#if nothing in canon retcons it ill make it longer

[barb-l]

Yeees totally! With Enid probably picking stores strategically beforehand because she knows Wednesday can only take so much before her social batteries run out for the day. She's also totally buying her something other than black and white.. maybe in a beautiful dark blue colour and for whatever, whatever reason Wednesday will be compelled to wear it (when they are alone.) Oh no.. I have way too much thoughts and feelings about them.

Ohh I will be ecstatic about anything you decide to write for them. I loved your first fic tons, it's so very well-written! 😊

Oh dark blue could work. Pretty sure that's what she was wearing in Addams Family Values.

Aww thanks! I'm actually working on a summer break fic rn, but i've been hesitant to keep going cuz ive been considering just waiting to watch the show first cuz i wanna know what Enid's family/pack is like by the end of the show. I'll probably be changing a ton of stuff, or just scrap the whole thing altogether, after i've watched the show, so let me just post what i have so far here:

(sorry im on my mobile and can't put it under read more)

💀💀💀💀💀💀

Enid didn't really expect anything when she gave Wednesday her number. For one, Wednesday didn't have a phone and has sworn that she will never have one.

But just in case...

As, uh, rocky as their start was as roommates, Wednesday has grown on Enid. Like a mold. Maybe due to Stockholm Syndrome. Jury's still up as to how Wednesday feels about her. But after going up against a homicidal monster and rogue Nevermore student together, she likes to think that she has managed to go past being merely a thorn on Wednesday's side and dug her way to the other girl's shriveled, pea-sized heart.

So just before they leave Nevermore for the long-awaited summer break, she gave Wednesday her phone number to let her know that she can contact her if she ever gets sick of tormenting her brother and wants to bother Enid instead.

Wednesday raised a brow when she's handed the piece of paper with Enid's digits and sceptically looked at her. "Why?"

Enid didn't expect Wednesday to ask at the time. Truthfully she expected her to wordlessly throw it away and was prepared for another bout of back and forth squabble like they've always done. Maybe even tease her over how she's too much of an old lady on the inside to even figure out how to use a phone anyway. It was fun. What's not fun is admitting that she will miss her. She didn't prepare to be asked why.

"I don't know," is what Enid ended up saying. "Just..." She shrugged, turned away from Wednesday's calculating gaze to finish zipping up her bag. "I don't know."

"Hm."

Enid didn't like that reaction. Like Wednesday just caught her doing something embarrassing. So she took her bag, gave Wednesday a saccharinely fake smile, and said, "See ya, weirdo!" before running away with her tail tucked between her legs.

----

Enid spends the first two weeks of summer break agonizing over how humiliating that was. Who gives their number to a girl who doesn't even have a phone? Desperate idiots, that's who.

If Wednesday knew how much Enid was suffering just thinking about her, she'd be smiling in satisfaction.

...and now Enid has started thinking about Wednesday's smile, wicked as it may be, and has buried her face in her pillow. This time she's suffering for different, more embarrassing reasons.

She didn't expect anything, honest to god, so when she receives a notification one day for a text from an unknown number, she couldn't believe her eyes.

Greetings, Enid Sinclair, it reads.

Against my better judgement, I have gone and acquired a phone. I still maintain the belief that they are unnecessary and annoying, but you were, regrettably, right. Lighting Pugsley up in the good ol' electric chair has not been the same since Nevermore.

Perhaps it's due to everything else that we have gone through the whole semester. Monsters and what-not can't compare.

Though money has never been an issue to an Addams, I expect that you will make my purchase worthwhile by granting me amusement. Go ahead, regale me of your woes spending school break locked in a whole different kind of prison with your family. I don't expect it to be any worse of a time than I have had, but I haven't lost hope.

Forever in darkness,

Wednesday Addams

Enid rolls her eyes when she finishes reading the absurdly long text, but there's a smile she can't contain when she fondly mutters, "So edgy."

