: So really, Star Wars has been consistently rewriting and revising itself. And
: someday some other company may own Star Wars and declare Disney's EU not
: canon. Hell, Marvel, now owned by Disney, will be making new
: "canon" Star Wars comics, when they themselves had made a whole
: host of mostly-cheesy SW comics in the 80's that were ignored for the most
: part in the last EU incarnation. Kind of ironic!

I think that overstates the amount of change in the SW canon. More fair would be the following:

- There was the "first canon" in the 80s.
- Canon was rebooted with Dark Empire and the Thrawn Trilogy.
- Every once in a while, George Lucas threw in a wrench, but LucasArts worked as best as it could around him.

Even at a level of say, 90% consistency, there is nothing like the Star Wars ex-canon. The Old Republic would be a decent-sized canon in its own right, but altogether, you have over 100,000 entities on Wookiepedia, over a thousand pieces of literature...

: In a multi-creator franchise, the only canon that matters is the canon that
: rings true to the reader, whether it's old or new, official or fan-made.
: Companies will trade IPs, original authors will come ago. The nature of
: franchises, and possibly stories as a whole, is always in flux, sometimes
: transforming from something you love to something you don't really
: recognize anymore, sadly.

While I definitely believe in the concept of head-canon (e.g. Fistful of Arrows), I think official canon is important. (Heck, Disney does too - do you expect them to publish contradictory novels in their own canon?) In addition to Loftus's arguments, its sheer size became a testament to human creativity and dedication. And its infinite scale (how many people have read every piece of literature) meant that one could really escape into it as a parallel reality as if it actually happened. I never consumed a lot of Star Wars media, but the idea always appealed to me. It's true that Disney will keep publishing existing stuff, but watching it seal shut makes me a little sad.

On the plus side, the Holiday Special is no longer canon ;-)

: As well, Disney said that creators will be encouraged to use characters and
: threads from past EUs in the new EU. Which is basically what has been
: happening all along!

I think Disney should have done more of a "reboot" than a discarding of the original universe (sort of like Star Trek). I look forward to Disney's fresh and unconstrained take on Star Wars, but six movies and a TV series is a franchise, not a universe. If they continued to treat the "Star Wars Legends" branch as an alternate canon (and continued to put works out in it), that would make nearly everyone happy.