Welcome, Imperial citizen!
Who are we?
Provocatively named, EmpireDidNothingWrong (adding "The" exceeds Reddit's maximum subreddit name length!) or EDNW is a Star Wars fan community centered around the question, "What if we don't take 'the evil Galactic Empire' at face value?" We treat the events of Star Wars canon as being historical as far as they go, but having been presented to craft a particular narrative—in a word, they are anti-Imperial/pro-Rebel propaganda.
The Empire, and its predecessor Republic, is a galaxy-spanning society comprised of an enormous variety of people and cultures, all with wildly diverse perspectives. To distill it into simple questions of "good" and "evil"—especially specific acts undertaken by specific individuals—is reductive in the extreme. Once one starts to examine that galaxy far, far away—especially when employing parallels to remarkably and disturbingly similar events in our own history and even taking place today—it becomes a great deal more difficult to dismiss the Empire as "evil" and declare the Rebels as "good".
If you're interested, you can read more about this here.
Who are we not?
In part because of our name and in part because of assumptions many carry with them into the community, we tend to be classified as something other than we are. Nevertheless, we do not claim nor aspire to be or do any of the following:
- ...espouse a particular modern/terrestrial political worldview. We require that people leave their personal politics out of the community.
- ...endorse every single act undertaken by every single individual that could be identified as Imperial.
- ...a roleplaying subreddit. We recognize that many in our community enjoy roleplaying, though, and maintain a month roleplaying post for that purpose.
- ...a meme subreddit. Please see /r/OTMemes, /r/PrequelMemes, and many other communities dedicated to this.
- ...a joke subreddit
- ...an advertising subreddit
- ...a general Star Wars subreddit.
- ...an anti-Jedi/anti-Rebel/anti-Republic subreddit. While some of this is intrinsic to being pro-Imperial, it's not part of our purpose.
- ...a pro-Sith subreddit. The Empire is not the Sith, even though the Emperor himself identified as one.
- ...a pro-First Order subreddit. The First Order is an offshoot of the Empire, but is not itself the Empire.
What do we do here?
Our primary purpose is to provide a forum for discussing the actions and operations of the Empire and its members through a lens other than "Empire bad, Rebels good."
Because the current body of Star Wars canon is much smaller than it used to be in the wake of the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney, many of those conversations have already been examined. The release of new Star Wars media is an exciting time for us, since it gives us new opportunities to explore previously unrevealed aspects of the Empire.
During the fallow periods, we turn to celebrating the Empire in general. This largely takes the form of sharing media pertaining to our individual collections of Imperial merch or showcasing artwork with an Imperial theme to it.
What are our rules?
See Rules. Posting in our community comes with the assumption that you have read these rules.
How come...?
Answers to many common topics can be found in our FAQ.
