Origins of Ventress

From here, a note from Dave Filoni (producer of the new Clone Wars CGI stuff) about the origins of Asajj Ventress. Given that I've already heard uninformed suggestions that she's an EU character so George is gung-ho for the EU, here's a bit of extra info to again demonstrate how uninformed such opinions are:

"Ventress was a character that was actually developed for early concept art for Attack of the Clones. There was the idea that maybe the Sith apprentice, the new one after Darth Maul, would be a girl. That got abandoned eventually in favor of Count Dooku, Christopher Lee's character. But the concept art existed. And the comic books and novels of The Clone Wars that were done, had utilized that character, that concept art and created this new character...so when it came time to develop the idea of The Clone Wars as a series, we thought, well, that's a big fan favorite character. So let's draw her out. And it just so happened that we were introducing Ahsoka at the same time, so here you have these two new girls coming into this story at the same time, which there's actually kind of an advantage to. Because you have one that's the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker, trying to train in the traditional ways of a Jedi, and that's the hidden apprentice of Count Dooku, who's the evil, opposite end. So that actually works really nicely for the story that we're trying to tell."

SW Quote Lists Updated

According to my count I'm up to 74 non-hearsay quotes on the chronological page, and it would be higher for this year if I wasn't a slacker. I primarily focused on the Lucas quotes, though I do kinda wish I'd added that recent Chee quote about the novels.

Oh crap, fine. 75 is a nicer, rounder sort of number. You guilted me into it. Ass.

Anyway, the new quotes also appear on the ranked quotes page.

Eventually . . . maybe circa 2013 . . . I'll get around to updating the Overview mega-page and its shorter brethren. Nothing on it (save for some of the TV show stuff) is out of date, mind you . . . I just like the idea of spamming purists and EU completists with overwhelming amounts of evidence.

Chee on the Clone Wars Movie Novelization

While we know from Lucas that the Clone Wars CGI movie and the series are his babies and a part of his Star Wars universe, there was some question remaining. Whereas the novelizations of the two film trilogies were all overseen by Lucas (he even had his name put on one that someone else wrote), I'd heard nothing about how the novelization for the Clone Wars CGI flick was being handled, other than the fact that Karen Traviss was writing it.

It appears, however, that Traviss is not getting the sort of direct access and notes and editing from Lucas that the film novelization authors enjoyed. In other words, this novelization appears to be strictly an EU piece based on the scripts.

This information comes from Leland Chee, who recently stated:

Regarding The Clone Wars movie novelization, these were done a bit differently than our prequel trilogy novels (I'm not exactly sure how it was handled in the OT novels). For the prequel trilogy novels, each of the authors met directly with George Lucas to discuss story points and character motivations. The Clone Wars is more of an interpretation of the movie script (actually more like a hybrid of the individual episodic scripts which make up the movie including scenes that were done for the episodes but were cut from the movie as well as scenes that were created specifically for the movie that weren't in the individual episodes). There also wasn't any direct contact this time around between the novelization author and George Lucas or the writers and director.

Given that, it seems rather unlikely that the Traviss materials will count in the Lucas universe.

( ... Which is a damn shame, really, 'cause several of the really crazy EU Completists I've dealt with also loathe Traviss, and I would've derived secret, evil pleasure from watching the coronary events her work's elevation would've produced.)

(Oh crap, did I say that out loud? :) )

Trinity Report From Australia, Et Cetera

The fans are part of a Star Wars-built network Lucas divides into the father (films and TV), the son (licenced spins offs such as video games, books and comics) and the holy ghost (the fans and the internet).

‘‘Everything in the father's world is consistent, mainly because I know it so well,'' he says.

‘‘The son's world pretty much do their own thing. Once in a while they will check if they can kill off a main character, but otherwise they don't really talk to me much, and if I were to find out what was going on there there's actually an encylopedia of who does what to whom we can look up.

‘‘Then we have the holy ghost and that's the internet and all the fans, and they make up their own stories, and their own world, most of which we don't even know about. There is a giant mythology going on that is bigger than me.''

