I'm having trouble figuring out where you are and aren't agreeing with me, so let me try to lay out my argument chronologically.
Yeah, I did not respond as clearly as I could have. My apologies.
First, Retcon: "...is a literary device in which established facts in a fictional work are adjusted, ignored, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which breaks continuity with the former".
Well, how particular do you mean to be about how explicitly the facts are established or contradicted? Like, here's an example I've used before:
A guy and a girl are in an apartment, getting ready to go on a date. The girl goes into the bathroom, out of the reader's sight, and the two continue their conversation through a closed door. Both of them have pauses and make excalamations consistent with getting ready. She eventually leaves the bathroom, they make some innocuous conversation as he finishes whatever he was doing, and they leave the apartment. The larger story is one of a contented relationship. In the next issue there is an event in which, if the couple has contented relationship they both survive (off screen) and if their relationship is poor they'll die (off screen).
Suppose now that a different author replays the scene some ten years later, except with a new camera angle which shows Spiderman entering the bathroom through the window while the girl is in there, a bra gets flung out the window and he catches it back in, he exits disheveled and covered in lipstick, and the text of the couple's final conversation as they leave the apartment (although superficially unchanged) now looks to have undertones of infidelity and an imminent breakup.
The second scene does not change any of the explicitly given facts from the first scene, but it's very clearly altering their meaning and is well outside the spirit of the first author's intent. I think that meets any reasonable standard for "retcon." We could draw a line between this level and the more stringent definitions, but... what do we gain by doing so?
Also, I think it's important to note that the OP was remembering an exaggerated version of TR:3039, not what TR:3039 actually says; I think the exaggerated version (were it the truth) would meet the more stringent definitions of "retcon." Alternately, if we allow that neither the OP nor his friend meant to be overly precise, I think the word "retcon" is at least in the right general vicinity to describe TR:3039's actual text.
For my part, I did mean that TR:3039 presents facts which break continuity.
1) TRO 3025 originally wrote the charger as being in service with every house, but most particularly focused on its use by the Capellan Confederation. This created the impression that it was a primarily capellan machine, complete with a specific capellan variant. The text also implied that the mech was long out of production.
The Charger entry gives equal time to Capellan and Suns use, with an implication that Free Worlds and Combine use are similar. To the extent an impression of Capellan-ness exists, it's the -1L variant that tips things that direction.
I agree the Charger appears to be long out of production. I will note, though, that TR:3025 says so little about current production that we're obliged to assume it's not giving us a complete picture, and the Charger isn't as definitively kaput as (for instance) the Trebuchet or Victor.
2) The house books (particularly House Liao and House Kurita) indicated that the charger was in fact being produced by House Kurita, and the mech has all of one mention in the house Liao book, as being common among a single regiment of the Tikonov reserves. This is where my joke about taking a lemon away comes from, as it turns what originally appeared to be a signature capellan machine into a signature combine machine.
It's a fair joke, and I laughed at it, but I do disagree with it on two levels.
Firstly, I don't think the Luthien factory in the Drac book makes the 3025 Charger a signature Drac design. The Vulcan and Cicada aren't signature Marik designs, nor is the Firestarter a signature Steiner design, despite the presence of factories in their realms.
Secondly, while TR:3039 does associate the Charger primarily with the Kuritans, it does so by diminishing the Steiner, Marik and Davion shares while taking an extra step to specially preserve Liao's supply. It's made the Charger more signature to Liao than it was before. (This is what I meant with my response to your joke.)
(Also, I meant to do the :D smiley instead of ::), but the smirk on ::) seemed sufficiently good natured to let the typo stand. Really, I'm just glad that I can finally do :-\ from memory.)
This might arguably be called a retcon, but then it can also be arguably described as an expansion of the original fluff. There is no specific statement of the Charger's origin or its most common user in the original TRO entry. Even listing Wells as the original manufacturer in the TRO entry is NOT contradicted by the house book's listing of Luthien Armor Works as the current producer, since it was already established that the League took the mech out of service and a change of manufacturer isn't the least bit unreasonable. Thus, no concrete information about the mech was changed.
I agree. However, it is important to note that, even with the Kurita book putting a Charger facility on Luthien, the -1L variant is still understood at this point to be Liao modifications of Star League remnants, not sourced from Kurita.
Even so, because the TRO fluff focused on the mech's use in Capellan service and virtually ignored the mech's use in combine service, it can be argued that the implication was changed when the house books assigned it to the Combine. So you could argue it was a change, but you could also argue that it was a result of reader expectations not matching what was ultimately written.
I agree in the specific case of Charger fluff between TR:3025 and the House Kurita book, and I agree more generally that implications and reader expectations do not always represent solid fact. However, I think the facts that TR:3039 is butting up against are much more solidly established than the ones the House Kurita book was butting up against.
As both the House Kurita book and TR:3039 were parts of larger efforts to revamp the setting, and both efforts included changes which do meet the most stringent definitions of "retcon," I think when we evaluate how incongruous a change is we have to look not just at the specific text but also at the spirit of the change and how well it integrates with the structure at large.
The 3039 fluff, however, is not a retcon. It does not contradict any information that comes before. It just incorporates the later house book fluff into the original 3025 fluff. Both accounts are true and fit together. Wells technologies built a failed lemon, the Capellans got their chargers, the Combine got their charger plant.
Disagree. I see three points of sufficient discontinuity.
While it is not explicit, I think we can accept that TR:3025 intended it to be a fact that the Confederation employed some number of Chargers "in the bitter fighting" on the Marik border prior to the Concord of Kapteyn; and I think we can accept that TR:3039 intends it to be a fact that the Confederation did not possess any notable number of Chargers until the Kapteyn imports started (the Chargers in that "bitter fighting" are now better understood as Marik's). These facts are in contradiction. They are not
irreconcilable, certainly, but the author is clearly not trying to preserve TR:3025's intent.
TR:3025 presents the -1L variant as the Confederation trying to make the best of what they already have; in contrast, TR:3039 presents the -1L as something they are desperate to import. "We're stuck with this" and "GIMME" are very different attitudes, and I think they're explicit enough in the text that they can't be dismissed as reader expectation. (The change in attitude shouldn't be meant as a result of ongoing events in the timeline, either, since Wells Tech ceased operations in 3027.)
The -1L itself becomes the most difficult issue. TR:3039 makes a special effort to describe each faction's share of Chargers, and they do not count Liao having a notable number prior to the Kapteyn Accords. So why would the House order development of the -1L in the absence of additional Chargers? Why import Chargers when Takashi was content to keep them home and export better designs instead? Again, these contradictions aren't
irreconcilable, but they do represent substantial breaks with the established continuity.
Also, I agree that putting the Wells Tech plant in the Combine satisfies only the very weakest definitions of "retcon," and (although I would've put the plant somewhere else), I agree that putting it there isn't a real discontinuity. I do have to applaud the author for not putting it definitively on Luthien - in the Kurita book, Luthien Armor Works only builds the -1A1 variant, and is merely "a" manufacturer of Chargers rather than the "sole" manufacturer.
IRL there are countries who make their own modifications to tanks and warplanes that they import.
Sure, but the Charger wasn't originally written as an import from the Dracs, and there was no reason to rewrite it into being an import. TR:3039 made other changes like that too - retconning the PNT-8Z into being a large laser variant, for instance.
