Metrobay Chronology

Discuss "Metrobay Comix" and other stories with Doctor Robo!

Re: Kari's Adventures

Postby Doctor Robo » July 24th, 2011, 3:23 pm

Hector2 wrote:Dear Doc Robo, Technophile and of course, MCtek:

Oh my, I can’t believe it, we just have had our first continuity discussion! I must say that fills with warm my nerdly hearth.

It was destined to be sooner or later, because I think you’re producing comics about Metrobay since 2003, aren’t you?

Just a suggestion, why don’t you create a Metrobay wiki entry called “Timeline” or something?

Hector2


That's right, Hector. Finister Foul and I started work on our first joint venture in 2003, but he was doing Pink Pussycat stories on his own for a year or so before that.

As for the timeline entry, that's a fantastic idea. Tecknophyle wrote up a very detailed Chronology which I have posted to the wiki. You can find it here: http://metrobay.wetpaint.com/page/Chronology

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Metrobay Chronology

Postby Tecknophyle » July 25th, 2011, 6:35 pm

Northern Chill wrote:Macrolass, MONA's origin is found in chapter 1 of the Tasty Treats arc...one of my personal favorite story lines on many levels.

I


Hmmm...

Just gave an idea for another column in the Chronology table. Be right back...

...aaaaand we're back. New column added to the Chronology table indicating when a story introduced a particular character. This one was done quickly, so there's no doubt errors (and some characters aren't added because they first appeared in other stories which aren't on the list yet).
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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby Doctor Robo » July 26th, 2011, 3:54 am

Tecknophyle wrote:New column added to the Chronology table indicating when a story introduced a particular character. This one was done quickly, so there's no doubt errors (and some characters aren't added because they first appeared in other stories which aren't on the list yet).


Awesome job. I think that table will become a very valuable addition to the wiki. Thank you very much!

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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby PsiLance » July 26th, 2011, 1:15 pm

Great job on the Chronology table, Tecknophyle, but did you mean to leave out stories like the Platinum Earth adventure, Sword and Shield, Resort Tales, Goth Girls, and Protect and Serve?
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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby Northern Chill » July 26th, 2011, 1:57 pm

PsiLance wrote:Great job on the Chronology table, Tecknophyle, but did you mean to leave out stories like the Platinum Earth adventure, Sword and Shield, Resort Tales, Goth Girls, and Protect and Serve?


The trouble with chronology such as the great job Tecknophyle did is that it does rely on references to give the arc a fixated point in the continuity time line.

As for the stories you've mentioned, I'll take a shot here:

Platinum Earth - takes place before the Forbidden Fantasy Arc (referenced to briefly in that arc).
Sword and Shield - takes place after Teacher's Pet and before Catatonic Kitty
Resort Tales - happens shortly after Forbidden Fantasy
Protect and Serve - happens after Club Pump ( Officer Han mentions belonging to club at end of Serve)
Goth Girls - happens after Platinum Earth (Knyght Fighter shows residue effects of PE arc)

and one more: short story Members Request Twelve (debut of Clownetta, Bluebird and Sparrow) happens early in time line after Twisted Tales (arbitrary choice but this story is referred to in Day in the Life of Belinda Giolla)

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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby Doctor Robo » July 26th, 2011, 6:53 pm

Northern Chill wrote:and one more: short story Members Request Twelve (debut of Clownetta, Bluebird and Sparrow) happens early in time line after Twisted Tales (arbitrary choice but this story is referred to in Day in the Life of Belinda Giolla)


All of those members requests take place right around the time of "Twisted Tales". At that point we were still in the process of integrating all of our characters into one universe, so the timeline is a little fluid.

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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby Tecknophyle » July 26th, 2011, 9:24 pm

There's a lot of stories that aren't included (such as most of the Pink Pussycat ones, the Guardian gals stories, and so on) that I haven't slotted in yet. They will be, I just haven't gotten to them yet.
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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby Tecknophyle » July 26th, 2011, 9:39 pm

Northern Chill wrote:
PsiLance wrote:Great job on the Chronology table, Tecknophyle, but did you mean to leave out stories like the Platinum Earth adventure, Sword and Shield, Resort Tales, Goth Girls, and Protect and Serve?


The trouble with chronology such as the great job Tecknophyle did is that it does rely on references to give the arc a fixated point in the continuity time line.

