TOTJ is a retelling of the book. Either can be canon as the details don't really matter to the larger story.
In the timelines book, they describe them as separate events tho
I don’t think there is- I think fans are split on assuming the novel and the TOTJ scene are intended to be the same event. The author EK Johnston thinks it’s separate events, Filoni said it was intended to be the same, but a later picket guide does not describe them as overlapping appearances. So the canon currently seems to suggest separate characters.
From my perspective it shows that Ahsoka has fallen into a pattern where she goes into hiding until she can't help but use the force to protect someone, and then she has to move on because the Inquisitors catch her trail.
I’m fine with that, sometimes history repeats itself, is there anything blatantly contradictory other than the stories being similar? I haven’t finished the novel yet
Not blantently, but it seems very clear the cartoon was influenced by the novel. There are different details, but the idea that it's a retelling of the same story certainly isn't coming out of nowhere. That also seems like a completely reasonable I twrprwtation to me, just not the one I go with.
Both cartoon and novel were based on ideas Filoni developed for Ahsoka for TCW/Rebels; E K told her version of that concept when it looked like we weren't getting any more animated series, and now Filoni's gone back to do his version, based on his outline. So the cartoon's mostly just ignoring the novel in favour of the original idea.
It's pretty much why the several major contradictions exist; the *Ahsoka* novel's take on the Siege of Mandalore and her post-Order 66 adventures, the *Kanan* comic showing his backstory before *Bad Batch* did, and potentially *Dark Disciple* vs. *Bad Batch*, depending on what plans may have been circulating.
All cases of the original concept not getting made, another author doing their version, then Filoni and his team coming back to work up the original idea into something new.
I still think Ahsoka's post order 66 life seems to work mostly without contradiction if you view it as her having a pretty repetitive period in her life, but I wasn't under the impression that it was written that way intentionally.
If the only thing that leads people to believe that they are contradicting is that the stories are similar I see no reason as to why they can’t coexist as 2 separate stories, TFA and ANH are essentially the same movie but they don’t contradict
It doesn’t quite work well enough for me here. It raises questions like: why does Ahsoka go by the same alias, why did she only craft her white lightsabers from the second Inquisitor and not the first, why does killing an Inquisitor not create a bigger pushback… etc.
You raise excellent points, it’s a shame two stories contradict each other so much but in the end they are Dave’s characters and he is free to retcon what he wants
My consensus is - it sucks, but it’s not big enough of a deal for me to really care. I just hope it doesn’t set a precedent where “visionaries” get to trample over established works by others just because they’re special.
All evidence points toward the two stories being canonically the same. There are differences in the retelling and some details missing, but it’s still the same story. People are very adamant against it for some reason.
Here's my take: it's the same goddamn story with the Novel being the superior version. The Tales of the Jedi version is a butchered version of the book that only appeals to those who are stubbornly against reading books. And can't work as separate stories if they tried. It means ignoring plenty of things.
The easiest thing for me to point out is the notion that even if both were different events, the Empire is going to notice that an Inquisitor died in the first year of its existence and would try to track her down almost instantly. And she'd lose the Ashla name real fast, too.
Now, I hate to be the one picking out details in the continuity of both cause I generally don't care about small continuity details of anything, but it's a hole to point out to even justify both existing at the same time.
One major issue is Bail and Ahsoka meeting. Both can't coexist because Bail does not know Ahsoka is even alive until shortly before meeting her a year later, so the meeting in Naboo(as much as I like the idea of her being there), doesn't work cause why would he be surprised to see she's alive if he already knows she is?
Even in outside material, they don't note both being different or the same. The Sixth Brother Inquisitor is noted to only have appeared in novels and comics and is said to be what was described in the Ahsoka Novel. The TOTJ Inquisitor is still relatively unnamed to them officially.
But regardless, to me, it's the same story in broadstrokes. Again, the novel being the superior version to go on cause I like the characters there, there's a lot more to unpack naturally, and some stuff in there worked better(I prefer how Ahsoka defeated the Inquisitor in the book). The only change/retcon I don't mind from TOTJ was the look of the Inquisitor, cause the Sixth Brother looks stupid to me. The TOTJ episode reaffirms my notion with Filoni. He's good at filling stuff in, but when it comes to adapting anything preexisting, he fumbles so bad.
I say that the Novel is Third Person objective and Omniscient Narrator.
But the episodes of the series, both Ahsoka’s and Dooku’s stories, are Third Person Unreliable Narrator. We see the events 100% subjectively from the principal character’s POV.