She doesn't reply right away. Mostly because she doesn't know what to say, and also because she spent a good fifteen minutes just re-reading the message, giggling over the mental image of Wednesday going to the mall and buying a phone, all for her.

... Well, maybe not, but Enid doesn't have enough self-control in her to deny a hungry ego.

She knows that the text has been shown as read on Wednesday's end by know, but she pays it no mind. With all the torture having Wednesday on her mind has brought her, she deserves to do it back.

After spending much too long of her time erasing and retyping, she finally replies.

u dont have to sign n write texts like letters yunno. U can just talk like normal

Enid once again laughs when she sees that her text was immediately read. Wednesday spends two minutes conjuring up a reply, and Enid spends the whole time watching the dots on the the bubble move as she lies in bed.

Eventually, Wednesday sends a reply.

Your spelling is atrocious.

Enid wonders if Wednesday would get offended if she tells her how often she has made her laugh.

That's more like it, Enid texts in return.

[grandinventor]

Since I do not write fanfics, I wanted to (not so) briefly share my Jindosh "verse" as in how me and my friend @divaythfyr re-write and head canon the story which might or might not be really lore friendly, but we are having fun! Also Ronny lore! Let's go!

Ronny is a Karnaca born medical school dropout that decided to stop her pursuit of education to join a gang and basically live on the streets, much to the dismay of her family. Ronny used the medical knowledge she had to patch up her fellow gang members and sometimes even members of rival gangs for a price, earning her the street title "Doctor" even though she wasn't really one. She lived this life of stealing, fighting and running away from authorities for over a decade, until tragedy struck her family.

Ronny's sister, who much like her wanted to pursue medicine, was accepted by the Academy of Natural Philosophy in Dunwall. However after couple short years at the Academy, she fell pregnant with the child of a colleague she was seeing, but due to his status and arranged marriage with an aristocrat woman, he broke off the relationship and told her that he wants nothing with the child. Heartbroken, she returned to her home in Karnaca where she gave birth to a daughter, Noa. Wanting to help her out, Ronny offered her a job at one of the shops that was a front to her gang activities, believing her gang will keep her sister safe.

Ronny was mistaken and she learned how much when the City Guard raided the shop and started a fight with the gang there, killing her sister in the crossfire. Blaming herself for it and realizing this left two year old Noa an orphan, she gave up her gang life and settled in a small apartment to raise Noa. During this time Ronny finished her medical degree and applied to work at Addermire before it was closed. She then worked once again illegally as a doctor around the neighborhood, but avoided any gang involvement.

Once Addermire is re-opened by Hypatia, Ronny manages to get a job there, helping out with the patients. That's when she meets Jindosh who is brought to Addermire because due to the electroshock, he is too unwell to stand trial. Ronny asks to work with him because she is scared working with the sick might make her ill and she might bring it back home to now six year old Noa. Also she thinks it will be easier to look after him since he was the Grand Inventor and seems to be physically well (not to mention taking him out is a good excuse for a smoke break since Hypatia doesn't let her smoke indoors).

However at one point Ronny feels bad for him, seeing him struggle to remember things or form sentences and tries to actually work with him. She also occassionally brings Noa to Addermire and Noa and Jindosh seem to be good friends and playing games with her seems to improve his cognitive abilities.

It takes a long time, over a year but Jindosh keeps improving until one day he is basically back to his former self with some residue issues left. However as he gets his mind and intellect back, so comes his mean and cruel nature and Ronny begins to dislike him due to his behavior. She tells Hypatia about this and seeing that he has become an asshole as he used to be, she concludes he can stand trial and finally leave Addermire.

At his trial, due to his injury, he get's off easy because his involvement with the coup can be written off as service to the Duke and now he can once again serve the Empire to redeem himself for his past actiond, under supervision. He is put under house arrest at his Mansion and because Ronny was his caretaker at Addermire, she is tasked to look after him for a while, much to her dismay. She and Noa move to the Mansion, where there is half of the original staff and the guards this time need to make sure to keep him inside. All of his Clockwork Soldiers are destroyed and all of the weapons at the Mansion have been confiscated so he finds himself no longer having the upper hand, but as an actual prisoner in his shifting rooms. However Jindosh is willing to cooperate and not cause harm provided that he get's some of his freedom and is allowed to tinker with things.

