Steph, I think what Buffy and Willow were seeing were things that when they started watching hadn't happened, but once they were seen, they became part of their current "reality." Don't forget, the reality field (or whatever the heck they called it) was unstable. I think those visions were more possibilties, than realities, even if it seemed like in the moment.

I had no problem with the Willow/Kennedy parts. In fact, Willow saying she didn't want to have to choose between her and Buffy made me get all sniffly. I still don't like Kennedy, but I felt terrible for Willow.

man I never should have looked up "retcon" on Wikipedia. Now my head- she is all swimmy. I demand to know what is real and what isn't!

Heh, wait until you get to stetcons and the such...

OK I give up. Google says, "Did you mean to search for: stetsons?"

A stetcon is when you undo a retcon. Derived from the editorial/proofreader term "stet", which is to let the previous version stand...

Ah geez. I should have been able to figure that out. thanks.

Is it a retcon, really? A retcon is a "reveal" of sorts, that what you thought had happened had gone down differently--this was a current plot development instead.

Not to distract from the point of it sucking. However, the problem with resetting Spidey at his iconic ideal--they didn't deage him, did they? That status quo is very different around university age from late 20s.

Well, there are a different versions of retcons. Retcons can mean....

1.) Two or three different story elements from past issues are revealed by a current creative team to have been really linked together. For instance, the reveal that Wanda/Scarlet Witch and Pietro/Quicksilver were Magneto's children didn't come until they were Avengers, after they had left Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil. Basically they put together some early X-Men and Avengers threads to come up that background reveal.

2.) That a new story element reveals or adds to a previous story element. For instance, in a mid 80s comic "Wolverine versus Spiderman" (I think that was the title) 2 part miniseries it was revealed that MJ had always known that Peter was Spiderman, even before he told her, because she was visiting her aunt next door the night Uncle Ben died and saw Peter return to the house afterwards, taking off his costume. That didn't change the previous story, but added to it, adding shades of meaning to previous MJ and Peter interactions.

3.) A previous story element is written over by deliberate creative team attempt. This is Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superboy's punch and now the Spiderman magic handwaving.

These three definitions of retcons, and stetcons, all come fron Peter David's Comic Scriptwriting book.

I don't see what's so special about #1. It just strikes me as information, or at least indistinguishable from such. The other two are are pretending that something was true/known/decided at some point in the past where we all know it wasn't.

Holy crap.

Just bought the graphic novel of Buffy: Season 8 Book 1.

(Finally!)

Love. Just - love.