What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each other?

No noses? No problem! Zombiebots? Sure, why not. A confusing new canon that allows loose and contradictory material? And now a new sequel show with an entirely different art style that takes place way in the future!
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JediTricks
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by JediTricks »

Dominic wrote:The UT made it official that TF exists in a multiverse. Since then, the Fan Club has parsed it by sub-franchise and even dates of publication. In theory, if you have the naming convention itself memorized, you can figure out which timeline any given story (including those yet to be published) is set in.

At this point, it is probably best to look at Hasbro's "Aligned" setting as a cluster or grouping of timelines that are where Hasbro has direct control, rather than the veto they have over IDW or shared control of the Paramount timelines.


Dom
-and as is often the case, "multiple timelines" means "poor editing".
You're my bud, but FUCK the UT, that shit is useless stupidity.

Hasbro cannot call it "aligned" if it's... not aligned.

Shockwave wrote:
JediTricks wrote:That sounds to me like 6 different universes telling somewhat-overlapping stories, not the same universe.
Ok, think of it this way: A movie comes out. You've got the movie, you've got the novelization of the movie and then you've got the video game of the movie. These three items are not going to be the same but they will have the same core characters, settings and story. But, a movie is not a novel and a novel is not a video game. By that alone there's going to be significant differences but most people wouldn't really regard those differences as "separate continuities", it's just the same thing rearranged to work in those particular mediums. The "aligned" continuity is the same conceptually.
That's not a "canon" then, that's in fact the OPPOSITE of a "canon". And in fact, it's also not a "continuity". So it's not aligned, it's not a continuity, and it's definitely not a canon. Yup, sounds like Hasbro! :mrgreen:

To me, what you describe sounds like the various versions of the Bible, while what I'm seeing from Hasbro is more akin to someone wrapping a religion around the Torah, the New Testament, the Greek Bible, the Koran, the Buddhist scriptures, the texts of the Pyramids, the Book of Mormon, and Dianetics as "all true" no matter how contradictory they are even to the same tales.
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See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by Dominic »

You aint' gotta like it. But, the UT counts.
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by JediTricks »

Dominic wrote:You aint' gotta like it. But, the UT counts.
If it counts, it does so using its fingers... slowly.

But no, I don't have to count UT, nor RID, nor the commercials made by Sunbow in G1 style, nor Machine Wars, nor Pack-In comics, nor Headmasters, nor BWII or Neo. They aren't viable precedent here, they are cobbled together, promo materials, or not originally intended for this audience.
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See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by Onslaught Six »

It's "aligned" in the sense that, at least according to Hasbro, they're "supposed" to take place all in the same continuity. Just like all those disparate 2007 film prequels are supposed to all take place together, but don't really.

I like to think of it like this: Each individual publication (video game, show, novel, whatever) is a "window" into the overall "Aligned" universe, during which certain elements like character models, style, or history details might be changed or altered because of the window's dressing. Everything's the same hot dog, they just have different condiments--Prime's ketchup and mustard will taste different than WFC's chili cheese, but at the end of the day it's still a hot dog.

It's kind of similar to IDW's stance on character models as of the ongoing series two years ago--different artists draw the same Transformers in different ways. Don Fig's Optimus Prime is the exact same character as Guido Guidi, but Don Fig draws him different from Guido Guidi because That's How Don Fig Draws. Just because there's differences between them doesn't mean they don't represent the same character, or that there needs to be a specific explanation from how Prime got "from this body to that body." Similarly, if you handed me and you both pieces of paper and a pencil, and said, "Draw Optimus Prime," we'd both probably come up with things that had disparate details--for example, I might draw his oil tanks and wheels on his legs and big gaping holes in his forearms (as per the toy) while you might draw him more like his animation model. But they would both be drawings of Optimus Prime, each representing the "real" Optimus Prime. Does the "real" Optimus Prime have wheels on his legs? It doesn't matter! I draw him the way I do, you draw him the way you do.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by Dominic »

But no, I don't have to count UT, nor RID, nor the commercials made by Sunbow in G1 style, nor Machine Wars, nor Pack-In comics, nor Headmasters, nor BWII or Neo. They aren't viable precedent here, they are cobbled together, promo materials, or not originally intended for this audience.
How are you lumping entire cartoon series in with ads?
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by Onslaught Six »

I think that's where "not originally intended for this audience" comes in, being that all of the series he mentions began as anime. I think that's a bullshit call, myself, considering UT was very much made in conjuction with Hasbro, but hey.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by Shockwave »

Onslaught Six wrote:It's "aligned" in the sense that, at least according to Hasbro, they're "supposed" to take place all in the same continuity. Just like all those disparate 2007 film prequels are supposed to all take place together, but don't really.

