Month: September 2024

Fans are prone to certain annoying behaviors regarding unreasonable expectations of hyper-consistency from media, to the point where it’s detrimental to the media itself. I say that, but I’m honestly not certain how true it is, because I know examples where the fans were not to blame for settings hemming themselves in with lore, but I can’t actually think of examples where this problem actually did happen in response to fan demand. Star Trek is the stereotypical example of fans having a higher demand for lore consistency than creators, but I haven’t actually checked. Is that true?

The most egregious example of people blindly assuming that a lore tumor was the result of creators giving into fans is the Zelda timeline. It’s not an uncommon opinion that the Zelda games are meant to be retellings of the same basic story with new twists, a legend with no specific continuity, and that the fan efforts to impose a timeline on them are to the detriment of the games, especially when the games feel pressured to play along with things like the Hyrule Historia releasing official timelines and cramming in games that clearly want to be their own thing into the timeline.

That sounds like a thing fans would do, but it is a matter of historical fact that this is not the case. Every problem with the Zelda timeline, including the existence of a Zelda timeline at all, is Nintendo’s fault. The “the games are just legends with no specific timeline and which frequently retell the same story in different ways” interpretation is a fanon retcon that ignores the lore of the games. Not supplemental material like the Hyrule Historia book, but the games themselves.

The first game in the series is the Legend of Zelda. The Adventure of Link is a direct sequel. A Link to the Past is declared a prequel by its title and the back of the box – this is only true in English, the Japanese title and marketing is different, so it does seem like the developers intended Link to the Past to be a Super Nintendo remake of the NES original similar to Super Castlevania IV, but the fans are not to blame for taking Nintendo of America at their word. Ocarina of Time is a direct prequel to Link to the Past, depicting the events of Link to the Past’s opening cut scene. Majora’s Mask is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time. Wind Waker is also a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess is also also a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time. Every one of these three games makes explicit references back to Ocarina of Time without referencing one another, in addition to Ocarina having been a prequel to Link to the Past in the first place – this is where most of the trouble comes from. And then Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to Wind Waker, and Spirit Tracks is a direct sequel to Phantom Hourglass. Skyward Sword is not a direct prequel to any specific title (it makes no reference to the plot of any game besides itself), but it is very explicitly the first game on the timeline.

By the time the Hyrule Historia was released in 2011, the only Zelda games that did not have explicit placements on the timeline were the handheld games Link’s Awakening, Oracle of Ages/Seasons, and Minish Cap, plus the Four Swords multiplayer mode for the Link to the Past Gameboy Advance port and the Four Swords multiplayer game made for Gamecube based on that mode.

Even if we count the original Legend of Zelda and Link to the Past as retellings of the same story and thus not on the same timeline as one another, and remove Adventure of Link as being lore-incompatible with Link to the Past’s version and therefore also count it as incompatible with the timeline, that still means eight games are in some kind of timeline with each other (Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword), while another eight are free floating with no connection to the main timeline (Legend of Zelda, Adventure of Link, Link’s Awakening, Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons, Minish Cap, Four Swords, Four Swords Adventure). And those eight games include the Oracle pair in continuity with one another and the first two games in continuity with one another, and also includes Four Swords mode as a game unto itself rather than a prototype for Four Swords Adventure. And also most of these games weren’t made by the main Zelda team, and exactly zero of them are incompatible with the main timeline – most of them can be dropped in wherever and it’s fine. The timeline snarl comes from games in the main timeline, because they are mutually incompatible sequels to Ocarina of Time.

By the time Hyrule Historia came out, the point when Nintendo allegedly gave in to fan demand and cranked out a half-assed timeline because the fans were desperate for all the games to be in continuity with one another, fully half of all Zelda games were in a timeline with each other, including all the ones that made the timeline hard to keep straight.

