Jutland Question

M

Mancubus

Rear Admiral
(...)from Ghorah Khar to Vukar Tagthe Jutland class carriers took the fight to the Kilrathi. We tour the last survivng example, the ex-TCS Philippine Sea to see what held her together
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now that's all the info S*S has given about the class, quite and few people here insisted it wasnt even official name before it.

Yet, while this notegives us no Idea what these ships really were, LOAF says (based on the pre S*S info I assume) that Jutland is in fakt Gettysburg modification, while with the same amount of info Standoff Team created a completely new model.

So my question is: what's a pre S*S info? where exactly it can be found?
 
In any case the information is not contradictory at all (all sources call it a carrier, WC Bible says it was based on the Waterloo hull). What happened is someone somewhere got the idea the Jutland was a fleet carrier, and arbitrarily decided such fleet carrier had to be a kitbash of the Victory and Concordia. It started off as a neat fan concept, but then some people took it a bit too seriously.
 
t.c.cgi said:
In any case the information is not contradictory at all (all sources call it a carrier, WC Bible says it was based on the Waterloo hull). What happened is someone somewhere got the idea the Jutland was a fleet carrier, and arbitrarily decided such fleet carrier had to be a kitbash of the Victory and Concordia. It started off as a neat fan concept, but then some people took it a bit too seriously.
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You know, it's really much more complicated than that. As I mention in this thread, the Bible's mention of the Jutlands as a modification of the Waterloo was noted almost immediately after the Bible showed up online, but everyone decided that this is a mistake in the Bible rather than an intentional reference.

As for how the model itself, and the Jutland's stats were developed, I don't think you give us fan project folks justice here, with your "someone got the idea" and "arbitrarily decided". You make it sound like we did this ignoring basic facts - the exact opposite is the case. If the Jutland was not a Waterloo modification (which is the conclusion reached back then), then what was it? It's a CVA, and it is mentioned in the Confed Handbook that a new design would be replacing the Bengal class. The connection was made, and we reached the conclusion - by logic, not by arbitrary "I feel like it" decisions - that Jutland class carriers are big and powerful, being in some ways superior to the Bengal class ships that they're supposed to replace. That's what we went with in Standoff, as far as stats go. In the meantime, the Saga folks (who, like Standoff, were keen to make some us of the Jutland class, and were going through these same thought processes independently of us) came up with a very pretty model for these ships. The model is, as you say, a "kitbash" of the Concordia and... errr, the Concordia class. Is this an "arbitrary decision"? Well, it certainly is a decision - reasonably, once we'd all reached the conclusion that the Jutland is a previously-unseen ship, the question of what it looked like had to be resolved one way or the other :). I don't see anything arbitrary about it, though - Lynx (who, IIRC, made the Saga model - which is also what Standoff's model is based on) very reasonably decided that a CVA in the late 2660s would share design features with other capital ships that were to be seen at that point in the timeline. He could, I suppose, have come up with a completely different design, something utterly new.... but contrary to popular belief, fan projects, as much as they want to introduce new things (that's the fun of it - and that's why, I suppose, we all wanted to use the Jutland one way or another), are generally very conservative. Our objective is to fit in as seamlessly as possible - so even when we come up with new ships, we put in a lot of effort (sometimes too much, like when we name a new capship "Targu II" just to make a reference to previous Kilrathi frigates :) ) to make it look and feel like a solid part of the universe.

(...and then, when it turns out we failed, we go and write long-winded posts to at least justify our reasoning :) )
 
Quarto said:
You know, it's really much more complicated than that.
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Of course it is. That's the caveat of generalization and fuzzy memory of a debate I didn't participate in 5 years ago. What I do remember is that it looked cool and wasn't boasting 24 PTCs in triple-mount turrets.

Quarto said:
(...and then, when it turns out we failed, we go and write long-winded posts to at least justify our reasoning :) )
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I think it's justification from the wrong angle. To state it clearly, it fits Wing Commander's aesthetics and statistics well enough that it blends in to its environment. That's a better justification for the CVA Jutland than any citation of being something briefly mentioned in the written works.
 
The Transformers Wiki has an interesting article about "personal canon". I don't want to go into details here, but its basically blending out certain facts and/or inventing others. Fanon usually just fills holes, personal canon makes you more comfortable with your favourite franchise if there's things you just don't like. While this certainly has nothing to do in discussions *about* canon, fan projects like Standoff and Saga *are* personal canon to a certain extent. I mean, there is always the danger that a future game/novel/comic/whatever renders your whole project "uncanon". Like if EA suddenly decides to publish a note that says the Hakaga carrier looked like a giant pink Hello Kitty. Ok bad example, but hopefully you get the idea. We're lucky to have a franchise with a pretty solid canon (relatively speaking), probably due to the small amount of sources (and LOAF seems to have them all down cold). But fan designs can add a lot to a canon, make it more interesting, even if it contradicts the official sources.

tl; dr: officially, the Jutland is a Waterloo class ship, but personally i don't want to miss the Saga/Standoff design.

EDIT: Here's the article if anyone's interested http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Personal_canon
 
You may like the idea of a personal canon, but if EA suddenly decides to publish a note that says the Hakaga Carrier looked like a giant "Hello Kitty". I personally am going to prepare to blow that pink bastard out of the sky..

