Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Re: Why retcons don't bother me anymore | |
| Posted By: Narcogen <narcogen@rampancy.net> | Date: 5/24/11 4:07 a.m. |
|
: I agree. There's some really interesting responses and opinions in this : thread, but I'm still firmly rooted in the canon faithful camp. That's largely a question of perspective. I also hold canon to be sacrosanct-- but for me, the canon is the games. Everything else is Extended Universe for me, and of much lesser value. When that stuff conflicts with the games, I disregard it. If it doesn't somehow enhance the games, I tend to ignore it. It's interesting to note that so far, with the exception of Cryptum, a lot of the extended materials deal with the portion of the Haloverse I find least interesting-- the UNSC-Covenant war. The discovery of Halo and the Flood is essentially the story of how that war gave way to another conflict as the center of the story, so for me, extending that part of the universe isn't as interesting as other things one might do. I find what Cryptum is doing interesting, but I think that's already been discussed. So I consider myself just as "canon faithful" as others who want to see details paid attention to-- my canon is just more tightly centered around the information about the Haloverse contained within the games, and not material wholly separate. Despite
I found it difficult to relate with the events of Reach because for the most part, they don't really matter, and affect characters we're given much less time to grow to know and like. I think ODST did a better job of this. Having read TFOR only twice I have to admit I wasn't more than vaguely aware of what the conflicts were-- but for me, these aren't conflicts with existing canon because the canonical value of a novel, like TFOR, is by its very nature provisional: it exists at the whim of the source material, created by Bungie in the form of a game. For me, canonical value is more about who than when. Reach is canon to me because Bungie made it: Halo is their creation, even if it is no longer their property (and they are no longer MS property). What additions were made by third parties, regardless of how much access or approval they were given, come a distant second. : It would be great if I could just consciously ignore fictional consistency,
If TFOR and Reach were two creations by the same group, I could see that inconsistency as being lazy. That's not the case. Those who authored, approved and published TFOR had to be aware of the risk they were running that they could be retconned. I don't believe that Halo's initial creators had a moral obligation to maintain consistency with all the spinoff material. : Of course, it's a matter of how you look at it. Some people simply find
I like consistency as well, but when it collides against other priorities it gets bumped down the list a bit. Bungie made some creative decisions with Reach that I think are defensible, even if I think the result isn't the best story in the games. : As for the claim that fictional consistency is extremely difficult or
I sort of thought it would come around to that. Hobbyists devote their leisure time to this for free, and are able to crowdsource efforts that would take a smaller group of paid individuals more calendar time to complete. I asked Stephen Loftus a related question elsewhere in the thread; I'll be curious to see his answer. Out of curiosity, was there anyone in particular at Bungie or 343i you'd care to label as incompetent? Or is it more of a general thing? There are a couple of possible answers; one is that regardless of how difficult or easy, the majority of players and readers don't care that much about all these details, or if they do, it doesn't inform their purchase decisions. So as long as successful entertainment products can be made without changing the approach to this, there won't be any changes. The other is that they do care, but that they only care to the degree that it's cost-effective. Continuity hurts, but doesn't help-- nobody starts a whisper campaign to support a spinoff novel because of its amazing continuity. A good novel with bad continuity is a good novel. A bad novel with good continuity is a bad novel. Some portion of the audience might appreciate the degree to which the author embraced and extended the universe without breaking it, but may not care too much if the characters are bland and the story uninteresting. Of course there are those who say that Reach has flaws in both areas. I just focus on the flaws it has on its own, because I sweep the novels away and measure Reach's canon up against the games, letting details from the books back in where they don't conflict. Maybe they should just have one or two
This sounds a lot like the story about the map of the world that was commissioned, that when made, occupied precisely the space it mapped, it was so accurate. : Also, I don't think the novels or ancillary material should be regarded as
That's pretty central to my view of the franchise, or indeed any franchise. Its creators are just that: its creators. Meaning is a collaboration between authors and audience. Licensed materials are, to me-- when they are additional and not the main event-- a sort of uneasy middle ground, like a quasi-official fan fiction. In fact, one of the major reasons for my having that attitude is the knowledge of how easy, and in fact inevitable, it is that such material eventually gets rescinded, superseded, or discarded. (See: Splinter of the Mind's Eye.) : There shouldn't be any conflict between them to begin with; they're all
Except that they're not. The Haloverse was made by Bungie. You can't slip all of the Haloverse into a binder, call it "The Halo Bible", give that document to somebody else, and get back a portion of the Haloverse. You're getting somebody else's idea of what the Haloverse is. Even with collaboration and approvals, there's a lot less consistency of vision once you start throwing material over the wall this way. What of the anime series, for instance, that used a series of drastically different visual styles? Aren't those differences applicable? How can things in the same, singular Halo universe look so different from one another? What about tone? The tone of the novels by Dietz, Nylund, Bear and Staten are all drastically different. To what extent are these really the same universe, and not different universes with shared traits? Or the same universe, viewed through different lenses? There's a long of she said, he said going on here-- whose take on the universe is the "right" one if not the original creators'? However, when a game
For me that's just the opposite. Those that embrace and extend should do that-- and not break. (Imagine spinoff novels labeled "Halo Compatible!") It's not the place, in my mind, for third party authors to stand in the way of the stories Bungie wants to tell in the universe they created. Doing so was a calculated risk. Asking Bungie to make a fifth Halo game, and letting them retcon TFOR, was an admission of that, I think. MS owned Halo, and Bungie was independent. Either could have refused, but the call was made. Let me underline it: I'm a Bungie fan. Not a Halo fan. I'm a Halo fan insofar as I'm a Bungie fan. Where the two roads diverge, I'm looking to see where the latter wants to lead me, and keeping a wary eye out for what the former is up to. (Note: It's worth pointing out that much of the above is applying auteur theory to the Haloverse, which is an approach I have been mostly subverting for the past week. What can I say, I'm philosophically opportunistic. What I'd say in response is that there's a difference between comparing and contrasting author theory with reader-response theory when asking how meaning is formed, and looking at licensed material, where third party contributors have a role that is not exactly author, and not exactly audience.)
| |
|
| Replies: |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |