Did you know there was 2 Matrix's in G1?

[Liege Evilmus]

you don't understand my concept correctly. Outside of the crashing part, your way off the mark.

[Tramp]

Based upon your own wording, I don' think so. Also, in regards to these new pieces of the story creating new continuties. That's not what causes the creation of new continuities in the franchise. The TF franchise has always had multiple continuites running simultaneously. The Marvel comics and the Sunbow cartoon ran concurrently, and had gone in different directions from the start. It had nothing to do with Primus being introduced in the comics and not in the cartoon. The cartoon and comics never meshed as a single continuity. They were always two separate G1 continuities. This is inherent given that the cartoon ran weekly (and sometimes daily) whereas the comics were published monthly. It's also why the UK comics diverged from the US comics. Whereas the US comics were published monthly, the UK comics were published every fortnight. Thus they needed more stories than the US comics alone could provide.

 

Retcons are new pieces of information introduced in later chapters of an ongoing story that change how we are supposed to interpret information from previous chapters within that same ongoing story in ways the original author may not have originally intended without actually changing or overwriting those previous events in the previous chapters themselves. They don't create new continuities. They simply add to the information within an existing story that wasn't known before. That's why it is called retroactive continuity.

[Sparkless]

I think what Liege is trying to say is he makes stories for his toys that appeal to him and him alone and if it doesnt follow the "official" storyline....Who gives a?

 

It's all about what you prefer, not what's preached or whatever. Liege simply commented he has his own fan fic version of the TF continuity. YOu don't need to understand it. It's for him and him alone, unless he finds the damn thing and actually shares it with the community :P

[Liege Evilmus]

What PC said. The type of thing like the show, the bios, and the comics all going in there own dirrection is the type of thing that turned me off right away from the provided fictions.

 

If the people at the top can't get organized, I don't see why any of it should even matter especialy when all it takes is one new writter to take the whole dam thing and toss it out the window.

 

I've watched the shows, even own the DVDs. I've read a few of the books. I have to say though if it's constantly gonna contradict, restart, and retell. For me, it's only passing entertainment at best.

 

The figures though. Once I buy one, then they're simply part of my world, whatever that may be like the time Unicron fought Voltron :thumb

[Tramp]

IT's not a matter of their being "disorganized". It's inherent when you have multiple media from different licensees with widely different release schedules involved in an on-going series. Reboots are inherent in any series which is intended to continue indefinitely for decades to come that use essentially the same cast. Look at Superman and Batman, for instance. Those comic series have to be rebooted every decade or so for each new generation. The characters don't age, they don't grow old. They can't, otherwise the series ends. Transformers is much the same way. It's intended to go on and on indefinitely. This inherently requires occasional reboots, and new continuities to start up. What's different with Transformers though is that the previous continuities aren't overwritten and voided by the new ones, as is the case with DC and Marvels' superhero stories. New stories can still be told in these pre-existing continuities, new information can be added to them. Stories can span multiple continuities, as is the case with the Fun Publications material. One of th few ongoing series which doesn't reboot every few years is Star Wars. That's because, it isn't about one person's adventures, it is an ongoing unfolding history of a galaxy over thousands of years with most of the stories dealing with the Skywalker lineage. We see characters born, grow up, have families, grow old, and die, and new generations take up the mantle.

 

There's really only two ways to avoid the resulting multiple continuities and reboots inherent in these kinds of franchises. The first is to have only one set of stories be canon, much like how Star Trek works. The other is to have everything tightly controlled by a single central authority dictating the direction of the franchise. Even then, you'll get issues requiring retcons. The only way to avoid them entirely is for the story to have a predetermined, finite life span, such as a single novel, movie, trilogy, or miniseries such as you see with a lot of Anime.

[Liege Evilmus]

nah man, they screwed up, and they kept screwing up. Lot's of shows go on for a real long time and don't suffer from this type of thing. The problem is, same as the movies which are good but could be better, they make money, so they don't care.

 

It's a double edged sword though because if they didn't make money all this would hardly be a memory in the long list of forgotten shows.

 

Anyhow, I'm tired of this circle, it's getting pointless. So I'll leave it at this, you like what you want, I'll like what I want.

 

It's always a pleasure debating with you Tramp, this topic though is one of prefrence, that rarely has much staying power. We'll never sway one another. I don't think either of us were trying to, so what have you till next time.

[dcj91x]

No, not a screw up. I think the major problem that you see is the fact that each contry has a different TF version. Hasbro has been trying to pull them all together for years but only recently has started being succesful in that. That is part of the reason they are starting to focus on an offical canon for the TF's.

