#Retcon (trope)

[feyres-divorce-lawyer]

observant tamlin i’ll never forget you

[tollsoftheclockwerkbelle]

sega please do not save maria please do not save maria PLEASE do not save mariaaaaaaa sega PLEASE

[vanderspeiglemd]

God like shut the fuck UP.

So Chris originally pitched vandertrees. They were supposed to be together in s2. They were supposed to take care of Bridget.

Chris says that didn't work out because Alan and Sara's 'chemistry is more mother-son' and I've never heard a more absolute bullshit excuse for 'I didn't develop my main character so when Alan played him as ND read I said oh he's a baby haha' and changed the shows trajectory after the first season. BTW that's from his own mouth, he didn't even know Harry until they got Alan literally when they were already filming the pilot and then he decided Harry was supposed to be an idiot child. Like yeah, that dynamic happened bc you FORCED the child/parent thing later, that never existed in s1. Their interactions after the whole dumber Harry thing are so stiff and miserable, it's not natural the way they were before.

They genuinely won the lottery with two super attractive, talented actors who had immediate chemistry and they shit all over it. And fine don't make it canon, why do they have to be so hostile and weird about it? You're not smarter than shippers, you make a show full of poop jokes.

[wetcatspellcaster]

I'm not going to tag this bc I can practically visualise the hornets nest I'm kicking, but I am starting to get annoyed by people who are complaining about inconsistencies in dragon age lore, when the inconsistences mostly seem to be happening in places where the old lore was severely problematic and written at the height of game of thrones grimdark fantasy market trends.

[frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe]

i'm outta my head over you Pt. 3

prologue (Pt. 1) | Pt. 2 | AO3 | playlist for this fic

btw, this whole concept is definitely not based on my own steddie playlist and masterpost for why i added each song 👀

today's @steddie-week prompt is: angst

-----

Steve’s dealing with his feelings just fine, thanks.

He’s not pissed at Eddie for the stunt he pulled back in the upside down.

Not at all!

Steve snatched Eddie up in a bridal carry, yelling at Robin and Nancy to help Dustin up to follow them back to the gate, because he’s head over heels for the stupid man bleeding out all down the front of his shirt.

Steve brute forces his way through the Munson’s ceiling one-handed and lands a bit too hard on one knee on the other side because he can’t imagine a life without Eddie Munson now that he’s in it.

Steve keeps his fingers pressed into the mangled wounds on Eddie's side all the way to the hospital to keep him awake and sobbing for Steve to “Let go! Why are you hurting me?” because he’s pretty sure he’s in love.

Or at least, he could be. Someday soon. He’s certain of that.

He loses time after finally letting Eddie go, safe on a gurney that was speeding into the ER.

He was standing there, watching as Eddie was wheeled away through big double doors, then he was on the floor. The collapse onto his ass does not exist in his mind; one second he was standing, and the next, his legs were crumpled under him and his right asscheek hurts. Nancy and Robin are there too, crouched in front of him with twin looks of worry on their faces and he can see Dustin behind them, trying to shove the nurses who are looking at his ankle away in order to get to Steve.

“Dusty,” his voice is a cracking whisper, “Dusty, stay there, I’m fine.”

“Steve, Steve, what happened, are you alright?” he sluggishly turns his head toward Nancy’s voice, but never gets there. His memory goes blank again.

When he comes to, he’s laid out in a bed of his own. The flimsy papery gown already slipping from his shoulders and the thin hospital blanket he was given doing nothing to stave off the cold feeling of IV fluid rushing through his veins.

He blinks the crust away from his eyes and looks around.

He’s in a hospital room, naturally, a couple empty chairs sit opposite him along the wall, there’s a window out to the setting sun (rising sun? How long was he out??), and beside him is another bed, a familiar head of curls atop an unfamiliar small form.

“Eddie?” he tries to say, but no sound comes out. “Eddie!” he tries again, only getting a hoarse whisper this time.

Eddie doesn’t move, but Steve sure as hell does. He needs to get up, needs to get to his friend, is he okay? Why does he look like that? Eddie's nowhere near this small or fragile, he’s loud and nearly as tall as Steve is! He needs to help him, needs to–

“Steven, Steven!” there’s a hand on his arm, stopping him from rolling out of bed fully.

Later, he’ll kick himself for his total lack of response, but at the moment, all he does is freeze.

“Mr. Harrington, please sit back, relax. Please.”

