Retroactive Continuity

Retroactive continuity, for those who aren't aware, is "the deliberate changing of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction", according to the fine writers at Wikipedia. If we take a slightly broader interpretation of the term and include non-fiction, then this post was retconned. Which is to say, I posted one thing, and have now removed it and replaced it with this post on retconning.

In film, television, writing and any other type of serial fiction, retconning is bad. Plain and simple. Sure, it might open up interesting new paths for plot to develop. But it opens them by cheating. Taking the easy way out.

It is sloppy and it is lazy and if you really really wanted to take your character from his office job to the far flung reaches of space, don't retcon his father into a mad scientist who implanted a tracking device in his son at birth so that when the mad scientist transcended space and time he could transport his son with him. Everyone will wonder about the office worker's old father, the good carpenter who raised his son and forced him to go through university so he could get the rewarding and fulfilling job where he met his beautiful young wife.

Why don't you instead just make a smack-talking chihuahua from the planet Xorb pick the office worker at random and transport him to an alien world. Still need a mad scientist? Maybe the mad scientist just thinks the office worker is his son. Don't change the past. Come up with creative solutions for the future.

But that's just fiction. What about non-fiction? What about this blog post right here? Should I preserve the content of the original post, no matter how stupid or insipid or trite I think it is?

What if I make a spelling mistake? Should that error be preserved for all time? Or should I correct it? Or does it not matter either way?

I reckon that fixing unintentional errors is ok. Worth doing even. But removing and replacing whole posts? It strikes me as somewhat dishonest. Especially when part of the point of this blog is to let my writing evolve. Once my writing has improved, should I go back and clean out the archive? Wipe the slate clean? Leave behind only the writing which lives up to my personal standard, whatever that may be?

Again, I don't really have an answer, just questions. I'll be thinking about retconning non-fiction over the next little while, and will probably revisit it in another post. Until then, I guess I'll just think.