Ive been re-reading posts about “Fool for Love” and “Darla” and noticed copious use of the word etcon. What chew talkin bout, Willis?
A. Retcon is an abbreviation for retroactive continuity. Retcon is when writers to tie up loose ends by creating a past which almost certainly wasn’t imagined at the time the original story was told, but which now offers a semi-rational backstory. It’s a legitimate form of writerly creativity, but is somewhat disdained by Comic Book Guy type fans. Actually, it is a term that comes out of comic book fandom, and it was originally applied to such situations as Captain America not dying at the end of WWII but actually having been frozen in a block of ice until the 1960s so that he could show up as a contemporary Marvel Comics character.