Think that having a contrived three-way timeline split is the fans’ fault? Nope, Hyrule Historia invented that. The idea that there is a timeline where Link died and that’s why Hyrule is in decline in the original Legend of Zelda game and its sequel was not really something any fans were talking about before Hyrule Historia had a three-way timeline split.

Think that having multiple timelines at all is the fans’ fault? Still no, this was not a fan invention while trying to reconcile the mutually incompatible Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask, this was something Nintendo devs said in interviews before Wind Waker came out.

Twilight Princess isn’t hard to place on a timeline because it wasn’t intended to be part of a timeline in the first place. Twilight Princess is hard to place on a timeline because it was intended to be part of a timeline, and it turns out the timeline was bad.

I’ve been watching Generation Tech lately, a YouTube channel that covers Star Wars lore, usually revolving around the space tech and tactical doctrine or logistical efforts of the wars in the stars, i.e. what is an AT-AT’s purpose on the battlefield and why is it designed the way it is (answer: It’s a platoon-size IFV designed to be level with the skyline in most cities so that rebels can’t get above it, which makes it more intimidating, as per the Tarkin Doctrine).

One thing that keeps coming up in an annoying way is that the Star Wars galaxy has a million or more habitable planets. This leads to things like the Imperial Navy having 25,000 star destroyers at its height, and that’s for a navy that’s stretched thin, only able to directly occupy 2.5% of the planets they nominally govern. While it makes sense that they can’t mobilize the whole navy to go to Endor because they need some for patrol duty and occupation of trouble spots, it makes the battle seem pointlessly small if the entire Rebel Navy is there (Palpatine expects the Rebellion to be pretty much finished if they lose), is badly outmatched by the Death Squadron of star destroyers, and Death Squadron is struggling to reach 0.1% of the size of the total Imperial Navy.

Star Wars generally uses planets as though they were small countries: They have a single important city on them surrounded by lots of sparsely populated rural or frontier countryside. There’s clearly lots of small towns and countryside on Naboo, but the only major city we ever hear about is Theed, which is a pretty mid-size city. There’s probably other cities on the planet, but not many, and no megalopolises like Tokyo or New York City that we have here in our one-planet civilization. The Organa family might live in the countryside apart from major cities (medieval and Renaissance aristocrats did this, and they’ve kind of got that vibe), but certainly what we see of Alderaan (a core world!) suggests that there are like twelve cities total on this planet and they’re all pretty small, with forests for child princesses to impulsively wander off into within easy walking distance. Kashyyyk doesn’t seem to have any major cities at all, just small towns and villages peppered across the planet. Coruscant leaps to mind as an exception, where the parts we see are a small country centered on the Senate and Jedi Temple but there’s definitely a very densely populated entire planet beyond that, but there’s not many planets like that.

And if planets are like small countries, there’s only 200-ish countries on Earth, and even accounting for the fact that some of those countries are big countries that would be represented by multiple planets in Star Wars (space California and space Texas could be smushed together into one planet, but you wouldn’t expect it to be), 1,000 habitable planets is more than enough to cover everything Star Wars needs to. Yes, this means only a puny fraction of planets are habitable, but that was already the case. The Star Wars galaxy is about the same size and shape as the Milky Way, which means there are hundreds of billions if not trillions of planets in it, which means even the highest numbers given for the habitable number (“millions”) is well under 0.01% of the total. Since habitable planets are super rare no matter what, let’s cut them down to a number that’s both big enough that we’ll never plausibly outrun it when making up new planets yet also small enough that it’s believable that a battle for one planet matters.

The only reason Star Wars media is anywhere near exceeding a thousand named planets is because people keep inventing new planets unnecessarily. The mainline movies, TV shows, and video games do not do this, and while I’m less familiar with them, I can’t imagine the novels or comics are doing it that much. There’s like a thousand issues of Star Wars comics total, across all of time, so in order to run out of planets they would have to be introducing about one new planet per issue, which they don’t, and there’s only about 400 novels. Novels are more likely to introduce a new planet or even several than comics because they’re longer stories, but also a lot of the “novels” are actually YA books which visit fewer planets because they aren’t that much longer than a single issue of a comic. Plus, most of these stories reuse some of the 100+ planets already established rather than make new ones up.