Steve does as the voice asks and lays back down, looking over at the person at the side of his bed.

The older gentleman is familiar somehow, but his still-foggy brain isn’t pulling up the name.

“Good morning Steven, or should I say Good evening?” the man’s eyes crinkle up at the corners with his smile.

“How long was I out? Where is everyone? Is Dustin okay? What about Max? Why does Eddie look so small? He–” Steve’s voice started out okay, an audible whisper, but completely fell off by the end of his questioning and the man cutting him off with a shake of his head and a hand on his shoulder.

“Calm down, Mr. Harrington.”

“Steve.” Steve manages to whisper. Damn his throat is sore.

“Steve. Everyone’s okay, it’s after visiting hours so your ‘party’? I think I heard one of your younger friends say? Have all gone home for the night. Including Mr. Henderson; his mother picked him up with a cast on his leg. Broken ankle and a fractured tibia.

“Ms. Mayfield is just down the hall, with a couple broken bones herself. As for Mr. Munson, he’s stable, heavily bandaged, and will likely be out for a while more. You’ve been out for about 20 hours.”

Steve stared at this man, he must be a doctor, while his brain processed that information. He wanted to relax back into the uncomfortable hospital mattress and pillow but, “Who are you?’

The man’s immediately apologetic. “Oh goodness, I’m so sorry. I should have introduced myself. I’m Dr. Owens from the Hawkins Lab.”

Again, Steve starts to move, shuffling backward as best he can with all his limbs still feeling boneless, but he needs to get up! Get between this man and Eddie.

“Steve, Steve, please relax, I’m here to help you.”

Steve sits back, though reluctantly since he physically can’t do much else. “Forgive me for being suspicious of that.” His voice is getting a bit stronger now from using it around the pain.

“That’s fair,” Dr. Owens chuckles, mostly to himself. “Please, hear me out.”

Steve says nothing, so Owens takes this as his sign to continue.

“You lost a lot more blood than either you or your friends realized. The adrenaline kept you going until you were safe at the hospital–”

“Until Dustin and Eddie were safe in the hospital.” Steve corrects on instinct. He was definitely not there for himself.

Owens smiles. “Of course. Yes, once your friends were safely being taken care of, or taken back to be in Mr. Munson’s case, your adrenaline dropped off rapidly, and you passed out in the ER lobby.

“Ms. Wheeler called me when they took you back too, worried about what the staff would start to think when they saw your injuries, so I came as soon as I could.

“I got here just as your friends were being asked to leave, so I only got bits of what happened from Ms. Wheeler and Ms. Buckley.”

Steve’s gaze had drifted back to Eddie while Dr. Owens talked, looking over the visible bandages wrapped around him, the equally thin blanket tucked around his frame, the bags under his eyes, the handcuffs linked from the bed frame to his wris–

“What the hell is that doing on him..”

“I’m sorry?”

“What in the HELL is that doing on his wrist?” Steve manages to yell, whipping his head around to glare at Owens.

“What are you–oh, I see. The handcuffs…we’re still working on that.”

“Well work faster. Eddie didn’t do anything wrong, he saved this fuckin’ town!”

“I believe you, Steve. Please calm down. We’ll get Mr. Munson’s name cleared.”

Steve focuses on steadying his breaths, watching the rise and fall of Eddie’s own chest.

Owens seems to know what it is he’s doing, as once he’s calmed down, he speaks again. “Steve, can you tell me what happened?”

Shit, he focused too hard on calming himself down. “Not now, sleep.” Steve says, already fading back out. “Morning. Nancy, Dustin.” 

He’s asleep after that.

—

The next day finds him being bombarded (painfully) by Dustin (“OOf! Dusty, careful, I’m all bandaged up, remember?”), and joint upside-down rundown to Dr. Owens (who pales at the mention of Henry/Vecna/001) with Nancy, Robin, and Erica.

A plan is made in the next couple days, Owens, the newly not-dead Hopper, and Nancy heading up the ‘official’ story about what happened to Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick and what to do about Jason Carver and his mob-starting mentality against Eddie.

Lucky for them, Jason was in the hospital too, after the beating he took from Lucas. The assault of a minor really didn’t look good on him, and the hits to the head helped scramble his memories enough that he mostly forgot about Eddie (Plus some extra secret government influence sprinkled in for good measure).

