#and some of them has retcons and plot holes

[x-ac1d-tr1p-x]

"The tales from the pizzaplex books are canon in the ga-"

My live reaction:

[tobiasdrake]

My favorite detail about Jurassic Park is that it has a baked-in justification for any and all retcons it might need to make due to paleontology advancing forwards.

Because there is not a single dinosaur that has ever appeared in Jurassic Park.

Not one. Not in the books. Not in the movies. Not ever.

"Now what John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park was to create genetically engineered theme park monsters." ~Alan Grant

Grant says that in a moment of cynicism. It's part of his arc for the film. But it's not inaccurate. What Jurassic Park has, what it's always had since the very first novel, are "Mostly Dinosaurs".

"And since the DNA is so old, it's full of holes! Now, that's where our geneticists take over!" ~Mr. DNA

It's impossible to recover a fully intact gene sequence from an ancient amber mosquito. Cloning a pure dinosaur would have been completely impossible, and so the park filled in the gene sequence with whatever works. Frog. Lizard. Bird. Whatever they need to get the result they are trying to get.

Every single dinosaur is a chimeric beast made up of mostly dinosaur and a bunch of other stuff that some scientists thought would achieve the appropriate dinosaur-like result.

"Nothing in Jurassic World is natural! We have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals. And if the genetic code was pure, many of them would look quite different." ~Dr. Henry Wu

Which, from a writing perspective, is fucking genius. Because now you have a preset excuse for each and every plot hole your movie has.

Like. Why don't the raptors have feathers? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why do dilophosaurs spit venom? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why do T-Rexes have movement based vision? Oh, they don't. But Rexy does. Because of her chimera DNA.

Why is the Spinosaurus so fucking big? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why are the velociraptors mislabeled? Because Hammond's a dipshit.

Like. I've always marveled at the way Jurassic Park started out by giving itself a blanket excuse to be wrong about every single thing it ever said about the central attraction of its franchise. It's honestly beautiful, and allows the series a degree of immortality well into the era where we know better about its animals.

[lennythereviewer]

My favorite Kingdom Hearts fact is that one of the biggest plot-holes that Nomura has never been able to meaningfully retcon or write his way out, a plot-hole so big that it fundamentally breaks the very rules the series is written on...

Is the existence of Steamboat Willie

Let me explain for the uninitiated:

In Kingdom Hearts 2, there’s a small detour in the story involving Maleficent trying to invade Disney Castle, the home of King Mickey. She can’t step foot in the castle due to an artefact of pure light that wards off darkness locked in the basement.

Pete, who is working for Maleficent, opens a door into the past (Before Disney Castle, this land was known as Timeless River) and decides to remove the artifact from it’s place in time so it won’t be there to stop them from getting in.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy chase Pete into the past thanks to another magic door provided by Merlin, and through some shenanigans involving old cartoons and teaming up with Pete’s past-self, they lock the door the villains are using, and return the artefact to it’s proper place so it can exist in the present.

You with me so far? Pretty straightforward-ish time-travel plot right?

Here’s where it goes off the rails.

Time travel would go on to become a staple of Kingdom Hearts going forward and would come with a very strict set of rules over how it operates:

1. You can only travel to a point in time where a version of yourself exists

2. You basically give up your body to do so, and travel as a disembodied soul unless you have a vessel to inhabit

3. You can’t alter the past in a meaningful way, what’s going to happen will happen

4. You lose your memories of said trip once you return, but your actions could leave a lingering instinct on your other self that could influence their decisions

“Wait” you may be thinking “Why should anyone go through all those hoops? Wasn’t time travel super simple that first time?”

And you’d be totally right, because the existence of Timeless River completely renders all of these rules and restrictions meaningless. 

There is no version of Sora that existed in Timeless River before he step foot there, everyone kept their bodies, the trio and Pete were able to mess with the timeline as freely as they pleased, and they all very much remember their trip. 

Nomura has never been able to meaningfully explain this super simple, easy way of time travel and the more convoluted method co-existing other than a cheap-throwaway line from one of the villains saying that Merlin “broke the rules” 

The hilarious part about this line is that it implies that PETE of all characters is actually more powerful than the actual villain of the series, because Pete opened a door into Timeless River through sheer willpower and nostalgia for “the good old days”

But the all-knowing chess-master of a villain who had an evil plan several decades in the making with countless moving parts and contingencies to account for had to use the roundabout, more complicated method of time travel where a lot could go wrong.

Pete though? Dude just casually broke all the rules of time travel because he felt like it. He's just built different.

TL;DR: Steamboat Willie breaks Kingdom Hearts lore in half, Pete is more powerful than Master Xehanort, and I fucking love this beautiful trainwreck of a series you guys it means so much to me

I love Kingdom hearts so much.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Re: Lack of Raverne in Book 7's ending with all the memories of the people.

I noticed TWST does this thing sometimes where they purposefully won't bring up certain people in parts where they really should be brought up and talked about - or even if they are brought up, they're not really explained in depth - because those people will be revealed/introduced in full later. Case in point: Idia's parents. I remember when Book 6 rolled around, iirc Idia's parents were never mentioned in Idia and Ortho's backstory during the OB, and many fans thought they were neglectful because of it. But then Book 7 rolled around, their parents do get introduced and we see they're nothing but loving and supportive of both their sons, and they were among the MVP's of Book 7.

So perhaps the very noticeable lack of Malleus's father is supposed to be an implication that Raverne is alive, and that we will be seeing him, one way or another, eventually?

coughsinCrowleyisRavernetheory

In all seriousness, that being said, I very much agree with what you said. It's one thing for the game to purposefully not show somebody at a certain time - it's another thing for the game to do so in a situation where not showing them is a plot hole of sorts. Why wouldn't Raverne be where his wife was?? Was he just never in Wild Rose Castle?? I don't think someone has to be dead in order for them to appear as a memory??