 

In the past each different group who owned the rights to their piece of transformers (movies, anime, us cartoon, comics) and depending on the country, added to TF what they felt should be added. This created a continuity issue, yes, but by no means was ireversable. Now with hasbros domanance and much more close work with takara and the other TF medias they are finally starting and able to bring everthing together. And as was said before this does happen with a lot of shows. TMNT, GIJoe, all went through this as well. The thing with them though is that they had less properties owned by multiple companies.

[Tramp]

To add to what DCJ said, Back when Transformers first started, the different licensees didn't communicate with each other, only with Hasbro. Marvel didn't talk to Sunbow, or to Ladybird books. This is still true to some extent today. Hasbro is the only coordinator for the different series. and the only coordination between the US and Japan is between Hasbro and Takara. Hasbro doesn't talk to Takara's licensees and Takara doesn't talk to Hasbro's licensees. Thus, the coordination between licensees is limited. This, of course, increased the likelihood of differences in stories and ultimately continuity between the original cartoon and comics. As a result you get two or more different continuities going on at the same time with different writers taking the stories in completely different directions that what the other licensees are going. That's not a mistake, it is inherent in the system. Then you have the deliberate reboots such as RiD and the Unicron Trilogy. These were never intended to be part of G1. They're specifically designed and written to be new continuities. Thus, Transformers was never intended to be a single continuty, but rather, a multiverse of divergent but still interconnected continuities. The connection, of course, being the origin story involving Primus, Unicron, and the Thirteen, and their status as multiversal singularities—unique, singular beings in all of the multiverse.

 

By contrast, in the case of Star Wars fiction, Lucas Licensing coordinates communication between Bantam Del-Rey and Dark Horse (the novel and comic book publishers respectively), as well as Lucas Arts ( computer games), WotC (table top RPG), and Lucasfilm with regular meetings between editors, authors, artists, etc. Lucas' intent is to have a single, unified history connecting the movies, comics, novels, video and tabletop games, etc. together in a single, continuous timeline of events.

[Liege Evilmus]

I remember reading comics back in the day and there were like 4 or 5 Spider-Man books. Every month Marvel would add one page filled with notes and articles about what was going on with all the writers and editors and so on.

I always liked how each book was trying to tell a different story, but they would cross refrence eachother to make sure one book wasn't stepping on the other, and would make calls to other book departments to make sure something like a cameo wouldn't upset the story in say X-Men or Avengers.

 

I know that sounds easy because it's all Marvel in that example. To bring it to the groundHasbro knew what they were planning while watching these figures as Diaclone. The toys came out long before the comics and cartoons, and they could have easily said they wanted everything uniform since they did have a finger in each pie but they didn't, and that started this.

 

If they're trying to fix it now, well, thats nice. I'm already past the point of caring though. I'm also not getting my hopes up about how determined they are. Lets face it in the past few years that they've been trying to work real hard to bring everything together, they've had a record number of pointless repaints, 2 new rehash series, and took an independent show, tacked on the back of 2 others and called it a trilogy even though it had nothing to do with anything.

 

It's OK though because a black hole made an alternate universe :roll

 

Now apaerntly a video game is going to make sense of it all ? no, it's just gonna relaunch everything AGAIN, and will be the most definitive definer untill they forget they were working on it and move over to something else.

 

No Thank You. Just keep making the toys. I can handle the rest.

[Tramp]

The big difference between Marvel's in house comics, and something like Transformers is just that. Marvel handles everything in house. This inherently gives them greater control and coordination between writers. Transformers, on the other hand, was being worked on by multiple independent licensees with little to no comminucation between them. You had Sunbow, Marvel, Ladybird books, none of whom communicated with the others. Hasbro owned everything, but, at the time, they were still primarily interested in selling the toys and let the licensees handle the stories with relative impunity. It's only within the past fifteen years or so—starting with Universe—that Hasbro has gotten more directly involved in the stories and continuity of the franchise, officially establishing the multiverse as the structure of the mythos and tying the multiverse together with a single, unified origin story. Then you have to factor in Takara, Hasbro's Japanese partner. They have their own licensees writing mangas and producing anime with their own story lines. They also have their own cultural sensibilities and demographics. And, because Takara is partners with Hasbro, Hasbro doesn't have the right to dictate the direction Takara takes the property in Japan and vice versa. As such, they're never going to mesh 100%. The more diverse the groups working on a given property, the greater the diversity of the stories and continuities.