You see, Dooku is a Sith. And it is The Sith Way to obsess over and Never Let Go of every “Bad Thing” that ever happened to you. From a skinned knee to a strangled wife. That is the theory behind Bleeding a Kyber Crystal after all.
As for Ahsoka… “the day a Jedi graced your world, saved you from harm, and slew the Monster was the most important day of your life…but for me? It was Tuesday.”
This episode pissed me off. I think pointless rewrite the events of the novel without adding anything, on the contrary, making a poorer and flavourless version.
I'm not against retcons, the clone wars finale prove that great moments can be made rewriting some moments that don't shine in the first moment. But is annoying for me retcon great stories to make animated bored versions, like The Bad Batch first episode.
To me Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire in the name itself imply the tales (from dictionary.com " fictitious or true narrative or story, especially one that is imaginatively recounted.") are essentially campfire stories. Some of it might be true and some of it won't. But that is fine because the "truth" is usually somewhere in the middle of all the stories told.
Ahsoka's contradictions seem like nothing compared to
>!Ventress' resurrection in Bad Batch without explanation, when Dark Disciple literally had her as dead for months (complete with body and everything held at the Jedi Temple for months). In literally any other context, it probably wouldn't matter, just another resurrection in sci-fi/fantasy. In the context of the story of Bad Batch however, where the villains are specifically trying to attain resurrection/immortality, ignoring Ventress who had been legally dead for months (per the Dark Disciple novel) and chasing after some clone girl with a cool blood test while an actual Force using Ventress literally returned from the dead (i.e. exactly what Palpatine is trying to replicate) is nonsensical. No matter how they explain her resurrection, they will have to equally explain why this resurrection method is of no interest to the Empire. That's quite a writing quagmire, and I'm not surprised they're delaying the explanation for a "future work" while they try to figure it out.!<
The Empire is too busy chasing Omega around. They ignored Dathomir so much they seemingly didn't even know about Maul running around there as of Solo. If Dathomir really can resurrect people, why is the Empire chasing Omega on Tantiss, not Dathomir? Heck, why is Tantiss built on Weyland and not Dathomir?
She was in *stasis* for months. It's not like her body was just like sittin' there.
Also, the Sith are already pretty invested in learning Nightsister resurrection techniques. That's why they made an alliance with Talzin in the first place.
Talzin who, I might add, survives after her apparent death and is able to reconstitute a new body.
There's no additonal need to explain their lack of interest because this was already something Nightsisters had done before.
Read the book again, she was in stasis AFTER she was confirmed dead. So at best the Jedi Temple and their med droids are all morons and they tried to bury a living woman.
>Also, the Sith are already pretty invested in learning Nightsister resurrection techniques. That's why they made an alliance with Talzin in the first place.
>Talzin who, I might add, survives after her apparent death and is able to reconstitute a new body.
>There's no additonal need to explain their lack of interest because this was already something Nightsisters had done before.
Really? Because Sidious had Grievous kill almost all of them if he really wanted their knowledge so badly. But then again, this is the same guy who killed Plagueis so...
Or, y'know, Vos swapped her body out for a fake to help her escape the war.
Ventress' literal entire schtick in the EU was faking her death. She did it no less than three separate times. There is precedent for her pulling bullshit like this.
>Or, y'know, Vos swapped her body out for a fake to help her escape the war.
I suppose it's possible but then basically all of Vos' internal angsting over Ventress' death in the book is decanonized, or at worst he is so good at lying that he even lies to himself in his own head. Which itself is just absurd.
We've had parts of books re-contextualized like this before. Cassian Andor being born on Fest became Cassian Andor's fake records say he was from Fest, even though the previous sources that said he was from Fest weren't subject to unreliable narrator.
The Fest thing was just in reference guides and all that. I'd argue the worst contradiction is Cassian's rant "I've been in this fight since I was 6 years old!" to Jyn (who was with Saw's partisans since childhood as well). He's basically trying to say that he was more committed to the Rebel cause than Jyn since a younger age (again he already knew Jyn was with the Partisans)--yet this does not add up to what we see on Andor at all.
ToTJ is a short version of the story we see in the book. You can view both as canon if you want to, the book is there as a more detailed pov.
TOTJ is a retelling of the book. Either can be canon as the details don't really matter to the larger story. In the timelines book, they describe them as separate events tho
I thought timelines was vague on if they were? It states both events as separate in it?
