Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Daniel Avery" data-source="post: 355268" data-attributes="member: 27">Retcon is a contraction of &quot;retroactive continuity&quot;.&nbsp; This is a situation where something asserted in current story (whether a line, a situation, or even an entire story or character) directly contradicts what was established in lines, situations, or entire stories that were written before.&nbsp; For example, a female character contracts cancer and is forced to have a hysterectomy, but ten years later the character has a baby--well, that&#039;s a retcon.&nbsp; If we see a character with several onscreen siblings who are later written out, only to have the character start talking about being an only child and how that affected his childhood, then that&#039;s a retcon.&quot;Getting additional information&quot; is when they simply fill in the blanks without contradicting themselves.&nbsp; If that character had never been seen with siblings and had never alluded to having any, then the &#039;only child&#039; story is just adding information.&nbsp; But just as easily, they can create siblings for a character even if he/she never mentioned them prior to that.&nbsp; The key difference is writing something that does not directly contradict what has already been established as part of the character&#039;s history.&nbsp; Frequent head-writer changes and inattention to the show&#039;s character histories leads to these retcons being identified.&nbsp; The fans of the shows care a LOT more about continuity than the writers do, and I think we&#039;d be seeing a lot more &quot;retconning&quot; if the fans were not watching them like a hawk.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Daniel Avery, post: 355268, member: 27"] Retcon is a contraction of "retroactive continuity". This is a situation where something asserted in current story (whether a line, a situation, or even an entire story or character) directly contradicts what was established in lines, situations, or entire stories that were written before. For example, a female character contracts cancer and is forced to have a hysterectomy, but ten years later the character has a baby--well, that's a retcon. If we see a character with several onscreen siblings who are later written out, only to have the character start talking about being an only child and how that affected his childhood, then that's a retcon. "Getting additional information" is when they simply fill in the blanks without contradicting themselves. If that character had never been seen with siblings and had never alluded to having any, then the 'only child' story is just adding information. But just as easily, they can create siblings for a character even if he/she never mentioned them prior to that. The key difference is writing something that does not directly contradict what has already been established as part of the character's history. Frequent head-writer changes and inattention to the show's character histories leads to these retcons being identified. The fans of the shows care a LOT more about continuity than the writers do, and I think we'd be seeing a lot more "retconning" if the fans were not watching them like a hawk. [/QUOTE]

Verification

Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?