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[Lex]

^I'm going to assume you meant Shademp but had me on the brain

Something we might consider is hosting and linking to your essay in the disclaimer as a kind of "here's a fan's view of how Maiden can be canon" or something. More content on the site is always a good thing.

 

[Selphie Tilmitt]

Well, it doesn't have to be changed to "definitely canon" but yeah I would be happy if it doesn't say/infer definitely not canon either Edit: Also yeah that bit about Que's essay and stuff, something like that would be good/is worth thinking about too yeah

Spoiler

 

[Shademp]

I went ahead and edited the "Novels & Novellas" page to say nothing in one direction or the other about Maiden. I feel it best to keep it that way for now. *goes to bed because FFVII overload*

 

[Strangelove]

I would go for ambiguous. Unlike FFXIII (where Jun Eishima seems to have been involved from development specifically to write a companion novel for the same which later got made into drama CDs, and assisted with the story in FFXIII-2 which shows she had access to the development team), Benny Matsuyama was hired to write a short story in a guidebook years after FFVII was made. It seems kind of like a film novelization to me, sort of 'take it or leave it'. You don't have a clear answer about it, but disregarding it wouldn't have the same weight compared to dismissing Nojima's novels (or Eishima's).

 

[Lex]

It's still something I'd like people to weigh in on (Japanese understanding people such as Tres and Hito) so that we have a clear stance on it as a site. UNITED WE STAND and all that.

But yeah Quex, it's a well written essay and that's exactly the kind of thing we want hosted on the site so let me know what you think about that and I'll get it slotted in somewhere nicely when the time comes, even if we don't link it from that page.

EDIT: Ninja'd by ninja Hito ofc

 

[Roger]

Well, even FFVII itself is not above being retconned (how the Hojo confrontation went as of DoC is so stupid I can't even), Nojima's own novella in preperation for XIII-2 were thoroughly contradicted in the game proper. Maiden of the Planet doesn't introduce new characters that the Compilation will ignore, Aerith & Zack's status in Case of Lifestream is similiar enough that I don't see major plotcontradictions. Short of a remake revealing something very different was taking place in the Lifestream during the tailend of FFVII, there's as little harm in seeing as canon as any entry. Nojima and Nomura probably don't agree that Aerith loves Cloud much more then Zack, but they'll never use certain enough language to contradict it outright.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

My position remains that it isn't canon -- or at least not canon as folks outside Japan (primarily Westerners and fans of American comic books) tend to concern themselves with the concept. Japanese media in general is loose with this sort of thing (where do the "Dragonball Z" movies fit into continuity, for instance?), but as a site dedicated to making sense of what is what in FFVII, we need to have a position, I believe. Or at least comment on what Square's position seems to be.

I understand why others would be hesitant, though, and I will respect that if a majority feels any conclusion is too presumptuous.

There isn't a singular "keeper of FFVII canon" and there are no prefaces or appendices (afaik) in FFVII guide books that dive into the concept of canon.

The closest SE has come to this is their comment on a list of FFVII titles in the FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character guide that Dirge of Cerberus Lost Episode and Last Order were not actually part of the Compilation. I believe that is the one and only time they have ever made a comment like this.

The fact that Maiden is omitted says nothing in either direction, unless the guide books are clear that they are devoted to the concept of canon just as much as the people of FFVII forums like this are.

Sections focusing on the stories and characters give that impression. Sephiroth's profile, for instance, acknowledges that there is discontinuity in the presentation of events in the Mt. Nibel reactor across titles.

What if the central figures of the Compilation staff (Kazushige Nojima, Tetsuya Nomura, Yoshinori Kitase) simply forgot about Matsuyama's?

That's not helping Benny's case.

More than that, they've actually outright contradicted him. One of his writings holds that Aerith met Zack while selling flowers. Crisis Core shows a much different meeting, as well as that she got the idea to sell flowers from Zack.

As Que's essay shows, I don't think Maiden has any actual contradictions with the canon (for a while I thought the "Zack, who had blue eyes that proved he was in SOLDIER" thing might, but Aerith wouldn't have known about Weiss or Rosso, much less the color of their eyes), but I still think it is disregarded.

It is also for this reason that I don't think it 100% clear if Tactics is part of FFVII canon. If you subscribe to the notion that any FFVII products by Square is part of the canon narrative and/or that the "Final Fantasy VII History" section of the 10th Anniversary Ultimania is there to present the continuity rather than the products, then yes, FFTactics can be seen as part of the canon continuity.

That isn't what I'm subscribing to. I think Tactics is mentioned in that "History of FFVII" section from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania, yes, but that section is, like you say: a history of the release of FFVII products.

It doesn't mention Cloud's presence in Tactics there; it just mentions that Tactics was released the same year as FFVII. It also mentions that FFVIII was released the same year as Ehrgeiz. None of that is important.

The reason I would argue Tactics has a place in Cloud's continuity is that the section about it in the FFVII Ultimania Omega straight-up says that Cloud is pulled from FFVII's world. To me, that's clear.

More clear, at least, than their (non-)treatment of Maiden.

