Coryn's: Quick and Easy Guide to the MR Canon

[MahluaandMilk]

Word count and complete versus wip are two things that would be immensely helpful in that index. Not sure if that was ever directly stated, but they're two easily quantifiable things that really add to stats. Might be a little difficult to read Coryn's Saga over a lunch break at work, y'know? (I don't think I've actually finished Coryn's Saga. I think the formatting bothered me a bit so I moved on to something else...)

[Coryn]

Well, Coryn's Saga isn't even MR canon, but I definitely can't blame you for having issues with the formatting of that old thing. I hadn't taught myself the right way yet, after all.

[legomaestro]

Read Coryn's Saga goshdarnit. How much need I recommend it before my feeling start to get hurt *goes in corner*

You Loremasters do your thing. Wiki yes, Wiki no, so long as you have an entry for my true nickname, Maestro.

[Coryn]

Never! Respecting your nickname of 'Lego' is part of the oath.

[Coach Fro]

The wiki thing will probably end up being my own personal venture then, since I wouldn't mind taking a crack at it and learning something new, even if there isn't much return. Fun fact: Reading character wikis used to be a big hobby of mine as a kid. It's probably why I got into writing in the first place, so my biases are probably showing.

However, if it's a index/reference list we're going with, then I'm down to help in any way I can. The canon is still fresh in my mind as far as stories read, but some rereading wouldn't hurt. If I did it once, I can do it again.

[Suuper-san]

Word count and complete versus wip

Yeah I totally agree on this one. You sort of know what you're up against with that.

@Coryn probably I've got too much on my plate to help at the moment so I'll leave that to you and whoever else for now. I will totally read everything one day though...

[Coryn]

So, I've been spending some of my free time today doing so.e canon research, and it's made me realize something.

The timeline of the 4KCU makes
NO
GOD
DAMN
SENSE.

So the 4KCU was first introduced during DOTS, which canonically takes place in fall of X012. This shows them running about freely.

Dystopic Blades 1 and 2 on the other hand, canonically takes place a year and a half earlier, in spring of X011.

Additionally, the Mortal Combat topic was closed in the summer of X012

Now, a lot of this comes down to Lego piecing together some sort of and ending to Dystop 2 that accounted for the time discrepancy between when the story started, and when it finished. This was before the rule determining the "present" of a story was created, and is in fact the reason for it, but alas, we still have a discrepancy.

So, Dystop is written off as being the result of the 4KCU messing about with the mortal combat topic, and trapping several raiders inside of it for four years. (Lego alternatively days, three, five, and six years in the story, but if we're assuming he meant to go from the beginning of Dystop, to when he was wrapping it up in 2015, then it's only four)

This all works out however, because through some nonsense, we all make it out within a day of outside time, essentially creating a doomed timeline for the years we were trapped. In theory, we pick right back up in X011 like nothing happened, and the canon continues as previously written.

Now, Dystop writes it off such that its events are what lead to the end of Mortal Combat, but as we can see, that doesn't actually happen for another year. Supposedly it's 7 days between the end of Dystop and MC closing, so that's the first wrinkle.

And here is the big one. Per Dystop, Alan and Achan are taken prisoner in X011, and remain there until this day. But then in X012, they show up for the first time. We meet them for the first time.

So we have a bunch of characters being around a year before they were even first introduced. We also have one story super out of reference with another event it is supposed to cause.

Three events. DOTS, Dystop, and MC are out of sync with each other. In real life, it goes MC > DOTS > Dystop ending. But in canon, it seems to be Dystop ending > MC, and DOTS gets left out in the cold of no man's land.

DOTS and MC are internally consistent. Dystop's explanation of itself is where things get twisted.

I... Need to think this out a little more. Needless to say that is all coming about because I looked at the timeline for a little too long. I think I need to start sketching things out on paper... We'll see what happens when I sleep on it.

[Coryn]

Okay, okay okay okay.

Okay.

I think I have some sort of conclusion to this tangle.

So, the ending of Dystop plain does not make sense. Never the less, the timeline it lay out must remain the same relative to itself. We'll call that constant #1

Second, the start date of DOTS, and the end date of MC must remain immutable. DOTS can about directly because we needed something to do after MC was closed, and there's a lot of stuff that happened in MC which influenced canon, and is therefore nebulously canon in and of itself. And we can't just chop off a whole year of it. We'll call this constant #2

So we have two constants. Dystop must end 7 days before MC does, and DOTS must then take place post MC.

This is my proposal: Dystop cannot take place in X011. For it to match up with MC, it must take place in X012, but before both MC and DOTS.

That still leaves the 4KCU out in the cold, but I think we can just write a retcon into it by way of the timeline. Instead of the DOTS participants running into the 4KCU in a linear progression of time, we declare that they had actually been sent to an earlier place in the timeline, where they met the 4KCU, and started the conflict. That way Akan and Achan can still be captured by MR at the end of Dystop, but only be first encountered canonically a few months later during DOTS. Some hand waving needs to be done as far as character perspectives go, but I think that's about as clean as it gets.

Tldr: Dystop has to happen a year later than the post date, and we blame a bunch of stuff on the remote from DOTS.

Any questions?

[Coach Fro]

Any questions?

