Lit Is it possible for books to retcon things from TCW?

Good one, great evidence to back up that claim.

 

Glad I could be of service.

 

If they can or already have, then I'm happy.

 

Actually, it was less than definitive. IIRC Filoni even said that they kept it a little ambiguous to leave room for the EU story.

 

Just a couple points here as we play with numbers. The Clone Wars children's books cost maybe 1/4 the amount that the adult books do on average so while they did sell more copies they only sold them at a far lower price point.

As for the books being out viewed by the cartoon, it is pretty easy to turn on a television and flip to the proper channel. It does not require one to take their wallet out of their pocket to watch a TV show when most of the viewing audience already had Cartoon Network in their homes before The Clone Wars existed.

I'm sure there are more fans of The Clone Wars than of the novels, but in part that is because of the ease of access to the program. One could never spend a nickel on TCW and still be a fan of TCW.

Also by your own link Charles the series debut averaged 3 million viewers in the USA, not the series itself. If you look at the American numbers for the entire series I think 1.5 million would be a more accurate average number, of course that doesn't count numbers generated world wide.

 

The problem is Grievous' backstory is awesome.

Yet it is utterly inappropriate for Grievous the character.

"I was the heroic deeply wronged leader of an insurgency against Jedi Corruption."

Vs.

How he has ALWAYS behaved.

 

The reason why Charles' sales numbers had three bad books was because those three bad books were the last Star Wars novels to break 100,000 copies sold back in 2008. It was also the year when TCW became a thing. Star Wars novels sold better than TCW books about thirteen years ago. It was likely due to the prequel hype.

 

Is it not: The problem is Grievous' possible backstory is awesome. ?

 

I'm just saying that Grevious backstory of being a guy who desperately wanted to be a Jedi to the point he made himself into a cyborg SOLELY to use lightsabers actually isn't that bad of a backstory and certainly makes more sense for a man who commits countless atrocities on a whim.

 

I like Labyrinth of Evil's version- Grievous's cruelty and ruthlessness was, at least partly, engineered into him after that shuttle crash.

 

Look, if the Republic gets Jar Jar to pull a homer for it, the Separatists get Grievous.

 

For the retcon question, I have to say no, at least that's what I think Lucasfilm/whatever would say. Although, I think this whole canon level thing is nonsense. If someone says, "Ooh, that's level G Canon, so it's more important then that Level-J canon," I really couldn't care less. Leave it up to the viewers, I say.

 

The canon levels were never meant to adjudicate fan discussions; they were meant to help the creators of Star Wars products navigate the reams of material dating back to the 70s more easily. We've simply commandeered them, often without even knowing WHICH level a given piece of material falls into, for our petty little fannish arguments.

 

The problem is, they broke the system by creating a new level of canon and conveniently using it to completely redo the most well documented three years in the universe without any justification.

 

Plus Leland says that contradictions are handled case by case -- frequently lower levels "win out" in conflicts, in the sense that generalized ideas from higher levels of canon frequently give way for specialized exceptions in the lower levels.

 

The justification was "George Lucas says so, and he owns this whole shebang and, moreover, decides whether we still have the most awesome jobs on the planet tomorrow."

Exactly. The canon levels are guidelines and guideposts, not laws.

 

That's not justification, that's a draconian version of my way or the highway and definitely not hands off, but more importantly, a great way to guarantee that people like me will probably never respect the canon system again.

 

Well, it absolutely WAS "my way or the highway." At the time, it was Lucas's intellectual property, controlled by his company, owned solely by him.

And one more time, no one at Lucas Licensing cares whether you respect the canon system. IT ISN'T FOR US.

IT ISN'T FOR US.

It's for their internal use, as a tool for storytelling and product management. The only reason we know it even exists is because Leland Chee chose to talk to fans about his job on a message board one day.

 

I stopped watching Clone Wars after what I heard they did to Barriss Offee.
It led me to discover whole contradictions between the series and the movies itself.
The writers of the series went off on their own whim and forgot to actually check what they were doing. I sold my Clone Wars DVDs and ignore it in favour of the original timeline.

 

More importantly, they have lost my respect as the caretakers of the universe. George Lucas simply can't wrap his head around the fact that even though his films lit the fire that is many fans love of Star Wars, it was the EU that kept the fire going and made it burn brighter and hotter than anything the films alone could have ever done. One fire that is simply a love of Star Wars, not his films and television first and everything else secondary as he would have it be, but Star Wars as a whole. So invalidating the EU is merely quelling the flame a little, but it will go out if they keep up this nonsense.