He and Ronny, despite having known each other for a year, are at a rough start at the Mansion, but he finds it easier to warm up to little Noa, despite claiming to not like kids. And eventually he begins to find Ronny interesting because she is smart yet openly defies him and refuses to play along his games. His interest in Ronny shifts and changes over time and he begins to find that he feels a certain way that is both new and fascinating. And most importantly during this time, he finds himself becoming nicer to the staff and no longer interested in a lot of the macabre things he once found alluring.

So here we are in the current time where I draw my art and stuff, sorry this is long but thank you to everyone that read it! Also, for the record, some minor Jindosh crimes have been retconned to mske this work, but mostly he was still an evil asshole and he is now slowly learning to change and earn his redemption. And goes without saying, but actual lobotomies IRL were one of the most terrible things and caused permanent damage, but due to the nature of the electroshock machine and there being no clear way it works in a fantasy universe, we could bullshit around and say that he recovered. It's part of the re-writing.

[overdrivels]

Moving money in the Overwatch world is somewhat of a subplot in TWtaH. I was reading an article just this morning about how money-laundering is at a standstill because criminals are having a hard time transporting and exchanging their ill-gotten gains in this Covid-19 lockdown. So that got me thinking about Overatch’s currency--credit.

I don’t really think ‘credit’ as a currency is canon in the Overwatch world. I just took the cash shop stuff and shoehorned it into the story because I didn’t want to use specific currencies like ‘bitcoin’ or ‘dogecoin’ or whatever else is out there.

With cryptocurrency, you get exchange goods and services without having to physically interact with any paper or coin money. On an individual level, it just means that a pandemic such as COVID-19 wouldn’t stop people from paying for stuff and no one has to worry about transmitting disease using money as a carrier. On a much larger-scale like money-laundering, the story becomes a little different.

We understand that the original concept behind bitcoin is, at a very high level, a representation of money (”cryptocurrency”) that is traded for goods and services. There is no central governing authority (decentralization), it is mostly anonymous, and very secure (or as secure as your password and wallet ID is anyway) because the code behind it sure is.

There are pros and cons to this. Let’s address the three ones I mentioned:

1) No central governing authority. This means that whatever cryptocurrency we’re talking about isn’t controlled by anyone. No federal government, no international government, nothing. That means no singular entity can lock you out of your money if suddenly let’s say all banks fail or something or government declares some law that suspends withdrawal of money.

On the flip side, that also means there’s no one to regulate the money. For example, 1 bitcoin is worth whatever the fuck the people decide. This leads to instability and the rollercoaster of having bitcoin being worth $10k per bitcoin to suddenly dropping to $6k per bitcoin in a three day period. It is incredibly unstable. This also means there are no laws governing what happens if you get scammed or the like or anything to protect the consumer. If you lose your money, it’s your fault (by and large).

2) It is mostly anonymous. Yes and no. Yes, as in your name and social security number isn’t blatantly associated with your wallet ID. In theory, you could set up like five or six wallets and trade that way to obfuscate (hide) your activities. Then there’s the ‘no’. Similar to how police can triangulate where your cellphone is based on which cellphone tower your phone pinged last, investigators can get a general idea of who you are, and what transactions were made. Bitcoin specifically uses a public ledger to record all trades. If they see $400 come from wallet A to wallet B with the same amount and transaction ID, they may have a match. Then there’s recording IPs and the like. Lots of contextual data that can be used to track someone down if someone was determined enough.