(link)

There's also some interesting detail in the fact that this Trinity stuff is getting passed around far and wide. Hardcore EU Completists will have greater and greater difficulty convincing Star Wars fans of EU supremacy when folks have that little idea in the back of the head.

Defense of Chee

Episode MXXIX: Attack of the EU Continuity Fans

LOL Internet War! The . . .

Oh wait, next movie, sorry.

There is unrest on the StarWars.com Message Boards. Several thousand pounds' worth of fanboy has declared their intention to stop reading the EU.

This Separatist movement, under the caloric intake of the mysterious Count Chocula, has made it difficult for the limited number of people named Leland to maintain peace and order in the galaxy.

People are giving Leland Chee a bit of grief regarding the necessary changes to the EU in light of the new Clone Wars series (which doesn't even begin to cover the live-action one coming in 2006 2007 2008 2010).

Chee has acknowledged that there will be some retcon action happening, including a compression of the existing timeline of EU Clone Wars materials to try to make everything jive with George's universe.

(Not-A-Quote-of-Leland: "Dammit! We thought this was over with! Revenge of the Sith, he said, he was gonna be leaving us alone! Messing with Red Tails and a bunch of hippie arthouse crap and ... just dammit! Curse you, George Lucas, for such extraordinary job security!")

More than one EU fan has expressed consternation, if not pure outrage, at how Lucas is purportedly going to be ignoring the existing EU coverage of the era. Not satisfied with his borrowing of characters from the comics (e.g. Ventress) or the CW producers' attempts to make the show EU-inclusive such as they can, the hardcore EU-philes are out for blood-o'a (or buy'cese of tal, if you will).

In the midst of this climate of outrage, a voice cried out from the internet ether. "Stop, ye angry bitches, and listen! For I am He of the Timeline Gold, and I speaketh to thee thus!" (Also not a quote.)

(This is a quote:)

Sounds like a lot of the same angst that I've been feeling is bubbling up again, but let's try to keep this in perspective, folks.

This is me saying this. Many of you know me, or the online SW community "me," at least. With 1500+ pages of the Star Wars Timeline Gold and nearly 11 years of the Star Wars Timeline Project under my belt, I'm about as continuity minded as they come, but I also attempt to approach things with some intellectual honesty.

If we are being intellectually honest, then we have to recognize a few things:

1. Dark Horse, Del Rey, etc. could not have known how the Clone Wars era would be tweaked by this new film and TV series when they were publishing the Clone Wars materials circa 2002 - 2005. Fans of the film and TV series should not turn their ire there.

2. By the same token, we, as fans, and the EU creators (Dark Horse, Del Rey, etc.) have always known, if being intellectually honest, that there is George Lucas' vision of SW, and there is the Expanded Universe, and those are not always in line with each other. The EU has been influenced by Lucas, and he has, at times, been influenced by the EU, but it is Lucas' sandbox. When he tweaked some ideas with TPM, they were tweaked in the EU. Then AOTC and ROTS did the same, and they were tweaked. That's how it is, and the moment we heard of new Lucas-driven projects, we knew that some retconning would be necessary. This is no surprise, and Lucas cannot be blamed for exercising his creative rights over the saga he created.

3. Leland Chee here has been perhaps the greatest boon to fans of continuity in all 30+ years of Star Wars continuity publications. He juggles things an impossible amount of information to do what is, in all honesty, an impossible task: to keep it all straight and make it all fit. He does, however, do this job with aplomb, taking the time to speak with fans, and seems to truly love the saga, as we do. As such, no one could have a 100% success rate, but he certainly gains higher marks than most others in his position would be able to garner.

But yea, verily, the complaints continued to flow, and thus spake He of the Timeline Gold to the masses again, and all was settled:

As much as I do think that he could have worked within continuity if he really wanted to, there's a few things to keep in mind that, frankly, somewhat make that point of view a bit extreme.