[You can read my thoughts on the book 7 finale here!]

The Shroud parents may not have been present in Idia's post-OB flashback, but Idia does talk about them in book 6! It was a combination of their lack of presence in his backstory + the disparaging things Idia said about his parents ("they care more about getting results than their own son's feelings," or something to that effect) that led many fans--including myself--to think that maybe the Shroud parents were neglectful. Then the Shroud parents appear in book 7, and we see that even Mr. Shroud (who was previously described as cold and calculating) is loving, and both Shroud parents are accepting of Ortho. It can feel like a retcon to some people, but to others, this is easily explained by citing Idia's usually negative frame of mind and how that biases how he sees and presents others. I find myself split down the middle, personally. In any case, I don't think it's a good writing choice to just... not bring up people who really SHOULD be brought up. Should you not at least properly foreshadow now or at least remind us of that thread??? It doesn't read as clever to just not address it or even mention it at all, it comes off as shoving plot holes or other important details into the corner and ignoring it in favor of focusing on something else. This happened with the Shroud parents, and it happened with the end of book 7.

adlhbabyoryqe8foia IS THE CROWLEY = RAVERNE THEORY STILL... AROUND... I thought it would have calmed down a little by now, but it seems to still be going as strong as ever. (If this ends up being Real, then I'm of the opinion that Crowley could have had a brief aside or some ominous/telling line foreshadowing this at the end of book 7. Currently, we don't have anything like that.)

I've been thinking about it and thinking about it, and I STILL don't understand how that ending scene logistically worked out. Barring my confusion with how Lilia's UM worked (how are both humans and fae that resided in the castle at different points in time are having peaceful memories there??), why did Maleanor, the Dawn Knight, and Leah appear but not Raverne???? Nameless NPC soldiers showed up too, but not Raverne???? Doesn’t that imply that there is not a single memory associated with Raverne in Castle Wildrose that Lilia can summon OTL B-But surely he was there at least once, seeing as he's a diplomat? Literally described as “her highness Maleanor’s eyes, hands, and feet"???? And that's his WIFE???? Please make this make sense, because it doesn't no matter how much I try to wrap my mind around it 😭

[bunannabun]

as a whovian since 2009

ive NEVER spread hate on anything the series did regardless of my opinion on their decisions and plot holes and whatnot, and boy oh boy is not easy being a whovian ive been accepting everything with an open heart, yeah you wanna retcon shit? you wanna leave a plot open for ever? you wanna over do nostalgia? alright, i'm here to have fun and love all the things that made me fall in love with the series, i can ignore things that were not my taste, DW was never about being a flawless production anyway, it was always about HEART but you know what? I can only be so patient for so long! This finale has a list of things that made me watch the whole thing in denial, not wanting to believe my own eyes, trying my best to trust the show until the end just to end up in desbelief and as frustrated as i was watching Star Wars episode 9. And you know what, I could still take all of this shit but i can only be so patient when it comes to dealing with BIPOC characters with so much cowardice. So take my hand and let's take remember how RTD writes them? I will not even take into account the annoying outcast boyfriend of female (white) lead, Mickey, or the let's play with Asian stereotypes but hide them under an alien mask, Chanto. let's look at the big ones, shall we? Martha Jones - had one great episode centered on herself as the great heroine at the end, and it's implied she becomes this motherfucking cool UNIT agent that we don't get to see much. Collaborates with torchwood, etc. BUT, her own series: always is standing on Billie shadows, always rejected by the 10th for not being Rose, always humiliating herself for a one sided love, like despite her brains and her skills her life was revolved around that alien man. No so much important as she could be (she had potential to be greater than Billie even) compared to all other companions on RTD era including the ones that last one episode. and that's it for RTD 1.... RTD 2: he did some nice things: got our first officially Black Doctor (remember we still have Jo Martin pending, no one knows her story yet), he did an entire episode with 100% black cast taking the Doctor to Africa (bc Ncuti asked). First time 100% non-white Tardis, as Belinda Chandra becomes companion. Great. BUT

instead of introducing our first black doctor normally, there's a twist! He had to share his big moment, big reveal, big spotlight with David Tennant - for fan service purposes. Has our first black doctor sharing the tardis with a white blond girl (and don't take me wrong, i love Ruby, just stay with me here a bit), alrite, she has a black wonderful family, super well written, super charismatic. 2nd companion Belinda. Don't even have a whole series for herself to shine. I don't feel her like a companion at all since she don't even agree to be there and it's all only circumstantial. She's a great character, but don't show so much grow. Disappear for a whole episode that we have Ruby back (the episode is great, but again, keep with me here cause i have a point). Ruby is the one that saves the day on the finale (both Wish and Poppy issues) while Belinda is more like a background character. The Rani: once again, comes from a white character and has to share her big entrance with her. Is underwritten has always to share screen time with Ms. Flood and presumably dies at the end while her white counterpart survives.