And at this point an emphasis on reusing planets instead of making new ones up would serve Star Wars pretty well. It’s pretty telling of JJ Abrams’ flaws as a Star Wars creator that he felt like he needed to invent new planets, but the best he could come up with was Jakku, which was Tattooine with a “welcome to Jakku” sign slapped on. The only reason Jakku needs to be a separate planet from Tattooine is because of its backstory, which was not referenced by the movies in any way. Jakku is a mid-rim planet between Endor and Coruscant and the site of a battle between the Rebellion and the Empire in the aftermath of Endor, which is why there’s all these defeated Imperial wrecks lying around.

As far as I can tell this backstory was created by people trying to contrive reasons why this place that is clearly identical to Tattooine could justifiably be a new planet, and all they could come up with is that it is located in a different part of the galaxy. Sometimes that’s justified. Hoth and Rhen Var are both ice planets, Rhen Var has mountains but so what? Hoth could’ve had some mountains on it far away from Echo Base. But Rhen Var also has Sith ruins on it, which means it’s in ancient Sith space, like Yavin 4. If they put those ruins on Hoth instead of making a new planet, that means ancient Sith space covered most of the galaxy. If they moved Hoth to be closer to Yavin 4, that means the Rebels’ secret backup base was pretty close to their original secret base which makes them look like a regional nuisance, not one side of a Galactic Civil War. Rhen Var legit needs to be a new place even though it’s an uninhabited ice planet just like Hoth, purely because of the astrographic implications of Hoth having a Sith ruin on it.

Jakku, though? Sure, if the Battle of Jakku happened between the Battle of Endor and the Rebellion capturing Coruscant then it needs to be in the Mid Rim. But there’s no reason for the timeline to be like that, and Jakku has really strong Outer Rim vibes and is also clearly just Tattooine with a crashed star destroyer on it. So here’s a better backstory for Rey on Tattooine: The Battle of Endor is in the year 4 ABY. Rey was born in 15 ABY. The Battle of Starkiller Base is exactly 30 years later, 34 ABY, when Rey was about nineteen (about the same age as Luke at the Battle of Yavin). This is all from the existing canon, so how can we fit a Battle of Tattooine in to leave a star destroyer lying around for Rey to scavenge there by 34 ABY?

In the immediate aftermath of the Galactic Civil War, the New Republic fought on-and-off regional wars with Imperial remnants, especially in the Outer Rim. The Outer Rim had always been mostly de jure independent and after consolidating the Core and some key Rebel planets like Mon Cala, the New Republic was mostly willing to play nice with Imperial remnants in other parts of the galaxy, especially the Outer Rim, but sometimes those Imperial remnants poked the New Republic, resulting in a small war. In 14 ABY, ten years after the Battle of Endor, an Imperial remnant fleet caught up in one of these regional wars had fled to Tattooine and made their last stand against New Republic forces there. Because of the remote location of the battle, the New Republic never bothered salvaging the Imperial wrecks. They didn’t want Tattooine, they just wanted to make sure this specific fleet would not make incursions into Republic space again, so job done, they leave.

