Visual representation

It’s Tuesday. The Tuesday before many of you are heading to Celebration VI. This is probably the longest Tuesday you’ve faced in a long time, but fret not. We’re here to provide extremely mild amusement in another Trope Tuesday, our weekly foray into the world of TV Tropes to investigate the literary devices and themes that make our favorite entertainment chug along. Or in the case of Continuity Snarl, grind to a screeching halt.

A Shared Universe can become a very confusing place, and the longer they exist, the more confusing they can become. As new creators come on board and take over, continuity eventually gets tangled, convoluted, and increasingly difficult to pick through. Sometimes, it gets to the point that not even the fans who write Wikipedia articles understand what is and isn’t in canon.

It goes something like this: in the beginning, The Universe is created, and it’s a blank slate. Everything’s new; as such, the creators can do whatever they want to do, create whatever they want to create, throw everything in and have fun doing so. Whatever works, works and whatever doesn’t, doesn’t. So far, so good.

However, the whole idea of a Shared Universe is that different creative teams will eventually take over. Sometimes Writer A of Title A will leave and Writer B will take over, while at other times Writer A’s character will guest star or make a Cameo apearance in Writers B’s title. People being people, those different creators will have their own ideas. They’ll have different ideas about what the ‘verse should be, about what has worked and what hasn’t, what might work and what doesn’t.

The longer that this goes on and as more teams take over, the more chance there is of a Continuity Snarl.

When canon becomes too involved and self-contradictory, it starts denying new writers “room to move.” When writers disagree strongly with what previous writers before them have added to the mix and are overly keen on using continuity to get rid of them (or attack the other writer), then the snarl may come from the writers being Armed With Canon. If worse comes to worst, the writers may simply perform a Continuity Reboot, discarding the old continuity completely and starting over from scratch. (Everything you read or watched before? It never happened! You imagined it! Either that, or it wasAll Just a Dream.)

Holy wall of text, Batman. So let’s try and distill that down a bit, shall we? A Continuity Snarl is pretty much what happens when different books/comics/games/films/television shows in a universe start conflicting with each other. Suddenly a new piece of material comes out that directly contradicts some older material. Say hello, Republic Commando controversy.

As many of you know, Lucasfilm actually employs someone by the name of Leland Chee who (among other things) is responsible for keeping tabs on continuity and canon, helping to ensure that new material doesn’t trample over old material. Or helping put together retcons for when snarls do happen.

Now, if you’re looking for a book that deftly manages to avoid the pitfalls of twenty years of Expanded Universe continuity, you may want to give X-Wing: Mercy Kill a try.