Jo Martin is not RTD's fault, but he DID had time to fix this and chose not to. We had literally seconds of her onscreen. Then we have Ncuti regeneration. Beautiful scene, beautiful moment with Jodi, but come on! Not even Eccleston had so little screen time as the doctor as he had! And he had to regenerate on a blonde woman only for fan service purposes again??? Can we see a pattern here? BlPOC RTD's characters always stands on white characters shadows, they're always underused, always have to share their spotlight and this kinda make it seems that all the positive representation stuff he had done in the series was for show this is sad, is frustrating and i can't tolerate this anylonger quoting Eccleston here: "Sack Russel T Davies" (i mean absolutely no hate to anyone from the cast, great team, great actors, only love to them)

[lizaintheduster]

Things they should have shown Sam and Dean realising after Chuck was defeated:

- people call them more, reach out, Jo invites them to dinner, Garth calls to catch up, they realise Chuck was keeping them isolated from other people so they would depend so intensely on each other

- people don't just randomly leave on side missions when it suits the narrative, they stick around. Work together. If Cas is back he doesnt just randomly leave for "reasons". This one massively fucks with Dean's head

- plot holes and retcons. All of a sudden they'll be thinking about a case they worked on in the past and they'll realise it doesn't make any sense. Why did Reapers become Angels out of nowhere? Why was Lucifer the younger brother then the older brother then younger again? This one drives Sam crazy as he realises that notes HE made on cases don't add up with other notes HE made and he never noticed

- hunting is way harder. Their fake badges stop working, clues don't fall into their laps, monsters are much better at hiding and running when they get wind hunters are around. This annoys the hell out of them, but it seems to be affecting all the hunters they are in contact with so there's that

- John Winchester. All of a sudden when they think about their childhood it's like there was a cover over it before, controlling how they looked at it, what parts they saw and when. Now they can actually see the picture and both of them get very very drunk about it

- Sam's trauma gets worse as he now is aware of everything that's happened to him, instead of only being able to really engage with whatever trauma is relevant to today's episode. He's like, "Oh, oh wow, I have been through some shit that literally is going to require professional help. Damn"

- Dean's mental health, shockingly, improves. People are calling him back, they're staying around, and all of a sudden when someone tries to talk to him about his feelings the great wall of "No!" that has existed in his head for years is just gone. Dean's mental health then does tank for a few days when he clocks this

- Also Dean is gay now. But that's just a fun one for me. I just think that would be wild. Fucking imagine

[princessofghosts-posts]

I must say that some of the most stupid and genius things that some authors do,in their works,is leaving plot holes that can be easily explained by some strange plot line they probably forgot about.

Take Echiro Oda for example. The guy is the mangaka of One Piece,his work is 20+ years long,and some of the plot holes he left in the beginning,if put in today's chapters,can possible pass as "foreshadow" and "ohh,this is why. Now I understand". When in reality Oda probability forgot about it or changed it.

Same thing can be said for Riordan. For example,Nico's skin in TTC is described as an "olive" color,typical of the Mediterranean. And when he come back later on he is described as extremely pale,almost like a ghost/dead person. And while Rick completely forgot about it,you can pass it as Nico's spending too much time in the Labyrinth or in the Underworld (and later on Tartarus). There are many more things that he forgot about,but the fandom can excuse them with a logical canon explication because Rick put the seeds for it. Especially with the whole memory loss problem that Nico has: he can add or retcon whatever he want about his backstory,and it can be explained with "Nico is finally remembering his life before the Lethe".

And it's a genius move to do so,especially when you are an author that doesn't reread his own works,and doesn't remember much of the previous books. But at the same time it's frustrating because you can excuse or change anything already pre-written,things that are already canon,with some no sense that can ruin your whole character.

[ckret2]

Hey, Puff. Do love your uncanny ability to work plot holes / retcon into really compelling plots, so figured I'd ask — do you have a theory to square how the Guardian's Time Portal showed King!Jack as the one worthy to defeat him / traveling through time, but Aku later defeated him (& destroyed the portal)?

Maybe... something something, Past!Jack goes back to Show!Future!Timeline to try and save Ashi, while Aku was able to defeat the Guardian because he didn't want to USE the portal?

I have two theories that involve finagling an unintended loophole out of the prophecy.

Theory one:

The Guardian thinks the prophecy is about the one person who will defeat him and use the portal, but it's actually about the one person who's able to defeat him and use the portal. At some point during his 50-year journey Jack's power peaked and he got the fancy king outfit, then lost it later due to the trauma & depression. At that moment when he was at his peak, he could have beaten the Guardian and used the portal; but he didn't visit him then.

But—as you suggest—the prophecy doesn't cover people who might have the capacity to beat the Guardian without using the portal; and so it didn't predict, for instance, Aku turning into a brick the size of the Titanic and bodyslamming the portal & Guardian, crushing them both.

Theory two:

The prophecy is indeed about the one person who will defeat him, but the prophecy is only enough to let the Guardian see what that person looks like as they arrive. He knows the name "Samurai Jack" but for all we know maybe the full version of the prophecy involves The Chosen One saying "hello, it's me, Samurai Jack, can I use that portal now?"

And so, if all the Guardian knows is what The One Person Capable Of Defeating Him looks like and who that person claims to be...

Well, Aku's a shapeshifter.

And he is known to occasionally learn prophecies about ways to defeat him and go on a little quest to undermine those prophecies.

And usually he's stuck with the same color scheme, but we do see him use makeup to disguise his appearance in the comics.

And Jack's future king outfit has a few striking similarities with the "hero" outfit Aku imagines for himself in his fairy tales.

Joke theory three:

somewhere out there is an obscure tiny kingdom whose king happens to look like Jack and who coincidentally happens to be named Samurai Jack, and after Jack's visit but before the portal's destroyed he visits the Guardian with something like "my wife died last week and I need to use the portal to go back and save her life." This King Samurai Jack just so happens to be the most powerful character in the whole series, he just never got involved in the plot because of how isolated his kingdom is. He did, in fact, win and use the portal. He's never seen again. He has no further relevance to the show. Neither Jack nor Aku knows he exists.

