Story continuity and an open letter to George Lucas…

Ah my old…friend. Story continuity. I’ve never written an article about story continuity before; I’ll have to be careful. Pauses for LOLs. I love media of all kinds. Books, comic books, magazines, movies, videogames, televisions shows, on and on it goes. Most of these media types tell stories and I mean fiction. I have no interest in based on a true story.  Im here for entertainment. That being said, continuity is the second most important thing a story can have. It is of vital importance. Without Continuity you have nothing. I can’t stress this enough and I fail to understand why people don’t see failures in story continuity as the unforgivable mistake I assign them. Let me explain…

Read the following paragraph…
Ex. 1   The female jedi knight with waist length hair naturally the color of dried blood leapt over the 2 assassins with her yellow blade ignited to land behind them. They were taken totally by surprise. With two flicks of her blade two heads were separated from their bodies. Two blasters fell to the ground as nothing told the hands that held them to keep doing so. She deignited her blade and snapped the hilt on to her belt in one deft move that would have left lesser Jedi with fewer limbs. The redhead surveyed her work for a moment before leaving.

The 2nd example is a sequel to the first and involves the same female Jedi. Aren’t you excited? Did you get advance tickets?

Ex.2  The Jedi pushed both hands through her hair in frustration at the wookie diplomat she was speaking to. He was SOOO frustrating. Her naturally black hair was becoming greasy and mated by the number of times she had ran her hands through her it. The Wookie made a slashing gesture with his mechanical arm to emphasize a point he was trying to make with the Jedi. She was glad that she didn’t have any mechanical limbs. The loss of a limb would undoubtedly affect her midiclorian count thereby having the effect of diminishing her influence with the Force. She toyed with the idea briefly of decapitating the diplomat with her emerald bladed lightsaber but decided it wasn’t in the best spirit of the Jedi code.

Okay so the sequel to Ex. 1 is full of continuity flaws.  She now has naturally black hair instead of dark red, her lightsaber is green not yellow and she now has two arms instead of just one. Now let’s assume that ex. 1 and ex.2 are not paragraphs but books that you have purchased. (More on that later.) Some of you may be wondering what the hell I’m talking about when I mentioned our Jedi example had two arms instead of one. That was not established or reversed in either example. (Back to that in a sec.)

So our examples are books that we have bought. Book 1 was great and we loved it and it was re-read and money well-spent. Life was good. Then we heard about book 2. Same author? Yes! Comes out later, oh whats the story going to be, sounds interesting. Later, the day comes and we get book 2 and read it. Wait, she has black hair? I thought she was a redhead…wasn’t her lightsaber a different color.
Do you know what the publisher of these books has said to me?

1. The customer will not realize there is a mistake. So who cares?
2. The popularity of the first book guarantees sales so who cares?
3. The time you spent reading the first book was unimportant to us. We have your money for the first book and now the second.
4. We have your money.

This is what I “hear” when I experience continuity flaws. I mean they have changed what happened.  So the first book didn’t count? I wasted my time reading it and the time it took to earn the money to buy it? Not to mention the money it’s self. I wasted the time it took to go to the store? I wasted the time reading about the book in the first place?

Yes. This is what people say to me with continuity flaws. You care nothing about me only my patronage.

Now the two examples of continuity flaws I have are minor and deal with the color of things. Red or black hair, green or yellow blade, not major considerations. These would bug me but I could live with them. Maybe she has a different Lightsaber now and the hair thing was an honest mistake. Im not a complete zealot on this matter. I tend to make up my own retcon for these inconsistencies and I can live with them.

Lucasfilm does the same thing. When Attack of the Clones came out Boba Fett’s origin was completely changed from what had been already established. He used to be a man by the name of Jasteer Mareel (or something like that, Im not looking it up). After AotC came out this was changed into that Boba let people believe the stories that he was Jasteer. It added to his mystique. Now while I prefer things the way they were originally I am grateful for the retcon explanation, it fixes what was now a continuity flaw. (*)I could, if I were unwise, make a couple of assumptions about this.

1. The continuity flaw was unintentional.
2. They cared enough to fix it as best they could. (Why fix it if you don’t? why even address it?)

I have been unwise before as I will no doubt be again; which brings us to why I am writing an article about the importance of continuity. The Clone Wars episode The Mandalore Plot has story continuity errors with already established EU that you could drive a fleet of Death Stars through. The errors involved Mandalorian society, history, names and events. So this is what Lucasfilm told me when I was watching that episode.

1. Anything that conflicts with what you see in this episode is wrong.
2. All the money you spent on these items was wasted and helped make this episode. So we spent your money on an episode that says to you that we don’t care about you at all.
3. All the time you spent enjoying those products was based on a lie.
4. All the time you spent defending the integrity of the story was wasted.

