BtVS, character development, and retcons

When reading today a comment a friend made on retconning I was wondering what it is and what the implications of retconning are in a series or comics.  Specifically in the Buffy series and new comic book.

I am not expert but I read a few articles on the topic.    Retcon or “Retroactive Continuity” is a devise used by writers to make a extraneous changes in a plot in order to make it be inserted more or  less seamlessly into the logic of the universe in question.  

Now, there are other terms for this.   One is “ass pulling”, which would be a retcon that plainly contradicts previous canon.   Ex.  The Dallas episode that made a whole season become a dream.   Another example would be how in Superman Returns Lois was pregnant from Superman 2.   This banes the whole of S3 and S4 out of existence. 

A “revision” would be the retcon that fits very well into the plot, since it is supported by elements that are well known and in character.    In general this would simply mean to give back story to things we only learnt in passing or were merely hinted at.   Ex. The whole Spike back story in “Fool For Love” or “Lies my Parents Told me”.

There are also errors in continuity, which shouldn’t be confused with retconning, for instance the sire issue for Spike, who in S2 he said was Angel but later we learnt it was really Dru.    That was something that bothered me when I recently watched the series (in total disorder for that matter).  I call this error in continuity and not retcon because there was never a canon explanation given for this change in the situation. 

Now there is also something called “drafts”.    A draft is of course, a previous design for the profile of a character or plotline.   A profile or plot that never saw the light and was replaced with something else, that became canon.      It’s important not to mix this with retconning of any sort.     We shouldn’t even be aware of these unless they leak somehow by the mouth of the writer who is discussing the creative process.     I think that this discussion by no means takes away from the quality of the final result of the story.    

The best example here is  the first plans to kill Spike during S2.   This draft for plot never saw the light and the result we got was undeniably better than the original plot. 

So would I call Spike a retconned character?  No, by no means.   I think this is one character we discover as the time goes by, we get flashbacks of him, we get to know what makes him tick, but I would call that character development.  

Yes, the writers weren’t aware of all that was Spike at first, specially of his potential for redemption.    The character was developed organically.   

 When developing an original character you really are not aware of what he/she is in a 100%, you can have a very well outlined idea of his “tridimentionality” (in the best of cases), but the process is pretty much like that one of thinking.   You really don’t know what you think until you form the words in your mind or speak them out.       And likewise, you really don’t know the character well until you write it out, make it interact with other characters and specially put him/her under “the conflict”.

There are indeed many contradictions in BtVS.   Many people act out of character sometimes.   I have special problem with Willow here.   She goes from shy girl, to powerful witch, to insane witch who wants to end the world.   Then back to shy girl.   Specially the part of wanting to end the world doesn’t ring true to me for someone who under the biggest conflict of her life should have come out as basically a moral person.

Why is this?  Because it’s under such conflict when the reality of the character should emerge.   And by reality I am not saying what people think of the character (be it viewers, or other characters inside the universe) or the what the character thinks deep inside of himself/herself.  I am talking about the unconscious element that even the character is not aware of, and that in the end defines him/her. Something that should had been somehow hinted very subtly in the subtext.    

That is the key element in writing a realistic and tridimentional character.    The unconscious and suprising element.   But yeah, Willow stopped, just in time.   Maybe it would have worked out if it wasn’t for the melodramatic touches.

Something like this is also what happens in “Seeing Red” and the attempted rape.   Contrarily to what most Spike fans think, I don’t see this moment as out of character or retconned.   It’s simply a moment such as the ones that I described above that adds to the psychological depth of the character and is needed as turning point.  (important to keep in mind that I am not saying that it was right, I am discussing this only from a literary POV, in which there are not morality where it comes to quality of literatury/scripts.)   

Other interesting moment in the Buffy arch is Buffy exploration of her dark side in Season 6.   This was foreshadowed previously in Restless, as when the First Slayer tells her that she doesn’t know who she is and in Buffy Vs Dracula, when he also hints at Buffy darkness and her power that probably roots in it.     The act of foreshadowing is very important so the viewers don’t get a feeling of being cheated (at least the careful viewers).    

Now, something about foreshadowing is that it exists by itself.    It doesn’t matter if the intention when writing it didn’t exist, or at least it shouldn’t matter for the viewer, who should really judge by the result.    I won’t go into details but many things in the episode Restless and other dream sequences, and also in “Once more with Feeling” worked out as foreshadowing for the future of the series, and enriched the whole story by it. 

Oh, the final element I wanted to touch in this whole confusing mess that, in my opinion, is wrongly termed “retconning”: It’s called bad writing. 

Let us take for instance the  incidents we see in the last two or three episodes of Season 7.     We see there all the people of Sunnydale leaving town without an explanation, without for instance, having the government asking for them to evacuate.  Suddenly seems that everybody in town has watched the last season on TV, and it simply smacks our “suspension of disbelief” badly. 

Ditto for how everybody suddenly is able to kill ubervampires in the final episode, while it took Buffy like four whole episodes to do in one.     Joss Whedon has accepted that this was done for dramatic purposes and many other things that didn’t work were added so as to make the whole seven seasons’ arc close nicely, while realism received a good spank.

Interesting, these were indeed writing decisions that were taken consciously.    But now we have the new comic spoilers and by what some have deciphered from it seems that this one has a big ass-pulling retcon.    

The Buffy discussed and seen at AtS5 episode “The Girl in Question” wasn’t a real Buffy, but  a double posing for security reasons.   She wasn’t dating the immortal….   This does contradict canon that has been there for three years now.   Comic!Buffy uses big guns and combat outfit, which is something that we never saw in her, except maybe in “The wish” which developed in a different universe.

This may be a bad beginning to the new comic series.    But well, I suppose even that can be part of a dream sequence too.

Thanks to </a>for the inspiration for this essay  and especially some of her great ideas on drafting that I borrowed here.  :)   </font>

  


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