[physalian]

There are ways to do retcons properly

Nothing incenses an audience quite like a retcon, more so if it’s one done deliberately and not by the writer simply forgetting or not knowing that they’re retconning in the first place. Beyond just being the man behind the curtain going “uhhh you didn’t see that last bit, just trust me, this is the new canon” reading as lazy and breaking the immersion, it’s seen as at best, uncreative and at worst, actively dismissive and disrespectful of the canon that came before, especially if this isn’t the original writer.

There’s hundreds of examples of terrible retcons, most recently in the litany of reboots and live action remakes.

But if you’re a solo author and you realize you’ve made a mistake that you must retcon in order to tell the grander story effectively, here’s some suggestions for how to handle that.

—

Have a character say they made a mistake, and make this mistake have lasting consequences

Mistakes are human. Characters simply “making a mistake” in fiction tends to go over poorly because it’s not a satisfying or meaningful direction for the story to take. Unless this is heavily foreshadowed or the character is deliberately set up for failure and the audience knows this, or the character chronically makes these kinds of mistakes, it feels like the hand of the author giving a diabolus ex machina—outside of the control or autonomy of any of the characters, suddenly they are wrong because the author says so.

So if you haven’t done the prep work for this big mistake, because you didn’t realize it would be one until it’s too late to change it, you can have this mistake fundamentally change the character. That way the retcon becomes more than the author patching holes, it’s now part of this character’s growth.

Have the characters be misinformed by a bad actor or propaganda

Like above, having a character out of nowhere go “eh, I lied” to patch your plot hole is weak, if it comes out of nowhere for them and never shows up as something they would do again.

However, if your cast lives in a world where multiple sides are prone to making shit up about each other (as all sides are in every conflict), you can take a piece of wrong information and bake it into the plot as part of a deeper conspiracy. Or simply a loss of trust in the original source of the information, or a change of worldview about how they won’t be duped again.

—

Whatever the case, making a retcon work might demand changing your original plan to incorporate how these characters approach the new laws and lore of their world now thrust upon them. They might be frustrated, wary, confused, upset, distraught, or devastated depending on the severity of the retcon. It should mean something fundamentally to them that what they previously thought is now wrong.

You don’t have to turn it into this big thing if it’s a minor retcon, like, somebody’s eyes now have to change colors. Leaning too far into a long explanation wraps back around to being convoluted. Sometimes it really is just better to say nothing and not call attention to it (but if it is that minor, why are you retconning in the first place?).

If I’m writing a contemporary romance series and between books Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome had blue eyes but now I really want them to be brown because I just like brown eyes…that ship has sailed? Write another book for your brown-eyed beau.

If I’m writing a fantasy story and Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome absolutely must have brown eyes because eye color is crucial to bloodlines and majorly important to his character and arc, and I accidentally gave him blue before fully realizing my lore, I now have to figure out, within the reality of the world I built, how to fix this error.

Maybe that means he has to be adopted, or some nefarious magician changed his eye color as an infant to protect him in some grand conspiracy, or the actual lore behind magical eyes is one big lie to support fantasy eugenics. How much you focus on changing the retcon should be proportional to how important this retconned detail is to the story, and how realistic this new explanation would be.

If I say magicians dyed this boy’s eyes… I gotta already have established that there exists magicians who could potentially do this.

Hand-waving critical things away, or giving a BS excuse so we can quickly move on, or insulting the audience for believing this is how the world works as you’ve told it to them and trying to spin yourself as oh so clever isn’t going to end well for you.

But also… if you act with some humility and admit you just forgot, audiences are likely to be more forgiving than if you do contrive some long-winded explanation and act like it was your plan all along.

There’s a balance, and it’s highly situational.

Hope this helps?

[chaifootsteps]

honestly Viv's approach to writing reminds me of JKR

whenever she gets criticism or people point out plot holes she tries to find some hacky solution that fixes the problem. but where JKR's solutions were clumsy but mostly worked (people asked why everyone didn't just use time turners to solve everything - time turners all get conspicously destroyed so there's none left) Viv's are just embarassing in how transparent and amateurish they are

she's decided Stolas is the good guy and he gets flack for cheating? write Stella as more than just a bit of a bitch who has become distant from him - now she's an evil monster who exists to torment him so Stolas is doing a virtuous thing by continually committing adultery

he still gets flack for being a bad dad who neglects Via? write an episode where he neglects her even harder but now the moral is explicitly 'Via needs to suck it up and cut him a break', delivered by the one character who has no reason to believe that much less the right to say it given how she treats her own adopted dad

Stolas still gets flack for how he uses Blitzo as a sex doll with a pulse? uh, um, Blitzo seduced him! and Stolas is nice on phone calls we don't get to see, passive aggressively nice on texts we do get to see and acting like sex between them is now distasteful because he wants love and Blitzo is the one who's a perverted horndog

Blitzo shows little affection for Stolas and doesn't even seem to like him? suddenly he's clingy and insecure and just wants Stolas back but won't admit it and he's (probably) going to do a complete 180 when he finds out Stolas was abused, because Viv can't think of a quicker way to make anyone like or love Stolas than 'he's a very sad boy who's very tormented, which is the only thing a sympathetic character needs'

I think the thing about JKR's plot holes is that, they feel like...well, regular plot holes. You can get through the series without thinking about the time turners too much, just like you can get through Shawshank Redemption without dwelling on the fact that Andy shouldn't have realistically spent 24 years in the same cell.

Viv's plot holes fly almost as fast and thick as the swears. Things that happen in an episode are consistently retconned in the next episode, and then that's retconned into something else entirely. The audience doesn't have the luxury of ignoring it, because the show plays out like it was written by a group of people who each took an episode and didn't communicate with each other at all.

