So, yeah, you can poo-poo the idea of retconning in a story where, basically, everyone who’s posted in this thread is the entirety of who you’d be worried about knowing anything about it.
I would argue: don’t be so dismissive.
Our attention to world-building detail, or ability to maintain some kind of an (admittedly occasionally foggy) institutional memory and a recounting of the history of our characters and story universe is one of the central pillars that makes Kupopolis what it is. These details matter, and putting them into some kind of order matters, because they enrich our story and make it more meaningful.
Point being: these things need to be carefully considered. Retcons that benefit the story universe as a whole, and which treat our history with some reverence, should be executed in the most thoughtful and careful manner. Otherwise what’s the point? Just launch an entirely new story and dispense with the pretense of calling it “Kupopolis.”
((no, don’t actually do that, that was rhetorical))
Yeah, I think it’s important to do retcons that build upon the story and reinforce the history of the story; ones that throw that out should be avoided with rare exception. Ideally, they’re ones that add on and explain more of what happened, possibly at the expense of some original details. If it helps make more writing, I think it’s probably the right idea (i.e., Jay quietly retconning a character age).
I’d give a pass for a thing a writer just couldn’t remember or, well, some hypothetical situation where they found something so uncomfortable they wanted to distance themselves from it. I’m not sure such a thing exists in the story, though.
Well, Matt is of course correct – Kupopolis is a triumph of world-building, and much of that is the detailed history that makes the story feel lived in.
My general rule of thumb for CoH has been “a new story, set in the Kupopolis universe.” We are very much in the Kupopolis universe and telling a story that honors our past and continuity…but we are also telling a new story and shouldn’t have to be straitjacketed because of a random comment I jotted down on the wiki ten years ago.
And I think it goes without saying there’s levels of comfort with retcons. Changing a name of a character who only ever existed as a name on a page and never actually appeared in a post? Probably OK. Changing the outcome of the Tasnican elections of 45 WR, which was a fairly significant in-universe event with several posts in the boards? Probably not OK.
…and also acknowledging that the timeline of certain events is kind of fuzzy, relying as it does on the wiki, some posts which may or may not be easily accessible, and our memory of events over ten years old. (even various comic book universes, which our shared universe has something in common with, sometimes get it wrong even with their legion of editors fact-checking everything.)
But besides randomly bursting into song, being dismissive is all I got!
But you guys do bring up a facet of the discussion that I do boast to friends about, we now have decades of continuous world building under our belt and that’s pretty cool. Sorry if I sounded negative!