like being so touched that like
people would still be there for himand when he felt so lost for a

(02:39:26):
while. And yeah, so StarWars fans are great. Yeah, Star
Wars fans are great, and everyfandom has rotten out. Yeah, yeah,
everything in society, does you know? Usually, man, you know,

(02:39:46):
I had to do one man jokein this episode. Yeah, you
don't, don't. Don't. Don'tlet the bad spoil the good. That's
it, because there is there isstill good out there. You know.
You may have to seek it out. That's the thing. You may have
to get over the you know,the hurt and whatever it was to move

(02:40:07):
on to the next thing. Soyou know, and if you can,
if you do, we're all here, We're here, you know, open
arms. You know, it's it'sa great thing, you know, and
there's more coming, Like the EUisn't dead, Supernatural Encounters isn't the end.
You know, We've got the HungarianHan solo books have been translated.

(02:40:33):
Finally. That was something that I'vebeen I've been trying to do for fifteen
years was to find a translator,and I did and he is amazing and
his work is amazing. And wewe have these books in English. Kyle
and I are proof reading them.I haven't started yet, Kyle has.

(02:40:56):
We'll get some others on board andthen those will be out. Yeah.
Consider it, Yeah, consider itdone, because we need we need you.
And they're great stories from what I'veheard, and they're part of this.
There's four more Hans Little books,I mean, and they're they're part

(02:41:16):
of continuity. They they and we'regoing to get to read them finally after
all this time. That's just wildthat there's only Hungarian issued books, Like
how did that come? How itcome about? Like it was a thing?
Yeah, it was a thing.There's this there's a long story behind
that, which will be in thebook itself, I believe. Yeah,

(02:41:41):
and the foreword there's there's a prettynice explanation of the history behind all that.
Okay, it's amazing, it's amazing. Yeah, those were written as
legit EU books and remardless of whetherthe publisher had the act rights or not,
I mean, from the point ofview of the author and all of

(02:42:03):
that. They were written to youknow canonically and that community, you know
that that's what they loved, andthey did not know anything of the Wiser.
Apparently, once the dawn of theonce the dawn of the Internet came,
they were like, why isn't ourstuff on? Like they didn't realize
it was their stuff, you know, it's like, why isn't why isn't

(02:42:24):
Why aren't the books there author aswell? Yeah, yeah, there,
there's there's a lot there. Buteveryone was under the impression that they were
all systems go and four came outand then they had pulled the plug and
try to pretty much say, likethe final two I believe if Memory Serves

(02:42:45):
were just kind of on his ownright, But that's not that's not how
that happened. Yeah, Lucasfilm.It wasn't like Lucasfilm sued them or anything
like that. No, No,they just like pulled the plug and yeah,
thing go. I mean, yeah, it's so it's like a quasi
official, but for the Hungarians itwas official, and as far as for

(02:43:05):
euth fans it should be as well. Yeah books, from your knowledge,
is there other countries that have secretbooks like this or is it just this
one situation? Well, Saria theChinese have they called man Man who was
I think it is the pronunciation,but I'm completely off. But those those

(02:43:30):
tend to run in their own direction. Like a lot of the authors of
these these Chinese comics didn't even seethe films. They maybe had some stills.
They that's kind of okay, That'show I understand it too. It's
like they they I think, Ibelieve if memory served, so some of
them were written off of trailers andwhatnot, just like, okay, so

(02:43:54):
I have a picture of what thisis supposed to be about, and like
that's kind of yeah. They're veryvery funny. However, the German German
Ewok comics and magazines, they're thoseagain. You know, I was hoping
they were going to be reprinted byMarvel because I sent them to Marvel,

(02:44:18):
but they, of course can't findthe contracts, you know, same thing
that happened with the Spanish Ewoks andTroids comics. So now we have these
German ones and I'll release them.They've been translated, they've been incorporated in
the body of the images, soit's just a matter of getting them out

(02:44:41):
to you guys, which I'll dofour years. And because they're more.
They are more legitimate eu Walks storiesthat fit in with the cartoons and the
comics and were written to be official, like part of this story, and
they're fun if you're a fan ofyou know the Ewoks in any way,
shape or form. They were blessed. So learned to love them because of

