The Taxonomy of Toy-Based Fiction, or a further look at Continuity Families
- Thread starter Tuxedo Prime
- Start date
That's as may be, but did we hear that name in the broadcast episode?
Even if we did, conflating "Primacron's assistant-Oracle" with "Beast Machines-Oracle" is just as much a later retcon as conflating "Creation Matrix" with "Matrix of Leadership", or putting Optimus' spark chamber in front of the Matrix receptacle as 3H did.
We seem to be talking past each other a bit, as I don't hold retrofitted continuity to be inherently good or bad. It simply is.
Furman's retcons, whatever you or I may think of them (and I've been willing to point out where they need some squinting and hammer blows to make fit), have stood the test of time in the ephemeral world of fortnightly comics designed to help sell toys. I figure that there had to be a reason for that, as well as a reason why, the kaiju that is Japan's Pack-in With A Recording of a Radio Play of Revelation might be a little less gravitated towards, even by our weebier fans.
(...poor Sayori.)
But ultimately the arbitration of Canon will be done by Hasbro Licensing, so we'll just have to see what comes next. I do wish IDW had been able to do their Infinite Crossover Crisis as a close-out, though.
I consider it a bit more 'streamlining' then anything. Since it gives oracle some kinda connection to G1 which doesn't really strech credibility or change anything. It's just makign two vaguely similar 'characters' with obscure lore, into one that gives them slightly more depth then being random macguffin characters.
I also feel its MUCH less a retcon to do, then 'The Quints are secretly trying to take over." Which largely just feels like more fandom spite on the level of killing Wheelie and Daniel. Becuase one doesn't really change or effect the show at all, and the other tries to completely change things.
While, yes, the whole Primus layer was indeed a big fat retcon, what Takara did with their version of Vector Sigma was basically reconcile all of the different interpretations of it featured across the different series of the Japanese G1 timeline:
Combining all of that gives us Vector Sigma: The ancient computer hidden deep inside Cybertron that gave life to the Transformers after foretelling their first coming to Cybertron, maintained the balance of stability on Cybertron in tandem with the power of the Matrix, and was revered by the Transformers as their god. Following Cybertron's destruction in 2011, Vector Sigma somehow survived and eventually evolved into the Oracle by the 24th Century, during which it was rediscovered after a long period of dormancy that had led to its fading away from Cybertronian knowledge. This rediscovery brought it back into public awareness and eventually led to its becoming the highest authority on Cybertron, by which point it had evolved again into a new form and started bestowing a certain class of individuals with Energon Matrices. Oh, and it made Cybertron City in the distant past and put it on Earth to protect the planet's Gaia Energy for... reasons.
And that's all before adding in the Quintessons from the G1 cartoon, Cybertron having originally been an organic planet in the ancient past from Beast Machines, and adding in both of the retcons about Primacron's assistant and Primus to explain Vector Sigma's connection to the Matrix's power, which then led to more retroactive connections with... *deep breath*
Phew!
- Vector Sigma of the G1 cartoon: The ancient ultracomputer that gave life to the Transformers, hidden deep within a secret chamber near the center of Cybertron (listening to the dialogue of the Japanese version, it sounds like Megatron at one point refers to Vector Sigma as "kami", meaning "god")
- Vector Sigma of The Headmasters cartoon: The ultracomputer that maintains the balance of stability on Cybertron, which is also somehow tied to the sacred cosmic power of the Matrix (Note that it is also supposed to be the same Vector Sigma as the first one, despite its bluer appearance inside a very different-looking chamber)
- Vector Sigma of the Beast Wars Neo cartoon: The "God of the Transformers" said to have been their creator, now a known public figure and the highest authority on Cybertron, residing high up in the Tower of Light (and now speaks with a female voice and has a completely new look as a silver, jagged, crystalline shard, coincidentally looking kinda like a giant version of the AllSpark shard from ROTF)
- Vector Sigma of the Car Robots cartoon: The "God of the Transformers" like in Beast Wars Neo, now said to have bestowed Energon Matrices to those of the Convoy Class, and is said to have created a great fortress called Cybertron City hidden on Earth in ancient times to protect something called "Gaia Energy"
- Vector Sigma of the Beast Machines cartoon: The ancient computer that eventually evolved into the Oracle by the time of the 24th Century, and has only just been rediscovered after having faded into complete and total obscurity over a long period of time, with only its evolved Oracle form being remembered in legends (legends that said the Oracle foretold the coming of the first Transformers to Cybertron), while knowledge of its original Vector Sigma form remains confined to centuries-old datatrax (Note that while in the English version the Oracle speaks with a female voice, it speaks with a male voice in the Japanese dub)
Combining all of that gives us Vector Sigma: The ancient computer hidden deep inside Cybertron that gave life to the Transformers after foretelling their first coming to Cybertron, maintained the balance of stability on Cybertron in tandem with the power of the Matrix, and was revered by the Transformers as their god. Following Cybertron's destruction in 2011, Vector Sigma somehow survived and eventually evolved into the Oracle by the 24th Century, during which it was rediscovered after a long period of dormancy that had led to its fading away from Cybertronian knowledge. This rediscovery brought it back into public awareness and eventually led to its becoming the highest authority on Cybertron, by which point it had evolved again into a new form and started bestowing a certain class of individuals with Energon Matrices. Oh, and it made Cybertron City in the distant past and put it on Earth to protect the planet's Gaia Energy for... reasons.