[peijizerojournal]

re: 'khaos reigns'

i have SO much to say about it lol but i'm still gathering my thoughts. all i know for sure is : even though the bar (in regards to quality of story and characterization) was on the floor, i am still, yet again, extremely disappointed !

(rant/review/spoilers below. will maybe add to this, but also maybe not. just purging some of my thoughts lol)

in a nutshell,

the way liu kang, kuai liang, cyrax, sektor and bi-han's characters were all deviously misrepresented was just appalling.

kuai liang is depicted as heartless, arrogant and temperamental. posturing as a 'grandmaster' even though he's done nothing but usurp authority by establishing a 'clan of his own' and pointing the finger at everybody but himself. lecturing cyrax about honour... pfft.

liu kang is strangely unforgiving and not very compassionate (he was literally more gracious in how he handled shang tsung/quan chi over bi-han?? like what??) not to mention his lack of urgency with dispatching of havik and rescuing geras. instead of extending some authentic benevolence to bi-han, he instead goads and chastises him after his transformation, and fails to elaborate further when they have their brief interaction regarding his hopes for a different future. the miscommunication between them -- in other words -- continues to be infuriating.

sektor doing nothing but being comically op and fawning over bi-han every three seconds is so all over the place, like they couldn't decide or couldn't find a nuanced balance in her persona (an issue with many characters, it seems...). while i thought she was the most accurately characterized out of all of these major players, her defining traits such as her obsession with the cyber initiative and boosting the lin kuei's position are not made so clear in the actual story? instead the writers chose to focus on her over-the-top, one-sided adulation toward bi-han. it makes her so hard to take seriously as a threat or as the next acting-grandmaster. another storytelling fail!

cyrax starts off the dlc defiantly, standing up for what she believes in and deciding to help the shirai ryu, yet during the rest of the story, she has no agency and just follows kuai around profusely apologizing for something she didn't even do (and kuai was relishing in that shift of power.... gross.)

and bi-han... i think that situation speaks for itself. missing chunks of the leak script and clever editing in the trailers left most of the fanbase baited and switched, and not to mention literally anything could happen next because of the lack of commitment to any of the lore and to even the timeline itself. many of the tower endings contradict much of the intro dialogue and the campaign itself. i guess by introducing alternate timelines and universes so early on, it gives the writers fair game to retcon anything and everything. which, effectively, pulvarizes any meaning for liu kang's 'new era' going forward.

i could keep ranting but, in short: 'khaos reigns' was rushed, boring, full of poor characterization and enough 'macguffins' and 'red herrings' fit for a superhero movie. so many plot holes and loose ends that weren't followed up on (like hello, what's with the hand on noob's hip? and where the hell did titan havik go at the end? was he banished? what about the kamidogu???). there were so many missed opportunities to flesh out preexisting conflicts too, and the pacing of everything from dialogue to the transitions between chapters was completely disjointed. all the characters actions were seemingly shortsighted and many of the decisions made led to nowhere and nothing really changed by the end. nobody went through any real character arc or growth, nobody knows what happened to our over-hyped 'villain of the week,' and the tower endings cancel out the dlc's true ending, essentially making all of it, and none of it, 'canonically accurate.'

it's clear whoever's writing this has no respect or insight for the source material, and is just doing whatever they want: whatever's popular, whatever sells, right? the one thing about a multiverse story is, you can keep that going forever. the possibilities are endless, and if they don't like something... it can be changed with a snap of the finger. kind of reminds me of one of supernatural's awful later seasons, or destiny 2's "shadowkeep" expansion. 'khaos reigns' comes across as a shoehorned seasonal narrative that exists solely to sell noob, cyrax and sektor and little else.

oh yeah, and the future dlc's that are sure to come.

[rvb-canon-tuckington]

here are some "quick" rvb restoration thoughts before i go to bed that i may expand upon later, in no particular order:

this movie was ABOUT tucker but tucker is not in it. there is a tucker sized hole. we see tucker only a little bit more than we see donut, but tucker is still there the whole time!!! at the beginning, i was excited for the tucker whump, but does it count if not a single character reacts to the truly horrifying news that their friend has been controlled for a few months by eight or nine ais, at least two of which have tried to kill him and everyone you love before? like even if they had retconned red and blue teams being friends (which they didn't), you're telling me that we never get to see wash's reaction to this news? carolina's? two people who lost a different friend to this exact gruesome process of de-personing? no one ever tells carolina that tucker is in there and no one objects when tex goes to fucking decapitate him? like i get that caboose was the only person to see that tucker was actually still in there, and he can't really be trusted to communicate things clearly, but they could have even just included some sort of discussion where they decide that they think that tucker would rather be dead than be dragged along in this parody of life (and with the way the ais were torturing him, he probably would have agreed.)

speaking of caboose knowing that tucker is still in there - grif and simmons abandoning caboose rubbed me SO wrong. usually if a character is trying not to involve themselves, they'll "run away" to the nearest place to hide, not GET ON A SHIP TO FLY AWAY LEAVING CABOOSE TO DIE AT POSSESSED TUCKER'S HANDS. i get why they (the writers) did it, but that doesn't mean i have to like it lol

why weren't they FRIENDS ANYMORE

where was donut

what was that wash b-plot. what did the wash b-plot add?? what it did: make me feel weird about dr. grey's character, kill doc off screen, and make wash useless in the main plot. what it did not do: make sense. when did wash get injured post chorus? why is he hallucinating, period? why was he institutionalized? (and why is the room number the same as his prison number?) why did they spend so much time on it for it to have no real conclusion? they didn't need to have this weird "wash is hanging onto the past via doc" plot to have the carolina-wash-freelancer ghost heart-to-heart. (also i have never laughed so hard as when i saw the post pointing out that they left wyoming out bc neither my friend or i noticed lol) why wouldn't he know there was a manual way to activate the recovery beacon since he was LITERALLY recovery one? so many questions, no answers. what have you done to my boy, burnie.