I like to think of it like this: Each individual publication (video game, show, novel, whatever) is a "window" into the overall "Aligned" universe, during which certain elements like character models, style, or history details might be changed or altered because of the window's dressing. Everything's the same hot dog, they just have different condiments--Prime's ketchup and mustard will taste different than WFC's chili cheese, but at the end of the day it's still a hot dog.

It's kind of similar to IDW's stance on character models as of the ongoing series two years ago--different artists draw the same Transformers in different ways. Don Fig's Optimus Prime is the exact same character as Guido Guidi, but Don Fig draws him different from Guido Guidi because That's How Don Fig Draws. Just because there's differences between them doesn't mean they don't represent the same character, or that there needs to be a specific explanation from how Prime got "from this body to that body." Similarly, if you handed me and you both pieces of paper and a pencil, and said, "Draw Optimus Prime," we'd both probably come up with things that had disparate details--for example, I might draw his oil tanks and wheels on his legs and big gaping holes in his forearms (as per the toy) while you might draw him more like his animation model. But they would both be drawings of Optimus Prime, each representing the "real" Optimus Prime. Does the "real" Optimus Prime have wheels on his legs? It doesn't matter! I draw him the way I do, you draw him the way you do.
This. Apparently O6 is more eloquent in how he put it, but this is basically my point.

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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by Onslaught Six »

I would also like to point out that, while this is my interpretation of how Hasbro is doing this, it doesn't mean I *like* it or support it. I don't like that a bunch of TF media is coming out that is supposed to apparently work together but has major problems with it. Thankfully, I give a pitiful zero fucks about Prime as a show, removing pretty much the driving reason for me to care that it doesn't match up with it. It's like someone complaining that the Energon comics don't match up with the show--Energon sucked ass! Who cares?! (Besides Prowl.)

I mean, Transformers have had errors since some poor Sunbow colourist accidentally mixed up the model sheets for Rumble and Frenzy. I don't see you declaring that there have to be three micro-continuities inside the G1 cartoon because the Constructicons have three origins, even though it doesn't make sense for them to have three origins. So things don't match up between Prime and WFC and the books! This is what happens when Hasbro is more concerned with having a book and a video game and a cartoon and a live action movie than with their other shit. Frankly, I kind of wish Hasbro would just stand back and go back to what we know they do well--make good toys. Hell, I'm sure even if Hasbro assigned one or two guys *specifically* to watch the development of all these separate things and make sure not one single thing contradicted each other, there'd be things they would miss.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by Shockwave »

I cared back in the day when I was watching it growing up. Which was why I preferred the comic continuity better. At least it kept shit straight (story wise, not coloring. Nelson Yomtov couldn't color a paint by numbers set much less a comic, how he got the job is beyond me. I did better coloring in coloring books at age ten). But the cartoon inconsistencies were to the point where it was like listening to a story from the Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future from ATHF. "Thousands of years ago in the distant future in a land that time forgot to remember... to forget." Yeah, it just wasn't even a coherent story anymore and, while entertaining, I never took it seriously.

As for Rumble, at least they CONSISTENTLY got that wrong. To the point where one can legitimately claim that Rumble is blue. In that continuity.
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Re: What do TF:P, WFC,TF:U and Exile have to do with each ot

Post by BWprowl »

One way I heard this explained a while ago was to compare it to the G1 cartoon and comic. Those were two things that were supposed to be the same, but were different. In the same way that the Sunbow cartoon and the Marvel comic had the same core ideas and were supposed to be mostly telling the same thing but ended up being really different, the ‘Aligned’ novels, games, and cartoon were all built to kinda work from the same stuff, but have ended up doing their own things. Like Six mentioned, you could compare it to the schism between the UT comics and cartoons, or the differences between toy-continuity Beast Wars, and the cartoon, and the manga, which all had the same basic ideas, but vastly different interpretations.

That said, I think I’m with everyone else in that I greatly preferred Hasbro’s old “Everything counts, even if it’s not in continuity with everything else that counts” approach. It was surprisingly elegant, in that you didn’t have to work overtime to track down what was or wasn’t canon if you were into that sort of thing. This new thing they’re trying just seems so…half-assed.

In this case, by the way, it’s at least nice to talk to people who aren’t somehow hopelessly convinced that War for Cybertron is supposed to be in-continuity with the G1 cartoon. *sigh*
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