Corvettes: Paradigm vs Venture?
- Thread starter gavinfoxx
- Start date
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
That... boggles the mind. Well... it's not completely crazy, I guess. Someone could probably come up with a decent explanation. I mean, we've seen fighters docked externally, so it's possible...
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Hah, it's probably not necessary to explain the SNES changes... it just makes for interesting trivia. You'll end up running into the whole insane world of Nintendo-mandated changes to make the game more family friendly. Shotglass' ice cream stand, the "Blue Angels" Scimitar squadron... and so on. (Yes, you could mention angels but not devils in a Super Nintendo game.)
Nomad Terror
Rear Admiral
I've always figured that, as the "Blue Angels" were the well-known Naval acrobatic team, it was then a cultural reference rather than a religious one.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Haha I don't think that was ever a policy. 
Nomad Terror
Rear Admiral
I hope you weren't *actually* considering that Jalthi are actually green Salthi and that Ventures carry fighters?
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Of course not. But I still say that if official sources contradict each other I take the games (PC above the rest) as highest priority, followed by the manuals and the books, with the animated series and the movie last in line.
I know others don't, but that's the way I like to do it in order to retain the last bits of sanity I still have.
But now excuse me, I have cats to sniff.
I know others don't, but that's the way I like to do it in order to retain the last bits of sanity I still have.
But now excuse me, I have cats to sniff.
Nomad Terror
Rear Admiral
Did you know that the manuals and books establish the cartoon and movie as canon?
Aginor
Vice Admiral
I don't have a problem that they are canon, but if various canonical sources contradict each other I take the games.
Just a few examples:
- Bossman dies in SM2
- Tiger's Claw doesn't have 40 torpedo tubes, and it looks like in the game or the manual, not like in the movie and not like in the cartoon. And it is called Tiger's Claw, not Tiger Claw.
- Hobbes was given his callsign because of the philosopher, not because of the comic character. And it wasn't Blair who called him that.
For me those are facts. If you regard every source material as "equally canonical" then you have to discuss about it. I don't want to so I have created a rule for myself how to deal with it.
Just a few examples:
- Bossman dies in SM2
- Tiger's Claw doesn't have 40 torpedo tubes, and it looks like in the game or the manual, not like in the movie and not like in the cartoon. And it is called Tiger's Claw, not Tiger Claw.
- Hobbes was given his callsign because of the philosopher, not because of the comic character. And it wasn't Blair who called him that.
For me those are facts. If you regard every source material as "equally canonical" then you have to discuss about it. I don't want to so I have created a rule for myself how to deal with it.
Mace
Vice Admiral
Retconned as MIA, I believe.
The look is different, yes, but there are no contradictions. Wing 1/2 and 3/4/5 also look different, technical limitations and artist freedom. This is used in more franchises that crossover with cartoons/games/movie. I do admit the Tiger Claw being a bit confusing.
Where did this come from, the novelisations? There is only one WC2 where he states this.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
I don't think it is even needed to retcon anything about Bossman. What for? Besides I don't like retcons. Retcons killed Star Wars. They have a bajillion retcons and levels of canon, which makes everything false and true at the same time and creates approximately 58 levels of canon. I hate it.
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Take the armament for example. That is not just artistic freedom like the closed flight deck in the animated series. It is just something different. But it doesn't matter, because at least for my personal use it is clear what to use when in doubt.
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I don't remember where it is but I think the Calvin&Hobbes thing came from a Forstchen novel I think. I read it somewhere years ago.
btw: I just remembered (or at least thought I remembered)... wasn't there even a animated series episode where the acceleration absorbers of the Scimitar were suddenly engines?
Also those are only a few examples. The list goes on and on and on, depending on how strict you are.
I prefer not to do that. It goes on my nerves. Questions like "how does maniac look" become ridiculous very quickly. I don't want to explain it and fit it into canon, I just accept it is different and that's it. So when I get creative myself and build a mod I have to choose one and run with it. That's where I decided to have the games above everything else and work from there.
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Take the armament for example. That is not just artistic freedom like the closed flight deck in the animated series. It is just something different. But it doesn't matter, because at least for my personal use it is clear what to use when in doubt.