After reading all of that I got thousands, but I'll stick with a few for now.


For starters, when a story starts and ends on a particular date in irl, is that the date we go with in canon? Even if the author intended the story to take place within a particular time frame? To clarify, let's go with The Strand of Truth and Drifter as examples. The Strand of Truth was posted and finished near the end of X017, with Drifter preceeding not long after it in March of X018 (Or whenever i posted that damn story). However, in actual canon, The Strand of Truth was written to take place sometime in X016, just before my real life hitaus from the forum, with Drifter taking place a year later. If we were to go by the "present" rule, then Drifter would take place in just few months after the strand of truth, which, in terms of story, wouldn't make sense since Drifter was written to serve as an explanation behind my character's disappearance during that time frame. I'm guessing this is partially the problem with Dystop as well, correct?


Secondly, If I read what you wrote correctly, Achan and Akan were officially introduced to the raiders in Dots??? How can that be if they already appeared near the end of Dystop 2? Shouldn't the raiders already know who they are? That part is really fuzzy to me. They appeared during the ecchiworld arc, right? I think I should reread that section, because now I'm feeling like I missed something.

And finally, 4kids goes bankrupt and rebrands when exactly? X011? X012? According to Lego, the rebrand happened long after the 4kCu undergone their mission, which I guess would be years after then? Of course, there's that time loop thing, which further complicates things. I don't know man. I'm really confused at this point.


I have no objections to any decisions made on your end regarding this matter. All I hope is that by the end of it this entire fiasco will finally make some damn sense.

[Coryn]

Alright, let's try to sort this.

The present = date of first post rule only applies unless another time period is indicated. Obviously we want people to set stories when they want to. The rule is just a baseline so every story at least has something to put a date to.

So for instance, Strand of Truth still takes place in X016 because you say that is when it is, while Quest! is fine to take place in Spring of X018, because that's when I first conceived of and started posting it. There are no set pieces in the story that dictate a certain time frame, so date of first posting does not need to be superceded.

See, that's the problem. It goes like this.

- Lego writes Dystop 1 in 2011. The ending is a cliffhanger that does not tie it to any specific dates.
- Lego begins work on Dystop 2 in spring of 2012. Dystop 2's story begins immediately after the end of Dystop 1
- I start DOTS in the fall of 2012, and the 4KCU are introduced to the canon for thr first time.
- Fast forward to 2015, Lego is finally getting around to finishing Dystop 2. To close it up, he takes ideas from DOTS which did not exist when he wrote Dystop 1 or started Dystop 2 in order to wrap up the story.

Lego basically got too meta with it. He finished Dystop by using knowledge that he could no have possessed when he started. He treated DOTS as being in the past of Dystop, even though by his own stated timeline, it can't be. Thus, the timeline gets screwed.

And yeah, 4Kids does the real life rebrand in 2012, but that took some time to work its way into the canon. So things like DOTS still used them per normal. We did know about it by 2015 when Lego was wrapping up Dystop, but again, he didn't when Dystop was started.

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense for us not to remember Akan and Achan when DOTS happens. And at this point I will admit that I have not received DOTS yet. I spent last night blowing through all of Dystop 1 and 2. So it may be that those who were in both stories didn't encounter Akan and Achan directly. In which case, no biggie. If they do though, then some sort of hand waving will be needed.

Does that clear it up a little?

[Coach Fro]

Ahhhhhh I see where I got confused now.

I was unaware that Dots was taking place while Lego was working on Dystop 2. Lego pretty much took ideas used in Dots as inspiration and applied them in Dystop 2.

Now that I understand the discrepancy, I'll be honest with you here. There's no way to completely clean this up as I'm sure you know already. Even if we go with your suggestion, the whole thing will still come off as messy. Especially to newer readers getting into the canon. However, damage control is damage control, and it's definitely needed in this case. Looking forward to your offical write up on this for the timeline doc. An update for that portion of the guide has been long overdue.

I'm still curious as to what Lego thinks of all this. This is his mess after all. Maybe he'll have some alternatives of his own.

[Coryn]

Yeah that's the sticking point. There is no perfect solution.

Hopefully Lego will get himself back online soon ish, but if not, I'll think of something to say.

[Suuper-san]

we need a gantt chart timeline for this sort of thing, which would look pretty cool as a side effect.

[Coryn]

That would definitely end up looking like some homestuckian nonsense. But would probably be doable once the regular timeline is updated and we get a character list for each story put together.

[legomaestro]

My general assumption was that DOTS was nefarious semi-canon that didn't have direct relevance to actual canon. I mean, Lego's fighting prowess and personality was developed a lot in MC, but I never considered it as far as timeline was concerned canon. I treated DOTS the same way, seeing as it had the same format of an 'anything is possible' adventure. That being said, EW did also get canonical information from DOTS so yeah some stuff becomes canon some stuff not.

My solution would be relegating the 4KCU encounter in DOTS to Universe B. Because the whole point of their attack being suprise and unexpected in Dystop was because we'd never encountered them in particular. Or we could say Akan and Achan aren't the ones who are depicted in the scene. None of them were mentioned by name, and Jack and Nair kicked their butts and they never showed up again.

I also forced their assosciation with Bethuw’el because of plans. My bad.

Dunno man. Do what makes sense.