Until everything was sorted, an unconscious Eddie remained in cuffs. Something that irked Steve to no end.

After he was discharged himself, Steve basically lived at the hospital. 

He’d greet the nurses that were kind to Eddie, and snub the few others who weren’t. He thought about getting his mom on the phone just for her to say some choice words to the hospital’s Chief of Medicine, the Head of the Board of Directors, someone about the exactly zero doctors here who really showed any care for his friend, but he didn’t think she would be counted amongst the few people who were.

He haunted the hall between Eddie and Max’s rooms from first thing every morning to just before security is called to escort him out every evening, sharing his time between the two of them about 70/30 (Lucas was in Max’s room constantly, and if Steve hovered for too long Max would start pelting him with tongue depressors), spending a majority of the day at Eddie’s side with a couple others; mostly Dustin, but all the party would visit Eddie as often as their parents would allow; Steve made himself scarce when Eddie’s bandmates would come to visit, not wanting to make them uncomfortable with “King Steve”s presence.

Some days were just he and Eddie and the steady beeping of the heart monitor.

Steve’d sit beside him, listening to music, or reading, or attempting to read aloud that Hobbit book Dustin brought by. He’d make sure Eddie’s wrist under the cuff didn’t get raw and chafed by rubbing lotion into the skin there and over his cracked knuckles (he also wanted to do something about the dreadful cracking that was happening to his lips around the tube in his throat, but worried that’d be taking it a step too far).

And he thought.

He thought a lot.

A lot about how he felt about Eddie, over and over about what he could do after he was safely discharged too, would he even have the guts to tell him his feelings?

Steve knew he could wait, wait until Eddie was much healthier, far more healed. He’d waited this long, what was a little longer?

Steve debated not telling Eddie at all. He heavily debated it, actually. Within a few short hours of really knowing Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington knew his life wouldn’t be the same. He could not imagine any version of his future without Eddie in it now that he was there. Why risk the awkwardness if Eddie didn’t feel the same? Why take the chance?

His few hours away from the hospital would be where he did most of his agonizing over it; barely able to sleep, able to function besides his basic needs. 

Two of their party, their little family, were in the hospital right now and Steve couldn’t stop himself thinking it was his fault they were there. The hospital staff constantly told him that they both were stable and well on the mend in Max’s case, but all he could think of when he wasn’t there was that somehow both of them would crash; an invisible, undetected infection had taken hold way too fast to act, or bone shard had wandered off somewhere it wasn’t supposed to.

His thoughts made it near impossible to sleep, the echoing empty of his house was no help either. He could really only calm down when he was at the hospital and could easily put eyes on both Eddie and Max.

Then, because of the lack of sleep away from the hospital, he’d always end up crashing there in Eddie’s room, twisted into the chair at his bedside with his fingers curled into the sheets next to Eddie’s hip.

It was after one of these chair naps that Steve first met Wayne Munson.

Steve fell asleep later than normal, so he woke up a bit later than he normally would. Somehow, he was skipped over during security’s rounds that night and awoke a good bit after visiting hours were over.

Not wanting to make things worse for himself if he wanted to come back later, he uncurls and reaches for his bag. 

He rubbed the lotion into Eddie’s wrist under the cuff as best he could, over his cracked knuckles, and over the rest of his hands, trying to warm them up a bit and not-so-subtly also checking for bedsores on the backs of his friend’s arms at the same time.

He was just adjusting the pillow under Eddie’s head like he always does before leaving for the day when a voice boomed into the room.

“Who the hell are you?!”

Steve whips around to look at the source of the voice from where he’s hunched over Eddie’s head. 

The older man in the doorway is tall, the top of his bald head only a few inches shy of the doorframe, though that could also be due to the heavy-looking workboots on his feet, poking out from under the legs of a well-worn, grease stained set of coveralls.

“Who are you, and what’re you doin’ with my boy?!”

Steve immediately stands straight, his hands up in surrender. “I’m Steve Harrington, sir,” he starts, putting one hand out for Wayne to shake, “You must be Wayn–”

“A Harrington, huh? Get the hell away from my son, Harrington.” Wayne hisses and steps forward between Steve and Eddie’s bedside in an impressive three strides and immediately worrying over the bandage on Eddie’s cheek.

Steve backs up as requested, both hands back up. “Please, Mr. Munson, I’m his friend, I was only–”

“Don’t lie to me, boy. No Harrington would ever dare to be friends with someone of our kind.” he says over his shoulder. Steve knows that tone, someone’s said that to him before. ‘One guess as to who.’ Steve’s brain supplies, very unhelpfully.