And that's all before adding in the Quintessons from the G1 cartoon, Cybertron having originally been an organic planet in the ancient past from Beast Machines, and adding in both of the retcons about Primacron's assistant and Primus to explain Vector Sigma's connection to the Matrix's power, which then led to more retroactive connections with... *deep breath*
- Unicron and Primacron from the G1 cartoon and movie
- The Angolmois Energy from Beast Wars Second and Beast Wars Neo
- The Zodiac from Zone
- Devil Zed from Super-God Masterforce
- The Trans-Organics from the G1 cartoon
- The Pretenders and Master-Braces also from Super-God Masterforce
- The Powermaster concept first introduced to the Japanese lore via the Nucleon Quest Super Convoy toy
- "It" from the G1 cartoon
- The Great Transformation prophecy from Beast Machines
- The Junkions, Lithones, Xetaxxians, and Lanarqans from the G1 cartoon, as well as the people of Twin Star from The Headmasters
- The Primus Vanguard first mentioned in Legends LG-EX Magna Convoy's toy bio and first alluded to in his tie-in comics
- The Golden Lagoon redeco toys from the small toyline of the same name, plus the "Electrum Jazz" reissue toy
- The One from Transformers: The Ultimate Guide
- The Vector Oracle toy from the 2011 Arms Micron store promotional campaign
Phew!
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And I bet none of the extra Primus retcons would have even happened at all if it hadn't been for the whole "Primus exists in all worlds" thing that Furman laid the groundwork for with his "There is only one Unicron" idea, since it really feels like that the main reason Primus was retconned into the Japanese G1 cartoon continuity at all was to adhere to the "Primus in all worlds" notion that was in its heyday at the time of 2006-2007.
Thinking more about this streamlining of Vector Sigma, when going back to what the Kiss Players timeline did, before adding in the Primus part, all that was added to this equation was just Primacron's assistant, in an attempt to explain the presence of the Matrix seen departing from the assistant's body in the episode. Since the episode's script referred to him as "the Oracle" (based on his glowing energy appearance), the timeline simply merged the two entities named "Oracle" into one being, which also merged the assistant with Vector Sigma since the BM Oracle was also a form of Vector Sigma. Coincidentally, both the G1 Oracle and Vector Sigma also had the same voice actor.
Though, since the G1 Oracle was also located on an ancient rocky planet, all scenes set on that planet had to be retconned as taking place in the distant past in order for this retcon to work. Watching the scene of the Primitives traveling to that world, it does kinda look like it could be reinterpreted as a time traveling sequence. This retcon also fit nicely with how Beast Machines said that Cybertron had originally been an organic planet, so the Oracle's ancient world would just be how the planet looked before that lush green ecosystem was created. And since the Key to Vector Sigma was already retconned by Beast Machines into being able to turn any and all organics into technomatter, that provided the perfect tool for the Quintessons to have built Cybertron with in this retcon.
Plus, what really brings things full circle is a nice bit of symmetry in how, in the episode, the G1 Oracle's planet was said to have been located at the center of the galaxy, and then later near the end of Beast Wars Neo, Cybertron was located near the center of the galaxy, essentially bringing the planet back to its origin point at the end of the latest-set JG1 cartoon.