Scavengers descend on the planet to salvage advanced, military-grade Imperial technology like turbolasers and AT-AT cannons and twin-ion engines. Rey’s parents meet during this gold rush and have a kid in 15 ABY. Two or three years later, the really valuable stuff is gone, and Rey’s parents leave the planet. Unable to afford a kid now that the gold rush years are over (and having squandered all the money they made during the gold rush on living large), they leave her as well. The Imperial wrecks are still full of lighting fixtures and regular old power conduits like the kind they sell for twenty credits at Space Target, because the gold rush scavengers walked right past all of those to get to stuff that cost tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of credits to build, which could be salvaged for a year’s worth of pay even at pennies on the dollar. What’s left is still enough to make a respectable living on if your standard for “respectable” is moisture farmers and cantina rats, but it requires spending all day scavenging half-functional parts worth just one or two credits each. Nobody wants to live on Tattooine and the people who already live there mostly already have jobs that are less dangerous or more profitable (in the latter case, because of crimes), so even fifteen years later there’s still some salvage left if you know where to look (star destroyers are big), but the last few scraps are finally starting to get picked clean. Open the curtain on Rey in 34 ABY.

I think Star Wars creators are in the habit of adding in one-off planets because this helped make the galaxy feel very big and believable for a long time. Han Solo makes a one-off comment about a bounty hunter on Ord Mantell and it helps make the galaxy feel like there’s more to it than just what was purpose-built for our protagonists. But we’re long past the point where adding in more and more planets makes the galaxy feel believably large and have reached the point where new planets make the galaxy feel unbelievably large, so large that it’s difficult to see how our protagonists could possibly be having an impact on it. The Galactic Senate chamber is not big enough for a million worlds, the Rebel fleet at Endor is not big enough to stand a ghost of a chance against 25,000 star destroyers even given a descent into chaos following the death of the Emperor, the Battle of Christophsis can’t possibly be significant for a war between factions that each control hundreds of thousands of planets.

Back in Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars had already established the significance of individual planets (roughly equivalent to a small country), but had only named Tattooine, Alderaan, Dantooine, Yavin IV, Hoth, Bespin, and Dagobah. So when Han Solo needs a throwaway line about an encounter with a bounty hunter shaking him up, it’s a good idea to drop a one-off reference to Ord Mantell, some planet we’ve never heard of before and which there are currently no plans to use in any movie or spin-off material. There’s at least a few hundred and probably about a thousand planets out in the galaxy, when we’ve named a grand total of seven of them, the odds that any random planet referred to would be one of those seven is struggling to reach 1% even before considering how remote and backwater most of those planets are. But that was a long time ago. We have hundreds of Star Wars planets now, so it’s not weird that when one comes up, it tends to be one we’ve already heard of.

Idle sci-fi worldbuilding idea: A measurement system based on the speed of light would make a reasonable amount of sense. It would still be nailed to Earth units of time, but if we assume that a healthy human sleep/wake cycle is 24 hours long regardless of what the lighting situation is (has anyone actually studied this?), then we’ll carry that length of day in our biology even as we leave behind the planet that evolved it into us. And light distances mostly conform really well to easily managed 1-100 scales for most human use cases.

A light nanosecond is almost the length of one foot. That means it’s a good length for measuring the size of things that are close to human scale. Human height is measured in a single digit number of light nanoseconds. It is slightly annoying to express small lengths like we usually use inches or centimeters for as hundreds of light picoseconds, but people who use meters have the reverse problem where you have to use decimal points all the time because most humans are between one and two meters tall and there’s never any riots demanding a return to imperial measurements.

A light microsecond is a really good unit of distance for overland travel. The average human can walk a light microsecond in a couple of minutes, and can walk about sixteen light microseconds per hour, so human walkable distances largely go from a scale of one (for something that can just barely be described as going for a walk rather than going down the street) to one hundred (for something that will require several hours, approaching the limit of what a reasonably fit but untrained human can walk if they set aside the day for it).

Car speeds largely go from 100 microseconds/hour for residential distances to 500 microseconds/hour (US speed limits usually cap out around 430 microseconds/hour, but most people end up going ~450 anyway, and it’s easy to imagine a society built around this measurement system using 100-500 as “car speed”). This isn’t quite as snug as nanoseconds to microseconds because now instead of a 1-100 scale that keeps commonly used distances to double-digits. If you’re in any kind of hurry, you’ll take the car for anything that would take more than 5-10 light microseconds, and the upper limit of a day trip in a car is well over a light millisecond. A light millisecond is about 186 miles, which is far past the limit of being a quick car ride but well under the limit of how far a car can take you in a day.