“You ain’t hurting my Eddie if I have anything to say about it, now get the hell out of here before I get you thrown out!”

“Yes sir, of course. I’m sorry..” Steve acquiesces immediately, he’s not about to fight the man on this, especially not with what he’d gone through.

He grabs up his bag and leaves, rushing out to his car before his thoughts finally catch up with him.

‘That’s it. That’s all the time I’ll ever have with him. Wayne Munson won’t let me near him again and I’m already going out of my mind without him.’

Steve’s in his car now, staring blankly out the windshield. He slowly lowers his forehead to the wheel in front of him, onto the backs of his hands.

“…Fuck…”

-----

Eddie listens intently to the first four songs, imagining what about each of them Steve is trying to tell him beyond what is written down, laughs at the inclusion of Runnin’ with the Devil (though he really hopes Steve’s note about Ozzy was just there by happenstance and not because he thinks Ozzy is part of Van Halen).

‘Damn he’s cheesy as hell.’ Eddie thinks fondly.

His eyes glance over to the little blurb for the next song when Out Of Touch starts to fade out.

“...the fuck?” He says, and pauses the tape.

Under Be My Baby - The Ronettes, Steve had written “Teddy, your uncle is fuckin terrifying...but he’s got great taste in music.”

“What in the hell??”

Part 4 here!

wayne can be a lil' scary. as a treat.

[sasukeless]

for a side that says to be so pro sasuke its hilarous when they start fuming when you mention canon stuff about his characterization

[bees-bees-fear]

Why can Dalish players not handle the concept of the Dalish being fallible

Almost genuinely. It's probably a vocal minority because that's how really aggravating stuff works, but it's so common.

"Why only ruin the elven pantheon" "Why make their gods slavers" "Why do this to my characters" "Why have [exposition]"

For the PLOT. Because there is a WORLD to BUILD and you only heard "lithe little mage who gets to be in charge and fuck Judas 💅"

[minecraftrelatedrandomness]

tv tropes update: it is all retconned, fuck you /pos

[katyspersonal]

To be honest, figuring out that Maria is a bifauxnen archetype (or rather, remembering about it 3 years later after too-western-leaning discussions lol) felt soft of a relief? Keeping that in mind could have saved a lot of debates, and I do think that this take should be apparent since Bloodborne is a Japanese media! Can't analyze oversees media without applying oversees tropes and culture! So, her masculine aesthetic is not up to being questioned or written as practicality!

That one elusive bit that doesn't fall so apparent is the motivation. The thing about bifauxnen trope is that it is not consistent! There is execution where the masculinity is supposed to be rather involuntary, forced by another person or circumstances, and the character, in fact, struggles to reclaim her femininity after being led "astray" by some unfortunate events (like Lady Oscar). Then there are more blatant examples that are exactly what you want and expect from the trope, where femininity IS uncomfortable (like Utena)! I also talked with my friend who is familiar with far more Japanese media than I am, and according to her, Utena actually is a subversion of the trope, whereas "this lady had her natural femininity shunned by person or circumstances" is more common + that's the reason my friend DISlikes the trope. Can't attest to that statistic unless I play/watch everything she did, just something to notice 🤔

So yeah, that's the CORRECT interpretation branch I think! I wrote a separate analysis post on Cainhurst antics but the gist of it was, for a Vileblood woman it'd be a shame to not indulge in the bloody magic and antics as that's their 'natural' streak, so with this trope there would be skewing influence. Or other examples of the trope like "wanted son" or "she takes place of sickly/absent noble brother" that could play out. ...Or none could be the reasoning besides her preference, maybe even in spite of others (again, the 'blunt' variant of the trope does exist!)

There are various factors to decide from! I don't know, I just.. having the [HUMANITY RESTORED] moment over external validation for different interpretations, even though it should be a common sense. But also that there is something UNdebatable. I don't take "historical gender roles" flex for the setting where female doctors, scholars, hunters and vicars exist in 19th century of course, but I can't argue with "Japanese developers did a Japanese trope" pointer, and it just feels better to have more clarity, you know?

