Lit A/V Clone Wars Continuity Discussion (Spoilers Allowed)

While I'm unaccountably optimistic about this particular project, I think you're being a bit unfair, Sinre. I can certainly understand people feeling put-out over this, especially given the three examples you cited above.

 

Do they know?

I mean...this strikes me as a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

Seriously...when GL or whoever was in charge of this project got started...did they look at the upcoming releases...the standing story...the chronologies...etc.

Or was is in it's own wing...detached...memos going here and there but nothing concrete being laid down.

Did Chee or Pena or anybody know? Cause if they did, they've been "hushed" about it.

Probably better to not tell people in that department...better to task them with "retconing" then having them slow down the process by balancing things as it develops.

This is a statement by George...this is his baby...and to prove it, he can steer it right into the ground and leave it to his staff to try to "pull up".

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It's funny...I started out this morning on this thread feeling fairly indifferent about it all...but it's just been pecking at me all day...how can they do this?

And the only thing I can up with...well...got edited.

But seriously...it takes serious stones to pull this maneuver and expect the masses to hold on...ESPECIALLY in the face of outspoken criticism of the material in recent years.

Part of me thinks this might be the torpedo that LFL thinks fans want. Part of me thinks that perhaps the supportive voices for the EU within LFL haven't got the ear they may have had. Part of me thinks George is just determined not to settle for the critical see-saw his recent offerings have been.

In any event...I think this is a "put in it's place" light on what we have...the continuity was great, until it ran into a GL pet project. I'll be curious how staunchly continuity will be asserted after this...will the rules still apply to everyone but George?

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Time for my moment of Optimism:

Maybe...just Maybe...this movie will be the epic we've all been praying GL could deliver since 1983...and our worlds...both real and imagined...will be hardcore rocked in an awesome way.

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*sigh*

I almost bought that...I love books too much to sell out to the notion though.

Star Wars made me love READING...this is not the message to send people like me.

 

Great!

So where are they?

Did they really think this wouldn't be caught?

Why don't we have a comment on patched in from TOS or the forums there.

It's awful quiet...people I know who don't frequent SW boards were messaging me today about it...it's gotten around.

Are they waiting for us to cannibalize each other before posting a statement...or were they truly caught off guard and are trying to word it carefully while not sounding as lost as we are about it?

again...right hand vs. left...perhaps LFL is not as united a house as we all like to think.

 

[image=http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a285/hondaboi925/DevilsAdvocate.jpg]
Vector Prime busted the character death bubble, this appears to bust the "special status" bubble. Even with this alleged timeline reshuffle Star Wars fans still have the best kept auxillary universe. Lets not dillude ourselves with the "importance" of the EU. Virtually all secondary material for franchises is not canon at all. Trek has no standing, Alien EU has to be rewritten with every film, anything Joss Whedon is not involved with for Buffyverse, and so forth. So Star Wars is now given a treatment more similar to other franchises. This something we, the EU nuts that memorizes everything regarldess of quality, will just have to get used to.

If you look at the franchise from a business POV, though I do not have hard numbers right in front of me, the EU will almost assuredly make less cash the television series. Rather we like it or not the supermajority of people consider Star Wars a six film saga making a television series a more logical stepping stone than prose or comics for attracting people who just watch the films. The novels still sell though they are not runaway bestsellers, the comic medium overall is a niche market, and so on. Lucas can do whatever he wants from a business perspective because any possible losses will be worth the potential gains, and more than likely 99.9% of the EU fanbase will stay with the publications.

I'm not saying I am a big fan of this. My posts have shown I like one big story with minimal continuity errors. However like Greedo shooting first if these timeline changes do pan out the fanbase just has to deal with it.

 

My $0.02:

I think anyone who doesn't think this is a continuity reshuffle is deluding themselves. I think anyone who doesn't think a continuity reshuffle is a positive thing is also deluding themselves.

Seriously, if you watched the CW micro-series straight through, and you weren't aware of the ENORMOUS KLUDGE they used to warp that storyline to fit the ridiculous timeline of the rest of the EU, the new timeline would seem totally normal. The Battle of Muunilinst happens shortly after AOTC, Anakin is knighted almost immediately afterwards, then the montage represents about two and a half years of time (now being covered with the new series), and then we see the mission to Nelvaan right at the end of the war. Perfect. It makes sense in terms of storyline and character development. The current situation is absurd, and if this fixes it, I'm all for it.

Dreadnaughts of Rendili is literally the only thing that could be seriously affected by this that's worth saving, and I'd be willing to make that trade to fix the timeline.

In general, though, everyone needs to take this less seriously. If the continuity works, that's great, but if not, the stories usually still work on their own.

 

Patience isn't the point. It's not like I'm gonna lose sleep over this.