1. Lucas has said for YEARS that there's "his world" and the EU's "world," and Lucasfilm has said the same. Whether it was the years where it was called "canon" and "quasi-canon" or "Canon" and "Official" or "G, T, C, S, N-Canons," or as simple as his references to "three pillars" or a Holy Trinity analogy, they have made it abundantly clear for a very long time that Lucas views the saga as separate and distinct from the EU materials. In a sense, he views them as different realities, timelines, universes, or whatever other term you prefer. In his mind, creating new stories for his "pillar" of the saga is *not* trampling over fans' beloved EU continuity. It is, instead, adding another chapter in "his" story, while the EU continues to provide new chapters in "their" story. As such, I wouldn't think he would necessary expect the EU to be shuffled around to accomodate his new chapters in the story, so much as he considers it a separate issue. It is Lucasfilm who decides to build upon that vision and integrate it with what has already been published, and Lucasfilm takes some liberties with how to fit it all together, such as how they dealt with the ever-changing background and eventual fate of Boba Fett.

2. From a business perspective, EU fans do matter, but, frankly, EU fans are not the target audience. The mainstream public is the target audience. As much as there is a huge SW fan base out there that takes continuity very seriously, there is a much, Much, MUCH larger SW fan base out there that has very little knowledge of the EU and simply enjoys new SW tales on the big screen, television, etc. The goal is to reach out to broader audiences, as any business must. The same could be said for, as an example, the Legend of Zelda video game series. That continuity is truly insane and basically impossible to figure out because of retellings, revisionist history, etc. that makes the saga, if you try to include all of the games, virtually incomprehensible, but while that irks some hardcore Zelda fans, the target audience is the mainstream video gaming public, who just want an awesome new Zelda game. Thus, we get more Zeldas, and that continuity gets more convoluted. We have, frankly, been spoiled in that Lucasfilm *has* tried to make things work together in *almost* every case, when most Sci-Fi series (with a few exceptions like Babylon 5) don't even remotely consider their published spin-off materials to be in-continuity *at all*.

3. As someone who has written fiction works before, including some that I have expanded upon with other stories, I have been in the position myself of having people ask me if they can create works that tie into those stories I've crafted. While I might someday say, yeah, sure, go ahead, I am fully aware that I have a sense of ownership over what I have created, and if I want to create something new to go along with it, it is my perogative. I might consider what someone else has created for that world, but I certainly would not be bound by it, as I hold the creative rights to what I created in the first place. That isn't throwing one's weight around or being haughty about it. That is a creative individual deciding to expand upon his own creations in a way that goes along with his creative vision for that story.

The moment one starts to chastise or get upset at someone exercising their creative rights to their own "creative worlds," we take several dozen steps backward in the realm of creator's rights that so many have fought for over the years. For decades, for example, comic book writers could create a character that might become extremely successful, but the characters were owned by the *company*, rather than the actual creator. The companies got rich. The creators were paid what amounts in the film industry to "scale," standard pay. It took the tenacity of independent publishers and the industry-shaking formation of Image Comics to break that stranglehold on that particular industry and make creative rights an issue in the limelight. In the era of the internet, intellectual property rights are becoming even more important, so much so that copyright laws around the world are being amended and updated rather frequently to make sure that those who create original works have those works protected and their creative rights to expand upon those works retained.

I am just as frustrated by how The Clone Wars is going to shuffle continuity around as anyone, just as I wanted to pull my hair out over Jedi vs. Sith being overwritten by Path of Destruction or the clash between Labyrinth of Evil and the original Clone Wars cartoons. Heck, it was my vehemence when Dark Horse was having issues (no pun intended) with SW comic copy editing, missed release dates, and so forth that somehow (in a comedic sort of way) led to me writing for Tales. For a while there, I was vocal, vehement, and people *really* disliked me.

But, y'know, you have to pick your battles, and those battles need to be on solid ground. Any "battle" within fandom that begins with "How DARE Lucas do such and such with his own creation?" is not an intellectually honest foundation upon which to build.

So it was that overzealous EU Completist wankery received blows rained upon it, and its smiting was complete.