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I don't remember where it is but I think the Calvin&Hobbes thing came from a Forstchen novel I think. I read it somewhere years ago.
btw: I just remembered (or at least thought I remembered)... wasn't there even a animated series episode where the acceleration absorbers of the Scimitar were suddenly engines?
Also those are only a few examples. The list goes on and on and on, depending on how strict you are.
I prefer not to do that. It goes on my nerves. Questions like "how does maniac look" become ridiculous very quickly. I don't want to explain it and fit it into canon, I just accept it is different and that's it. So when I get creative myself and build a mod I have to choose one and run with it. That's where I decided to have the games above everything else and work from there.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
With all due respect, though, you're kind of the problem here.
Star Wars wouldn't need things like the world's stupidest roundabout explanation for why A-Wings appear in the Ewoks cartoon if fans weren't going around complaining about a simple mistake in the first place. What you think is some evolved take on it all is actually the specific match that lights this fire. The guy saying 'look at this specifc error I found, therefore this story doesn't count!' is exactly the reason both fans and creators go back and retcon things in the first place. The issue isn't ever making everything fit perfectly (an impossibility)... it's making people take their work seriously. The 'therefore this doesn't count' is the issue... retcons are an attempt to get people to drop that straw man argument.The Academy Scimitars have engines on the rear of the fuselage, like in Wing Commander I.
There's no question that Bossman dies in Secret Missions 2.
(The thing that always makes me mad about this argument is that no one cared when Super Wing Commander did the exact same thing to Bossman's death. I've been talking about Wing Commander online pretty much every day since 1993 and never once have I seen anyone posting to complain that SWC changed Bossman's death. Or that Freedom Flight and Secret Missions 2 have different accounts of /how/ he died at Firekka! So it always strikes me as another one of those we-hate-the-movie-so-we're-complaining-about-otherwise-insignificant-things things.)
This one isn't even a continuity error, though... because who ever said it doesn't? It's like the dreadnaught... you just don't LIKE the fact that it would have forty torpedo tubes, there's no actual continuity reason why it wouldn't. (TALK TO PALADIN - "Ach, lad, take a seat and tilt a glass with ol' Paladin. I was jus' telling Angel here about how the Tiger's Claw does not have broadside missile tubes.")
(... and not to be pedantic, but as the old joke goes: so, does it look like the game or the manual? There's three unlikely-to-harmonize appearances for the Tiger's Claw in Wing Commander I alone! It has five engines in Claw Marks, six in the game itself and then seven in the cutscenes! And then of course /which game/ is the real Tiger's Claw, Wing Commander I that you happen to feel the most nostalgia towards... or Super Wing Commander, done later by the same creators with more advanced technology at their disposal and visually referenced by later titles? I have a feeling that your answer is going to be: 'why, the one *I like* of course!')
[I did write a cute little retcon about the Tiger Claw/Tiger's Claw thing for Star*Soldier, in the letters column. Check it out! I also am not an enormous fan of retcons, but this was so obviously an error and people are /so annoying/ about it... and it's such an insignificant thing that I didn't mind forcing actual Wing Commander characters to talk about/make fun of it.]
This one is a little hard to take seriously. That conversation is just Wing Commander II lampshading the fact that OBVIOUSLY they named the character after the famous talking tiger. You realize it's a joke, right? You're supposed to laugh because because Ralgha, unfamiliar with human culture, actually bought Downtown's patently fake explanation for the name.
Well, there's an issue... because what does it matter how /we/ regard the material as canonical? None of that is our call to make or anything that should matter to us in the first place. The fact that something is or isn't "canon" only matters to a writer sitting down to create a new commercial Wing Commander game or tie-in... and, well, quite frankly, we don't have any say in that.
And despite the fact that every fandom seems to imagine their 'canon' as having the same significance as the religious equivalent we borrow the term from (heh, no contradictions in there!) that just ain't how it really is. If Wing Commander II says Hobbes was named by Downtown and a later writer decides it'd be a good way to establish his connection to Blair to say Blair chose the callsign... then that's probably going to happen. There's no Wing Commander Pope who will excommunicate anyone for continuity errors. And there's a 99.9% chance that the producer in charge of the license doesn't care about or would ever even recognize anything so insignificant.
There's nothing that actually says this. I think the story writes itself, but it hasn't ever been entered into the continuity proper. But Aginor is right about retcons... why bother with something so specific? Just give us the two [or... five] versions of his death and let us come up with it on our own... the lesson should be less hand holding, not that one source is especially right and the others are banished to the ghost dimensions entirely.
