S3 - Episode 20: Citadel Rescue

So a guy I've known for a while now put into words something I've even said before myself, and yet recently I find myself willfully blinding myself (for a lack of better terms) to this reality, by the hope of the story that doesn't cause a retcon. I've often said I'm a fan of a good retcon, but I've stopped looking at it from the historian POV, and was looking at it more as a library of the history. Read Slave's post below and continue the rabbit hole journey with me.

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Dawud786 wrote:

Star Wars is a 'history' and we are treating continuity like a 'history' as well. It's necessary, because of the nature of how the EU is telling stories and has been since the early 90s. It's not just plodding foward like it was from ANH into Marvel and SOTME... and even in that era you had some prequel stories like The Han Solo Adventures and the Lando Calrissian Adventures. Star Wars begins with ANH and tells stories from before and after from there. Continuity is not just an evolving story with cohesion... it's a history that is being gradually revealed. And the reality of the situation is that GL is the chief historian and most reliable historian of SW historians. His 'reputation' for this 'history' is so distinguished that it is accepted as Truth. All others are less distinguished 'historians' in the field of the GFFA. If new information is unveiled that contradicts old information from a lesser 'historian' it has to be reckoned that the lesser 'historian' was mistaken somehow in his account of events or some detail.

It's kind of fun to think about, really, on that level. If GL is the guy who is undisputed truth-teller of this 'history' and Zahn and all other EU authors are of lesser reliability in their 'research,' that means there will inevitably be contradictions. It is the job of other 'historians' like Chee and Wallace to find 'evidence' to connect those contradictions. And this approach is really how it works in the canon system of LFL, and fortunately it has been working very well.

What's fun about this too is that so many SW reference books are written as in-universe histories. The NEC is in-universe, not OOU. If fans can take a step back and try to see this as people finding out an actual history of the GFFA... in our passion for continuity we should still be able to take this stuff into account. After all, we human beings are still trying to put together earth history from a long time ago and finding out new information that changes or throws out previous ideas about pre-historical cultures. It works so much better because it puts us in the continuity too. We become participants who are discovering new information all the time and we might get a little irked that this new tidbit runs afoul of this other tidbit over here to the extent of even putting the whole thing into question... but that's often times what discovering lost histories is. Heck, that very approach might help to smooth out issues of continuity of characterization. If a source gives me a bad impression of Luke Skywalker even as he's being depicted as the hero of a tale, then I can view the teller of that tale as a historian that hasn't been able to be very unbiased or whatever. I still don't like it, I can choose to think the character actually acted more noble than say LOTF or FOTJ show because the more noble Luke Skywalker is in better accord with the majority of the established 'history' of the personage.

Slave has always been so much better at words in the Force Philosophy thread then I, and it's like some thing I've long since forgotten.

I've stopped looking at it from the historian POV, and was looking at it more as a library of the history...

Sure I understood the fundamentals of the canon/ continuity make up (for the most part that is- I couldn't tell you which parts of a story fall where in cases of divided canon levels. ie Prophets of the Dark Side lol)

But I had started to look at it less from a historian's uncovering the past POV and more a history as written (then come the retcon which one had to remember). Cause if one is trying to follow the history of what happened, despite having the books we'll never be able to really pin much down beyond what George gives us. Thinking of it as the historian's POV doesn't change anything, but it can change everything if you're in the right frame of mind.

I mean this whole "death/novel death" thing I've even thought about the twin angle people are talking about. After the initial shock of every "new find" or "Continuity issue" as I often call it, the retcon seeking begins.

But it really is a glass half empty/ full kind of thing.

When the Greedo story was altered in TCW- it didn't even phase me. I'd not recalled any of those stories so beyond being another in a list of minor conflicts it was nothing like the possible impact the Mandalorians had at first) As I've recently said on The Bothan Report: Live- sometimes the "shock factor" is part of the fun. But if I'm looking at it as a history, then it gets hard sometimes to remember that even though George doesn't have full knowledge of every detail in every comic book or source-book or guide, his detail even if made up on the spot are the facts. But if I pause my OOU reality, and think of it in that historian in-universe light, it's like pretending it's a Indian Jones adventure in my mind and makes it feel better then if I'm thinking of it as "George if you've only read what I've read in addition to everything you're about to make we wouldn't be in this mess." mentality.

As Defender of the EU I will still encourage my fellows to read every EU Book and comic despite any "historical errors" that may be.

And as my challenge to myself- from here on out EVERY "CONTINUITY ISSUE" (as I called it before) I WILL SEE AS A CHALLENGE TO RETCON, (As I always have) I will see it as the mystery it is, a "Prime fact" if you will. Laughing

This illogical Rant is brought to you by the numbers 10, 4, 8, and the letters P and M. Good Night!

EDIT: Hehe sounds like my thoughts have come full circle again? http://blogs.starwars.com/IR2/7 <Written by me in 05 Laughing

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Master Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 1846

I've spoken to Dawud at TFN about Force philosophy -- haven't had a chance to read that post yet (I did read what he wrote at TFN), I'll read it after responding to the first one.

Originally I was going to mention the Han shooting first. Sure, Lucas changes his own movies a lot, but it doesn't contradict anything really because he changes it directly, not retcons it with a different story. I consider that to be different. I mean, I guess the 2004 DVD release of Episode V contradicts Shadows of the Empire because Xixor is present on Palpatine's end of his discussion with Vader and the dialogue was altered, but for the most part that doesn't really affect anything else. And I think the Han shoots first controversy is so overblown... if a characterization hinges upon one scene, it's not a particularly deep character. Sure, Han shooting first is better, but it's not as if his character isn't firmly established by every other scene he's in.

