#just not in the retcon way

[ganondoodle]

i guess what my point really was is- i prefer a piece of media/franchise having a somewhat consistent canon so the fans can do all the twists and AUs as they want instead of the official canon being constantly retconned

[molinaskies]

An interesting “side effect” of the canonization of the “classic era” meaning “younger era” is that the classic era now reads as “cute fun times” before the core cast became teenagers/tweens and things got super, super complicated.

Because the characters are “younger,” there’s an air of “little rascal innocence” to everything they do now. The new releases like Mania and Superstars now feel like little throwbacks to the young heroes just learning how to work together and make a difference in the world.

I don’t think this is a bad thing at all.

[incorrect-green-lantern-quotes]

A funny side effect of the Corps generally recruiting only adults is that the Green Lanterns of Earth are probably on average the most well-educated of all of DC’s hero legacies*

Like, Hal was a fighter pilot in the USAF, for which a bachelor’s degree is a requirement. Guy in his original backstory got two degrees in education and psychology at the same time. John’s an architect, so he would’ve gone to college for at least five years.

Kyle’s run in the 90s mentions that he went to college, probably for art. Simon is stated to have a degree in automotive engineering. Jo went to freaking Princeton University. No idea what she studied but I assume it was something like criminal justice since she became a cop afterward.

The only reason Jessica didn’t get to finish her forestry degree was because she was hiding in her apartment for three years after her friends got murdered. But she would’ve if not for that horrifically traumatic event!!

No wonder Bats don’t like Lanterns. They’re all bright and colorful and college educated, like many of the most infamous Gotham rogues.

*I’d like to point out that this is more so because the other superhero families tend to include multiple kids, who are statistically unlikely to have graduated high school yet (and if they haven’t by now they likely never will thanks to DC’s sliding time scale)

Legit, I’m pretty sure the Earth GLs are the absolute last hero legacy to get a kid in main continuity (Keli’s first appearance was in 2019!)

And bc reading comprehension on this site is piss poor, this isn’t me saying that the Green Lanterns are smarter than all your hero blorbos. Just that the majority of them went to school long enough to get their diplomas.

[vaguely-concerned]

how much have the crows actually been sanitized outside of the very narrow view you get of them both in place and in time in veilguard, and how much is caterina deliberately putting her most presentable and pr friendly foot forward because she needs HELP with both the grandson and the antaam situations and is already playing from a weakened overwhelmed position. is she going to show off all the dirty laundry the crows undeniably have in front of the people she's courting for an alliance? is rook going to be looking a gift crow in the beak too closely when help is offered, go digging through that laundry basket on their own initiative on principle, knowing what you might find further down in it isn't pretty and might still be sharp, while the world is burning? is it entirely coincidental that the people caterina picks to interact with you most is teia -- the youngest, most charismatic and notably most weirdly idealistic of the talons -- and viago -- who is perhaps none of these things naturally but is dependable and logical and sharp and also down so cataclysmically bad for teia that when she runs in shouting 'TEIA YES!!! >:D' he sighs with longsuffering resignation and goes '...viago also yes. I suppose. under duress, let the record note' and follows.

surely parts of how each house functions would be left largely up to the individual talons, right? as long as they produce crows capable of doing the job and keeping up with the competition, I doubt the first talon micromanages how they get there (...for good or ill. lots of dead fledglings buried under that laissez faire policy, probably). they're very far away from a monolithic structure, they're constantly competing merchant houses/families striving to gain the upper hand held in check by little except 'if enough of the other houses shake hands and gang up on us for pushing our luck we're fucked, so don't push it too far'. like I believe lucanis says at one point, even calling them an organization is stretching the definition to a breaking point in some ways lol this is fully herding cats territory. all this to say that in this game we spend most of our time in teia's house. andarateia cantori, of the firm genuine conviction recognized as mildly unhinged by all the other talons that the crows truly are her family, who loves them with her whole unstoppable foolhardy thinks-she-will-die-young-and-live-eternally-in-song-and-story heart for it. teia, who won't leave the cantori diamond even to go home to sleep because she doesn't want the fledglings to have to see the place empty. do I think the way teia cantori would run her house is indicative of the average experience of being trained as and living as a crow? no. obviously. why are people seeming to assume that so immediately? sometimes I do wonder if I'm going insane.

