Now I knew that LFL and Wizards had no idea of these types of personalization but I did know that they would have a problem with them if there were to walk up and see them. So I addressed the issue before hand and for the most part everyone in the Legion understood, even the CO at that time. "Canon" was a word that I came up with, it simply meant that the costumers were to appear as they did in the movies, it never was designated as anything other than a means to get us all looking the same. It was later turned into something completely different by the powers that be, but that will come later. While it can be said that most of the costumes out there were pretty close, if you get right down to it most of them are interpretations of the originals since LFL had not been very forth coming with information, much less actual pieces of the costumes for reference until just recently.

So I asked all the 501st members that wanted to participate in this duty to please remove the “non-canon” items before the con. I published this almost a full year before the convention to give people plenty of time to comply if they were interested. I think that we only had one small group give us any problems but I held my ground since so many other members had removed the pieces in question. I told them, as I did everyone, that they could attend the convention in armor and would be free to leave their non-canon items on if they liked but they would not be able to participate in the “official duty”. I also told them if they wanted to wear their non-canon regalia they were free to do so when they were not on duty or participating in an official capacity. I felt that this was more then fair since so many others had already complied and to reverse the decision now would not be fair to them. After much heated debate the powers that be buckled and gave in to this one lone garrison, the CO allowed them to leave the non-canon stickers and badges on their armor while everyone else was required to remove theirs. I was powerless to do anything but apologize to the people I had required to comply.

It was only after this convention that this word “canon” was mutated into the word it is today. The command staff of the 501st took it to a whole new depth of meaning. It is now said to restrict members that do expanded universe costumes as well as interpretations of others unless they own a set of Stormtrooper armor of some other costume they deem as canon. It denies membership to people that purchase Rubies Darth Vader Deluxe costumes, officially recognized by LucasFilms as accurate. It denies membership of clean Sandtroopers and gives no thought to the opinion that they were not all created the same or dirty. At some point in time Sandtroopers had to be nice and clean so it would stand to reason that there could be clean versions of that armor. Only one Mandalorian? In the same manner who is to say that there were not more versions of the Boba Fett armor? And if so could their not have been squads or even entire garrisons of them? And why not different colors as we now see with the clones? Just some of my thoughts on the whole canon thing...

In the end it was never my intention of creating any restrictions for members of the 501st Legion or ever denying them the ability to participate in any activity. No, it was for a single purpose and you can see today if you look at the image below taken at Star Wars Celebration II in Indiana . It was to have the entire 501st Legion looking like what George Lucas envisioned in his movies. I was my vision all those months before when I was asked to head up the 501 st responsibilities for this convention.

I think in the end I got the point across. Never before had anyone seen anything like this…

Robert E Bean
VaderPainter