By Button Poetry
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Patrick Roche, performing “Retcon”
Transcript provided by YouTube:
0:02
– Retcon, or retroactive continuity, is this phenomenon
0:06
that’s common in comic books and TV
0:09
in which writers will retroactively alter storylines
0:13
to fill plot holes.
0:14
They decide the stories have reached a dead end,
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or they made a mistake,
0:18
like they want to bring back a character
0:19
that they killed off.
0:20
So, they retcon the story by completely changing,
0:23
erasing, or flat out ignoring plot points
0:26
that had been set in stone.
0:28
Okay, for example, in this issue,
0:31
we find that Jean Grey didn’t die as the Phoenix.
0:34
No, she was replicated and kept alive.
0:37
Or in this issue, the Winter Soldier is revealed
0:41
to be Bucky Barnes returned
0:43
to readers 50 years after he died.
0:45
Or in this issue, we find that my father was replaced
0:50
10 years ago by the shape shifter Mystique,
0:53
and he returns to us now alive
0:55
without a whiskey glaze on his eyes.
0:58
Or in this issue,
1:00
my grandparents cancer was just a parasite
1:03
now removed and jettisoned into space.
1:06
Or my grandfather didn’t die
1:08
on the same day as Whitney Houston.
1:10
Or my mother no longer changes the station
1:12
every time one of her songs comes on.
1:14
Or my grandmother reveals her death as an elaborate ruse.
1:19
Or in this issue, my other grandmother’s dementia
1:22
didn’t retcon her life for the last three years,
1:25
rewriting her husband as still alive
1:28
or children as someone else’s blood,
1:30
or herself as anything but the good face in the mirror.
1:33
Or in this issue, no one buried their child,
1:37
or put down the dog, or colored their skin with a knife,
1:40
or no one dreamt of a world washed clean of their stain.
1:44
Or in this issue, I am not no one, my mother is not no one.
1:48
Or without explanation,
1:51
I no longer need the medicine or the white walls,
1:54
and the hospital bed were just a dream,
1:57
or hypnotism, or illusion.
1:59
Or in this issue, I’m the Phoenix.
2:03
I relearn the language of a smile.
2:05
And I think of what a luxury it would be
2:07
to erase or reset at the stroke of a pen.
2:10
Or in this issue, I don’t mourn anyone
2:13
who never seems to stay dead.
2:16
Or in this issue, or in this issue, or in this issue
2:20
I wait and wait for someone
2:25
to rewrite me into a story
2:30
with fewer holes!
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: iStock