He's thinking of a bit of inner monologue in the Heart of the Tiger novelization where Blair mentions that Hobbes was named after a character from 'Terran folk art.'
Red Baron
Rear Admiral
I always took "canon" very seriously. I'd vent my anger on the internet for hours if there was a movie/game/book contradicting something that came before, but there are two franchises that numbed me to caring about it all that much.
One was Warhammer 40K, where every new rulebook or novel published basically belied everything that came before. Funnily the other is Wing Commander, where somehow they (In fact this very website) managed to wrap up almost every loose end and squeeze every game, novel, movie and cartoon into the same continuity, which is what fans are always crying for. I just enjoy them more when i view them as different interpretations of the franchise i guess. Heck i even enjoyed the J.J. Abrams Startrek movie once i took off my Roddenberry glasses.
Another thing is that, while having read most of the novels and played most of the games, i simply don't remember enough facts to actively engage in continuity discussions, so whatever i claim to know, always take it with a grain of salt.
One was Warhammer 40K, where every new rulebook or novel published basically belied everything that came before. Funnily the other is Wing Commander, where somehow they (In fact this very website) managed to wrap up almost every loose end and squeeze every game, novel, movie and cartoon into the same continuity, which is what fans are always crying for. I just enjoy them more when i view them as different interpretations of the franchise i guess. Heck i even enjoyed the J.J. Abrams Startrek movie once i took off my Roddenberry glasses.
Another thing is that, while having read most of the novels and played most of the games, i simply don't remember enough facts to actively engage in continuity discussions, so whatever i claim to know, always take it with a grain of salt.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Actually I was thinking Loaf would be the WC pope that excommunicated people here. I certainly had that feeling whe I first read threads in this forum in 2004 or so, a year or so before I started posting here. 
Also I see it a bit like you, Red Baron. Things don't have to fit. It is just nice if they do, which is why I like to see whether they do or not. Its not that I don't like the movie or even some facts we know from it. It is just if something doesn't fit in I ignore it (but just that part. not the whole product.) Which in turn may be the reason the 'everything has to fit or you are pissing over Wing Commander' guys don't like many things I say (and probably won't play my mod or read my stories)
we have to accept that some products are just... re-telling the story a bit different. So if there are different versoins you have to choose the one that you like best. Like the WC1 Tigers claw or the Venture with the fighter complement.
As for Hobbes: I didn't see the name as a joke. But then I didn't even know C&H and the description fits well since Hobbes is thoughtful and wise. I still prefer that explanation.
Also I see it a bit like you, Red Baron. Things don't have to fit. It is just nice if they do, which is why I like to see whether they do or not. Its not that I don't like the movie or even some facts we know from it. It is just if something doesn't fit in I ignore it (but just that part. not the whole product.) Which in turn may be the reason the 'everything has to fit or you are pissing over Wing Commander' guys don't like many things I say (and probably won't play my mod or read my stories)
we have to accept that some products are just... re-telling the story a bit different. So if there are different versoins you have to choose the one that you like best. Like the WC1 Tigers claw or the Venture with the fighter complement.
As for Hobbes: I didn't see the name as a joke. But then I didn't even know C&H and the description fits well since Hobbes is thoughtful and wise. I still prefer that explanation.
Lorien
Rear Admiral
Ultimately, they're the same explanation. Calvin & Hobbes the comic characters are named after John Calvin & Thomas Hobbes the philosophers, anyway.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Yeah
Although if you read about Calvin you probably sometimes wondered whether that guy was really wise. To say it in a neutral way: I often disagree with his views.
Hobbes is much better IMO, but then he lived in other times. He had an interesting way of looking at things.
Btw: Hobbes' last book 1668 (almost exactly 1000 years before the Kilrathi war ends) was named.... wait for it.... "Behemoth" !!
Although if you read about Calvin you probably sometimes wondered whether that guy was really wise. To say it in a neutral way: I often disagree with his views.
Hobbes is much better IMO, but then he lived in other times. He had an interesting way of looking at things.
Btw: Hobbes' last book 1668 (almost exactly 1000 years before the Kilrathi war ends) was named.... wait for it.... "Behemoth" !!