And this is all still before the Primus part was added in, so even without that part does the retcon still look basically the same as it did back when it was first made in 2006/2007. I guess the Primus part was just added to try to give some real weight to Vector Sigma/Oracle being an archenemy of Unicron, since neither a space monkey nor a shiny globe would have seemed all that impressive fighting against Unicron directly during the final battle of the Sparkbots storyline.
And even though the Primus part was added in at the time, not much else was really done with that particular part of the retcon until 2019-2021, when Generations Selects really dove into JG1 Primus's backstory with the Primus Vanguard and the Precursor World. I honestly thought it was quite clever to use the Vector Oracle toy to represent his most basic, original form, since back when that toy was first unveiled, my initial reaction to it was "Judging by his name, Vector Oracle may be a physical humanoid form of Vector Sigma."
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....Siege who?
Oh... was he part of Hot Rod's crew? I think there was an small orange Autobot in some of the cover group shots....
One idea I was considering is that Primacron was the name of the lead scientist working to build the Quintesson's factory planet. Records of his note book survived, but because noone speaks his langauge, only the barest of translation was possible, but there was enough notes for them to realize it's from their creator, so they deem it a holy book. It also has Primacron's initial notes for a planet that "eats" (converts into raw resources) other planets (Primacron's next project). Because of this, "Primacron" becomes known to Cybertron as two god beings who are the yin/yang of each other; Primus the creator, and Unicron the Destroyer.
Interestingly, the short Japanese manga story titled "Controverse" asserted that even the Quintessons were descended from those who had been originally created by Primacron, but the Quintessons in their arrogance refused to believe that they themselves could have ever been among those created by the lowly monkey scientist.
That's kinda similar to the take I use, with "Primacron" being one of the original names of the (cyborged, many-formed) species that we call "Quintessons."
So the individual in CotP is identified by a descriptor rather than a proper noun.
Well, the Exodus novel does state that the earliest entries in the Covenant of Primus were written in long-dead languages untranslatable by the time of Orion Pax, so that idea would track....
Sorry for the grave dig but the idea of what constitutes a continuity family has been rattling around in my brain thanks to the TF One discussion about where that film might fit and Tuxedo Prime volunteered this thread. Posting here seemed more on topic than filling the TF One thread with stuff not strictly related to TF One.
So! Ok. I won't be talking about the streams and clusters anymore. So what is a continuity family?
I feel like this was fairly straight forward until Aligned.
Aligned kind of fudged everything and since it was treated as its own continuity family then it stood to reason that the fudging that went on there could go on elsewhere.
This was a continuity, after all, that launched with a game and novel that told two different versions of Orion Pax and Megatron's origins, down to not even agreeing on the name of Optimus' predecessor as Prime.
Then the Prime show launched as the continuity's centrepiece which had a stylized and smoothed take on movie aesthetics in contrast to the gritty and detailed neo-G1 designs of the before mentioned game.
None of this was strictly an issue before. G1 had radically different origins for Cybertron and our main characters after all (as this thread can attest to). Even then though, the comics and Sunbow cartoon kept character designs (mostly) the same so there was at least a visual anchor that let you know "ok these are two different stories with the same cast of characters." And similar setups to the present day story were used- the Ark crashing on Earth.
The same can be said for the Armada and Energon shows vs comics. Sure, different stories, but the visual connection and some key story beats tie them together.
Meanwhile Highmoon's games have a hard time connecting with the Prime show, both narratively and visually. Even Highmoon going the extra mile to give Cliffjumper his Prime head in the sequel game felt like lipstick on a pig (in terms of effectiveness. I make no claims to either Prime or Highmoon's games' attractiveness or lack thereof
).
My point is you can show casual fans (ie not us) Marvel Megs and Sunbow Megs and they'd recognize him as the same guy. Highmoon Megs and Prime Megs as the same guy though? That's a tougher sell. I dare say your casual fan is more likely to connect Highmoon Megs to G1 Megs then Prime Megs.
Despite that, however, Highmoon's games and the Prime tv show were declared part of the same continuity. When you add in Rescue Bots and its spinoff you get even more disparate art styles in Aligned that muddy waters that were never that muddy before.
So much of the handwringing over TF One's place in continuity seems tied to Aligned's multitude of designs. After all if Highmoon Optimus, Prime Optimus, and Rescue Bots Optimus can all be the same guy then surely tying TF One Orion/Optimus to Bayverse Optimus isn't a stretch.