(02:45:05):
because of VESSI I learned to lovethat verse and I make a large role
in supernatural encounters like the Ewoks.Yeah. I went from the one of
the obviously right, I get intopretty much like everything. But that was
the one section that I just Iwas I read a shadow of endor and

(02:45:28):
I was like, I like thata lot, and that's where I kind
of left it. And and Ifeel a shame. Now. It's almost
as if I can't even picture alot of things without without all that mind
at this point, they were theywere written for kids. They were Yeah,
but see I think gives them alegit. And the second trailer was

(02:45:48):
about that too, and it's justlike I think that I think that there
there is a certain level of legitimacythat it's offered to them too. You
saved a couple of different projects thatwere thought to be found with no Pulse
there, Jeff. And maybe that'sjust an opinion, but I think that
a lot of things that we're kindof just like whatever with fans all of

(02:46:09):
a sudden like newfound appreciation first saidthings, that's just it. If I
can get fans to go back andwatch the Ewoks you know, cartoons,
and the Droids cartoons, and readthe comics and pick up some of these
you know, PG things and theseobscure stories, even some of the crossover

(02:46:31):
ones. But I can't get fansto do that, then I've done.
I've done what I set out todo, you know, which is,
you know, get us back,you know, get this the community and
the stories all synergetically working again.You know where you don't you don't have

(02:46:52):
to look at the Ewoks cartoons assome kind of outlier that doesn't fit,
because now you see how it fitsthe same with all of this stuff.
That that was that was the maingoal behind a lot of this, and
you know, it started with theMarvel series and I just kind of expanded
out from there, which is,you know, this is how it all,

(02:47:16):
it all works and has relevancy inthis in this great galactic story that
we have to lesser degree or toa larger degree, whatever the case is.
This is how it fits. II'm excited to hear everyone's thoughts.
You know, once you've happened toread it, you might break the internet

(02:47:39):
job because it's it's a lot toget through and and some of it is
dense and some of it you know, so you know, if a part
is particularly dense, to sort ofskip ahead to the next the next thing
is my advice, because there's there'sa lot. Yeah, I would,

(02:48:01):
uh if you're if you're planning onbecause there's a couple of folk in our
discords everywhere, Like I'm reading itthe first day and it's like, okay,
suggest like like two packs of redBull coffee. You're, yeah,
you'll need some dim lights because you'rejust gonna be so exhausted you're gonna need

(02:48:22):
some bright lights to get some prekingback up again. Matt Wilkins said,
he goes, this is not likesummer reading, Like you know, you
don't bring this out, and youknow, I love I love those kinds
of books, but this, thisisn't. This couldn't be that you un
if I had wanted it to it, it just it needed to be what

(02:48:43):
it is yep. And to getthat full appreciation and probably will have to
go through it multiple times and they'rejust like yeah, yeah, yeah,
hey did a good couple each.I think each pass took like three or
four months. That last one though, that was only under two months.
That was psychotic. That was alot of fun. That was a lot

(02:49:05):
of fun. I've ever what youdid. I couldn't have done it without
you, like I'd still I justcouldn't, you know, you and Corey
and Ed and Harry. And that'sthe list of names. I'm always leaving
out people when I go through thislist, Patrick, I couldn't have done

(02:49:26):
it without you guys. That's thetruth. And yeah, yeah, all
of you guys who said, yeahI believe in this thing. You know,
here's money. Or if I ifI can't contribute money, you know,
here's my moral support. You know, we should. All of it
really does count because it's it's ahard thing to do. It's it's writing

(02:49:50):
is not easy, particularly when you'renot you're not getting paid for it,
you know. Uh, It's it'shard to do and to keep to stick
with it. Yeah, you know, And and if you're any anything of
a perfectionist, yep, you obsessive. Yeah, that's that's nature of the

(02:50:18):
beast. You want it, youknow, you have a certain idea of
how it should sound, and youjust you want to get it to that
and that takes that's a process.There are some who, you know,
Kevin J. Anderson would would youknow, kind of just read it into
a microphone on his walks and thenhe would do a draft after that,

(02:50:43):
and that's pretty much. And Iadmire, I admire anyone who could do
that. That's not me. Ittakes me many drafts to get it to
where I wanted to go. Itwas different. Yeah, it was like
a completely yeah, you could tellthank you, thanks. Uh. We're

(02:51:09):
almost there. We are almost atthat point where everyone will start giving their
feedback and whether whether you love itor hate it or both, that's great,
man. It's it's all welcome.It really is, because we all
have different tastes, you know.I mean, that's the bottom line.
Not everything is going to register witheverybody, and north should you know.

