Taven Moore's Blog, page 22

[Perry] A Tale of Two Movies

The following post discusses the movies X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Edge of Tomorrow. This post will not contain any details that cannot be gleaned by watching the trailers. However, the comments can be a wild place so read there at your own risk.

I caught two movies this past weekend.

Both movies dealt with time travel, in one form or another, and both movies were pretty well regarded when it came to box office scores.

I have to say though? I found one of these movies to be a lot stronger than the other.

X-Men

The movie was about as entertaining as you’d expect. At the end of the day, it IS an X-Men movie, and it’s always fun to watch people with powers doing various things, fighting different things and each other.

So if you’re all about that, you won’t have a bad time watching this movie.

The question really becomes, could you have had a better time? Could they have elevated the movie from ‘entertaining enough’ to be something more powerful.

The Good Points

The visuals were fairly spot on, but that’s really just to be expected from a summer blockbuster.

As the previous X-Men movie had shown (First Class), I felt that James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender carried the movie on the weight of the dynamic they shared. When either of those two came onto the screen, they stole it from whatever else was going on. And don’t even get me started on what happens when they’re talking to each other, or having an argument.

There’s an argument they have in an airplane that brings the weight of the history of the characters and their losses to bear.

The time travel element itself felt a little hokey. But at the same time, they use it in a way that erases some of the more problematic and thematically ridiculous movies in the series, so I can give it a bit of a pass.

Even if the time travel in this movie is a little bit BECAUSE REASONS, if that means that the hideous and nonsensical X-Men:Last Stand never happened? I can totally stand behind that.

Finally, there’s a short scene with the character of Quicksilver as they’re escaping some building that really must be seen to be believed. It’s a wonderful moment in the movie and despite the fact that I couldn’t turn my brain off during it (I had a loooot of questions about that scene), I still enjoyed it quite a lot.

The Bad Points

Sadly…it wasn’t all roses. And I’m a little surprised at the HIGH ratings the movie is getting.

It’s a serviceable movie, for sure, but most of my friends have been treating it like the Second Coming of superhero movies and I just…really didn’t understand.

Wooden acting? A LOT of wooden acting? To be honest, save for the McAvoy and Fassbender, nobody really stood out to me.

Hugh Jackman doing his Wolverine thing was alright…but I don’t feel that they tapped the character as deeply as they could have. There really is a wonderful mirrored dynamic at play here…between the cynical and broken Wolverine being healed and taught to care and have a reason to fight by Xavier, and the cynical and broken Xavier being taught to care and hold onto hope by a reformed Wolverine.

But they didn’t tap into that anywhere near as much as they should have.

I’m also of the opinion that Jennifer Lawrence was horribly, horribly miscast. I haven’t really seen too much of her work to form a solid opinion of her as an actor, but every time she opened her mouth in this movie, I felt all of the tension bleed out of the scene and drop dead at my feet.

Peter Dinklage is a known quantity as a good actor…and yet? Didn’t really blow me away with his portrayal of Trask. I feel like there was a lot that could have been done there? Especially given some behind the scenes thoughts on the character, but in the movie itself? He isn’t given nearly the time needed to develop his character. As a result, it comes off as pretty generic.

The future, dystopian setting? It’s used as a background. It’s a set piece and nothing more. There is NO emotion injected into that grim, dark future. It’s just a backdrop.

You see people doing things in the future? And I couldn’t bring myself to care. I had nothing at all invested in that time period and it showed in my reaction to the brief fights they show.

I’m really curious to see if anyone else shares this reaction. The trailers sort of made a big deal about the future setting, and I thought we’d spend a lot more time there. I thought some of the new and interesting characters like Blink or Forge would have the chance to DO something…

But no. To be honest, I can’t even remember if any of the new characters (Blink, Forge, Warpath, Sunspot) even TALKED.

Hells, I didn’t even realize Sunspot was Sunspot. I thought he was Pyro, from the previous movies.

And finally, the time travel itself? It seems…farfetched. I mean, I’ve watched Jurassic Park as a kid, you know? The whole bit Ian Malcolm talks about chaos theory and all…but the very idea that altering ONE event in the past, even if it’s very pivotal event can TOTALLY alter the entire future and result in a world where everything is alright?