This wasn't a problem prior to Aligned, where even disparate parts of previous continuity families at least had uniform character designs and concepts to tie it all together.
I suppose my preference is be hyper critical and go "Aligned was a mess. It was slapped together from multiple different properties that weren't originally designed to go together and it ended when its two driving forces left Hasbro... we should treat Aligned's slapdash nature as a quirk and not use it as an excuse to clump disparate elements together in the future" but I also know that's a pipe dream. I know- we all know- how fandom works, after all. Aligned set a new looser precedent.
The thing is that if you wanted to hold up a magnifying glass and really start parsing things out well...
...IDW1
There have been murmurs here and there since IDW's first continuity got to be a certain size with its own fleshed out stories and backstories that it should be treated as its own distinct continuity, separate from G1.
I never really bought that argument because despite doing its own thing over its unprecedented thirteen year run it was grounded in G1 designs and broad G1 concepts.
But then Skybound happened.
Skybound's G1 comics embrace the G1-ness, right down to its first few issues being a retelling of the Autobots and Decepticons awakening on the Ark after being buried in stasis on Earth.
This got me thinking about the various incarnations of G1.
Sunbow and Marvel? Both use the same "crashed with the Ark" setup.
Devil's Due? Alternate timeline where Cobra finds the inert Autobots and Decepticons in the crashed Ark.
Dreamwave? Claimed to be an alternate continuation of the Sunbow show with some Marvel comics sprinkled here and there.
Skybound? Again, Autobots and Decepticons crash on Earth in the Ark, go inert, and resume their war when they wake up.
IDW's G1 comics actually stand out even more than they did before because they don't follow this formula. The Autobots and Decepticons come to Earth in present day (or well... present day circa 2005) as part of a broader galaxy spanning infiltration war between the two sides.
Had Skybound gone for its own distinct origins for its G1 story then I wouldn't have given IDW's own beginnings a second thought. By starting with that classic G1 starting point, however, it made me realize that IDW- both one and two- are kind of on an island. And that it would arguably make sense to make the "IDW Continuity Family" its own thing with IDW1 and IDW2 simply different iterations of it (IDW2 burrows a lot from IDW1, focusing on Cybertron's pre-war Senatorial politics and mass political unrest leading to the war).
Of course this creates its own problems. Multiple toys based on IDW designs have been made, and have been assumed to be toys of G1 characters. Are they still G1 toys if IDW is broken off? Potentially! A lot of those designs have been co-opted into other G1 off-shoots.
Nova Prime's Legacy toy, for example, is clearly based on an IDW original character but Nova showed up in the very G1 Sunbow Devastation game. Right now it's all G1 so it's fine but if IDW were split then suddenly you'd need "Nova Prime (IDW)" and "Nova Prime (G1)."
Just as one example.
If a desire to avoid splits like that for a multitude of characters is the driving force behind not doing it, despite IDW's uniqueness among "G1" stories then does that mean that fan convenience more than anything else is the deciding factor for what is a continuity family?
After all in the TF One thread Sabrblade said...
The question that kicked this all off- where does TF One fit?- can't be answered right now. What its full story is, how compatible it is with the live action movies that came before it, etc will have to wait for release.
And even then we have to see how it does. If it fails to make its money back we're probably looking at a one-off no one will care much about where it's "categorized."
If it is successful, however, it'll likely be used to kickstart a new continuity and fandom will have to figure out where that "fits" in relation to other Paramount movies, and the rest of the franchise as a whole.
A lot of stuff is in limbo for TF One specifically.
Broadly though? It's kind of a mess and the rules are made up as we go. And that may be fine.
I'm not without *some* inside connections and I've been told that Hasbro execs don't care. They don't differentiate between G1 Optimus Prime, G2 Optimus Prime, Armada Optimus Prime, etc...
They just want a version of Optimus Prime on shelves more often than not. And if the people who ultimately call the shots at good ole' Hassenfeld Brothers have such a cavalier attitude... maybe it's best we do?
I'm not suggesting the Wiki devolve into a "who cares, man?" mess or that fandom as a whole give up trying to categorize things... this entire post is less me trying to make a solid point and more just talking through these ideas in my head that the TF One discussion spurred on.
I just think it's worth exploring why we group certain clumps of fiction together and not others. There's no uniformity. At least not now, there may have been in the past. These days though? It's far less a strict set of rules.