I mean, just look at Last Order and Lost Episode. I realize what I'm saying here is definitely from a Western perspective and probably also from the perspective of a mind that needs everything neatly categorized into canon (e.g. Crisis Core), alternate universe (Kingdom Hearts), AU canon (my understanding is the KH manga isn't), non-canon (original release of Advent Children or original Case of Tifa), etc., but despite those titles being outside canon, they still gave Last Order a lot of attention in the 10th Anniversary Ultimania. It got its own Story Playback section even. Heck, there was even a little section about Lost Episode and its release at the beginning of the book.

For Maiden to warrant less mention than Dirge of Freakin' Lost Episode kind of says something about how much it matters to the developers (i.e. it doesn't). I think the case for Case of Aerith is pretty bleak.

For the record (I always say this in discussions of Maiden's canonicity), I love Maiden and I think it should be canon. I also don't think it's as relevant to the LTD as some people believe it to be.

 

[ForceStealer]

Did anything plot-related even occur in Lost Episode? It just covers his trip from the WRO to Nibelheim, right?

(how the Hojo confrontation went as of DoC is so stupid I can't even)

To what are you referring?

I also don't think [Maiden is] as relevant to the LTD as some people believe it to be.

I was always kinda confused as to why people try so hard to include it in that debate. It doesn't seem to be any more conclusive than anything else. As I recall, it actually seemed to be pretty Zerith. Yeah it says Aerith loved Cloud, but we all knew that already. But, sorry, that discussion isn't for this thread

Anyway, I'm kind of inclined to agree with Tres, the fact that they have clearly ignored or completely forgotten about it does not speak particularly strongly to its canonicity.

 

[Ryushikaze]

As I feel I say too often when shit like this comes up, I'm a big SW fan. I read the EU stuff. I am familiar with fuzzy canon. Maiden is sort of like that. Official, but less official. Not really considered. Maybe some of it counts, other parts definitely don't.

If it's canon, it's piecemeal. A bit here, a bit there.

And like I said in the LTD thread, regardless, the runny egg shit has to go.

 

[Dashell]

For the record (I always say this in discussions of Maiden's canonicity), I love Maiden and I think it should be canon. I also don't think it's as relevant to the LTD as some people believe it to be.

I don't think so either since basically every LTD thing in Maiden is stated elsewhere.

So are we going with it's ambiguous? I think that's a really good idea rather than saying absolute no

 

[Lex]

Well Shademp said he'd changed it to be ambiguous already so for the time being that'll do I think

 

[Fangu]

Re: the roll call, I'm not working on anything atm. The last thing I did was starting to prepare our theme to be a child of Twenty Twelve instead of Twenty Eleven, but really I feel like that's basically doing (for now) unnecessary maintenance. I know it's probably better for the future to rebuild the theme for Twelve for say plugins and stuff, but I'm pretty sure any good plugin developer would make sure the plugin runs for Eleven too, as a lot of people are still on that theme. I feel like changing it back to Eleven, tbh. There are several tiny design/CSS breakages that takes time to fix (font sizes, table design, placement of small stuff, colors, etc) and isn't really rewarding either, it just takes shitloads of time. So I was thinking of doing that as a side project, and rather focus on the actual _development_ stuff instead. You know, the fun part

Although it's probably a good exercise to fix the CSS anyway as there are stuff in there now breaking things, like how the top menu looks different in different browsers. In the Twenty Twelve version the menu is completely fucked (have a look).

 

[Dashell]

Well Shademp said he'd changed it to be ambiguous already so for the time being that'll do I think

okay wait, what article did he change?

 

[Shademp]

okay wait, what article did he change?

Only the Novels & Novellas page. The statements in Tres's Guide to FFVII Canon remains the same (for the time being).

As can be seen from all of this, Maiden Who Travels the Planet — though not canon — does actually fit into continuity just fine. It’s my belief that Maiden sees all the debate concerning canonicity that it does due in part to FFVII’s infamous Love Triangle Debate and misconceptions on the part of fans who believe that Maiden has potential implications for the LTD.

I honestly think we can cut Tres some slack and not demand that he instantly change the article. Maybe he thinks that larger edits needs to be coupled with the shorter edit of changing the statement from "not canon" to "ambiguous". This is, after all, a discussion of a very deep, erudite nature about how works of fiction are to be interpreted. If Tres wants to keep his guide as it is for at least a few more weeks, I'm perfectly fine with that.

Edit: That is, assuming he even agrees to changing the article in the first place.

Edit#2: Also made sure now that the Novels & Novellas page actually looks decent.

 

[Dashell]

Oh I was just asking because I didn't know there even WAS two articles... no Tres doesn't need to hurry or anything, no rush. I just didn't know what had been changed

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I'll be changing the Canon article later today. I'm still not convinced that Maiden is canon (in fact, I'm firmly convinced that it isn't), but I'm willing to change the article to reflect the ambiguous take on it that most folks feel applies.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

And done.