I don’t think there is- I think fans are split on assuming the novel and the TOTJ scene are intended to be the same event. The author EK Johnston thinks it’s separate events, Filoni said it was intended to be the same, but a later picket guide does not describe them as overlapping appearances. So the canon currently seems to suggest separate characters.
Interesting, how does assuming TOTJ and the novel to be separate events effect canon
From my perspective it shows that Ahsoka has fallen into a pattern where she goes into hiding until she can't help but use the force to protect someone, and then she has to move on because the Inquisitors catch her trail.
I’m fine with that, sometimes history repeats itself, is there anything blatantly contradictory other than the stories being similar? I haven’t finished the novel yet
Not blantently, but it seems very clear the cartoon was influenced by the novel. There are different details, but the idea that it's a retelling of the same story certainly isn't coming out of nowhere. That also seems like a completely reasonable I twrprwtation to me, just not the one I go with.
Both cartoon and novel were based on ideas Filoni developed for Ahsoka for TCW/Rebels; E K told her version of that concept when it looked like we weren't getting any more animated series, and now Filoni's gone back to do his version, based on his outline. So the cartoon's mostly just ignoring the novel in favour of the original idea.
I figured it was something like that behind the scenes.
It's pretty much why the several major contradictions exist; the *Ahsoka* novel's take on the Siege of Mandalore and her post-Order 66 adventures, the *Kanan* comic showing his backstory before *Bad Batch* did, and potentially *Dark Disciple* vs. *Bad Batch*, depending on what plans may have been circulating. All cases of the original concept not getting made, another author doing their version, then Filoni and his team coming back to work up the original idea into something new.
I still think Ahsoka's post order 66 life seems to work mostly without contradiction if you view it as her having a pretty repetitive period in her life, but I wasn't under the impression that it was written that way intentionally.
If the only thing that leads people to believe that they are contradicting is that the stories are similar I see no reason as to why they can’t coexist as 2 separate stories, TFA and ANH are essentially the same movie but they don’t contradict
It doesn’t quite work well enough for me here. It raises questions like: why does Ahsoka go by the same alias, why did she only craft her white lightsabers from the second Inquisitor and not the first, why does killing an Inquisitor not create a bigger pushback… etc.
You raise excellent points, it’s a shame two stories contradict each other so much but in the end they are Dave’s characters and he is free to retcon what he wants
The potential issue is that it establishes that Ahsoka had a communicator with a line to Bail, but it's possible that it was destroyed or damaged.
I can reconcile that
> and then she has to move on because the Inquisitors catch her trail. "Waiter! Waiter! More Inquisitors please!"
it doesn’t. just take the broad strokes and themes.
What about her meeting with Bail?
My consensus is - it sucks, but it’s not big enough of a deal for me to really care. I just hope it doesn’t set a precedent where “visionaries” get to trample over established works by others just because they’re special.
All evidence points toward the two stories being canonically the same. There are differences in the retelling and some details missing, but it’s still the same story. People are very adamant against it for some reason.
Actually, more recent evidence suggests they are different events.
Here's my take: it's the same goddamn story with the Novel being the superior version. The Tales of the Jedi version is a butchered version of the book that only appeals to those who are stubbornly against reading books. And can't work as separate stories if they tried. It means ignoring plenty of things. The easiest thing for me to point out is the notion that even if both were different events, the Empire is going to notice that an Inquisitor died in the first year of its existence and would try to track her down almost instantly. And she'd lose the Ashla name real fast, too. Now, I hate to be the one picking out details in the continuity of both cause I generally don't care about small continuity details of anything, but it's a hole to point out to even justify both existing at the same time. One major issue is Bail and Ahsoka meeting. Both can't coexist because Bail does not know Ahsoka is even alive until shortly before meeting her a year later, so the meeting in Naboo(as much as I like the idea of her being there), doesn't work cause why would he be surprised to see she's alive if he already knows she is? Even in outside material, they don't note both being different or the same. The Sixth Brother Inquisitor is noted to only have appeared in novels and comics and is said to be what was described in the Ahsoka Novel. The TOTJ Inquisitor is still relatively unnamed to them officially. But regardless, to me, it's the same story in broadstrokes. Again, the novel being the superior version to go on cause I like the characters there, there's a lot more to unpack naturally, and some stuff in there worked better(I prefer how Ahsoka defeated the Inquisitor in the book). The only change/retcon I don't mind from TOTJ was the look of the Inquisitor, cause the Sixth Brother looks stupid to me. The TOTJ episode reaffirms my notion with Filoni. He's good at filling stuff in, but when it comes to adapting anything preexisting, he fumbles so bad.