It's all about vibes.
My attitude is to abandon the cluster system entirely. We could talk about how it was never meant to be something fans obsessed over but ultimately... it just comes down to reality. The one company that wrote fiction that used the cluster category system lost the licence. No one at Hasbro is interested in maintaining it. And the further we go the more and more new shows and new comics and new movies will come out that cannot be categorized by it because there's no one saying "oh this is X and this is Y." Time comes for us all, even universal streams.
So! Ok. I won't be talking about the streams and clusters anymore. So what is a continuity family?
I feel like this was fairly straight forward until Aligned.
Aligned kind of fudged everything and since it was treated as its own continuity family then it stood to reason that the fudging that went on there could go on elsewhere.
This was a continuity, after all, that launched with a game and novel that told two different versions of Orion Pax and Megatron's origins, down to not even agreeing on the name of Optimus' predecessor as Prime.
Then the Prime show launched as the continuity's centrepiece which had a stylized and smoothed take on movie aesthetics in contrast to the gritty and detailed neo-G1 designs of the before mentioned game.
None of this was strictly an issue before. G1 had radically different origins for Cybertron and our main characters after all (as this thread can attest to). Even then though, the comics and Sunbow cartoon kept character designs (mostly) the same so there was at least a visual anchor that let you know "ok these are two different stories with the same cast of characters." And similar setups to the present day story were used- the Ark crashing on Earth.
The same can be said for the Armada and Energon shows vs comics. Sure, different stories, but the visual connection and some key story beats tie them together.
Meanwhile Highmoon's games have a hard time connecting with the Prime show, both narratively and visually. Even Highmoon going the extra mile to give Cliffjumper his Prime head in the sequel game felt like lipstick on a pig (in terms of effectiveness. I make no claims to either Prime or Highmoon's games' attractiveness or lack thereof
).My point is you can show casual fans (ie not us) Marvel Megs and Sunbow Megs and they'd recognize him as the same guy. Highmoon Megs and Prime Megs as the same guy though? That's a tougher sell. I dare say your casual fan is more likely to connect Highmoon Megs to G1 Megs then Prime Megs.
Despite that, however, Highmoon's games and the Prime tv show were declared part of the same continuity. When you add in Rescue Bots and its spinoff you get even more disparate art styles in Aligned that muddy waters that were never that muddy before.
So much of the handwringing over TF One's place in continuity seems tied to Aligned's multitude of designs. After all if Highmoon Optimus, Prime Optimus, and Rescue Bots Optimus can all be the same guy then surely tying TF One Orion/Optimus to Bayverse Optimus isn't a stretch.
This wasn't a problem prior to Aligned, where even disparate parts of previous continuity families at least had uniform character designs and concepts to tie it all together.
I suppose my preference is be hyper critical and go "Aligned was a mess. It was slapped together from multiple different properties that weren't originally designed to go together and it ended when its two driving forces left Hasbro... we should treat Aligned's slapdash nature as a quirk and not use it as an excuse to clump disparate elements together in the future" but I also know that's a pipe dream. I know- we all know- how fandom works, after all. Aligned set a new looser precedent.
The thing is that if you wanted to hold up a magnifying glass and really start parsing things out well...
...IDW1
There have been murmurs here and there since IDW's first continuity got to be a certain size with its own fleshed out stories and backstories that it should be treated as its own distinct continuity, separate from G1.
I never really bought that argument because despite doing its own thing over its unprecedented thirteen year run it was grounded in G1 designs and broad G1 concepts.
But then Skybound happened.
Skybound's G1 comics embrace the G1-ness, right down to its first few issues being a retelling of the Autobots and Decepticons awakening on the Ark after being buried in stasis on Earth.
This got me thinking about the various incarnations of G1.
Sunbow and Marvel? Both use the same "crashed with the Ark" setup.
Devil's Due? Alternate timeline where Cobra finds the inert Autobots and Decepticons in the crashed Ark.
Dreamwave? Claimed to be an alternate continuation of the Sunbow show with some Marvel comics sprinkled here and there.
Skybound? Again, Autobots and Decepticons crash on Earth in the Ark, go inert, and resume their war when they wake up.
IDW's G1 comics actually stand out even more than they did before because they don't follow this formula. The Autobots and Decepticons come to Earth in present day (or well... present day circa 2005) as part of a broader galaxy spanning infiltration war between the two sides.