It just seems really far-fetched to me. It seems far-fetched that this one change would make almost EVERYTHING turn out alright for Wolverine’s future. That everyone would be okay, you know?

There’s a bit of dissonance there.

Overall

I thought it was worth the watch…and to be honest? I enjoyed watching it in theaters. But it’s not a movie that I would bother sitting through again. It was fun the first time, but even watching through the first time, arguments and ‘logic’ kept rearing up at the back of my head and I had to fight it down. I can only imagine that it would get worse on a second watch.

Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow is a movie based on a japanese novel (and apparently manga as well?) with the strange title of “All You Need is Kill”. It’s a story about an Earth that’s been invaded by a conquering, mindless alien race, humanity’s fight against it, and one soldier’s journey through some mind-bending abilities.

To be honest? I can’t split this one up because I couldn’t really pinpoint anything about the movie that pulled me out of the experience while I was watching it.

I’m not saying it’s perfect…just that I enjoyed it enough that nothing really sticks out in my mind that bugged me.

The characters were pretty solid. Tom Cruise does good work in the movie, but that’s really just to be expected. There’s a moment near the middle of the movie where he shares a cup of coffee with someone in a farm house and I found myself utterly moved by the predicament he found himself in.

It reminded me a lot of a specific anime character I’d seen fairly recently, but i can’t name it here in this post for fear of potential spoilers.

Surprisingly, though? The members of his little squad grow and develop a fair bit in unexpected directions as well. Unexpected because when you’re first introduced to them, they seem to be the sort of throwaway cardboard cut out characters that you’d see wandering around a dime a dozen in other stories.

Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski? Wonderful portrayal. She’s a tough as nails character who’s earned every sliver of her reputation as the “Full Metal Bitch”. There are hints of softness here and there, though. Tiny little flashes of the woman behind the reputation, usually in the quiet, near-death moments that really just help pound her into the heart.

The time travel mechanic is handled well. There’s an explanation in the story as to why it even exists.

What I liked a lot about it? Is that they don’t really beat you over the head with it. They just…sort of run with it and expect that you’re keeping up. It’s the feeling that you’re not being patronized that I enjoyed.

It’s the sort of impression that’s kind of hard to quantify in words though. I’d love to get your impressions on it as well.

But…yeah. It was a bombastic, thoughtful movie. There’s even a romantic angle in play there, but it’s wonderfully underplayed…it’s got a soft touch to it that I LOVED.

If I had any complaints at all, it’s that the ending was just a little bit mawkish. They really strove for the Hollywood ending and I wish, wish, wish that people would be brave enough to kill off characters when the ending calls for it…to nail that poignant punch just right…

But that’s just me.

Go watch it! Tell me what you think! I’d love to know if it’s only me who finds Edge of Tomorrow to be a much stronger movie than X-Men.

 

Related posts:

[Perry] A Tale of Two Movies
[Perry] Good Bad Movies and Bad Bad Movies
[Perry] Nostalgia Movies

Birds and Foliage

First off, sorry for no post last week. I didn’t drop off the face of the earth …. literally, anyway. We had a week-long staycation and I didn’t think about being productive or responsible at ALL.

It was awesome.

Moving on.

Birding has … become more difficult.

Number one? It’s freaking hot. Not like, Texas hot? But definitely hot enough that hanging around outside staring into the sun-baked sky for hours on end doesn’t sound like a fantastic idea.

Number two? All the trees got their leaves. Which is beautiful? But it means that birds are vague sounds and shapes amidst a visual cacaphony of green.

We went birding recently and gave up in disgust after seeing three unidentified birds and not having the energy to look them up in the book. We’ll not even discuss the difficulty of getting the camera to focus on the not-leaf bird hiding behind three layers of very-much-leaves overgrowth.

Bah! And Humbug, even!

Related posts:

Birding
The Trees Are Spilling Joy

[Perry] Wildstar Wednesday

Ladies and gentlemen, I must confess.