I don't think Lucas' involvement with the microseries was anywhere near as comprehensive as on TCW. He seems to have a pretty firm grip on what's going on with TCW. He's involved in the initial outline of every single episode, and I've listened to a few interviews with Filoni where he goes over the process. It sounds to me like Lucas' involvement in the show is identical to his involvement in The Empire Strikes Back. He doesn't write the scripts, he doesn't direct the episodes, but he's involved with every phase of production in an advisory role with veto power.

Also I think the (G, T, C, S, N) scale is dumb, to be honest. It seems to be an internal scale purely for categorization in the holocron, and to assign it a hierarchy was dumb on Chee's part. He says contradictions are handled on a case by case basis. C-canon tends to trump G-canon when they contradict, in the sense that if G-canon seemingly voids C-canon with a blanket statement, it doesn't. Anakin says in ROTS that there's never been a Jedi Knight on the Jedi High Council, for instance. Not so. I think if we went by that system with TCW, there shouldn't be "T-canon" at all, because then TCW would just be C-canon, except for elements explicitly created by George, because books, comics, etc. aren't rated in the canon system themselves, but the characters, ships, planets, etc. within them are based upon where they originate, e.g. EU, Lucas. Thus, Tatooine is G-canon, but Myrkr is C-canon.

As for KOTOR/KOTOR II/TOR, the timeline for TOR revived the Massassi species that was previously extinct (on Yavin 4) after the Great Sith War due to Exar Kun's bid for immortality (The KOTOR Campaign Guide establishes some still live elsewhere in the galaxy, namely Korriban and Tund). KOTOR II resulted in the origination of the Dark Lords of the Sith being the Second Great Schism rather than the First Great Schism, as it was originally, to explain what was originally an anachronism with regard to Kreia describing Tulak Hord using a lightsaber. Those are two pretty major retcons, IMO. KOTOR parallels film technology, even though fifty years earlier the TOTJ comics had the hyperspace beacons in lieu of hyperdrives and pulse wave blasters, which I think is a pretty big shift in fifty years, but is more easily written off. Karpyshyn also messed cortosis up in Path of Destruction, but that's not KOTOR so...

As for Del Rey: they didn't really do a whole lot with the Clone Wars to begin with. I blame their troubles upon their poor creative decisions since 2003 and because their new strategy seems to be quantity over quality. I'm sure once the contract is up in 2013, either they or the next publisher will not publish nearly as much novels. They really need a new strategy with a new focus.

Edit: Looked over the second post. Yeah, the retcon stuff doesn't phase me. I won't skip a beat reading Jedi Twilight because when I read the Thrawn trilogy, the same sort of incorrect information is there. Same with pretty much every Bantam novel. They all made assumptions about the Jedi that proved untrue:

They married.
They had children.
They all disappeared at death -- or at least Jedi Masters did.

A book's title is seemingly at odds with what we learn about the Jedi: Children of the Jedi.

The last one actually bothers me that EU writers made that assumption. If all Jedi, or all Jedi Masters, disappear at death, then why was Vader, the man who hunted down and wiped out the Jedi Order, surprised when Obi-Wan disappeared? Meh.

I'll end this post with something a SW author told me via PM at TFN:

"Just between you and me, canon is bull****. It's just arguments between people who don't have anything better to do. People who insist on categorizing facts into hierarchies of canon need to read actual history, in which nothing is "canonical," but is instead only established to varying degrees of verifiability."

Tying this into one of Dawud's posts at TFN, Lucas' tellings of the Star Wars galaxy are the most accurate "historical" tellings. Thus, Jedi Twilight is told by a slightly less reliable historian that fudged which Jedi brought word of the book's MacGuffin to Nick Rostu.
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Master Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 1846

This topic is so deep now, I'm not sure if I can even step in. Stang you guys and your massive replies Laughing

Okay, so back to good old Piell and how his fate has been rewritten. Some people are okay with it, others see it as another straw on the pile of continuity issues in TCW that is threatening to break the camel's back (for some at least).

Thus I'm going to look at this whole issue again in a new light, one which was briefly introduced somewhere amid all those massive replies. The idea that George (assuming killing Piell in this episode was his idea) rewrote Piell's fate for the better is one I think I can get behind. In Coruscant Nights, I don't recall his death being very epic. It's been a while since I read that book, so I could be wrong. But his death in this episode was pretty good, and I really like how the memorial worked out. Him dying amongst the likes of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi during a break out that freed someone as sinister as Tarkin from what was built up to be one of the best prisons the Separatists had...yes, that is Epic. A fitting way to go.
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Master Joined: 22 Dec 2010 Posts: 1846

The author wasn't Reaves, and he (there's so few female authors in SW) said it to me about a year ago. He had written a few SW novels at the time and had spoken with George Lucas at length about Star Wars. I guess that's sort of a hint. We were discussing a controversial character.

As far as I know, the author in question has never had any continuity issues in his books.
_________________
"Trust not the words of a poet, as he is born to seduce. Yet for poetry to seize the heart, it must ring with the chimes of truth.”

“The world is understood through metaphors. Language is a metaphor-system. Mathematics is a metaphor-system. All real-world schools of magic and religion revolve around the understanding of vast metaphor-systems, symbols as they relate to concepts."

"See, the thing is, everything everyone tells you is a lie. The truth is always bigger than the words we use to describe it."

I finally got a chance to watch the episode commentary. Dave Filoni didn't mention Piell at all, but he did have some interesting comments on Osi Sobeck. The voice they used for Sobeck is a rough version of a Christopher Walken impersonation. I thought that was pretty neat, and it puts the character in a different perspective.
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