(For like an hour, anyway . . . it'll come back again soon enough I'm sure. Bad ideas don't die abruptly . . . they die slowly, over time, even if the supporting arguments (and even raison d’être) are soundly and publicly vanquished.)

Special thanks to the above-quoted Nathan Butler, who discovered around the same time I did that the correct answer to 'the canon question' was dual continuities, and who most infuriatingly always seems to state the concept better than I could ever hope to. I mean really . . . the nerve! ;)

Lucas & Comics

An interesting exchange amongst the Comic-Con panel, confirming stuff we already knew. For instance, George's interest in the comics (which apparently constitutes his primary intake of EU material).

It's interesting, too, to see how some people in the production staff keep trying to work EU material in, since it is almost absent from the Lucas stories.:

Sansweet: So you guys are pretty familiar with the comics and the novels. What happens when you present an expanded universe character who’s never really had much of a role in Star Wars? How did you come up with the idea of using Asajj Ventress as a major villain?

Gilroy: George is a fan of the comics. He would look through the comics and say, “wow, this is a really interesting character, visually. Let’s see that character.” There’s a few that I think the fans of the comics are going to love to watch the series. You’re going to see some of your favorite characters.

Filoni: We have to bring some of it in front of him too. We would work with a certain idea, and go onto Wookieepedia and print out all the pages and say, are you aware of all this material out there, and See what he wasn’t aware of and wasn’t aware of, and take what we wanted to do and try to do a version of something to keep it all together, because Star Wars has expanded so far. Every now and then you run into a Boba Fett scenario, where we didn’t know he was a clone, and the Jaster Mereel, and now he’s not, and now he’s a clone. And then we call Leland Chee and it’s his problem.

From the sound of things, we largely have George doing his own thing and then various folks bringing in EU stuff trying to get it in, with the exception of when he is enchanted by something from the comics (like hot blue Twilek chicks). Reportedly, a few aspects of EU backstory are going to make it into the show, such as Dooku's wealthy family from Serenno (which, in a similar manner, made it into the RotS novelization because the author was trying to keep EU continuity).

So on the one hand, vast portions of the EU are being trounced (much to the chagrin of assorted EU-philes, as noted in previous postings), but some convenient elements are coming in to the wider canon with George's blessing. Sounds good.

Yet Another Lucas Trinity-style Quote

(Source)

“I am the father of our Star Wars movie world - the filmed entertainment, the features and now the animated film and television series,” he says. “And I’m going to do a live-action television series. Those are all things I am very involved in: I set them up and I train the people and I go through them all. I’m the father; that’s my work. Then we have the licensing group, which does the games, toys and books, and all that other stuff. I call that the son - and the son does pretty much what he wants.” He laughs. “Once in a while, they ask a question like ‘Can we kill off Yoda?’, things like that, but it’s very loose.

“Then we have the third group, the holy ghost, which is the bloggers and fans. They have created their own world. I worry about the father’s world. The son and holy ghost can go their own way.”

Lucas also discusses the live-action series, using terminology together that has previously been used as individual micro-snippets by journalists, which had left some confusion as to the canon status of the CW CGI series and the live-action series. To wit:

Lucas has now finished with the live- action films, although the wider Star Wars universe remains very much alive. In terms of fresh storytelling, Lucas has overseen production on The Clone Wars, a 3-D animated movie, out here next month, which will launch an animated television show on the Cartoon Network this autumn; and he has already started work on a live-action Star Wars television series, which will go into production in 2009.

“It’s completely separate from the Star Wars films,” he explains. “The Clone Wars has all of the characters everybody knows — from Yoda to Anakin to Mace Windu to Obi-Wan — they’re all there. The live-action series, meanwhile, has nobody there, because it’s after Episode III, so everybody’s dead, basically, or hiding somewhere. You hear about the emperor, just like you do in Episode IV, but it’s mostly about a whole different world. I mean, there are a million stories in the big city — you’ve only seen one of them.”