[un-pearable]

oh yeah saw blue beetle last night and one million thumbs up. going into having heard it’s very tokusatsu and comic booky made it one million times better. goofy and stupid in fun ways. i’m so glad we’ve looped back around to comic book movies being like comic books: confusing chronologically and catered to fans willing to put up with wildly specific nonsense. also heck of a great job making a movie about gentrification and colonization out of the chaos of blue beetle lore and corporate blandification i genuinely had fun

[happy-emmdings]

OUAT be like ‘True love is the rarest magic of all’ and then they expect me to believe that fucking Brennan Jones fell in love in his sleep and a nurse fell in love with him without ever having a reciprocated conversation with him or ever getting to personally know him and it was actual True Love™ that managed to break a sleeping curse. And now suddenly he’s completely reformed and such a good guy because the woman ✨fixed him✨ And they expect me to accept this in the same episode where they show him selling his children without showing the slightest hint of remorse. Okay. Umm, what the fuck?

Also him telling Killian that if he had known the nurse back then he never would have done that and everything would have been different must have been an extra punch in the gut to Killian because if he was at all close to his mother when he was little, it must have felt like Brennan was absolutely dismissing her. As if Brennan was saying he needed a woman to make him a good person but Killian’s mother wasn’t good enough. What an asshole.

[jennrypan]

..can we stop with the 'secret family no one knows about' trope. It's never actually been interesting and it's far too common now.

Cuz why the FUCK does dick apparently have a sister?? What the fuck

[legendarybeautyprotibalarina]

the male characters that arent chrom should have kids too so that all the kids have siblings i think

[whetstonefires]

not sure if it counts as a trope, but for the trope grade asks: canon divergence AU

I like these! They give a good balance between having the canon as a launch pad and giving the fic writer space to play, and there are so many ways to approach it that you can get a really good story at a number of different skill levels.

Obviously no premise or trope precludes bad fic, but the amount of structure canon divergence AUs offer is good for a lot of different things that work well in a fandom context. You can build in lots of worldbuilding exploration and character study as well as engaging with the structure of the plot and where its give points are, or put in the work to earn a non-canon pairing so it has context that makes it make sense. It gives you space to flex some craft without being unreasonably demanding.

Of course, sometimes people start out saying it's a canon divergence AU and then start building in increasingly massive retcons that make the fic much more AU than that label implies.

Which is fine, in itself, no one's obligated to do things the hard way in their hobby output and where should you be self-indulgent if not in your fanfic, but the mislabeling tends to annoy me--not just on organizational grounds, but because the emotional weight of changes in an actual canon divergence AU is different than if you're rearranging context elements and doing large-scale worldbuilding to get your desired result.

The latter is much easier to get to a given endpoint with, of course, but it tends to mean you haven't actually delivered on what you promised in characterization terms. I'm very invested in the relationship between character and context lmao.

I may have a very strict definition of the term but I think it's pretty self-defining: canon has to have proceeded as it did up until a certain point, from which point the fic proceeds on a tangent vector. Having diverged. The divergence point can be as ludicrous as you want IMO and still count, but you have to build your castle on the established foundation. Stuff that's outside the scope of the original narrative is fair game, but the more of it you add and the more it doesn't play by the established rules the more you're spilling out of bounds.

Which I mean, the only penalty for that is your fic is now tacky and will make some readers feel cheated, but still.

Occasionally I've seen a deliberate fakeout done where what looked like the canon divergence point was a red herring and actually caused by some other much earlier change. This is fine because it preserves the element of causality that defines the 'divergence' concept.

Anyway kvetching aside, B+ I guess? Maybe A? I can see why you're not sure if this counts as 'a trope' because those tend to be more internal elements than entire narrative structures, and it's weird to imagine searching AO3 for canon-divergence AUs. Unless the canon is a very particular flavor of tragedy, maybe.

[jennycalendar]

btw it is actually insane that my dream job is to be a librarian and that that's like legitimately totally not connected to the calendiles thing (have wanted it since i was ten/watched btvs for the first time at fourteen) BUT that their tech vs. print debate is something that actually interested me in them MORE BECAUSE I WAS THINKING ABOUT IT AS A TINY LIL CELIA. like i'm writing stuff for grad school and talking about how cool it is that the library is in a constant state of change and my brain just went "someone made calendiles in a lab for you specifically"

[yuridovewing]

i spoke in the past abt finding littlecinder to be a nostalgic ship with a ton of potential but tbh im tempted to scrap it in my au in favor of making cinderpelt aroace out of spite.