Had Skybound gone for its own distinct origins for its G1 story then I wouldn't have given IDW's own beginnings a second thought. By starting with that classic G1 starting point, however, it made me realize that IDW- both one and two- are kind of on an island. And that it would arguably make sense to make the "IDW Continuity Family" its own thing with IDW1 and IDW2 simply different iterations of it (IDW2 burrows a lot from IDW1, focusing on Cybertron's pre-war Senatorial politics and mass political unrest leading to the war).
Of course this creates its own problems. Multiple toys based on IDW designs have been made, and have been assumed to be toys of G1 characters. Are they still G1 toys if IDW is broken off? Potentially! A lot of those designs have been co-opted into other G1 off-shoots.
Nova Prime's Legacy toy, for example, is clearly based on an IDW original character but Nova showed up in the very G1 Sunbow Devastation game. Right now it's all G1 so it's fine but if IDW were split then suddenly you'd need "Nova Prime (IDW)" and "Nova Prime (G1)."
Just as one example.
If a desire to avoid splits like that for a multitude of characters is the driving force behind not doing it, despite IDW's uniqueness among "G1" stories then does that mean that fan convenience more than anything else is the deciding factor for what is a continuity family?
After all in the TF One thread Sabrblade said...
I'm not sold on Cyberverse but he has a point about EarthSpark. And if the pushback against it is as simple as "we don't want to expand big G1 pages on the Wiki more than necessary" above all other concerns then... yeah. Fan convenience seems to play a huge part in what makes a continuity family.
The question that kicked this all off- where does TF One fit?- can't be answered right now. What its full story is, how compatible it is with the live action movies that came before it, etc will have to wait for release.
And even then we have to see how it does. If it fails to make its money back we're probably looking at a one-off no one will care much about where it's "categorized."
If it is successful, however, it'll likely be used to kickstart a new continuity and fandom will have to figure out where that "fits" in relation to other Paramount movies, and the rest of the franchise as a whole.
A lot of stuff is in limbo for TF One specifically.
Broadly though? It's kind of a mess and the rules are made up as we go. And that may be fine.
I'm not without *some* inside connections and I've been told that Hasbro execs don't care. They don't differentiate between G1 Optimus Prime, G2 Optimus Prime, Armada Optimus Prime, etc...
They just want a version of Optimus Prime on shelves more often than not. And if the people who ultimately call the shots at good ole' Hassenfeld Brothers have such a cavalier attitude... maybe it's best we do?
I'm not suggesting the Wiki devolve into a "who cares, man?" mess or that fandom as a whole give up trying to categorize things... this entire post is less me trying to make a solid point and more just talking through these ideas in my head that the TF One discussion spurred on.
I just think it's worth exploring why we group certain clumps of fiction together and not others. There's no uniformity. At least not now, there may have been in the past. These days though? It's far less a strict set of rules.
It's all about vibes.
Having gotten to speak to Aaron Archer earlier this year at BotCon, I found out the real-world reason why it was so easy for us fans to use continuity families before Aligned came along. We already knew that, back then, Archer was basically the guy in charge of Transformers at Hasbro, and that he was always focused on moving the brand forward, not backward, wanting to try new things and tell new stories. But what I found out about him from back then was this: He was not that big a fan of G1. That explains so much about why his tenure was full of less G1 homages and more newer designs and innovations. To him, going back to the well of G1 was backwards-thinking. While we did get some obvious G1 homages in Alternators, Energon, Classics, and Animated, they were always new designs with updated looks, instead of anything slavishly faithful to the original 1980s designs (like what we get nowadays as the current norm). As such, the likes of the Unicron Trilogy and the live-action movies were easy to categorize as something wholly and fundamentally different from G1. Same too even for the heavily-stylized Animated, despite its very G1-reverent vibe and designs mostly courtesy of Derrick J. Wyatt being such a gleeful G1 cartoon fanboy.
But now, in the post-Aligned era of the brand? It's the opposite, with all corners of the brand now embracing the looks and vibes of 1980s G1 more than it ever did, thanks to the new people in charge at Hasbro being way bigger nostalgia geeks than Aaron Archer ever was. In other words, the inmates have taken over the asylum. With practically everything we get nowadays feeling closer to G1 than all the things that deliberately tried to distance and disassociate themselves from G1 during Archer's tenure, the once reliable system of continuity families isn't as clean as it used to be.