3) It’s mostly secure. This one is the backbone of cryptocurrency. There’s not much to say except it’s based on algorithms. Really, really annoying to crack algorithms. It’s not exactly possible to steal money unless you have access to the person’s wallet and password. However, this goes back to point 1 where if you lost your wallet or had it stolen, there is no central authority that can really help you.

Okay, so why the fuck am I talking about this?

I’d imagine that with the development of omnics and the progression of omnic rights, Overwatch’s world may have evolved to move away from physical money to digital currency and to keep paper money around kind of as a novelty or only used in really remote places. Having digital money means paying people more reliably, paying people faster, less errors, and less hassle.

(I messed up a little in my fic and I’m thinking of retconning it to remove the part about different countries and their currencies still having different exchange rates. Instead, I might just say that they still use the same symbols they always used to indicate money and the numbers are in credits instead.)

Anyway, back to the three points again. I think in the world of Overwatch, if cryptocurrency were to become the norm, they would first get rid of point #1. They would absolutely centralize the fuck out of it. It’s money. What bank, what government, what nation wouldn’t want to have control over money? If it’s global, I’d assume the World Bank would create a branch specifically dealing with cryptocurrency. They issue the regulations, they do the audits, they handle the interest rates, inflation, and everything related to the control of money. Then the banks of each nation would accommodate that. Though, with the obsolesce of physical money and different exchange values, that can imply that currency is no longer really tied to anything. Up until the end of WWI or Great Depression (I forget which), the de facto standard was gold (hence ‘gold standard’). How much physical gold you had is how much wealth your nation had and it was translated into paper money. But then the Great Depression(?) happened and then that became stupid. Now the monetary system is based on 'fiat money’, so I guess it’s not too dissimilar to a full cryptocurrency system. It’s just that there won’t be any bills.

Next is the anonymization. If it becomes centralized, I can’t imagine how it would remain anonymous. Money-laundering and bypass of trade sanctions would be rampant. It’d be an international disaster and undo the many years of regulatory law each nation has put in place. (Look, money is a serious business. Look up regulatory compliance, look up OFAC, look up KYC, and the like. It is a very, very big deal.) So, lack of anonymization would likely take place. However! That doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

Point 3 is an interesting one because it is literally the backbone of cryptocurrency as we know it in 2020. This might actually create a problem. If someone, let’s say a super omnic or the like is about to figure out the algorithms used to generate and validate new cryptocurrency, wouldn’t that mean money is worthless? Whoever can figure this out can essentially make themselves infinite money and then tank the economies of powerful world nations. Because you can’t print physical money anymore, so now you have to spoof digital money. Security (specifically cybersecurity) would be super huge and the tools to protect this crytocurrency generating process would be unworldly. Maybe even Sombra’d have a hard time cracking it.

Though, digital currency does pose one itsy-bitsy problem. The poor. The criminals. The underdeveloped. The current issues plaguing us now and why we don’t see contactless payments everywhere. There could be a billion reasons why a person cannot get a credit card or some form of contactless payment ranging from poor self-control to shitty credit scores as a result of their reckless youth but they know better now, victim of constant identity theft, unable to afford any fees if they were to occur, etc. So, how does cryptocurrency overcome this? It can’t. Not unless restrictions on who can use financial facilities are non-existent such as anyone can open an account regardless of current financial status and the like, or unless it’s something that is automatically given to every person regardless of their current status in life, etc. There’s a ton of restrictions, but we assume Overwatch’s world has already overcome these.

Finances are complicated. Monetary systems are complicated. I’m having a hell of a time picking this stuff apart. There’s pros and cons to all of this stuff. If the cryptocurrency stuff is centralized and people are reliant on it to live, people can easily get locked out of their methods of living. On the flip side, if there’s no central governing body, we’ll see the insane fluctuation of the market that could very well spell the life or death of nations.

In TWtaH, donors are giving to an account managed by the Chef. Chef redistributes this money under the name of the restaurant and under the guise of paying vendors and the like. With the above points in mind, it’ll be a spoiler to talk about it anymore, but a lot of this stuff is relevant.