I have spent a completely unconscionable amount of time playing Wildstar this past weekend.

The game released on Tuesday, but for those eager beavers that pre-ordered, we were allowed in before the slavering horde, 3AM Saturday morning (eastern time).

What?

No, don’t be silly. I didn’t stay up that late just to play a video game. I’m getting older now, I’ll leave the all-nighters to the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youngsters.

…But I was up REALLY early on Saturday to get in my dose.

For a general look at what kind of game Wildstar is, I would direct you to this link. 

For a closer look at the types of features that makes Wildstar different from the many other MMO type games out there, I would direct you to this link instead.

Suffice to say, the game is a marvelous spectacle.

The world of Nexus is colorful and vibrant. There’s a wonderful cowboys in space sort of feel to the conflict between the Exiles and the Dominion and you can absorb as much or as little of that story as you like as you tour the planet.

The content is surprisingly challenging. The very first dungeon opens up once you hit level 20, and even to seasoned veterans, there can definitely be a bit of trial and error involved in getting through it in one piece. That doesn’t even begin to take into account the fact that you can revisit the dungeons later at higher difficulties to complete challenges and unlock further rewards, aside from the regular item drops from the bosses.

There’s the auction house and the commodities exchange, for people who play these types of games and enjoy becoming a virtual Donald Trump. I’m not one of them, but I know they exist. I’ve met them. And, in fact, my cousin and a guildmate both lost a couple HOURS of time over the weekend when they figured out a way to buy raw materials cheaply, then create a product and sell it to the NPC for more than it cost them to make.

That’s not really my kind of thing, I tend to find it a little boring, but if that’s what you’re into? Wildstar has got it in spades!

And the housing…

Dear fluffy kittens, the housing.

Look.

When I first started eyeing the game, waaaaaaaay back several years ago, I heard about the housing and it received some mild interest from me.

So you can have your own plot of land. So you can build a house and decorate it.

Big deal, right?

I can almost guarantee that you will think twice about it once you actually step foot in your home.

When you get into your house, and you see the mind-blistering array of decoration items that you can get? Items that you can buy directly or simply find in the real world? When you realize that you can scale the size of any of your decoration items up or down? When you realize that the little cute, plushy doll decoration can be sized up HUGELY to become a threatening guardian of fluffy doom and planted on your front lawn to ward off trespassers?

Holy hell.

I got into my house and noticed an item called “Staircase”.

“Surely not,” I thought to myself. But sure enough, the staircase item works as advertised. You can rotate and position it however you please and you can BUILD YOURSELF a second floor to your house.

I did that.

My bed is up there.

When I discovered that was possible, I blissfully lost a good forty minutes trying to figure out the best way to set up a second floor in a way that makes it look natural.

It still doesn’t…but only because I PRIED myself away.

I know that if I really get sucked into this, I won’t ever leave, so I forced myself out of my house and back into the world.

I’ll come back when I’m done levelling. Then? I’ll craft a house that will make architects weep. I’ll decorate the interior so well and people will approach me in real life with interior decorator job offers…only to be disappointed when they realize my vast skills don’t apply when you can alter size and rotation of items by clicking on a mouse.

But in any case, the housing feature set is just about everything you could hope for.

Are there still items on my wishlist? Hell yeah. Can I have a jukebox that changes the music on my housing plot? Can I get a little pet that lives inside my house and greets me when I get to the door?

Soon, Fluffy. Hopefully soon.

So there’s a lot to love. I haven’t even really scratched the surface.

If you were looking for a fresh start with an MMO, or if you were curious about the genre, Wildstar would be a pretty good place to start.

I think I’ve found an MMO to call home…something that I’d been missing since I quit playing Warcraft way, way back.

At first blush, Wildstar seems to have everything I wanted in a game of this type and I look forward to a long and fruitful future with the game.

Oh, and one more thing?

Lopp says you play too. =)

 

Related posts:

[Perry] Be Careful What You Leave Out
[Perry] Card Hunter
[Perry] Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

[Steven] Eager Wordplay

They way to leave an area — the path or the method — can be called an egress.

If one REALLY wanted to leave this place, one would make an eager egress.