What we see above is the "completely separate" line, but also the "million stories in the big city" line. Before Lucas clarified things with the three-pillars/Trinity business, these statements had left things unclear. But then, his involvement was unclear at the time, too*, so who knows?

In any case, for the time being we have it with certainty that the live-action show will be Lucas-canon, with the same being true for the Clone Wars CGI show.

* This isn't our own ignorance . . . it really was up in the air. Take, for instance, these statements by Sansweet and CW CGI producer Catherine Winder:

Sansweet: Catherine, initially when you were hired, what was the expectations for George’s direct participation in Clone Wars, and how and why did that change?

Winder: Intially, I was told no one was quite clear
how involved George was going to be. We might see him once a year, once
a month, we’d find out as we went along. As we started developing the
project and he started seeing the material, he became more and more
excited by what we were doing and started coming around a lot, because
he was having lots and lots of fun with us. One of the eureka moment
was that we did a short little test where we lit Yoda with our new
painterly style, and he just walked across this one spot, and George
looked it and he went crazy. He was so excited to see what we were
doing, it was beginning to achieve that unique look that he was hoping
for us to come up with.

Majel on Gene on Trek post-Roddenberry

"Recalls Barrett: 'I was the only little voice from the original series going around the country saying, 'Give The Next Generation a chance! It's gonna be marvelous!' The other seven [original cast members] were saying, 'They can't replace us! We know you fans aren't going to tolerate this!' Well, the fans are now willing to admit they made a mistake -- so they're tolerant and willing to see what this Voyager thing is.'

And what would the maestro have thought? 'Gene reached the point where he felt he'd done enough. He was retired and was resigned to the fact [Berman] would go on without him. When Rick talked about [the possibility of] doing a third series, Gene just said, 'Go with God, I wish you well.'"

- Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Grande Dame of the Galaxy, May 1994 - "Mrs. Roddenberry Speaks Her Mind", TV Guide (May 14-20), p. 28

T-Canon and CWAS Continuity

While I'd tried to keep myself mostly unspoiled regarding the Clone Wars animated series, after inadvertently finding myself with the trailer before me recently I decided to go looking. And, as it happened, some of the conversation occurred among hardcore EU-philes.

The basic feelings I've seen from them overall range from excitement to alarm to rage, with most on the latter end of the spectrum. Apparently what little information has emerged thus far already ends up "stomping" all over the EU stories from the Clone Wars era, much to the annoyance of EU fans.

Chances are it will only get worse. The prequels required a great deal of EU retconning, but that was only six hours or so worth of film. As one fellow put it, "the TV show only needs to
go 16 episodes to match that, meaning that even one full season of the
show* will have more screentime--and thus introduce more content for
the books to hew to--than the prequels combined."

Given that Lucas doesn't pay too much attention to the EU, this does not bode especially well for EU-Completism-based continuity efforts.

We haven't heard much from Lucas Licensing about this. No doubt at present they are still busy with Indy tie-ins, but with the Clone Wars coming in August they're undoubtedly at work with that as well.

We've known for some time from continuity database coordinator and "Keeper of the Holocron" Leland Chee that the new Lucas-helmed TV titles would be considered "T-Canon" at Licensing, which seemed to just be a sort of holding area for television product until they figured out what to do with it. While I don't pay terribly much attention to the old 'GCSN' rankings for Licensing canon (where G is from Lucas, C is EU, N is non-continuity, et cetera), the emergence of a new level is interesting.

Circa March 17, Chee stated that "T-canon falls between G and C". In May, he noted that it was not EU, and then pointed out (in keeping with Lucas's recent assorted "three pillars" comments) that it was part of the Lucas pillar.

With so much from the Lucas universe coming down the pike, it may become harder and harder for the Licensing universe to retcon itself into consistency. Granted, this need not be an issue, given that Chee has already stated that the EU has some intentional, selected inconsistencies with what Lucas has created. However, the farther they diverge, the harder it will be for EU Completists to maintain their Lucas-discredited claim that it's all one big happy universe.