[ampond52]

Doctor Who Canon and The Retroactive Continuity Paradox.

Rule 1: There is no such thing as canon in Doctor Who. 

The best way I can explain this is by comparing it to Schrödinger’s Cat; everything is both canon and not canon until it is officially mentioned in the actual show, and even then it’s still up for debate. The show allows itself to create exit strategies and potential reasons for why a “rule” has changed. It allows viewers to come up with their own reasons as to why the Doctor doesn’t remember this or; why humans don’t know about the many times aliens have invaded earth and London, specifically. It creates answers within episodes that can be applied throughout the series, and where answers aren’t inherently given they can be found. Nothing is every really off-the-table, there is no rulebook to follow (probably because the Doctor, through it into a supernova).

However, lots of people like to point out the shows, so-called, “retcons”, which actually is a word created from the term, retroactive continuity, where the writers/characters appear too have completely forgotten, or chosen to dismiss things that have previously happened or been mentioned. This is basically a “literary device” that allows creators to change/evolve a previously established narrative. This can involve inventing parallel universes for characters to live out alternate lives; reintroducing a character who was previously thought to be dead or just exploring plot lines that would otherwise be in conflict with the work. The most interesting thing about these retcon’s are how often they truly occur and how often fans are happy to dismiss them. 

In the Whoniverse the writer, Russell T Davies, takes it to a whole new level, by adding an actual drug into the universe called Retcon, an amnesia inducing pill that allows characters to forget any number of things. It’s what makes Doctor Who specifically such an interesting case in terms of retroactive continuity. The creators never allow anything to be truly retconned (obviously they can’t actually time travel and change the shows history) but at the same time the audience is expected to accept retcons and is even encouraged to find solutions which make them acceptable. Sometimes the creators introduce their own solutions, i.e. Torchwood literally retconning everyone to forget something or taking advantage of previous gaps in established lore to allow for a new cycle of regenerations. 

The one thing I can say is that the show never really retcons anything because everything ends up being a retcon where they constantly are retroactively adding in lore that we ‘weren’t aware of’ previously; and when everything is retconned, then nothing is. It is one of the many ways the show allow itself to be constantly refreshed, clever and innovative in its own ability to stay open and flexible to change on the previously established. 

As long time fans of the show will know, originally the Doctor was never even supposed to regenerate, the concept was added in so that William Hartnell could leave the show. At the time, he was working to an exhausting schedule as he slowly became more and more unwell. The producers, knowing of his illness, invented regeneration to allow the show to continue without any of the original cast (except, perhaps the TARDIS).

Speaking of the TARDIS, that’s a very interesting potential ‘retcon’ that no one ever mentions. Back in the 60s Hartnell suggests that the TARDIS is only a machine, a very advanced machine, but alas only a machine. In The Edge of Destruction, the crew (gang, team or Fam, if you prefer) discover that this very advanced machine has created clues to warn them of a danger threatening to destroy it. 

DOCTOR: It? It? What do you mean? My machine can't think. BARBARA: You say it has a built-in defence mechanism? DOCTOR: Yes, it has. BARBARA: Well that's where we've been wrong. Originally, the machine wasn't at fault, we were. And it's been trying to tell us so ever since. IAN: A machine that can think for itself? BARBARA: Yes. IAN: Is that feasible, Doctor? DOCTOR: Oh, think not as you or I do, but it must be able to think as a machine. You see, it has a bank of computers.

This of course suggests the TARDIS is indeed and incredible machine with brilliant capabilities but it is not a living thing with thoughts and feelings, as later suggested, however, this could also be attributed to the Doctor not yet knowing the full extent of the TARDIS, its abilities, its creation. To him at this point in time it may just be a ship that can travel through time and space. It could also be that the Doctor is lying to Ian and Barbara about the ships true origins and capabilities because he is weary of them and probably believes they will not understand its true nature. Or it could all actually be attributed to the fact that the creators never truly meant for this incredibly advanced fictional machine to become anything more than an incredibly advanced fictional machine. This speculation is what allows all of these answers to be essentially all true at once, until perhaps, we are given a true explanation. 