 

[Selphie Tilmitt]

Thank you so much, much appreciated

Spoiler

 

[Shademp]

I finally really did it. Thanks to the new codes provided by Fangu, I have fixed the formatting in my Unused Text series. All the tables look as they are supposed to and many ugly, unwanted tables (used for images) have been removed.

Previously I uploaded all the article images to the service worldofbits. But I have now uploaded all the 500+ images of the series onto the TLS WordPress, properly attached them to their respective article and refreshed all the links inside the actual articles. This was a great task not only beause of the sheer number of images, but many snapshots had to be retaken and image size had to be recalculated to create consistent formatting.

I can hardly believe it's over with. I am now ready...to work on Part 9 in the series. Enjoy the old entries at your leisure.

EDIT: It was agreed between me and Fangu that the series continues to be written in HTML, in the Text Editor. Making the articles look good in the Visual Editor is just too difficult. This is why it is important that nobody tries to edit any Unused Text entry in the Visual Editor, as this will butcher the article's formatting. An article can be restored of course thanks to the site's consistent log of auto-saves, but to save trouble I just want to inform everybody to not enter any article's Edit page when the Visual Editor is your default one.

 

[Lex]

Well done and congrats Shademp, this is excellent news! And I'll be using the HTML editor for the Franchise Guide pages too for the reasons you mentioned - the visual editor just completely screws with tables. It's a pain in the hoop diddy hoop de-hoop de-hoop.

EDIT: Now that I've read this, can I just chime in with something semi related to that discussion/ mentioned in it? I'm totally against articles or pages we write being split into seperate pages (not parts as Shademp has done with the Unused text series, I mean the 1|2|3|4 things we don't really do anymore) because it's incredibly easy to miss the fact that there's more than one page.

I understand that it's necessary for both narrative flow/ page size and it could really just be my stupidity, but I remember reading old articles on the site before I started writing and thinking the article had been published unfinished because I missed the tiny page numbering only at the bottom - we either need to make it more obvious that there's more to the article by indicating that within the text or making the 1|2|3|4 thing more obvious, or we need to publish them in parts as Shademp has done and not use page numbers at all. Just my opinion, obviously .

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

We're pretty much going to have to keep the page numbering system. Some articles don't merit breaking into multiple parts or doing so may not fit the vision of the author. Yet some such articles couldn't remain a single page either -- after a certain point, they become unreadable or just boink the page.

The simple solution is to just say something like "(Click below to continue to page 2)" or make the sentence itself a link and say "(Click here to continue to page 2)."

 

[Lex]

We're pretty much going to have to keep the page numbering system. Some articles don't merit breaking into multiple parts or doing so may not fit the vision of the author. Yet some such articles couldn't remain a single page either -- after a certain point, they become unreadable or just boink the page.

The simple solution is to just say something like "(Click below to continue to page 2)" or make the sentence itself a link and say "(Click here to continue to page 2)."

Good, can we make this a standard for articles that have multiple pages? Finish it as normal, add a link to the next/previous page at the bottom of each page and right or left align it depending on where it is.

Maybe just something like this in the centre at the bottom for articles that have multiple pages:

<--Previous Page | Next Page-->​

or

Continue to Page 2 -->​

 

[Fangu]

There is a default way of doing this, some <!-- tag that breaks the page. Not sure what you guys are talking about but just thought I'd mention it.

Oh if you meant giving each "page" a unique article, then this is where parent/child pages are handy. It's easy to write a template that lets you autolink to the next child.

Or you can do it manually ofc.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I think you're referring to this tag:

<!--more-->

That's the one we're discussing that adds additional pages to a post, though the resulting numbers at the bottom of each page are small and easy to overlook unless attention is called to them.

Now that we're talking about it, though, I want to say that there's a way of making those "more" tags into something more noticeable. Without going into the editor to check it out, I can't be sure, but I think it's done like this:

<!--more Click here to go to the next page-->

I like Lex's "previous/next" idea too, though.

 

[Shademp]

I understand that it's necessary for both narrative flow/ page size and it could really just be my stupidity, but I remember reading old articles on the site before I started writing and thinking the article had been published unfinished because I missed the tiny page numbering only at the bottom - we either need to make it more obvious that there's more to the article by indicating that within the text or making the 1|2|3|4 thing more obvious, or we need to publish them in parts as Shademp has done and not use page numbers at all. Just my opinion, obviously .

You are not the first to be fooled. Kusabi reported, when he was new to the site, often thinking that he'd reached the end of an article when in fact there was more content left on a second page.

One thing that always annoyed me about additional pages to a single article is the fact that you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to reach the page links. I think it would be great to have a link at the top right corner as well.

This Early Material newspost consists of three pages. Now while I would actually like to take the freedom and make it all into long feature instead of being divided into three, for the sake of an example I'd like to, again, see page links at the top right.

Spoiler: As such (edited in Paint)

Currently there are only page links at the bottom left. Maybe move them to the bottom right if we could implement links at the top right, for the sake of consistency?


EDIT: I do agree in general that we should strive towards making features that aren't divided into multiple pages (but instead parts) though I certainly do not shun any author who decides that multiple pages fits his/her vision.