If the being making the exit was a specific white bird, it could be phrased as an egret’s eager egress.

If you had been trying to get a good look at these birds and had unintentionally scared them away you would regret an egret’s eager egress.

Following the previous, we therefore know your actions did beget your regrets of the egrets eager egress.

(Tami note: Steven had another of these somewhere on the blog, but I can’t seem to find it in order to link it. You’re welcome.)

Related posts:

[Steven] Videorama – How Schools Kill Creativity
[Steven] Coffee-Based Moisturizer
[Steven] Videorama – Music Series Part 5 – Nier Soundtrack

[Perry] You Are the Man!

There’s a piece of writing advice that I’ve seen bandied about a fair bit, and that’s the one that runs along the line of “show, don’t tell.”

I’m here to offer an alternative solution which runs more along the lines of “show then tell.”

Backstory

Back when I was just a wee lad, all dewy-eyed and in the first year of my university classes, I attended a class called Bible and Literature.

Now, this wasn’t a class that studied the bible from a religious perspective. The class focused on the story-telling techniques in the bible and how they’ve influenced the literary culture over the years.

It makes sense, if you think about it. Regardless of your personal stance regarding the messages of the bible, it’s one of the most widespread books that have ever existed. It’s bound to have influenced the literary culture of many countries.

My professor spent a class teaching us about something he called the “You are the man!” technique.

The Technique

In the bible, there’s a story about a King David. In the story, David was walking along the walls of his castle when he saw a woman being all nekkid and bathing and decided that he had to have her.

What?

No, nevermind why the woman’s bathing naked on the roof of her house. That’s not part of the story.

Moving on…

Various things happen and David orders the woman’s husband, a soldier, to be put on the front lines of the next battle, and sure enough? Soldier buy buys the farm in the next fight.

David consoles the wife before eventually making her his own.

God is totally not down with that noise. He wiggles his head and snaps his fingers in a zigzagging, Z shape and he’s all like, “Oh no you didn’t!”

God then sends a prophet to David to tell him a story. And the prophet tells the king a story about a rich man with many sheeps and junk who’s visited by a poor traveler who only has one sheep…and the rich man kills the poor man’s one sheep for their supper.

David gets all angry at the story and is all like, “That’s an outrage! The rich guy is such a douchebag! He should be struck dead! What a horrible so and so!”

And right then? The prophet gets all righteous angry and points and David and is all “You are the man!”

How It Works

How it works is simple. First, you have a situation where you have some fellows give various examples (showing). Then? You follow it up with letting the fellows hang with the noose they wove together (telling).

The important part of this is timing.

You need to hit that sweet spot.

If you go IMMEDIATELY from showing to telling, you don’t really have much of an impact. It just becomes part of some character’s dialogue.

If you wait too long? The moment is lost and you don’t get that hammer-blow impact.

What you want to do is set it up so that the audience and reader realizes what you’re getting at RIGHT before you deliver the lines that tells em they’re right.

An Example

I started thinking about this on a recent re-read of Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi.

There’s a point where a bunch of freshly augmented soldier recruits from earth are going through basic training before they’re sent out among the stars to fight aliens that threaten humanity’s interests.

And over the course of basic training? They realize that they can run faster, hit harder, shoot straighter, and generally, out perform ANYONE they knew back on earth.

So you sort of start getting the sense that these super soldiers are amazing. Nothing can stand up to them!

One of the soldiers makes this remark in the hearing of the master sergeant, who flips out on him.

He rants about the fact that no army has ever equipped an army with MORE than they needed to defeat the enemy. The sergeant drills home the point that the new soldiers have all these augments because this was the very LEAST of what was needed in order to survive.

In short, they had these augments, not because the army wanted to give them a huge advantage over the enemy…but because without these augments, they wouldn’t stand the barest whisper of a chance.

The sergeant’s little rant cows the boasting soldier and made me raise my eyebrows as I read, thinking to myself, “Dayumn….”

It was a powerful moment.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to be said for “show, don’t tell.” I’m not going to argue with that.

Just keep in mind that it’s a TOOL. It’s not a requirement. Different tools do different things and are useful in various circumstances.