As for the stories you've mentioned, I'll take a shot here:

Platinum Earth - takes place before the Forbidden Fantasy Arc (referenced to briefly in that arc).
Sword and Shield - takes place after Teacher's Pet and before Catatonic Kitty
Resort Tales - happens shortly after Forbidden Fantasy
Protect and Serve - happens after Club Pump ( Officer Han mentions belonging to club at end of Serve)
Goth Girls - happens after Platinum Earth (Knyght Fighter shows residue effects of PE arc)

and one more: short story Members Request Twelve (debut of Clownetta, Bluebird and Sparrow) happens early in time line after Twisted Tales (arbitrary choice but this story is referred to in Day in the Life of Belinda Giolla)

Northern Chill


The problem with some of the stories is that stuff happens that make it difficult to place, especially (like Sword and Shield) and Goth Girls) when the story is incomplete and there's some massive changes (or at least potential ones) to characters: you need to know how the story ends before you can decide where it goes in the timeline.

To give you an example, in To Love and Obey there's American Amazon at the strip club: there's no way you could hide those tattoos in her normal costume, so there's some question about when exactly it might be happening.
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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby Tecknophyle » July 26th, 2011, 11:00 pm

I've added Members Request 12, Platinum Earth, Sword and Shield, The Resort Tales, Gothikk Girls, and Protect and Serve, as well as some minor rearrangement.
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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby Tecknophyle » July 26th, 2011, 11:30 pm

I should mention that when it comes to a timeline, part of the problem is the limitation on the how it's displayed: because it's a table, one thing has to follow another when, in fact, they may be roughly contemporaneous events. So some of the stories listed in order might be, and probably are, actually happening at the same time. A more accurate way of showing it would be graphically, with a stories clustered together in groups happening at roughly the same time and then the groups connected by lines showing how those time-groupings relate to each other.

For instance, one assumes that most of the Pink Pussycat/Guardian Gals stories are happening roughly at the same time, with overlaps at Night of the Drones where Pink Pussycat shows up, Serve and Protect with Clawdette II, Sword and Shield where a bunch of them are, Catatonic Kitty (again Pussycat) and so on. Otherwise, I assume most of their stories are off happening on their own at the same time as many of the stories already on the list.

The only way to be sure of what happens before what is specific references to dates, or to events in other stories.
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Re: Grime City Stories: The Lonely Man

Postby Doctor Robo » July 27th, 2011, 7:58 am

Tecknophyle wrote:I should mention that when it comes to a timeline, part of the problem is the limitation on the how it's displayed: because it's a table, one thing has to follow another when, in fact, they may be roughly contemporaneous events.

The only way to be sure of what happens before what is specific references to dates, or to events in other stories.


That's a good point. We do that on purpose, to allow for characters to appear in multiple stories simultaneously. We also purposely try NOT to attach specific dates to the stories, or else they will start to feel 'old' and outdated as real time progresses but the characters themselves remain essentially ageless. We don't necessarily want to have to deal with a reboot every ten years like DC Comics does, simply because they can't properly explain how Batman has only aged 10-15 years or so since 1939. :)

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Re: Metrobay Chronology

Postby Doctor Robo » July 27th, 2011, 6:45 pm

Hi everyone. As you may have noticed, the chronology discussion was taking on a life of its own, so I split it off into a new topic to keep the threads straight. Now, please continue the discussion!

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Re: Metrobay Chronology

Postby Northern Chill » July 27th, 2011, 9:07 pm

There's an error in the order...Changing of the Guard has to be placed as happening before King of Hooter County as Erica Donovan appears at the end of the latter.
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Re: Metrobay Chronology

Postby Tecknophyle » July 28th, 2011, 10:07 am

Northern Chill wrote:There's an error in the order...Changing of the Guard has to be placed as happening before King of Hooter County as Erica Donovan appears at the end of the latter.


Crap. Okay, I'll fix that.
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Re: Metrobay Chronology

Postby Tecknophyle » July 28th, 2011, 10:28 am

Actually, there's a timeline issue.

Changing of the Guard and Forbidden Fantasy must follow each other due to the Sparrow and Bluebird kidnapping/brainwashing which starts in one and ends in the other, with no room for anything in between (the first story literally says they are kidnapped a few hours after Donovan's brainwashing). The problem is that L.I.S.A. has clearly, by the second story, been in Twiss's custody for some time (his daydream about L.I.S.A. and Ms Metrobay happens after Bluebird is brainwashed and before/at the same time as Sparrow). Gynoid Dilemma also has Ted with L.I.S.A., and clearly happens before Forbidden Fantasy as well.

King of Hooter County is where they captured L.I.S.A.

There is no way to get those to work. You can't even say that it was another guard and not Donovan because Changing of the Guard states the guard uniform was created for Donovan first. The only way to retcon this is to either remove Donovan entirely from that single panel, or have the guard referred to by another name and in Changing of the Guard change a few words to indicate Donovan is being given a new guard uniform that a few have already tried out.

Hmm. Removing the entire panel is really the easiest. There's nothing critical that goes on in it anyway.
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