the pacing was ATROCIOUS. nothing happened for the first half of the movie, a bunch of stuff happened in the second half, and none of it felt resolved.

where was donut

why was everyone separated at the beginning? why was no one worried about it? where was donut? where was carolina? why was no one worried about where tucker was? had caboose been the lone blue for the few months that tucker was gone and wash was hospitalized? genuinely, my friend and i thought that the reds and caboose had been mind wiped and dropped into their undisclosed locations without knowing why, and the plot was gonna be them all reuniting and piecing together what had happened and getting tucker back. alas.

it felt like it was the grif-simmons-caboose show, which was interesting because that's not a problem i feel like i've had before with this show. even if i saw less of a particular character than i wanted to. they usually have a pretty good balance of characters and this movie felt like they suddenly Realized how many characters they had and fumbled it.

i did actually really like the tex reveal that was BOSS i LOVED IT

i have more thoughts but this is far too long already so i'll save it for later lmao

[tobiasdrake]

Genuinely curious what the original plan for Android 16 was.

It's widely known that the plot of the Android arc changed multiple times over the course of the series. 19 and 20 were originally intended to be the arc's true villains. In fact, Trunks calls them out by serial number when he's first giving the infodump about his future.

This isn't a Viz-ism, either. He says "19 and 20" specifically in the original Japanese.

Those two Androids, not 17 and 18, are the ones ravaging his future. However, as is commonly known, Toriyama's editor former editor and currently a trusted friend Kazuhiko Torishima was unimpressed by the Androids' design.

The funny thing is, this isn't the only glaring plot hole that the abrupt shift in plot created. It's easy to pin down 20's flight to his lab as the moment Toriyama switched gears, because he's forced to bring in Bulma to rerail it onto the new story - creating another massive plot hole in the process regarding what Bulma knows.

See. In addition to Trunks clearly identifying 19 and 20 as the Androids, this scene three years in the past had another moment that becomes an issue later on. It's when Bulma says this:

See, Trunks has explained that Dr. Gero is creating the Androids as we speak and will set them upon everyone in three years' time. Bulma suggests having Shenron reveal the location of Gero's lab, and then they can all run off and gank him.

She gets voted down because Goku, Vegeta, and Tenshinhan are all super interested in fighting these Androids.

Goku tries to spin some guff about a moral reservation but he adds that in as an afterthought. His kneejerk is that he wants to fight. It's Krillin who ultimately succeeds in talking Bulma down, via some 4-D chess maneuvers against Vegeta.

Krillin's planning on using the Androids as a common cause to trick Vegeta into becoming one of the gang.

Which. Y'know. Goes off without a hitch, honestly. Krillin is a tactical genius and all-a y'all owe him respect. He manipulated Vegeta straight into that redemption arc.

In any case, this is where Trunks's warning leaves us: In three years' time, Dr. Gero will unleash 19 and 20 who will kill us all. If we knew where he was, we could do something about it, but the will to actually do that isn't there.

So.

Three years later, during the fight with 20, he uses Bulma as a distraction to make his escape. Upon rescuing her, Bulma's able to positively ID 20 as the doctor himself.

More than that, she knows exactly where he lives because he's a famous celebrity whose personal information gets talked about in the scientific community.

She just never brought it up before because no one ever said Dr. Gero was involved in any of this.

This is an even bigger HOOOOOOLY SHIT than the clear identification of the Androids' serial numbers. What Bulma knows flipped between these chapters.

So we make our way to Gero's lab to meet the arc's Actual Villains For Realsies, 17 and 18.

As a sidenote, not to be outdone in jankiness by Goku dropping the Senzu into a pocket dimension earlier, Toei has Dr. Gero's broken-off right hand occasionally regenerate by magic in this scene.

This arc is rough for everyone.

In any case, this brings us to the awakening of 16.

At this point in time, the retcon has finished taking effect; 17 and 18 are now retroactively the Androids from Trunks's future, but 16 is something different. Another Android that Trunks has never heard of before.

Dr. Gero practically pisses himself with terror when the prospect of 16 being awakened comes up.

In the same breath that Toriyama rewrites 17 and 18 to be the True Actual Villains For Realsies of the arc, he also introduces the enigmatic 16. All we know of him is that Gero believed he was a malfunctioning, uncontrollable failure whose awakening would threaten the whole planet.

The Twins question 16 about the true threat he represents.

But all he has to offer in response is this... eerie smile, as if he knows something he isn't sharing.

Answering "Are you going to kill us all" with a smug grin is fucking ominous. Shortly after, we learn that whatever 16's malfunction is, it scared Gero so much that he never made another of the same kind of thing that 16 is again.

What went so horribly wrong that it spooked Gero into trying out human base models and? It's worth noting that while Gero did go back to the mechanical design for 19, he considered the subsequent failures of 17 and 18 following whatever happened with 16 to be sufficient reason to can the Infinite Energy design entirely.

Android 16 is the most formidable design Gero ever created to kill Goku with. And he refused to ever make another like him again.

Current Dragon Ball lore, per interviews with Toriyama, say that he didn't want 16 released because 16 has sentimental value to him. But that doesn't explain why he didn't make other Androids like 16, and these panels themselves are telling a very different story. They're hyping up the mystery of 16 to be the true ultimate threat of this arc - At least, once he finally gets a chance to meet his one true adversary.