“Show, don’t tell” is best used when you want to pull the reader into a scene. Make them feel a part of it, like they’re using their own eyes to mark out various things about the aspects of certain characters.

“Show, AND tell” is best used to really hammer a point home. To pound it into the reader’s mind in a way they won’t forget as they read the rest of your story.

Heck, I’ve even used “Tell, THEN show” successfully on an occasion or two. I’m not 100% certain as to why or how that one works, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t effective.

But that’s a story for another time ;)

 

 

 

Related posts:

[Perry] Not Everything Needs to Make Sense
[Perry] Listen to Your Story
[Perry] Don’t Force Symbolism

[Anne] Thunderstorms

One April evening, twenty years ago, I walked upstairs with a 7 month old that I had just rocked to sleep. I went downstairs, turned on the television and was informed that a tornado had been spotted on the ground, heading exactly in our direction. I ran back up the stairs, picked up our only child, and then ran out to the shed where Husband was working. He stepped outside and immediately took us all in and secured us in a safe place. I will forever be amazed by the statement he made.

“Get down low and cover Jake. I can smell the tornado. It is here.”

Not even a second after the words came out of his mouth, the roaring, crunching and grinding of destruction was consuming us. We suddenly smelled a pungent cedar and the fainter fragrance of oaks in the air. There was a break in the time-space continuum, because while I knew that it had been just seconds, or possibly minutes, since the beginning of the tornado, it felt as if hours were going by as we listened to the world splintering.

When it ended, Husband was certain we had no upstairs. As it happened, we had only lost one window when the tree broke through it. But two blocks west of us, trees were stripped of bark and over 200 homes were levelled in what looked like a war zone.

Twenty years earlier, I left the equatorial valley that was home as our family moved to Chicago. My childhood had been spent where the seasons were wet or dry. The rain came in the wet season on a daily basis as a soft shower followed by breaking clouds and sunshine. The temperature was predictable and there were always flowers in bloom. Chicago, as we arrived in the winter, was cold and snowy.

Somehow, the snow and frigid temperatures were not what surprised me. The weather that overwhelmed me was the rain, or specifically, the thunderstorms. I had never before seen thunderclouds, lightning, or hear the deep rumble of thunder. It was astounding.

I remember sitting with my dad and brother on the back porch in every storm that passed. We watched the clouds, listened to the rain and counted the seconds between lightning and thunder. Those were wonderful moments.

The tornado failed to diminish my love and appreciation for thunderstorms. The past two weeks, just as the schools were letting out and I was sitting in a car line waiting to pick up Youngest Child, huge storms have rolled in. I rolled down the windows and craned my head out to see the billowing, boiling clouds collide. I let the fierce wind whip through the car, breathing in that wonderful smell of rain. I marveled at the jagged lines of light cutting through the clouds.

Thunderstorms were part of the marvel of America. They are big, bold, loud, and impressive. They are dark and terrifying. They are unpredictable. They are beautiful and dynamic. They are refreshing. They are completely different, and yet very similar, to soft, splattering rains.

Related posts:

[Anne] The Words We Use Are Powerful
[Anne] Husband and I have a Special Way to Torment Our Kids
[Anne] Tiger Mother

Starting Over

So, you may have noticed a change in the progress widget on the sidebar.

It has been reset.

This is because I reached a certain point in the story and although I love the world and characters, I realized I’d been rushing them through what had become an uninteresting set of plot points. It was fun to see the world and meet the characters, but what they were doing didn’t FEEL important.

I found myself frustrated with the balance between the Race they were running, the opponents who were causing trouble, and exactly how the timelines didn’t quite add up to a thrilling adventure.

So Mr. Moore and myself went back to the drawing board and are keeping the good and throwing away the stuff that wasn’t working.

Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it will be very very much worth the effort and the time lost.

My alpha readers were not quite as frustrated with it as I was, but hopefully they’ll agree that the new version is much tighter and much more exciting.

Related posts:

Assistance Required Re: Image Hosting

2014 Booklist (Part 2)

March 2014

Harry Potter and the Pure-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

See my full discussion here.