(02:51:33):
It's the bottom line. I lovethe Crystal Star and I am I am
proud to admit it, love it, and there are things that I don't
like that people adore and it's great, It's all good, Like why can't
we if you're not into the EU, if you hate if you've read a

(02:51:56):
few books or comics and you didn'tlike them, they didn't resonate with you,
whatever, and you were like,ah, great, fine, why
denigrate something that other people love?Though? Like why why spend time?
I've never understood that. That's thething about fear and control. That's a
that's a whole different rabbit hole togo down into, though, Like yeah,

(02:52:20):
yeah, maybe one day we weshould because an interesting topic, you
know, you just because you don'tlike it or you don't understand it,
or why do you have to goout of your way to put it down
for others? Who who do that? Just that just seems mean spirited to
me. I've been disappointed by things, and I've expressed that disappointment definitely,

(02:52:46):
there's no doubt about it, Likeor I think something should have been better,
allegiance did not work, and Ican go to the reasons why.
You know, but if you lovedit, fantastic, let's talk about what

(02:53:07):
you know, what what you whatyou loved about it? And we're talking
about what I didn't love about it? You know, it's all good.
But I'm not gonna go online belike Timothy Line sucks and this book sucks,
and you come out and you're anidiot if you think it's you know,
yeah, we don't have to goout there and trash the ruins of
dance wine. Get it. Ilove somebody likes it. I think the

(02:53:31):
ones we criticize the most, asTroy Denning on this show. So I
love your Troy's okay, buddy,Yeah it's it's okay, a classic.
Don't get too upset, Okay,it's just a We can talk about Troy
at another time. Talking about afew people I've I've met a lot of

(02:53:56):
authors over the years, and it'sbeen Yeah, Aaron Travis, we could
talk about love. I love herbooks, but she was not terribly nice
to me. But I still loveher books. I could see that,
Yeah, I love her books.We're all big fans here, but yeah,

(02:54:18):
I could from just what I've seenof her personality online. You just
go, okay, all right,yeah, I'm just gonna go this.
I'm just gonna go this right out, like but likes like I guess that's
just yeah. Yeah, if wewere to reduce if we were to go
and and cancel the works of everyartist that said or did something that we

(02:54:43):
don't agree with or we don't like, we would eliminate the entire body of
art and entertainment because they're all imperfect, and we all have said or done
things that we shouldn't have said ordone, or have beliefs that seem weird
to other people. I mean,we were all even sure at one time.

(02:55:05):
And that's another thing too, isto allow you know, people to
grow. Society has grown. Youcan't judge, you know, writers or
artists from the nineteen twenties for theviews that they had those when those were
common views, and they may berepugnant views, Absolutely we're gonna throw them
out because of you have to separatethe art from the artists. Then it's

(02:55:28):
really the bottom. Yeah. Oh, I mean even the Magic Foot by
Mozart had riots. So like thingschange, things happen. Yeah, I
mean there's there's a lot of there'sthere's so many examples of that. But

(02:55:48):
yeah, we were in this weirdtime period where we are kind of hold
up artists on a pedestal and it'sjust it's just it's unhealthy. Is unhealthy
to work yeah, you know,yeah, I don't even I don't even
want to know. I just Ijust want to enjoy the stories, the

(02:56:09):
music, the films, whatever theart is, you know, the paintings
that is that is really unless theperson was egregiously evil. Yeah, that's
it's a different story and and andit's still right by those works. Yeah,
I may not purchase them if that'sthe case. Yeah, yeah,

(02:56:30):
yeah, they have to be displayedin maybe a different way, recognizing that
this is kind of all but yeah, I want to waste some time on
that either. Yeah. But buth that's been awesome, man, this
is this is fun. Yeah,this has been awesome. Dude. I

(02:56:50):
hope that you have a sense ofnot closure, because we talked about that
before too, because like artists typicallydon't just stop and just because this one's
gone. But I hope that you'reproud of what you've done here. And
I'm really Yeah, the world's alucky place right now to go to experience