However, this doesn't last. Torishima didn't like the Twins as villains either so Cell was created instead. It was later revealed that 16 was very strong and also has a bomb in his chest that would wipe out a small portion of the countryside.

But the nature of this terrifying and enigmatic threat to the planet sure to unfold if 16 awakens, something so terrible that Gero was afraid of ever making an Android like 16 again, would be lost to the cutting room floor.

[yarpharp]

Dragon Age Veilguard ramble (with some spoilers about the ending of the whole thing)

I... I know there are plenty of people defending this game. But on a story level, I am kinda confused. And frustrated. So The Veil is powered by the Evanuris who are immortal and trapped in a special alternate space veil prison thing where they serve as batteries until somebody cracks open the Veil.

So First Question: how the fuck didn't they (the Evanuris) escape from their prisons during Inquisition? I'm... I'm really confused how that didn't happen. I mean, Solas/Corypheus bungled it so bad it cracked a huge hole in the sky! TWICE! Once in the beginning of the game and then again at the climax! And what about the small rifts? I mean, Solas' knife ritual cracked open a hole in the Veil that WASNT MUCH BIGGER THAN A RIFT. Why didn't one of the Gods escape then? And you can't tell me those dumb little devices we helped hunt down for Solas were somehow keeping the Gods back. Most players didn't even find them all!

Second Question: did they seriously retcon Morrigan and her fucking son? And what is the deal with the Mythal lore? I mean, I ain't SHOCKED Solas probably once fucked Mythal or had feelings for her. That seemed obvious to me. But what the fuck about Mythal/Flemeth's scary warnings in Inquisition and DA2 about "reckonings" and "finally getting her vengeance"? ONE OF THE DA4 ENDINGS IS MYTHAL SOMEHOW REACHING OUT FROM MORRIGAN (oh and apparently Morrigan, she who feared her mom and feared becoming her mom's new meat suit for extending her life, decided to become Mythal's next host I guess???? Seriously???) TO TELL SOLAS TO LET GO OF HIS MISSION AND GRIEF? Are... Are you serious? What happened to all that fucking anger and plotting? Was that the ultimate plot of hers? Make Solas become a battery with the remainder of her killers? I... What. And what happened with the Old God Soul? Seriously, what about that? Is that supposed to be how Solas transforms into a fucked up hyena dog? (Sorry the design for the dread wolf is kinda disappointing to me.)

Third Question: Why is there a path option where somehow the Inquisitor Lover actually finally manages to persuade him to do the right thing? BRO, WHAT WAS TRESPASSER FOR THEN??? IF SOLAS IS WILLING TO DOUBLE-CROSS HIS LOVER AND ROOK TO GET HIS WAY, WHY WRITE THAT ENDING SCENARIO?

Fourth Question: Did the developers forget that Solas is actually pretty neutral about Blood Magic? Because there was a whole scene in the game where he claimed he abhorred blood magic and then proceeds to reveal the Veil is definitely partially a blood magic ritual. Or was it supposed to be a really lame "oh look he lies!" moment?

Fifth Question: Does this mean we retconned all those codex entries and Cole ramblings about how Solas was a spirit of Wisdom once and he LITERALLY HAS THAT SCAR ON HIS FACE BECAUSE HE BURNED MYTHAL'S VALLASLIN OFF WITH MAGIC? Because this makes the whole "Mythal and Solas are lovers and Solas did this all for her, blah blah" feel far more fucking malicious if that's still canon. I mean... Isn't it a bit weird to have at one point opposed the woman/god who quite literally owned you as an advisor/agent of her will, and then you burn her slave markings off your face, and somehow you became lovers somewhere in all of that? What kinda toxic bullshit is that? WHY TRY TO DESTROY THE WORLD FOR A TOXIC EX? Wanting to kill the Evanuris? Valid. Wanting to tear down the Veil to restore the elven people after seeing what happened to them? Fucked up but strangely valid. But arguing that he went through all that bullshit for his ex-lover because he "wanted to honor their promise and memory" feels really fucking janky and sloppy as a plot point.

And Sixth Final Question: Did bioware really not give me the ultimate bad ending of "Tear Down the Veil"? Because that's just plain disappointing.

[thewebcomicsreview]

Oh hey, Hamsteak 2. Looks like Vriska's...back in Alternia? In a dreambubble?

they sent the thief here in search of power; the power to escape the containment i so painstakingly set up for them

Al confirmed as the Candy narrator. Also confirmed that the black hole is "containment" for the dreambubbles and non-canon worlds, and that all the ghosts falling in wasn't an accident of fighting Lord English.

the black hole could only ever shelter them for so long, and in their haste to shrug off my protection they have opened the door to something far, far hungrier.

This panel is a callback to Karkat about to open the door to the New Universe. Where there were interrupted by Jack Noir. Vriska is interrupted by-

Yoo! It's Davepeta! Who feel into the black hole and has been conspicuously absent ever since. They're the only Ultimate who is not connected to Dirk, and in some ways the only "true" Ultimate. Interesting that Al considers them such a threat, when Davepeta has never been anything but benevolent.

Looks like it's all the sprites, in fact. Why...are there two Nannasprites? Oh god, I'm being pushed to the endless limits of my ability to remember Homestuck Lore. Is one of them pre-retcon? I do not remember.

ERISOLSPRITE: wwe'vve been here for liike a miilliion fuckiin 2wweep2. DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < actually we just got here DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < this place didnt even exist until she popped in ERISOLSPRITE: gue22 ii'll fuck my2elf.