This is only a small example of how Doctor Who is a show built entirely on retroactive continuity, and never being able to truly know whether the cat is dead or alive until you open the box.

Retroactive Rule 1: There is such thing as canon in Doctor Who but it is constantly changing and evolving from what it originally was, so much so that, the canon is constantly paradoxical and somehow no longer canon. 

[geoffreytoday]

The Last Jedi has problems and not problems.

Things that are problems in The Last Jedi:

Characters behaving in ways that don’t make sense:

Admiral Holdo withHOLDOing (see what I did there?) the details of her plan from literally the entire resistance with no explanation to the audience. I emphasize that last part, because *that* is the problem, not the actual withholding. Holdo doesn’t know how they were tracked, the possibility of a traitor in their midst makes her secrecy prudent, but that needed to be more clearly conveyed to the audience I think, as a lot of people didn’t view it through that lens. 

Finn trying to get away in an escape pod, knowing that the First Order is in hot pursuit and will likely destroy ANY escape pods launched by the fleet. Also, Escape Pods are not ships, they are Escape Pods, it’s not like Finn could just fly off to safety in one, so what the hell was he thinking?

Rose’s attempt to save Finn that is actually way more likely to kill herself and Finn. 

Inconsistencies with the established rules of the Universe:

The First Order not simply making a short hyperspace jump to catch up with and destroy the Resistance fleet instead of pursuing them until they run out of fuel. 

Time. Rey spends days on Luke’s planet, during which time, less than a day passes for the Resistance. The Empire Strikes Back has a similar issue with the training of Luke juxtaposed against the Falcon’s escape to cloud city. Luke appears to be on Degobah for weeks or longer, the Falcon appears to arrive at cloud city the same day, or being generous, the same week that they escaped from Hoth. 

The declaration that the First Order will not be scanning for small vessels leaving the Resistance fleet. Of course they would be. Also, if they aren’t, then why don’t the Resistance just evacuate everybody on those smaller transport and hop to lightspeed since the First Order won’t be tracking them?

Miscellaneous: 

Rose identifying tremors as being produced by a specific kind of animal when literally anything could have caused those tremors and there was nothing about them that indicated they weren’t being caused by something else, like a passing vehicle. 

Honourable Mention:

Everyone being surprised by Hyperspace Tracking when Rogue One already retconned it into the Star Wars universe by having Princess Leia at the battle of Scariff, escaping through hyperspace to Tatooine, where she was tracked by the Imperial Star Destroyer we see her fleeing from at the beginning of Episode IV. Of course, Princess Leia being at the battle of Scariff is a major continuity error for the saga and for Rogue One internally, but it’s been done and now we have to deal with the consequences, much like the prequels. The former canon explanation for how that tracking was achieved, provided by the excellent NPR Radio Drama of A New Hope, has been superseded by Rogue One unfortunately. 

Things that are not problems in The Last Jedi:

Rose and Finn illegally parking their ship on the beach. Neither of them are trained in covert ops. One is a janitor, the other is a plumber, while it may seem like a no brainer to us as an audience, there’s no reason to assume these characters would have the first idea about how to successfully carry out this ill advised mission.    

Lack of backstory for Snoke.

Rey’s parents being nobody.

Admiral Holdo being a woman.

Leia using the Force to pull herself back to the Resistance cruiser. 

Porgs.

Luke going into exile. You may not like the direction they took Luke, but it is a perfectly consistent and plausible depiction based on his character from the original trilogy. As is the more preferred “hero” version of Luke that the angry fans so love. It’s important to understand that just because this may not be your preferred take on how Luke would turn out, that does not make it wrong. It has its own internal logic that tracks perfectly on to the original trilogy. 

Force projection.

Luke’s encounter with Ben that turned Ben into Kylo Ren.