Lucas: EU is "sandbox", still "no story" past RotJ

More from Lucas (hat tip: "Mange")

George Lucas: 'Star Wars' won't go beyond Darth Vader

The saga resumes in August, but don't expect any new ending from George Lucas.

By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 7, 2008

Thanks to CGI animation, the "Star Wars" saga is coming back to theaters this summer -- but George Lucas said fans shouldn't get their hopes up about any future films that take the epic beyond the point of Darth Vader's death at the end of "Return of the Jedi."

In other words, it ends with the Ewoks.

"Whatever it is that happens afterward," the 63-year-old filmmaker said, "that isn't the core 'Star Wars' story that I like to tell."

The stories that do interest Lucas are the ones that take place before Anakin Skywalker dons the ebony mask of Darth Vader, which is why he and his 5-year-old Lucasfilm Animation venture will add a seventh feature film to the "Star Wars" canon on Aug. 15 with "The Clone Wars."

The movie has been produced with state-of-the-art computer-generated animation and voice actors, including Samuel L. Jackson, reprising his Mace Windu character, and Anthony Daniels as the familiar voice of C-3P0.

The fact that Daniels is back raises the idea that this new approach could provide a digital fountain-of-youth for other original trilogy actors, such as Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, who haven't been in the universe of the Jedi since they frolicked with the furry Ewoks on the forested moon of Endor at the end of "Return of the Jedi" in 1983.

If there's any force behind that concept, Lucas isn't feeling it.

"There really isn't any story to tell there," the filmmaker said. "It's been covered in the books and video games and comic books, which are things I think are incredibly creative but that I don't really have anything to do with other than being the person who built the sandbox they're playing in."

In the non-film versions of the saga, for instance, Han Solo and Princess Leia marry and have three children, one of them named Anakin after his notorious grandfather. All of it has been popular with core fans, but Lucas doesn't see any upside to extending the tale past the leafy luau on Endor where Vader's corpse was torched.

"I get asked all the time, 'What happens after "Return of the Jedi"?,' and there really is no answer for that," he said. "The movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that's where that story ends."

The "Clone Wars" film in August will lead into a weekly animated television series of the same title that will air on both the Cartoon Network and TNT beginning in the fall. The new film and series will fill in gaps between "Episode II: Attack of the Clones" and "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" with stories of Anakin, Padmé Amidala, Count Dooku and other second-trilogy characters.

" 'The Clone Wars' is a lot of fun for me, because in the normal course of the Skywalker saga, what happened during the Clone Wars is never told -- we see a little of the beginning and a little of the end, but other than that, it's skipped over," Lucas said.

"Obviously, during a war, there are lots and lots of stories, there's action, there's drama, there's heartbreak and sometimes there's comedy. Anakin was a part of the Clone Wars, so it makes a certain sense to tell these stories, because they ultimately do affect him."

Basically, Lucas is expanding his own universe, telling stories that affect Anakin. He's not moving past RotJ, because Anakin (the guy who is the core story) is dead after that, and so Lucas has nothing noteworthy to tell.

The sandbox reference is also fantastic, and is a perfect analogy. A literal sandbox is a designated area for play, one where the mess is kept. This concept has been used elsewhere . . . for instance, in software and security to describe a contained virtual space for testing unsafe or simply untested code without harming anything else. Wikipedia even has a sandbox, defined as "a page where users are free to experiment with codes without destroying or damaging any legitimate content." There is also the term "sandbox effect" for a theory of Google's operation featuring a 'holding area', from which a new page must graduate (i.e. once it is established as appropriate) before it gets ranked. There is also "sandbox therapy", which allows children (and/or those who cannot otherwise express issues) a way to create a world from their own experiences using toy people and such. Last but not least there are so-called "literary sandboxes", basically a place for writers to play and experiment.

In all cases, the sandbox is basically a container, separate from the rest of the world. In all cases the results are, like a sand castle, non-permanent . . . or, more accurately, non-binding on the real world.

In essence . . . a parallel universe.