This is why story continuity is so important. Without it these are the things you are telling me. I realize I live in corporate America and money is the bottom line but I really thought there were still a few that were different. Yes, even cynical me thought that.

However the episode it’s self is proof that I was wrong from the beginning. How is that? I will explain. There are two references to the previously established continuity that this episode mars IN THE EPISODE! That means the writers were well aware of the established story and didn’t care. I don’t know if they think some reference to what they were destroying was going to appease me but it does not. All that it means to me is you are acknowledging the fact that you are aware you are writing things that directly conflict with what’s already been established and you don’t give a shit.

This is my time and money you are wasting and all you have to say is “I don’t give a shit.” Because that’s what Im hearing. I’ve spent it’s entire life as a Star Wars fan and any geek knows that’s not the easiest social convention to adapt to. I’ve defended it to the naysayers all that time as well. I, the one that loves the special editions and the prequels and the clone wars too. But what you’re saying is that none of that mattered because nothing you bought involving Madalorian connections to Star Wars matters.

Writing is what you enjoy probably and it’s also your job. Why aren’t you fired for making mistakes? I’m fired from my job if I make mistakes.

This is what you say to me with continuity flaws. It’s a lazy, disrespectful, ugly, assanine, unmotivated, ill-prepared and sloppy way to write. Unintentional flaws though irksome are forgivable assuming you did do proof reading and fact checking. Intentional continuity flaws? There is a special place in hell for you and all you get to write are tampon commercials.

I have been a lifelong and dedicated Star Wars fan. I was there for the original trilogy. I was there for the special editions.** I was there for the Prequels*** and up until this moment I was there for the Clone Wars and I loved it all. I defended all of it especially the prequels to the haters. But people’s objections to the prequels, special editions and the Clone Wars had very little to do with continuity flaws and more with their preconceived notion of what Star Wars should be.  There are articles that I have written about that whole scenario so I won’t touch on it here.

(At this point it is assumed you either know the author or have read fuck the haters, by the author)

The continuity flaw in The Mandalore Plot is the largest one introduced by George that I know of. You now know the importance Star Wars holds for me. I don’t see how these flaws could have been introduced without George’s knowledge. If it didn’t have references to the existing history in it I could believe George didn’t know but those references are proof he does. Star Wars is my religion, my belief system, my happy place…whatever you want to call it. It has kept me from completely loosing it for over 30 years.
What has George said to me?

1. Anything that conflicts with what you see in this episode is wrong.
2. All the money you spent on these items was wasted and helped me make this episode. So I spent your money on an episode that says to you that I don’t care about you at all.
3. All the time you spent enjoying those products was based on a lie.
4. All the time you spent defending the integrity of the story was wasted.
5. All the shit you’ve taken over the years defending the story means nothing to me.

So it’s finally happened where the person I looked up to in the world, the last human outside of friends and family to have my respect, my hero…has let me down. I will continue to watch, read and buy Star Wars because it’s what I do. But ever since this happened whenever I see something Star Wars now it doesn’t seem as bright.

Addendum (added several weeks later)

I kept hoping I was somehow wrong. That Lucas had not simply ignored things he found inconvenient. He had given permission for these things to be written. Why go back later and completely ignore facts that had already been established. As a writer I could not believe Lucas, my personal hero would do this. I went looking for proof. I found it…

I could not believe I had found this. George Lucas and Dave Filoni were well aware of the continuity flaws they had introduced and decided to ignore it. I still can’t believe this. I was so angry and so disappointed by this it took me awhile to return to writing this document.

I can’t believe Lucas just purposely trashed all the writing that had been done about the Mandalorian people. Star wars was my thing. The one thing that has ALWAYS been there. It was my larger than life happy place and Lucas destroyed that. With one 22 minute episode he destroyed everything I’ve been enjoying and defending for over 30 years.

I thought he was different. I was wrong.

There is no one out there whose bottom line isn’t money and themselves. George is the corporate tool everyone has already said he is. He doesn’t care about anything.
I wont defend Lucas anymore.
I wont defend Lucas' movies.
I will not teach my children about Lucas.

I thought he was different.

P.S. (Saving the pieces)

So I still love Star Wars…I’ve decided to make a personal Star Wars Canon timeline. George may have been the last person on Earth I respected but he will not take Star Wars from me. I will decide what has and has not occurred in Star Wars…any aberrations are alternate timelines…or something. I can’t give up Star Wars. Cutting off all my limbs with a bar of soap would be easier.

So George all I ever wanted to do was meet you, extend my hand and thank you for entertaining me throughout my life. Now I hate you, you’ve taken away something precious from me and you can’t undo it. My life is emptier now thanks to you.

(I put the reference in there to midiclorians just to piss off you prequel haters.)
* Lucasfilm has done this on several occasions, even going so far as to fix/address continuity flaws that exist in the 77-83 trilogy. It was one of the things I really loved about Lucasfilm.