A nostalgic 6 out of 10

Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff

This book is not as good as my review will have it. The main character is the least fun character in the book, and the plot meanders more than a little. The writer head-jumps and scene transitions are rampant.

Despite breaking so many of my rules, I love this book.

This was a reread from my bookshelf, to determine whether or not it got to stay. I’ve read this book maybe four or five times already, and it never fails to make me laugh. Out loud. Unexpectedly.

From the no-nonsense talking cat to the schizophrenic portal to Hell in the basement to the neat-freak Newfie employee, I cannot lie. I loved it. (And I’m pretty sure, upon this reread, that it was the reason I wanted to write Blue Moon in the first place).

A snort-out-loud 9 out of 10

Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentlemen Bastards Book 2) by Scott Lynch

I adored the first book. The second book was more of the same, but not quiiiiite as cohesive in my mind. Well worth reading, but I don’t think I’ll buy it (whereas there’s a good chance I might get a hardcover of the first one).

Also, there’s a widowed middle-aged black woman with two kids who is the captain of a badass pirate ship. And here’s a super-entertaining article wherein the author scathingly responds to a reader who disapproves of that fact.

SPOILER ALERT Can we please stop killing female characters to provide motivation and angst for male characters? Pretty pretty please? END SPOILERS

A yo-ho-me-hearty 7 out of 10

April 2014

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

A satisfied 6 out of 10

The Republic of Thieves (Gentlemen Bastards Book 3) by Scott Lynch

This was the book I was dreading. We have seen that the main character, Locke Lamora, has an unpleasant and odd relationship history with a lady ex-Bastard. This was the book where we find out about her story and meet her again.

I was expecting to hate her character and by the end I admittedly kind of did, but not as much as I was afraid I was going to. If you’ve read her, you probably know why I find her behavior so repulsive, and if you haven’t then I can’t really explain it to you. She’s a lot like Denna from Name of the Wind, who I also despised.

This book was actually two plots — the history and the now — which didn’t intertwine as well as the plots from the previous books, and it suffered just a little for it because both plots had to be only half-a-book-long. Both plots were entertaining, but the overall result was a good book instead of an excellent one.

I will continue reading more in this series for now, but I am having reservations about whether I’ll enjoy any of them as much as the first one.

An entertaining 6 out of 10

Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig

I love Chuck Wendig’s blog. Period. He’s foul-mouthed, but not shy about it, and reading his articles on writing makes me want to be a better writer. Man can light a fire with his words, and it’s incredible.

Unfortunately, I think his fiction is just not for me. Not because it’s bad — far from it! In some ways, I think his writing is similar to Chuck Palahniuk, albeit less lyrical and more plotty (which should have me written all over it).

The Blue Blazes is the story of Mookie Pearl, a heavy grunt of a man whose daughter is up to her neck in danger. In that world, the veil between the magical and horrible underworld can be pierced only through the use of an incredibly addictive magical substance known as the Blue Blazes. Apply it to your temples for a rush of power, the ability to see the horrifying things that go bump in the night, and a dry itch in the back of your brain every time you come down from a high.

By all rights, this book should have SHONE for me, especially since the writing is so tight. There’s something very gritty and grim about the whole thing, though, that kept me from enjoying it (even as I appreciated the wordplay and the worldbuilding).

This is the second book of Chuck’s that I’ve tried, and I had the same taste in the back of my throat each time. I have a copy of his Blackbirds waiting on my bookshelf, but I’m pretty sure I’m not his target audience.

An unfinished 7 out of 10

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

So. Um. Once upon a time, a great many of you recommended this book to me.

I got the book from the library, read the first chapter, and chucked it against the wall. (metaphorically. I’d never treat a book that way).

It turns out the book I THOUGHT was Mistborn? Very much wasn’t. And I’ve held a horribly unfounded opinion of the thing ever since.

I was so. incredibly. wrong.

All of you who recommended it? Please feel free to smirk knowingly at me in the comments and say “I told you so” because you’ve earned it.

FANTASTIC book. A little slow getting started, not going to lie. It wasn’t until the magic system was getting explained that I started to like the characters or care about the story.

