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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Remember folks, mercilessly beating up unarmed citizens for espousing a relatively nonmalicious, if economically flawed, view is totally patriotic and heroic! Just follow good ol' Cap's example.
Like how Superman taught us how to "slap a Jap" back in World War II.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
x4 Yeah, but I think that would make the entire idea of a Shared Universe even more confusing. There'd be the Iron Man from Spider-Man's continuity, the Iron Man from Captain America's continuity, the Iron Man from Iron Man's continuity...
Or I guess they could just go with Status Quo Is God, but that'd limit the kinds of stories they could tell. Or they could do away with the Shared Universe altogether and have each superhero be separate, but that's not really how Marvel rolls...
edited 28th Jan '15 8:46:55 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.
So that would be Status Quo Is God, then? Is Iron Man allowed to have character development? Can that development be apparent outside his own series, or is that too much continuity? Is he forced to wear the same costume forever so he can be universal in all appearances outside Iron Man comics?
edited 28th Jan '15 8:44:39 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.Character development is fine, I think. Costume changes are fine. Continuity and canon aren't the same thing, really.
Like, Doctor Who has character development despite having basically no canon. So it can work.
It's when you get into "Okay, let's kill this guy. Shit why did we kill him. Let's bring him back! Quick! Come up with a stupid explanation for it!" that it gets annoying.
edited 28th Jan '15 8:47:45 PM by Mukora
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."I have mixed feelings about that approach. On the one hand it would settle all canon and continuity debates once and for all. On the other hand if there's no continuity you'd have to assume that any given story could happen without any other story. That makes it hard to make meaningful changes to the mythos or status quo.
I wouldn't object to the comics having less continuity, either. I try to read some of the 616 comcis, but it can be intimidating when I have to run to Marvel Wiki every two panels. But I still don't like that they're rebooting 616 and the Ultimate universe because that's probably just going to turn into DC where I have to learn the difference between pre-crisis and post-crisis and New 52 and then some post-crisis characters show back up thanks to dimension hopping and then the universe implodes again yaaaaaaay coooooomiiiiiics!
What they really ought to do is mandate that writers tailor the stories to a general audience to avoid Continuity Lock-Out.
edited 28th Jan '15 8:51:59 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.![]()
Okay, then literally nothing has any lasting significance, because it'll just at most get a Hand Wave down the line.
In theory, it ought to be possible to write stories that don't violate continuity but also don't force the reader to know the continuity in detail to understand the story.
edited 28th Jan '15 8:54:03 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.No, that's not true, but even if it was... so?
Like, you can still have entire storylines that only have continuity to themselves and it would still work. You could still have character development and stuff that exists only in the confines of that particular storyline and that would be fine. Maybe even better because it means you can pick up the first issue of any given series and not have to read 6000 previous issues for context.
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."![]()
That's probably the best approach although it isn't always possible. At this point unless you're dealing with an origin story just about any story you write will assume you have a passing familiarity with the character. They don't explain who Cap, Bucky, Agent 13, etc. are in every issue of Captain America.
How is that not true? As I understand it your basic premise is that comics should just do away with continuity and have writers do whatever stories they want. That approach basically makes every single story(or group of stories by a single author) into its own mini-universe. Sure the writer can have things grow and change in that universe but at the end of the day it doesn't matter because their story doesn't get to dictate the future direction of the book.
edit: Given the way the comic industry has been floundering I sometimes think it might be better if Marvel just quit altogether and focused entirely on adaptations into films and TV shows. They could release graphic novels occasionally but I think stuff like the MCU is where their characters have the best chance at survival.
edited 28th Jan '15 9:00:02 PM by Kostya
Again: Doctor Who. No canon. Over fifty years of TV episodes, movies, radio dramas, comics... but the characters still develop. There's still interesting things that happen. There are still callbacks and references and allusions to stuff from the series's past.
But you could watch any season or serial or radio series and basically figure out what's happening pretty quickly. And there's never a moment where they do something and feel the need to explain why that works by the rules of the universe they created- or if they do, it's a punchline or setup to a joke.
edited 28th Jan '15 9:00:53 PM by Mukora
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."
x4 It is. They're called the movies.
And there again, we see the problem. You can only go so long before there's too much continuity to keep track of and it becomes more difficult to jump in. You can watch any Phase 1 movie and be more or less totally fine. You might wonder who the guy Robert Downey Jr. is playing at the end of the Incredible Hulk is, and you should probably watch Iron Man before Iron Man 2, but you'll be pretty much okay.
But you can't really, say, follow The First Avenger directly with Winter Soldier without watching The Avengers in between. Or probably watch Age of Ultron without knowing that SHIELD no longer exists as of Winter Soldier. It's not nearly as bad as the comics, which have had monthly instalments of several series over the course of decades, especially when you can have new, unconnected things like Guardians from time to time, but it will get there eventually.
I'm confused as to why you keep insisting Doctor Who has no canon. It does. It doesn't inspire the virulent debates that other Expanded Universes tend to, but it's still there.
edited 28th Jan '15 9:05:27 PM by BadWolf21
Bullshit, Doctor Who has no canon. It has a universe, it has a history, it has a mythos, it has a reality and rules. Those things make up a canon.
My various fanfics.![]()
Well, Infinity Wars is fast approaching, and if you want to know what the Infinity Gems are, you'd better hope you watched some random movie about a space raccoon and his buddies.
edited 28th Jan '15 9:06:28 PM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.Kostya: They can't really do that, or they'd lose the trademarks on all their characters. And possibly their name.
![]()
On the other hand, Guardians is just the most recent movie to come out. At some point, someone's going to have to tell the Earth-based heroes what they are.
They can say that all they want, that doesn't stop there from being a canon.
![]()
I guess they could just roll the footage of the Infinity Gems' backstory again come Infinity War.
Canon is simply saying "This stuff happened in the universe we are describing". It tells you what's relevant to the media. Doctor Who certainly has a canon. It might be a very open and contradictory canon but it's still a canon.
Bad Wolf: Even if they're using them in the graphic novels?
edited 28th Jan '15 9:11:06 PM by Kostya

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