#Retroactive Continuity

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

X-Men: First Class (2011, Matthew Vaughn)

01/08/2024

[gofancyninjaworld]

An actual case of retconning in One-Punch Man

Wind up

The One-Punch Man manga series has seen several rewrites of chapters and parts of arcs, and several fans have taken to calling the revised chapters 'retcons'. That this isn't correct is something that has been getting on my nerves forever, but I've ignored it for two reasons. One, damn, but I do have more to do in life than carp on terminology in online fandom, and two, I've not minded the irony that One-Punch Man isn't big on retconning. However, in the most recent webcomic chapter, 152, there is a bona fide example of retconning, and so I've got to say something.

First, Let's Define Terms

First thing, what *is* retconning? It's short for 'retroactive continuity': when something that should have been established earlier in the story is written in and explained as if it was always there. If you want more on that, you can waste a few hours on TV Tropes. It's often used as a pejorative, especially with regard to mainstream Western comic book writers, where discontinuities, reboots, and retcons are common as the long-in-the-tooth properties pass from one writer to the next. However, it's rather stupid to use words wrongly as it deprives us of the ability to accurately describe and analyse what we see. It's additionally stupid because retconning is a tool, and it can be used well, even though it's easier to remember examples of poor use.

Specifics

As I've said, ONE hasn't been big on retconning. Notably, he's been happy to let the OPM manga and webcomic develop their own continuities. For example, it would have been easy for him to introduce Suiryu in the webcomic by having him recall having met Saitama and been inspired to become a hero: that would have been a retcon as we never saw the two meet earlier in the webcomic, but no. He started Suiryu as the unreformed guy he started out as and let him develop his own way.

So what's different here? Well, *nowhere* in the webcomic have Ryumon and Metal Bat had any interaction. They were introduced to each other in chapter 125, and that was it. Nowhere in the webcomic do we see Ryumon questioning his role in society, mentioning Metal Bat, or even watching Metal Bat in action from afar. However, in chapter 152, he reveals that he's been an admirer of heroes from childhood, admires Metal Bat, has been talking to Metal Bat, and has changed his MO as well as that of his group. THAT. IS. RETCONNING. 100%.

So, is it BAD? FUCK NO. IT'S A GREAT EXAMPLE. Let us dig into why it's so good. The cure for retconning is rewriting, as happens in the manga. It doesn't always pay to do so: sometimes you can't or won't go back. And you have to consider carefully whether it's worth tearing up a partially-written work to establish a new fact. In this instance, it's definitely not worth it: the FACT that Ryumon is an ally to Metal Bat is much more important than whatever PROCESS he went through to become one.

The story *needs* someone like Ryumon to act as an ally: the way the webcomic is set up, Metal Bat left on his own tod to join the Neo Heroes, so there's no one back at the Hero Association to support him. The other pro-heroes who joined with him are all either too isolated or too miserable to be of use -- yes, the selfishness of the heroes in the wc is coming back to bite them. And with his sister being held hostage, merely breaking out without an ally able to move freely within the Neo Heroes to look out for Zenko's safety would have doomed her. The story needed a 'lucky' break like this, or it'd be hopeless.

Is Ryumon the right character to use? Oh yes indeedy. First, as a stock character, we, the audience, like the idea of a gangster with a heart of gold, someone who may exist outside the law but still has a clear sense of right and wrong and who has standards about who may and may not be targeted. We're prepared to accept Ryumon in a way that we would not have been able to accept Zaedats having a change of heart (well, if he still had a heart to change... poor bastard). Second, Ryumon hasn't kicked any puppies; we haven't seen him do anything horrific. He may not have done much that is good, and it's clear that he'd been happy to regard the eventual culling of pro-heroes as no bad thing, but he doesn't come across as the sort of guy who'd applaud a completely subjugated world. It's right that he rebels.

He may be no devil, but he's no angel either: the pro-heroes being a rival gang whose demise is no bad thing is his view. Note, however, that he does want to be respectable.

His rough speech and his desire for respectability make it believable that he'd get along with Metal Bat, and so we're ready to buy that he'd be influenced by the young hero to actually be heroic rather than just mime being one. Along those lines, ONE established in the wc that as the various Neo Heroes came into contact with the various pro-heroes -- Webigaza with Child Emperor, Raiden with Puri Puri Prisoner -- they have not been able to avoid being impressed and moved by their examples and testimonies.

Given all of these factors (the right character, a process we've accepted for other characters, and a strong in-story need for the character to take action), Ryumon's heel-face turn fits in beautifully, and that's how a retcon is supposed to work.