Awesome magic system, VERY well explained in bite-sized pieces so my eyes didn’t go all blurry and grumpy. Fun, fun characters. A slow-build to a fascinating world (and a larger problem). An incredibly exciting finale.

Good, good stuff.

A stupified 9.5 out of 10

Related posts:

2013 Reading List (as of March 2014)
Book Review : Shotgun Gravy
Cut The Fluff!

[Perry] The Downsides of Retconning

The following post contains spoilers for the “Jurassic Bark” episode of Futurama and “The Day of the Doctor” episode of Doctor Who.

“Retcon” is a mashup of two words: Retroactive Continuity.

Essentially, what this means it that you’ve written yourself into a corner and you can’t figure a way out of it…so you alter the past to fit the future.

Sadly, this happens a lot more than one might think and it’s an awful tragedy almost every goddamned time.

Let’s target some specific examples before we start breaking down why they’re bad ideas.

Futurama – Original

There is a powerful episode of Futurama titled “Jurassic Bark.” In this episode, Fry finds the petrified remnants of the dog he used to have back in the 21st century. The episode spends a lot of time in flashbacks to his past, where it details how Fry met the dog and their life together before Fry accidentally fell into a cryofreeze tube and ended up in the future.

He discovers that the technology exists to reanimate the dog. When he’s offered the choice, he almost goes ahead with it…but stops at the last moment. He’s saddened at the thought of not seeing his friend again, but he reasons that his dog must have continued living after Fry had been frozen. He figures that the dog had found a new owner, and had made someone else’s life happy. And that he had no right to really butt into that at this late date.

So Fry let’s the dog go, and moves on with his life.

At the end of the episode, though? We’re treated to another flashback, of his dog, spending days and weeks looking for Fry after he’d disappeared. Eventually, the dog settles down to wait for Fry to return in front of the pizza shop he used to work at.

The dog waits as seasons come and go, people come and go, and eventually the pizza shop closes. Old and mangy at the end of his life, Fry’s dog settles his head on his paws and waits in front of the closed pizzeria, presumably dying of old age, waiting for his master’s return.

That? Was a goddamned powerful episode and still brings a lump to my throat when I rewatch it.

Then, of course, they had to ruin it.

Futurama – Retcon

Fast forward a few years. Futurama has been off the air for a while, but there’s been enough fan outcry that the studio put together a Futurama movie, to gauge interest and to see if the show was worth bringing back.

The movie deals a lot with time travel and part of the story has Fry going back in time, to live out a life in the 21st century (our time).

Among other plot points…not even as the main thing, but as a tiny little cameo? As Fry returns to the apartment he’s living in, his dog from the episode mentioned above, runs up to him, all happy, for a moment before the scene cuts away.

So, apparently? We’re meant to believe that Fry’s dog hadn’t REALLY lived out the rest of his life waiting for Fry’s return. Seymour hadn’t REALLY died of old age and a broken heart in front of the store Fry used to work at…because another version of Fry went back in time! And reconnected with his dog! And everything’s just so very happy and unicorns prancing around, farting out rainbows and junk.

This bothered me back when I first watched it, and to be honest? Just thinking about it now kind of gets my blood boiling.

It just felt so damned senseless, you know? It seemed so unnecessary.

You already HAD this beautiful, poignant episode that made you feel like your heart was getting hit by a car…why would you ruin that for the sake of a tiny, five second cameo appearance?

It just made no sense to me.

Doctor Who – Original

On another note, right around the time David Tennant was at the end of his tenure as the Doctor, there was this whole thing where he faces off against another time lord called the Master, who had a plan to bring Gallifrey, the planet of the time lords, into existence right above the earth.

The Doctor stops him, after some crazy things. And his reasoning was that in the last days of the great Time War, the gallifreyans and the daleks were BOTH reduced to committing any kind of atrocity they could in order to win.

In essence, the Doctor did what he did (locking away Gallifrey and the remnants of the daleks behind a “time lock”) BECAUSE both races had been reduced to that level. Because all of time and space was being burnt up by the war and that it was time someone stopped it.