between that and the antaam situation -- which turns the romanticized image antiva already is eager to reach for with the crows (the same way european literary tradition through the ages sure LOVES a knight, no matter what knights were actually like when you had one kicking around in real life) into an effective and recognizable symbol of resistance from an outside force (at least these awful little guys are home grown in a way we're kind of proud of despite it all and also they are deeply inescapably cool)... perhaps indeed a symbol of resistance and freedom that momentarily covers for a multitude of sins. I don't think we need to draw definitive conclusions about what the crows are like universially, historically or in different contexts from what we see in veilguard. sort of like the british in the pop cultural understanding being 'the good guys' when we think about WW2, and the sheer ludicrousness of that characterization of the british empire seen in any other context or angle lmao. I DO think there are some genuine writerly '*handwaves established ugliness aside aggressively* just uuuuuh don't worry about it! not important right now! you can feel at least ok hanging out with the cool theater kids but with murder they're like. comparatively chill in this context it's fine and they're fun' going on too. and you know what. they are fun. invenci is unfortunately objectively right, but the crows are sooo much more fun. and in fiction land that trumps all. absolutely baffling writing choice when you read through to the political/ideological conclusion that's reached from it of course (sort of accidentally? I think???), but would it really be a bioware game without a few of those. it's how you know you're home (derogatory and affectionate)

in short there are writing problems by god are there real problems here. obviously. and it'd take smarter and more knowledgeable people than me to properly untangle all of that. glorifying organized crime is a time honoured tradition in fiction that perhaps... shouldn't be quite so much and is uh risky, you're always playing with fire there. but I frankly don't think the 'de-edgeifying' for lack of a better term is that much of an inescapable one or that it erases what we knew of the crows before, we're just getting the angle on them in one very specific time and place in history and with specific individuals involved setting the tone. eight little talons killing off most of the established leadership beforehand so it's mostly only teia and viago who get to keep their full power base (even caterina and the dellamortes takes some losses in the apparent death of lucanis before the start of the game) probably figures into that somewhere too lol

[withdenim]

Hindsight’s fickle, huh

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

"Jason was the happy robin" this, "jason was the angry robin" that. Let's all be fully honest here Jason was the lonely robin

[linddzz]

(regular disclaimer that I will exaggerate big feelings for effect but at the end of the day this is fandom and in the grand scheme of things Just Ain't That Serious good? good)

okok look while I am obviously SOOO into where Arcane went with the Machine/Arcane Herald, I can get why gamers who liked og LoL Viktor would be Big Annoyed at him being totally retconned and overhauled in game. That is undeniably a totally different guy there and yeah it would be shitty to have the guy you like completely swapped out. I can especially get it if they liked the mechanical cyborg engineering aspects of his character!

BU T I keep seeing iterations of "he didn't choose anything for himself he just had things happen to him" or "he just went mystic. he used to be someone who used his genius to remake himself and now he just meditated himself into a wizard" and I am so so down to meet in the pit on those takes!! I get people not liking the less mechanical aspects of him but hhhhhhohmygod do not be taking my guys agency and genius down like that

Yes the initial full fusing with the hexcore is something that happened to him, that someone who loved him maybe too much did to him (almost like Arcane has themes of people being launched down dark paths by things that happen to them beyond their control hMmMmmmmmm!!!) And btw I still hold that while his brain got changed by trauma (bc trauma DOES THAT) and the hexcore helped amplify and empower him leaning into his worst traits, after Jayce forced that initial fusion everything Viktor did was a choice.

But also!! Jayce used Viktor's notes. Viktor was the one who went down and got shimmer, who lied and experimented in secret. He stumbled into noticing the hexcore responding to biological material but then he pursued that avenue (because LIFE is a lot of stumbling into things and then deciding what to do from there), figured out what interdisciplinary collaborations he needed to make, figured out on his FIRST TRY what runes he would need to put where.

And while they don't lean into the mechanical engineering genius as much as the OG Viktor like...guys that's a software engineer with a big scoop of magic theorist on top of it (who then started a pivot into biomechanical arcane theory like THAT). He made a magic AI! Don't go telling me he didn't use his genius to become the Arcane Herald when he made a magic AI and then I got to watch the hexclaw grabbing and programming runes into spells like the coolest shit ever!!

That man figured out how to make Jayce's ideas into reality. He then used the scant knowledge of the arcane that still exists to figure out and recreate, using technology, what mages do by instinct. He made a MAGIC AI HOLY SHIT. Jayce is STILL referencing Viktor's rune theories to figure out the anomaly!!

He did not use the same type of genius to become the same type of Herald, but my guy invented being a technomancer so hard that he turned himself into a magical supercomputer and was so good at THAT that he made himself a robowizard god and I will not be hearing anything belittling how nuts that is!!