This is very unlikely to happen in the manga for three reasons. Reason 1 (the most important): ONE knows where he wants to go with the character so he can just get on and write an organic story. It is also the case that many of the pro-heroes we're following into the Neo Heroes are doing so with a plan and are working together, rather than the scattershot individualism of the wc: they have more resources. Reason 2: as a paid-for work, ONE isn't going to expect us to be happy with after-the-fact handwaving. That's why he's willing to spend months rewriting if need be. Reason 3: Ryumon in the manga has much dirtier hands than his webcomic equivalent, having organised hero betting and planning worse. We are going to have to see him change. And with him already butting heads with Metal Bat, there is plenty of scope for just that to happen. Not too easily, I hope! :D

Not only is he no angel, but he's still actively criminal.

We don't need the webcomic to know that this is going to be interesting, but now we can look forward to this being INTERESTING.

Call to action

Please, for fuck's sake, can we use the right words? The no longer canon chapters are SCRAPPED or REDACTED. Their replacements are REVISIONS. Otherwise, we're just babbling nonsense.

[cantsayidont]

March 1985. Whatever else one may say about the Crisis on Infinite Earths, it was a triumph for truth in advertising: Worlds lived, worlds died, and the DC Universe was never the same. A cynic might add, "And nothing ever made sense again," since the event kicked off almost 40 years of retcons, revisions, and successive reboots, which DC used to internally describe as "white events," after the cataclysmic moment in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #10 where the original multiverse was shattered and recreated:

Even before the Crisis event was ever conceived, DC had a long history of fairly dramatic editorial and creative shifts, some of which hung on specific story events (like the de-powering of Wonder Woman in 1968) and some of which did not (like the inauguration of Batman's "New Look" in 1964). With the benefit of hindsight, it's possible to make some general observations about editorial revisionism and efforts to tear down and rebuild internal continuity:

It's ultimately easier (and more effective) to ignore than to change. When Julius Schwartz became Batman editor in 1964, he dispensed with many characters and concepts that had been staples under his predecessor, Jack Schiff, such as Batwoman and Bat-Mite. With one exception, there was no story explanation of where they'd gone — they just stopped showing up and were soon forgotten. The exception was Alfred the butler, who was killed off dramatically in DETECTIVE COMICS #328. When the producers of the 1966 Batman TV show decided to incorporate Alfred into that series, Schwartz was obliged to resurrect him, in a singularly preposterous way, after which he was regarded as indispensable. By contrast, while most of the characters who'd simply been ignored also returned, it was much later and generally in quite minor ways; their long absence reduced them to marginalia that could be incorporated or not, as seemed most useful.

Crossovers are the most serious and persistent enemy of change. The nature of company-owned comics is that the characters will inevitably show up in crossovers, team-ups, and events of various kinds, often written, drawn, and edited by people who aren't familiar with the finer points of the characters' history, inevitably resulting in troublesome contradictions, up to and including characters who were previously supposed to be dead inexplicably popping up alive. The more convoluted a change to a character or their history, the more likely that it will misrepresented, accidentally undone, or just ignored the next time the character shows up in a series other than their own.

A true line-wide reboot is commercially infeasible. A publisher like DC or Marvel has many different titles at once, and at any given time, some of them are selling better than others. If a title isn't selling well, there may be nothing to lose by rebooting it or making drastic changes to its characters and direction, but doing that to a series that's currently a hot seller is foolhardy. So, the bestsellers will generally stroll through a "white event" with only minor cosmetic adjustments, while weaker titles may undergo a whole series of radical reinventions. If the former bestseller goes into a slump and one of those radical reinventions transforms an underdog into a hit, the situation will be reversed. Surely this won't backfire later …

Timing is everything. A lot of the confusion that resulted at DC in the wake of the Crisis stemmed from the fact that different revisions happened at different times. For instance, the headaches surrounding Hawkman began in large part because of the editorial decision in 1990 not to treat the Tim Truman HAWKWORLD series as a kind of "Hawkman: Year One" (which is how it was conceived), but rather as a reboot, even though that threatened to retroactively remove the Hawks from books like JUSTICE LEAGUE, which had become very popular following its most recent revamp. This kind of thing creates situations where creative teams have to come up with desperate contrivances to explain retroactive changes to very recent stories. Having Hawkman and Hawkwoman stop showing for Justice League adventures for a while wouldn't have been a big deal, but trying to assert that the Hawkman and Hawkwoman who'd previously appeared were either never really there or were actually somebody else was another matter, and the problems this created were never fully resolved.

Continuity-tidying for its own sake is almost always a creative dead end. This is a lesson that Nelson Bridwell and Roy Thomas demonstrated over and over throughout the Bronze Age: It's one thing to have some flashbacks, if it serves the story, or maybe to retell a character's origin with a few nips and tucks, but if your main purpose is to explain, e.g., why Namor once wore the wrong shorts, the results are likely to be either silly or tedious. This hasn't stopped DC and Marvel from wasting a lot of ink and paper on specials and miniseries that exist to retell earlier stories in an updated, continuity-compliant manner, usually to no good end. The fundamental problem with such things is that their main object is to regurgitate familiar older stories (if they weren't familiar, there would be no point in retelling them) while urging readers who have read the original version (who are the most likely audience) to ignore their lying eyes. This is, with very, very few exceptions, a dismal exercise that routinely defeats even usually reliable creators like John Ostrander (see for example the tiresome 2001–2002 JLA: INCARNATIONS), and frequently results in yet more contradictions to explain or ignore.