It's why this was done this way

was it a goof? Was there a statement that was delayed but a prearranged update went forward...did something get published early?

as you said...we have some hawk-eyes...and they know that...so either they didn't expect the reaction or they didn't care to respond to it straight away. Or they didn't know anything about it.

"What is said" will be interpreted differently...simply by "when" it's delivered.

Should be interesting whether it'll be comments or a statement...that could be significant.

 

Oh, please. Any outside observer coming into the micro-series would not assume that there was a huge gap of multiple years between the escape from Grievous on Hypori and Ki-Adi Mundi talking about his escape from Grievous on Hypori in the Council chamber. In fact, they would probably think it was bizarre and awkward and unnecessary, because it is bizarre and awkward and unnecessary.

It's all done to preserve the way-too-late date of Anakin's knighting, but there are few if any stories with Anakin as a padawan that would suffer from being pushed up the timeline. The only issue is the scar and Dreadnaughts of Rendili.

"Anakin as a Knight" and "Anakin during the war" are not at all mutually exclusive, and in fact should be more-or-less synonymous. Hopefully, now they will be.

 

I'm feeling... oddly indifferent.

Partially, it's because a lot of the Prequel material wasn't great with continuity ANYWAY. Rogue Planet gives us a new backstory for Sienar Fleet Systems. Jedi Trial doesn't seem well-informed on established character biographies or the established locations of planets. Dark Rendezvous creates a new spaceship type, and describes it as a single-seat fighter and a larger ship with a galley and lounge within the same book. The Boba Fett kids' books have Ventress in action when she should be in bacta, and Nightsisters and Noghri running around on Coruscant before they were known to the Galaxy. There's a different characterization of Dooku in almost every story he's in, and people have already mentioned the issues with Vader's knighting and his scars.

Partially, though, my shrug is because my interest in Star Wars has been undermined - though that, in turn, is due in no small part to recent problems with holding canon together.

The normal argument in favour of detailed continuity is that inconsistencies kick the reader out of the story, but it's not just a matter of geekery. A coherent canon adds a level of integrity to the product: it means that the character-arcs from previous stories are going to continue, and the underlying situations of the story aren't going to be changed to suit the plot of the latest novel, or because some geek thought a six-foot-tall Luke Skywalker would be "cooler".

All of those things, I think, harm the reader's enjoyment of the franchise: the major issues people have had with Star Wars stories since forever have been characterization that doesn't match previous novels, and plots that ignore what's been established in previous adventures.

I have nothing against Alternative Universe and "Infinities" stories... except that the experience of Star Wars Tales suggests a lot of "Infinities" stories end up being basically the same. Respecting canon helps prevent that, too.

I find myself agreeing remarkably much with patchworkz7 AND dp4m, which is a sure sign that the fandom has gone boom.

But I'm not really feeling any emotion about the issue, any more.

I still think flow-walking could be used to fix the inconsistencies, though:

Blame Jacen Solo for the Prequel Era!!

And bring back Anakin Solo, while you're at it!!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

My guess is that it had more to do with real-world timelines than story ones. My guess is that after AOTC, LFL told the licensees they couldn't knight Anakin until they said so, and they couldn't touch the last few months of the war. They start dutifully rolling the timeline forward, but got caught up in delays and whatnot, and never advanced much further than a year or so into the EU timeline.

Then, sometime fairly late in the ROTS production period, they gave the green light on that and on ROTS content (new trooper armor, new ships, etc), along with the mandate that they handle a few major points in the last few months of the war. The licensees said "Oh, ****, we're behind schedule, and jumped forward to the end and crammed everything into the last six months. Also, GT was probably given more leeway with canon than the others, so they had to contort everything to fit the cartoon into their schedule.

In short, I don't think it's likely that LFL ever said "You can't knight Anakin until six months before ROTS", but rather LFL didn't give the licensees permission to knight Anakin until the same (real-world) time the licensees needed to be covering the last six months of the war.

 

I can't say I'm happy about this. It could be the start of a bad habit concerning the show and canon. I hope we're misinterpreting this. Either way, how this plays out will more or less make or break Filoni's claim to being canon conscious and in general fighting to maintain it. Lets hope that ends up being true.





One thing that would make me happy would be some sort of indication that there are parties within LFL that are unhappy about this. As of late they've been putting on the face of "anythings fine if it makes a cooler story" which is annoying, and not a mindset that I subscribe to.




Help us Abel (and Dan), you're our only hope...


And after they're done smoothing it out, I fully expect Luceno to write canon rich novels set in the clone wars that tie it all together again.



Time to roll up our sleeves boys and girls, it's damage control time!

 

If there were parties that were unhappy about it, do you think they'd ever be allowed to say so?

