Quote:
Originally Posted by JLvatron
Approved and cannon are completely different things.
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For, say, Star Wars and Star Trek, this is true. Both of those franchises will officially declare sections of approved fiction non-canon (Trek does this) or "less canon" (the Wars approach, giving movies a higher level of "canon" than the eight jillion comics and books and RPGs and video games and etc).
Transformers, however... has no such edicts. Hasbro or Takara have never said "no, this doesn't count", and it's highly unlikely they ever will. Both have in fact gone to great lengths to be as fictionally all-inclusive as possible... Takara more maddeningly obsessive, given the colosso-G1 ultimate timeline they put out a year or so ago online and through Kiss Players, which ties pretty much
everything outside of the Unicron Trilogy stories into a single uber-G1 series... and also retcons Galaxy Force as a post-Super Link series. Self-reference, epsecially obscure self-reference, has become the order of the day.
Basically, everything approved IS canon. It may contradict another piece; the Hasbro toy-packaging ad copy, Takara cartoons, Takara manga, 3H comics, IDW comics and FP comics/video to the base Beast Wars cartoon continuity are all irreconcilable with each other to varying degrees, but all are BW canon. It may be a "splinter timeline", a "what if", a sidestep (like the UK comic additions to the Marvel run). It may not apply to a certain "continuity family" (RiD is basically its own animal, though Car Robots isn't anymore). Oftentimes a lone piece of TF canon will not even agree with
itself (cartoon Constructicon origins, anyone?).
TF canon is (and always has been) basically a gigantic plate of spaghetti, only some of the noodles splinter off, join other noodles, mobius in on themselves, and are probably also loaded with quantum. BW took both the irreconcilable cartoon and comic G1 as its vaguely-defined backstory, after all.
It may not work with some other piece... but it be all canon. Yes, even Beast Within, help us all.
And by the way... yes, when someone is telling blatant falsehoods -not "technicalities", but completely contradictory-toreality accounts- about what someone has said about their own work, one should not be surprised if the person who is being misrepresented will speak up... and that knows no national borders.
And if a script is available for the TFcon reading, I'm sure it'd be an interesting read. It's honestly good to see a fan-run convention do well... it's the mark of a healthy franchise. When fan-run shows are no longer able to support themselves, then I begin to worry about the strength of the brand.
- GS