In fairness, Rescue Bots wasn't supposed to be part of Aligned. It was the people who made the show that decided to make it part of the same continuity as Prime, due to both shows being made by most of the same crew and airing alongside each other on the same channel. Rik Alvarez was pretty miffed about Rescue Bots being added in at the time (but boohoo on him because Rescue Bots is the best part of Aligned!).
Though, would you say the same about the Unicron Trilogy's three disparate designs for its characters? The Armada, Energon, and Cybertron designs of Optimus, Megatron/Galvatron, Starscream, Hot Shot, and Jetfire all look pretty different from each other from the neck down (and not even then for Megatron/Galvatron with his constant head design changes). The three series even had completely different-looking art styles for its robot characters, with Armada's bearing the closest resemblance to that of G1 and the other Japanese shows from 1987-2000 (Armada even used straight-up G1 robot character designs for background extras), Energon having a heavily cel-shaded CG art style, and Cybertron having a less cel-shaded more purely-3D CG art style. About the only thing the three shared in common, art style-wise, was that of the human characters.
Otherwise known as "Ultimate G1", in the same vein as how Marvel's "Ultimate Marvel" was to Earth-616.
Another pushback I forgot to mention is all the characters who were original male in G1 continuities being made female in those two series. While this has happened before with certain Micromasters in Beast Wars: Uprising and such, Cyberverse and EarthSpark used more major characters like Skywarp, Swoop, Cosmos, Ravage, and Frenzy. The Micromasters are more minor characters so some of them being made female is only a minor issue for organization. But G1 Skywarp, Swoop, Cosmos, Ravage, and Frenzy each have a long history of being male, so merging the Cyberverse and EarthSpark female versions with their pages would be much less cleanly-organized. And since their being female is one of the most notable things about each of them that make them stand out from all the other Skywarps, Swoops, Cosmoses, Ravages, and Frenzys in the brand's many continuities, merging them all with their G1 male namesakes would likely make them all stand out less as their own unique character versions unto themselves.
I think we still need the term or something like it, for all the reasons it made sense in the first place. I'd keep the trend of treating new kid lines as new continuity families until convincingly shown otherwise. Cyberverse is one. Earthspark is one. We'll see what happens with One. But I'd make some changes.
I'd splinter off the IDW continuity family. It's not just one long continuity. It encompasses multiple continuities, including other Hasbro licenses. That seems to be the whole point of the concept of a continuity family as opposed to just a continuity. Wall it off. Shorten some G1 character pages. They need it.
I'd consider separating modern G1 reboots from the original continuity family, though I'm unsure how useful that would be now that Generations doesn't get terrible cartoons anymore and I'd already be separating IDW. If I did, deciding the cutoff point could be a tricky thing. I think I'd put Fun Pub's stuff before the cutoff, because enough of it ties back to 3H's stuff, which was a lot closer to G1 than it is to us. It also has some similarities to Takara's contemporary madness of showing absolutely everything into their G1 continuity, which is really not the way anything works anymore. We are in a different era, whenever it started.
I'd splinter off the IDW continuity family. It's not just one long continuity. It encompasses multiple continuities, including other Hasbro licenses. That seems to be the whole point of the concept of a continuity family as opposed to just a continuity. Wall it off. Shorten some G1 character pages. They need it.
I'd consider separating modern G1 reboots from the original continuity family, though I'm unsure how useful that would be now that Generations doesn't get terrible cartoons anymore and I'd already be separating IDW. If I did, deciding the cutoff point could be a tricky thing. I think I'd put Fun Pub's stuff before the cutoff, because enough of it ties back to 3H's stuff, which was a lot closer to G1 than it is to us. It also has some similarities to Takara's contemporary madness of showing absolutely everything into their G1 continuity, which is really not the way anything works anymore. We are in a different era, whenever it started.
It seems like, with regards to G1 at least, there needs to be that "crashed on earth and lay dormant for millennia" that Beast Wars can neatly slot into to truly be a G1 continuity, as all the different variations are still basically telling the same story with Beast Wars/Beast Machines as an endpoint.
Versions like IDW seem like they should be splintered off as separate continuity families, as they are using the same characters but telling very different stories (with very different endpoints when they get to them).
Versions like IDW seem like they should be splintered off as separate continuity families, as they are using the same characters but telling very different stories (with very different endpoints when they get to them).
I see what you did there.