[odakota-rose]

so many gems in the Doctor Who script library the BBC just released but today I'm here in 4x02, The Fires of Pompeii

[cacw]

meet your maker

[foxx-queen]

thinking about that one slide from the credits of datv that's a shot of morrigan, with the voice over saying something like 'we will always be thankful to the stories that came before us' and how much of a blatant lie that is given how much the writers did not care about the previous games

[ganondoodle]

you know im unable to shut up when i have any opinion on zelda (though i try and have thus far succeeded at not commenting on any other concept from the darn book)- i find most totk ganondorf concept art worse than what we got to insulting even (of those i have seen) ..... this one though

much more the one in the background than the one up front, still at least he has the collar and the weapon we saw in the first trailer of things that never happen in the end (like so much else)

[aroaceleovaldez]

full on feel like pjo tv s2 is not gonna hold up so they need to drag as much attention to the series as they can by using nico as a sock puppet w tsats2

im fully expecting the show to go the way of the movies. it doesnt help Sea of Monsters is almost unanimously the least favorite book of the first series. People frequently forget it even exists or what happens in it, especially more casual fans.

Heck, just look at how little fanfare the second season has gotten so far as compared to the build up to s1. I wouldn't be surprised if s2 totally flops. It would be a little funny.

[autisticrosewilson]

So do you guys actually think that Jason's entire story, relationship to the others, and philosophy amounts to him being a rebellious teen who wants his dad's attention? Like are you 100% serious? I thought you were joking about that but too many of you are saying it with your whole chest.

And what the fuck is this "Bruce antagonizing Jason is fanon!" Shit I've been seeing? You guys are aware that a parent can love their kid and still be a shit parent right? I know you guys don't want to fathom the thought that maybe your blorbo might also occasionally have to face responsibility for consistently endangering children but let's not start being delusional now.

Bruce does love his kids, that doesn't mean that he hasn't hurt them. And I'd also argue that for the most part he feels in the right for it, and he's said multiple times that he believes it's for their own good, so you can't even argue that he's sorry about it. It's okay for you guys to admit that your PERSONAL INTERPRETATION of the character wouldn't do that but don't sit here and pretend that it's not a facet of the source.

[mamawasatesttube]

the geoff retcon is just so poorly done in so many ways. when i think abt it i just rly do have to roll my eyes because it wouldn't even be that hard to be like "actually, paul westfield was duped by agenda under orders from the contessa" and have that as the explanation for the introduction of luthor dna instead of paul westfield's, if you MUST include it. like that way it doesn't blatantly contradict the entire luthor plotline with mae in reign of the supermen, and it could've been a reveal to luthor himself, too. that couldve been fascinating ESPECIALLY in the context of lex having baby lena in that era, until the y2k event.

but fuckign. why do that when we can directly contradict kon's entire origin story which explicitly states he escaped before they were able to put control codes in his head. and when we can also just completely dismiss the ethics of "they [wanted to] put control codes in his head" in favor of "what if... some genes... make you BAD..." which is just very thinly veiled eugenics that the narrative entertains, for some reason. frankly, imo, lex was far more interesting as a character in every plot other than this, because he became so one-dimensionally evil in a very boring stock "manipulative" way. and we didn't even get a single mention of lena in all of his "my son" bullshit. using the contessa wouldve been such an easy and perfect way to tie it all together!!!! but sure. why do anything like that, right geoff.

[bonefall]

Maybe I'll make a post on this at some point but like, something deeply fucked up about TNP and Po3 that people have totally forgotten about is how badly they try to whine that "Tigerstar Had Good Traits :("

Firestar does it, Brambleclaw does it, and they keep doing this after it becomes this GRAND irony that Firestar almost gets Tiger'd to death in a fox trap because he was too trusting. Bramble gets his pity award of keeping deputyship and then cries to his son about how No One Saw The Good In Tigerstar :(

And it's wiiiiild that no one else in this fandom has done anything with the fact that Leopardstar broke the Warrior Code to appoint Hawkfrost, who had no apprentice, an extremely aggressive and warmongering Tigerclone who says things like "Tigerstar wasn't the worst cat to look up to." ONLY qualifying trait was being kinda like Tigerstar.

And she practically did that the SECOND Mistyfoot went missing. And then Leopardstar continued to be one of the most violent and xenophobic leaders through Po3, joining with WindClan to attack ThunderClan.

What I'm getting at is that like, a few years ago, with books like "Blackfoot's Reckoning" and "Shadow in RiverClan" it's like they suddenly decided to retcon in a bunch of "redemption arcs" in hindsight. They just pretended like there was this grand high reckoning with TigerClan, when there literally wasn't, and if anything that caused SERIOUS problems for the cast that the authors didn't fully acknowledge as such.

And now ppl haven't actually read the main series and are just working with their recent memory of all these retcon books.

But TNP and PO3 are still there, and you can go and see the ACTUAL timeline where Leopardstar is really not apologetic at all, and Blackstar is a useful stooge for the very next wannabe dictator that strolls in, in spite of the new side content that COMPLETELY mischaracterized them for their plots to work.

[meamiki]

vtuber loop !!!

[reverse entry au? the reverse isekai part of it? tangentially related to this post here, and also the last part of this post too]