(02:57:13):
because it's uh, we're gonna comeinto the next year here and twenty twenty
three is gonna rot the Star Warscommunity. Yeah, very large hand in
that. So thank you. Ihope gratulations sir, thank you, Thank
you, appreciate that. Lisa,thank you for having me on. I'm

(02:57:35):
happy, yeah, very happy thatyou could join us and we finally got
some answers. And although you guysare still a little secretive, I'm just
like, yeah, just telling menext time, like once you've read it,
we'll be able to go into someof some of that. And even

(02:57:58):
then I don't want to. Idon't want to get of my take on
things. I think fans should havetheir own interpretations of things and discover things
on their own and grow with it, because I think that's important. I
don't know to the to the tothe degree that like David Lynch goes with
that exactly. You know, he'sextreme with cages the point of frustration.

(02:58:22):
You know, it's like yeah,or but on the other hand, you
know, oh, well the authordefinitively said this, and therefore you know
it's like no, like you know, kind of discover it on your own
and have fun with it and thinkabout it. And that's more important than
you know so and so said,unless someone goes like way off and it's

(02:58:45):
like you know, oh this thiswork supports authoritarianism. Nope, you walked
away with a very different unless thatone willing to give your take on exactly.
Yeah, Well, I'm very veryvery happy you came on today,

(02:59:09):
and I look forward to meeting youat Legends Con, which is for everyone,
guys, that's September ninth and tenthin Burbank, California, So that's
coming up very soon. And uh, I'm almost like I'm at the point
where I'm like, can I startpacking? Like I just want to like
put myself in a bag? Yes, you can. It's only two weeks

(02:59:31):
away. Yeah, it's ridiculous.Yeah, there's a lot of yeah,
yeah, and yeah for for everyonelistening. I'm sure we've said it a
couple of times. But Joe willbe there, you know, and and
uh, and we'll be we'll bemodern some some tables, a lot of

(02:59:58):
people. But yeah, we don'tthe community doesn't get a chance to talk
you out there too much, youknow. So it's it's it's definitely an
opportunity to come out and and meetyou and also celebrate your your achievement with
you. So exactly, come too. I'll have two panels at least,

(03:00:18):
which is the Supernatural Encounters panel,which at least you will be moderating on
uh and Kyle, you'll be you'llbe there with me. Be fun,
I hope, and I'll be doinga History of Space Opera presentation, which
is yes, yes, I expectedto be a very highly viewed video on

(03:00:43):
YouTube because again we can't we can'tlive stream. That's okay, but that
all the panels we recorded, anduh, gosh, I hope you're ready
for that can of where I'm sairbecause I'm sure that you're freaking awesome.
It's gonna be awesome, absolutely positivethoughts. Yeah, exactly, you're gonna

(03:01:07):
They're gonna be great, exactly.All right, Well, thank you for
being here, and thanks Kyle foryou know, doing all your work with
the book as well and involving meand getting me into everything. So it
was it was probably one of themost spiritual experiences that I've gone through.
So it was great. It wasgreat. And now I just feel bad

(03:01:31):
for my computer, which is gonnahave to render this file and it's gonna
take like, okay, it'll takea while. So hopefully guys, this
episode drops on Sunday the same timeyou so you know, as soon as
I hit stop record, I'm gonnabe editing so yeah, yeah, yeah,
and just so you don't have todo, hey, check out Josie

(03:01:56):
star Wars Timeline dot net. Yeah, I forgot, I would take care
of the plug for you there,sir. Ye check out his site star
Wars timeline dot net exactly, andthen you know, join the discord,
join our discord. I'll put itin the show notes as well. So
thanks everyone for joining us. SoI'm Lisa, Kyle and Joe and may

(03:02:16):
the forest be with you. Bye. That concludes this edition of Legends Library
Podcast. To join the discussion,email us at Legends Library Podcasts at gmail
dot com, or follow us onTwitter or discord at Legends Library. This
podcast is not endorsed by the WaltDisney Company or Lucasfilm Limited. It is

(03:02:37):
intended for informational or entertainment purposes only. Official Star Wars website can be found
at www dot star Wars dot com. Star Wars, all names, sounds,
and any other related items are registeredtrademarks and our copyrights to Disney and
respective copyright holders. All original contentof this podcast is the intellectual property Legends
Library Podcast, otherwise indicating Legends Live. There's always been of truth in Legends

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