It didn't exist until a character arrived, at which point it retroactively existed the whole time, like how a planet works.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < does that not sound insane to you fefeta? FEFETASPRITE: 3833 < 383

What? How are Davepeta and Fefeta coexisting? That definitely doesn't make sense.

Well, logic be damned, it's apparently time for a Vriska training arc.

Gah! Talksprites! Also, Vriska enters "Hell" on page 666 of Homestuck 2, which is I think the first time this comic has aimed at any kind of Meaningful Number.

God, we are full on visual novel here. I didn't know Ren'Py could export to web, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me. I presume/hope the save option is default and won't be needed here, it's 1:30am.

Tavros is here and, much more oddly, alive. I suddenly understand jack shit.

I have no memory of Tavros ever forgiving Vriska for anything...or, for that matter, Vriska even being aware she did anything that needed to be forgiven. I presume she's just lying here, though.

This line combined with this pose is the essence of Vriska

So, Vriska's being forced to "grow as a person" and her big idea to finish her character arc is to atone for her sins by getting Tavros to take revenge on her. Vriska thinks that the secret to gaining power is getting Tavros to kill her.

I wonder where she got that idea.

But that time she refused to mind control Tavros into killing her, she wanted him to grow from it, too. Now we're past that.

I felt smart for remembering the K8LL ME bit but we're being really obvious about it now so I guess they just assumed everyone would and I'm not special :(

Oh shit. Erisol wasn't kidding.

Davepeta roleplaying being a cat who dies horribly is kind of the perfect synthesis of Dave and Nepeta. What is this music. It's very toot-y.

Oh hey a text log. How convenient. So we're trapped in a time loop, then, explicitly recreating Groundhog Day. I guess that explains the infinity hourglass on the Plot Point machine.

Vriska's having a bad couple of years.

Davepeta is "countless" cool dudes and kitty girls, which I think is the first explicit confirmation they're an Ultimate Self, though that was pretty strongly implied at least. The only Ultimate to do so without Dirk's involvement.

Stop letting me intuit things and then immediately making them clear! I don't care if it's good writing, it's making my liveblog bad!

It's so weird to compare this Davepeta to the one in Homestuck OG. There Davepeta was presented as this wise sage mentor figure who'd achieved enlightenment, and here they're much more of "Dave + Nepeta's combined silliness as one character". It's a subtle difference, but go back and read Davepeta giving this same kind of talk to Jade back in Homestuck 1. I guess that's the difficulty of a character with so little screentime in the original, they're either very limited or they feel slightly off.

Oh my fucking god, a to-be-continued select screen. Shit, that takes me back in an unexpected way.

Also, from the associated news update, "the big flash" is apparently several months away (10/25?), and I have to say they might want to be careful about overhyping it, if they have small flashes and now Ren'Py novels that are just preludes. If it's anything less than a Cascade after months and months of hype it could fall flat where a surprise [S] Enter would've popped the fanbase hard.

[sabre-tooth]

Tell me, Marvel. Tell me why you have to do this.

Tell me why you have to take a character who will, next year, have 50 YEARS of character development and strip absolutely all of the nuance and complexity out of him and boil him down to LOL IRREDEEMABLE MASS MURDERER FOR FUNSIES.

Tell me why you had to derail a perfectly good plot with Sabretooth becoming a leader figure to the mutant exiles to instead, him and a bunch of AU variants coming to kill all the mutants on Krakoa for literally no reason.

We have been through this. SO MANY. Times before and I think this is the worst fucking one. At least you used to let this man have some kind of motivation.

And Sabretooth was NEVER nothing but a fucking irredeemable mass murder. No matter what that SHITHEAD CHARLES XAVIER had to say about it.

When Sabretooth first appeared he was written as a sassy, savage and smart international assassin and killer for hire.

Then we found out that he had brain damage from military programming. This man is literally a fucking disabled war veteran. 

And you know what?? The worst fucking retcon that Marvel ever pulled was years ago. When they started ignoring that Sabretooth DIDN'T kill Silver Fox. 

He didn't kill her!! He and Logan didn't even have a poisonous history until Project X used brainwashing to turn them against one another!

And after finding all that out, when started to become an unhinged killer with no motivation and no joy he SOUGHT HELP FOR THAT. He tried to fucking medicate himself because it was too much! and when the medication wasn't working he sought help from the X-Men and they locked him up and told him he was irredeemable.

And after that he got used as a fucking government slave again! They put him in a shock collar and they enslaved him as their own attack dog.

And when he broke out of that control??? He fucking went after Weapon X to fuck THEM over!!! And he went back to doing hired assassin shit. He's not just a fucking pointless monster who has no motivation and kills for no reason. He kills for money. He kills for fun sometimes. But that's not everything of who he is and I'm tired of him having everything stripped from him.

The Madripoor arc where he was a crime boss hanging out with Mystique and in charge of the dark hand, that shit was great! That's how you use Sabretooth as a villain! He killed Wolverine then!!! HE KILLED WOLVERINE.

And then later, AFTER everybody got zapped with the "morality reverse" after he changed back, Sabretooth still decided to give being a hero a try. And he was good at it!! He was an excellent "Anti-hero" somebody to hang around all the other light side paladin and remind them that killing their enemies is EASY.

We could have had that for years. We could still have that. That was only 2017.

But no. BUT NO.

You retcon the whole god damn universe take away literally all of his character development STICK HIM IN A HOLE FOR YEARS, then promise us maybe MAYBE we'll get Sabretooth and The Exiles.

AND NOW THIS.

I HAVE FUCKING HAD ENOUGH MARVEL.

There are good ways to use sabretooth as a villain and this shit ain't it.