On the other hand, light milliseconds do lend themselves really well to measuring the distances for flights. A distance of less than one millisecond is generally too short to be worth going to the airport for, an NYC to Singapore flight is about fifty milliseconds, and the circumference of Earth is about 134 milliseconds. It’s hard to doublecheck the shortest commercial flight distance because the low end of that scale is taken up by trips that are well within driving distance but there’s water in the way and trips are infrequent enough that it’s not worth it to build a bridge. London to Paris is slightly more than one light millisecond and they built a tunnel under the English Channel because people were getting annoyed at having to take a plane for that distance. It’s definitely rare for any single-trip distance on Earth to be anywhere near the 100 milliseconds at the top of a 1-100 scale, on account of the Earth is a sphere so if you’re going 80 milliseconds it’s basically guaranteed that you could go the other way around and get there in 60 or less.

One full light second is about the distance of the Earth to the moon, and intrasolar distances are frequently measured in light minutes in the inner solar system and light hours in the outer solar system because those are already the most convenient units to use. The inner solar system keeps to 1-100 light minute scale while the entire solar system is about 22 light hours across, so even in the outer solar system where the distance from one object to another might be, depending on orbits, hundreds or even low thousands of light minutes away, distances in light hours are always manageably low numbers.

As you get into sci-fi intergalactic distances, you quickly run into the problem that the galaxy is a heccin chonker 100,000 light years across, and that’s not unusably large the way trying to measure galactic distances in miles or kilometers is (although metric has the advantage of being able to scale up to petameters and exameters), but it does massively exceed the 1-100 scale I’ve been trying to keep to. Of course, to actually use that space you must necessarily be using FTL travel of some kind, at which point you are making up how fast things go and may as well invent some hypertech excuse why light speed travel is measured in kiloyears on major trade spines but goes down to lightyears per hour (or per day or per week, depending on how isolated you want solar systems to be) outside of the main hyperspace routes.

Fractions of the speed of light are a futuristic, science-y kind of measurement tied to a fundamental law of physics and a unit of time that, while arbitrary, is probably pretty deeply tied to human biology, and it works really well for measuring the size of things at roughly human scale in light nanoseconds, walking distances in light microseconds, flight distances in light milliseconds, distances within solar systems in light seconds, minutes, and hours depending on the exact region, and distances between solar systems in light years (although that last one’s a freebie because the propulsion systems and frequency of landmarks worth caring about is up to the author anyway).

It’s annoying how car distances straddle the microsecond/millisecond line, but it’s otherwise very usable and fairly easy for readers to translate, easy enough that it might not be frustrating in use – provided that your plot doesn’t deal with the ugly car distance microsecond/millisecond overlap, because while I think people can quickly grok “walking distance is measured in microseconds, in-atmosphere flights are measured in milliseconds, and they both go on a scale of 1-100,” the hundreds of microseconds to whole milliseconds scale of car travel means they’ll start trying to convert to miles or kilometers in their head or treat the distances as white noise. And while you can make atmospheric flights stretch up to 100 milliseconds by making planes faster (while the bottom of the scale remains the same because it’s controlled by the point at which a car is slow enough to justify a plane, not the point at which the plane is too fast) and just not use the top 50 points of the scale because Earthlike planets aren’t that big and it’ll still work, you can’t do the same for cars because humans aren’t getting any faster so you cannot make a 300 microsecond trip reasonable walking distance, but cars are already too fast to reasonably be capped at sub-millisecond distances. Getting around that would require significant worldbuilding oriented around making this distance system reader-friendly enough to be usable.

I’m not really going anywhere with this, I have no plans for this measurement system and am not working on anything remotely Star Trek-ish enough to bother using it. So this is one of the random research project posts.