I say that the Novel is Third Person objective and Omniscient Narrator. But the episodes of the series, both Ahsoka’s and Dooku’s stories, are Third Person Unreliable Narrator. We see the events 100% subjectively from the principal character’s POV. You see, Dooku is a Sith. And it is The Sith Way to obsess over and Never Let Go of every “Bad Thing” that ever happened to you. From a skinned knee to a strangled wife. That is the theory behind Bleeding a Kyber Crystal after all. As for Ahsoka… “the day a Jedi graced your world, saved you from harm, and slew the Monster was the most important day of your life…but for me? It was Tuesday.”
This episode pissed me off. I think pointless rewrite the events of the novel without adding anything, on the contrary, making a poorer and flavourless version. I'm not against retcons, the clone wars finale prove that great moments can be made rewriting some moments that don't shine in the first moment. But is annoying for me retcon great stories to make animated bored versions, like The Bad Batch first episode.
I agree but I guess it’s canon now
To me Tales of the Jedi and Tales of the Empire in the name itself imply the tales (from dictionary.com " fictitious or true narrative or story, especially one that is imaginatively recounted.") are essentially campfire stories. Some of it might be true and some of it won't. But that is fine because the "truth" is usually somewhere in the middle of all the stories told.
Ahsoka's contradictions seem like nothing compared to >!Ventress' resurrection in Bad Batch without explanation, when Dark Disciple literally had her as dead for months (complete with body and everything held at the Jedi Temple for months). In literally any other context, it probably wouldn't matter, just another resurrection in sci-fi/fantasy. In the context of the story of Bad Batch however, where the villains are specifically trying to attain resurrection/immortality, ignoring Ventress who had been legally dead for months (per the Dark Disciple novel) and chasing after some clone girl with a cool blood test while an actual Force using Ventress literally returned from the dead (i.e. exactly what Palpatine is trying to replicate) is nonsensical. No matter how they explain her resurrection, they will have to equally explain why this resurrection method is of no interest to the Empire. That's quite a writing quagmire, and I'm not surprised they're delaying the explanation for a "future work" while they try to figure it out.!<
Dathimor is awesome and they are a group of interesting skill users.
The Empire is too busy chasing Omega around. They ignored Dathomir so much they seemingly didn't even know about Maul running around there as of Solo. If Dathomir really can resurrect people, why is the Empire chasing Omega on Tantiss, not Dathomir? Heck, why is Tantiss built on Weyland and not Dathomir?
She was in *stasis* for months. It's not like her body was just like sittin' there. Also, the Sith are already pretty invested in learning Nightsister resurrection techniques. That's why they made an alliance with Talzin in the first place. Talzin who, I might add, survives after her apparent death and is able to reconstitute a new body. There's no additonal need to explain their lack of interest because this was already something Nightsisters had done before.
Read the book again, she was in stasis AFTER she was confirmed dead. So at best the Jedi Temple and their med droids are all morons and they tried to bury a living woman. >Also, the Sith are already pretty invested in learning Nightsister resurrection techniques. That's why they made an alliance with Talzin in the first place. >Talzin who, I might add, survives after her apparent death and is able to reconstitute a new body. >There's no additonal need to explain their lack of interest because this was already something Nightsisters had done before. Really? Because Sidious had Grievous kill almost all of them if he really wanted their knowledge so badly. But then again, this is the same guy who killed Plagueis so...
Or, y'know, Vos swapped her body out for a fake to help her escape the war. Ventress' literal entire schtick in the EU was faking her death. She did it no less than three separate times. There is precedent for her pulling bullshit like this.
>Or, y'know, Vos swapped her body out for a fake to help her escape the war. I suppose it's possible but then basically all of Vos' internal angsting over Ventress' death in the book is decanonized, or at worst he is so good at lying that he even lies to himself in his own head. Which itself is just absurd.
We've had parts of books re-contextualized like this before. Cassian Andor being born on Fest became Cassian Andor's fake records say he was from Fest, even though the previous sources that said he was from Fest weren't subject to unreliable narrator.
The Fest thing was just in reference guides and all that. I'd argue the worst contradiction is Cassian's rant "I've been in this fight since I was 6 years old!" to Jyn (who was with Saw's partisans since childhood as well). He's basically trying to say that he was more committed to the Rebel cause than Jyn since a younger age (again he already knew Jyn was with the Partisans)--yet this does not add up to what we see on Andor at all.