So the Doctor took steps, locking away his own planet, beyond hope of rescue, essentially sacrificing billions to save TRILLIONS.

But it was a decision that haunted him, all his long centuries of life. It was essentially his birth point. It was the thing that turned him into the man he was. The man who refused to ever use a gun. The man who would risk everything to save lives that needed help.

Whatever it was? It worked.

Doctor Who – Retcon

…Eeeeeexcept Steven Moffat wanted to change that too.

At the end of the latest season, there was an hour long special episode called The Time of the Doctor. It was eagerly anticipated because it featured the return of David Tennant to the show, for one night only, special appearance.

The episode deals with the current Doctor (Matt Smith), and previous Doctor (David Tennant), meeting each other, and then coming face to face with the man they call the ‘War Doctor’.

The man they were when they chose to end the time war and lock away Gallifrey.

There were some small changes, even here.

The War Doctor wouldn’t ‘lock away’ the planet…but destroy it. Something that would destroy both the time lords and the daleks together.

That? I can get behind that.

Both the 10th and 11th Doctor REGRET the decision they made at the end of the war and during the course of the episode, are brought face to face with the man they were when they made that decision. Reliving that awful choice and all that…

At the end, the War Doctor is returned to that point of decision, and having learned of the type of man he’ll become if he chooses to destroy the planet….the the lives and planets he will save to try and redeem this one act, the War Doctor decides to go ahead and blow it all up.

There was a beautiful quote during the episode, where an AI asks him if he REALLY wants to go ahead with this. He tells her, “Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.”

But just before he does it? He hears the wheezing of the Tardis and the 10th and 11th doctors appear before him. They tell him that they understand the decision they made when they were him and won’t let him do it alone this time.

No, this time, they would help him press that awful button and help him bear the weight of his guilt.

I know this is likely confusing to non-viewers, but if you’d followed the story to this point, it was pretty powerful stuff.

But then?

Ruined.

Oh! They’re suddenly hit with a brilliant idea! A way they can wave their hands and save the planet instead of destroying it! And they do it! Hurray! Except, because of how it was done, their memories of the events won’t change even a little bit. They’ll forget that this happened and they’ll live their life, thinking that they blew up the planet. So while the planet was saved, nothing is going to change because they won’t really remember it.

…really?

That’s just LAZY writing.

Makes my blood boil.

Retconning

Here’s the thing. I’m not saying that retconning is ALWAYS bad.

I mean, just because I personally can’t think of a situation where it was done well, doesn’t mean that I’m completely denying the fact that it MAY be handled well sometimes.

But by and large, it tends to be used as a crutch for lazy writing.

As Tami would likely agree with, retconning is almost always the sole province of the pantsers.

Some people plan the story out in enough detail that retconning isn’t needed. When everything falls into place at the end, it largely does so because it was MEANT to fall into place in that fashion.

Retconning happens when you write without a solid plan. It happens because you get to a point where what’s happening NOW won’t make sense because of something that happened in the past.

Instead of thinking of a better way to forge ahead with a new idea that would chime with what happened before, you ‘cheat’.

You break out your bottle of white out and you liberally sprinkle it over the past. Re-writing history until you have a frankenstein patchwork of history and plotlines and you have something in the past that will shakily support what you want to do in the present.

Planning is the key to help you avoid this mistake.

I’m not really an advocate of balls to the wall, meticulously planning every scene before you start writing…but at least have the highlights set in stone before you set pen to paper.

And, granted, this is much less of an issue with most writing.

It tends to be a problem if you publish in a serial fashion, whether it’s by chapters or novels, or episodes. Because once it’s out there, you have to work with it and regard it as canon, no matter HOW good the idea you’ve come up with is.

So please, take the option of retconning with a large grain of salt.

And if you’ve ever seen an instance where it was done well, give me a shout because I’d be awfully curious to take a look at it!

Related posts:

[Perry] One Last Book
[Perry] Doctor Who: The Bad Bits
[Perry] “Read This”

[Anne] The Adventures of Ford

Related posts:

[Anne] Spring Break
[Anne] Last Week
[Anne] Storytellers