Canon is canon is canon. there is no personal interpretation that can be considered canon

thats called mental retcon. It has nothing to do with reality in any way.
 
I'm not saying it has, but letting canon come in the way of popular design choices (and i dare to say the Jutland class is one) is something not even EA would do (That's what you call retcon then).
Maybe my lengthy post was a bit unclear, it's obvious when we're talking canon about the Jutland then we're talking Waterloo class, no doubt about it (until there is an official retcon). I'm just saying un-canonity (is that a word?) is nothing a fan project should be ashamed of, especially when it adds to the franchise.
 
I sort of doubt that any of the standoff guys or saga guys, are ashamed of their contributions to wing commander lore.. but then none of the standoff guys will claim their project is canon either.


Any sort of fan project that takes that much time and care to guess correctly has nothing to be ashamed of. They made an educated assessment which turned out to be wrong.. I don't think anyone would suggest they go back and change it now.
 
I like "Standoff" & "Saga", They both have a direction and a team of people that are all full of pure knowledge when it comes to Wing Commander in general....If there's a few things you have to "Make on the fly" then it is what it is. Hats off to Both of those projects. I wish I could get WC:CD to a good point but there's alot of fill in.
 
NinjaLA said:
I sort of doubt that any of the standoff guys or saga guys, are ashamed of their contributions to wing commander lore.. but then none of the standoff guys will claim their project is canon either.
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...Exactly. We did get a huge kick out of the fact that some small bits of our work did make it into the official canon (i.e., most of the fighter designations we made up for Standoff), but we certainly make no claims about the rest.

The funny thing is, technically, the WC Bible is not canon - it's a behind-the-scenes document not intended for public consumption. So, it is possible that a future WC product would have yet another interpretation of what a Jutland is.
 
Quarto said:
The funny thing is, technically, the WC Bible is not canon - it's a behind-the-scenes document not intended for public consumption. So, it is possible that a future WC product would have yet another interpretation of what a Jutland is.
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This argument over what is and what is not "Canon" kills me. It gets to the point where not one knows their own ass from a hole in the ground.

I will grant you guys, you are nowhere near as bad as the Star Wars guys, I don't even BOTHER with those forums. Haven't in about ten years.

So lets see if we can get this down and out at once. What is the one source of info that trumps all or is there one? Personally I'm ok with taking everything with a grain of salt and just saying it's all based on one creative analysts opinion vs. another. That would be ok with me.

But Loaf, Quarto, AD, Death, or even "Real" Frosty :p

Could you guys give us all the one be all and end all the trumps everything else?

The Books?
The Ultimate strategy Guide?
The Game Manuals?
The Confed Handbook?
WC Bible?
The Armada manual?
Or something else?
 
Okay.

There's an easy answer: anything that was published is 'canon', which includes everything you listed with the exception of the universe bible.

So what does that mean to you? Pretty much nothing - because it's a distinction which truly only impacts future Wing Commander developers and licensees. Something being 'canon' means only that it is taken into consideration for future stories. If you aren't writing Wing Commander 7 then you need a specific canon only in so much as it effects arguing about stuff on the internet.

Now, yes, we have the same 'canon' here in terms of discussion -- but you need to think of it more as a reading list than a set of commandments (so, ah, like a literary canon). We will, likely, make fun of you if you go into some nerd rage about how you don't recognize Privateer 2 -- but that's more because you're being a huge doofus than because you're violating a "canon".

At the risk of possibly being more reasonable than any fandom, ever, lets go a little further and admit something about the concept of the canon: the fact that this is a rule doesn't mean that it's the rule. No matter what the Star Wars fans think, there's no grand governing body for policing fake world consistencies. At the end of the day the guy writing Wing Commander 7 can likely get away with contradicting Action Stations either because it best suits the new story or simply because very few people know *every* previously established fictional detail. Nobody is getting fired for putting Neutron Guns too earl in the timeline. (Similarly, there's a spectrum however immeasurable from our standpoint -- expect future developers be a lot more familiar with the original games and novels than, say, the flavor text on the trading cards that came with the action figures.)

Also, if you have ever said to yourself 'this isn't canon, so I don't have to enjoy it!' then I want you to drown in a canoe accident. In almost every case, licensed works that usually aren't considered "canon" are actually held to a *much higher standard* of continuity. Star Trek novels are relentlessly edited because they aren't approved if they contradict 800 hours of television series -- so if you're ignoring them because you're confusing "not canon" with some kind of bizarre "didn't really happen in the setting that doesn't exist in the first place" you are a doofus. (Star Wars works the same way, but Lucasfilms' PR folks have correctly figured out that you people are all idiots and come up with a nice blorb about how Star Wars material has various "levels of canon" that boil down to none of them having any effect on the source movies.)

(Which is to say, Standoff isn't 'canon'… and you're a real trainbolt if you think that matters in any way.)
 
That's a much more understandable version of what i was trying to say. I was a little drunk and didn't know how to express myself and used a stupid Transformers example in a post that, now that i read it, didn't make any sense at all.
 
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