Even freelancers are bound by certain agreements, and one of the rules of any company is that you toe the company line and step out front to say that you are 100% behind this product/service even if you went through hell getting it out the door and feel like you got screwed in the process.

I could go on my LJ right now and tell some horror stories about the hospital I work at...and if anyone from that hospital found them I'd be out on my butt or in serious poodoo. I could complain about editors I've dealt with in the past when writing fiction and non-fiction, and I'd never sell to them or anyone they know again.

Also, Havac made the point before, what's the point of having someone come up behind and clean up canon if the clean-up will just get scrapped with the next round of changes or whenever someone wants to change it anyways?

 

Yeah, I strongly doubt Abel and Dan are happy with developments on this front, and I'd be shocked if they weren't upset, but I'd never expect them to come out and say so.

Clearly, someone will have to get them roaring drunk at the next Celebration to get their opinion out.

Although it's kind of a rough spot for them, as even if they aren't bothered, everyone will assume they are and are just saying they're not for PR reasons.

 

^I'm now getting the oh-so-disturbing image of "Star Wars Authors Gone Wild" in my head.





And yeah, I know they'll never reveal any dissenting opinion that's going on internally, but I think that if they did that, it might ultimately be a good thing. More often than we'd like, we get this sense that LFL is just ignoring the fans, and out appreciation of canon etc. It makes them look like this monolithic enemy out to get us, which is not true and not healthy. It is often easy to forget that there are a lot of people working for LFL, many of whom I'm sure share many of our feelings. As fans we get to see them as people at the absolute maximum once a year at comic con, the average fan even less than that. Sometimes it feels as if they are too far removed from us and don't really care.

But yeah, that was mostly just wishful thinking on my part

 

Okay... I looked stuff over quick, and it's easily possible to both rejigger the timeline and save everything from being cut.

No, really.

For starters, nothing that doesn't involve Anakin or Obi-Wan needs to be moved.

And, fortunately, bulk of Anakin & Obi-Wan's exploits take place during the beginning and end of the war. Basically, we can leave everything prior to /Shatterpoint/ (so, the first six months) as-is and everything after /Dreadnaughts of Rendili/ as is. The only major things that need re-dating, then, are the Jabiim arc of /Republic/, /The Cestus Deception/, /Jedi Trial/, and /Dark Rendezvous/. The Jabiim arc spans roughly two months, and can be placed shortly after Muunilist with little difficulty, I think. I've not read either /The Cestus Deception/ or /Jedi Trial/, but I'd guess they can work contemporaneously; both of them, then can take place after Jabiim ends and maybe during /Shatterpoint./ After that-- some six or so months into the war-- I'd put the knighting sequence from the old cartoon, which takes place during /Dark Rendezvous/. /The Clone Wars/ would then pick up a few weeks to a month thereafter; we'll see when it airs.

There a couple smaller things that need to be moved around-- Alpha's Academy for Clone Commanders has to open earlier, obviously, and there are a couple short stories and comics that might need re-dating, plus a single one-shot (/Forever Young/).

There'll be a couple minor problems, of course. We'll sadly lose the exact dates given by five or so of the HNN articles, Plo Koon will look a little silly congratulating Anakin on being Knighted two years after the fact, and of course poor Tionne's gonna look as bad as Voren. Then there's Anakin's scar, which I'd just chalk up to visual inconsistency unless the cartoon makes a big deal out it at some point (in which case, meh, he's as unlucky with that section of his face as he is with his right arm).

All in all, though, I *think* we're pretty good for the most part. This is just from a quick look-over, though, so... I could easily have missed something. Plus, we still know very little about the cartoon, so there might be more to fix.

 

No fair Trip, you just like that solution cause it makes Voren look dumb again! (Especially since his latest work dedicates so much to the Clone Wars...poor guy!)


PS: I may have missed something, but I can't see what exactly in the CW movie requires the drastic redating?

Is it:

Anakin: Thank god I was knighted a month after Geonosis and not much later than others would have you believe!


Couldn't they just plonk it in one of the final months anyway? Or does it start with a "Six months after the Battle of Geonosis" crawl?

Hmmm....

PPS: Boy, I hope someone told Abel/Dan and co before they finished the Clone Wars RPG sourcebook coming out soon!

 

EDIT: Never mind.

 

Thank you Captain Obvious, I know it was about the databank. I was speaking hypothetically, and wondering why the movie requires such a timeline change.

 

D'oh.

 

There's no Clone Wars book coming out in the current announced schedule. There was one for the old system that was all but finished before it got cancelled, but that was five years ago for a now-defunct edition of the game.

Unless something was announced recently that I missed.

 

I thought they recently announced a Clone Wars campaign guide, but I didn't think it was due out till 2009.

 

Here's TFN's story that mentions it.