The bottom line is that while you can blow things up all you want, the likelihood that they can be reassembled in a clearer, more cohesive way is really quite low, and diminishes the more frequently you try.

I want to be clear here that this isn't a criticism of the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS series (which has many virtues, along with some significant flaws), or even any of the individual revisions and retcons that have followed, some of which are, in their own right, perfectly fine. The dilemma is that the project that an event like this represents is ultimately a doomed one. It might spark some commercial interest, at least briefly (which is of course at least half the point), but simplification and unity are just not in the cards and probably never will be.

[jpohlmanwriting]

As the description says: I made a #writing "oopsie," and now I have to retcon my way out of it.

...Of course, retcons are not necessarily good -or- bad, now, are they? ;)

[werewolf-cuddles]

Okay, so, unlike with Shiver, non-binary Dedf1sh does appear to actually be canon.

They're never referred to as such, but the DLC exclusively refers to them with they/them pronouns. I was unsure if this would actually be the case, given that they were referred to with she/her in earlier lore posts, and Shiver had previously been referred to with they/them in pre-release materials before using she/her in the final game.

Even in the Japanese script, they use the personal pronoun boku, which is typically considered masculine, but is also used for tomboys and people who are non-gender conforming.

So I think we can safely consider this to be a retcon.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He's the biggest kid here. Large and In Charge.

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[cyclogenesis]

I took this screenshot of 22 year old Ryan Reynolds in Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place last night, and I'm making everyone look at it including you

[kagoutiss]

*complaining for no reason again because i am bored* i need more ppl to know that these. are all the same person these are literally canonically all the exact same individual person im begging u

literally almost all the ganondorfs are the exact same individual and almost all the ganons are the exact same individual, almost all the ganondorfs & ganons are the same exact person just in different forms and circumstances. except for FSA and maybe whatever the fuck is going on with TotK ganondorf but i still think it’s weird that he still has golden eyes & rounded ears when even the gerudo in TotK’s ancient past dont, but anyway ashfjsbfjsn

[makiswirl]

ova redraws (sillies)

[jonathanarcher]

I have now thought about Henry Archer more than the writers of enterprise ever had

[tastycitrus]

Barbara: Steph and Cass have been queerbaiting for nearly twenty slutty, slutty years... Steph and Cass, hearing this over comms: Steph: Oracle, what is that supposed to mean? Cass: What are you talking about? Steph: What the HELL is that supposed to mean??

[sparrow-in-the-field]

Today I'm thinking about The Cormorant Bobby's first freshmen boat.

Of course they all noticed Bobby didn't have an Aves while he was their coach, and none of them were bold enough to ask him about it, so they all started quietly speculating and doing the math to try to figure out his age.

Until after their last practice in May, Bobby gives them a final speech, about how they've been a great crew and he was proud of their work.

He briefly says, "You won't be seeing me next year, but I'm so grateful I've gotten to work with you all. Remember what you've learned from me as you join JV and varsity in the upcoming years."

Some of the students wanted to be in denial--maybe he had taken a job elsewhere--but even their stern, confident Coach Moch had trouble keeping the sadness out of his eyes, the pain out of his voice. They all knew, deep down.

So then imagine their surprise when they come back in the fall, and standing there waiting with Coach Ulbrickson, is Coach Moch, with a big strange bird at his side.

Maybe one of the bolder students rushes over, the others quick to follow.

"Coach Moch, you have a bird!"

Bobby grins at last year's freshmen. "Sure do. You all wouldn't believe the summer break I had."

Even if he's not their coach anymore, they're all so relieved and thrilled that he's back.

[northern-passage]

I see you are working on Chapter 2 pat 1, but will the second part of chapter 1 if we don't help Merry be out? or have you decided that that path no longer fits the story and cancelled it. Sorry if the tone comes out weird, I just want to know as you have stated quite a lot of time that you are working on chapter 2

honestly i'm not sure when i'll get to that part of ch2; right now my plan is to go right into ch3 once i finish the blackwater route.

i don't intend to scrap it, but i know i do not want to be stuck on ch2 anymore and i think doubling back to do the highfell route would ruin my momentum. i'm already unfortunately writing at a very slow pace, and i worry it will completely demoralize me to double back.

once i do finish the next update i'll probably block out that choice in ch1 with a WIP note so people don't get stuck while playing the demo and locked out of progressing.

[bookwyrminspiration]

reading gideon the ninth:

reading harrow the ninth:

[modpoppy]

think i got haunted by bill cipher in real life

[sunstreakerapologist]

I think when you retroactively apply the same backstory to the same character over and over in transformers you're fucking boring. If I'm being honest.