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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwistedBishop" data-source="post: 2841845" data-attributes="member: 12503">This Straczynski has already addressed:"In your reply below, you do not address your statement that you hadoutlines by me. To say that you had scripts, about also which more ina moment, and say "well, these are the outlines I was referring" isdisingenuous at best. An outline is an outline and a script is ascript. Unless one wishes to deliberately confuse the two to createthe impression of involvement."IMO, the only thing the scripts could be used for, and honestly considered an outline, is a novelization of said scripts.  That's not what Mongoose is doing.  They're pillaging scripts for story hints.  That's no more an outline than if I took the script to Geometry of Shadows, saw it introduced technomages, and made up my own history for them. I have no idea how the authorization for this kind of thing works, so it's hard to comment.  But like I said earlier, as far as most fans are concerned, B5 canon means "JMS approved".  That's just not happening here.  Mongoose's replies have seemed to try and imply his involvement, perhaps since they understand most fans would react this way.  Putting "Approved by WB Executive #46" on your book isn't going to sell a lot of copies.None of this seems "clear".  Their history is a tangled one, and it doesn't sound like Mongoose tried too hard to establish a good working relationship previously. To quote JMS again:"All that I can say is that there has been zero coordination or approvals between Mongoose and anyone else that I know of. To date, again as far as I know, WB hasn't been shown what they're doing, certainly I haven't seen it, don't know what it is, nobody has signed off or approved anything that they're doing in terms of story, content, characterization, anything.In the long history of B5, we have never had a situation where alicensee has decided to just go off and do their own thing withoutcoordinating the creative aspects through WB and myself. They're doingthis completely off on their own. No other B5 licensed company hasdecided, in essence, "screw you, we don't need you," which has been myperception of their approach from early on, when they first approachedme to try and (in my view) reluctantly get me involved...an initialapproach that was absurd, and insulting. When they came back, thesituation did not measurably improve and the attitude was one of, andI'm admittedly characterizing it here, sod off, we don't need you, wecan go directly to the fans, who don't need you, we can do it better.And they went on to kind of poison the well with the fans in thatregard.And that's where it ended. They've gone off and done their thing,without any kind of creative approval as far as I know, which I believeis also a requirement of their contract. Be that as it may...whateverthey're doing, it has no bearing on the B5 universe insofar as I'mconcerned, which is again why I cannot endorse this on a personal orcreative basis."Do we actually know that?  Or are we going by Mongoose's word?I think it's pretty clear that Mongoose has tried to obfuscate Straczynski's involvement to give an impression of greater canonical merit to their products.Fans of B5 are well aware of the Del Ray novels JMS did outlines for.  So now Mongoose takes a couple unfilmed scripts and web posts and calls them an outline.  A slight error in terminology?  Could be, maybe.  But then...Mongoose was asked, "How much input directly are you getting from JMS?" To which they replied, "These days it's getting to be less and less."  When infact it had always been zero.  The end result is the feeling that Mongoose is trying to pull one over on the fans.</blockquote>

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