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[CortJstr]

Whenever you notice something like that a wizard did it.

Whenever interaction with non-Onstad humans is implied then Ray's deal with the devil handles it magically. Actually more likely is either:

[*]Onstad isn't really that big on continuity
[*]Onstad actively screws with continuity just to mess with overzealous fans such as ourselves.[/list]

[pmcd9]

• Onstad isn't really that big on continuity
• Onstad actively screws with continuity just to mess with overzealous fans such as ourselves.

I'd say that's the understatement of the season.

~Paul

[V-Adore]

I like playing the Achewood continuity game as much as anyone, but at this point it's just sort of pointless, kind of like attempting to reconcile the Star Wars movies with each other (except I have more confidence that Onstad is deliberately fuck*ng with us). Alternately, one can use a "quantum states" hypothesis in which most story arcs of the comic occur in slightly different parallel universes (thus why some arcs appear to be continuity and some don't, why Pat was fairly mellow initially, why Philippe gradually changes from apparently being a retarded adult to being explicitly a child, why Mr. Bear and Teodor originally found booze totally novel)... but that said, that's stretching it. The comic's premise has fundamentally changed from "what if alive stuffed animals lived in some guy's house and were stymied often by the human world?" to "what if alive stuffed animals inhabited an Underground world that only occasionally interacted with the human world?" And, y'know, that's cool and all.

or maybe a wizard did it

[AlohaDawg]

So if Geordi can see in all wavelengths, how come the holodeck works for him?

If the Holodeck can create sentient, independently thinking characters, what the hell is the big deal about Data? Especially considering one of those characters actually escapes the Holodeck.

I like the cartoon where the cats talk.
It's hard to suspend my disbelief but I manage.

Real life is fairly entertaining, and continuity is guaranteed -so I can pretty easily forgive gaps in continuity in the entertainment I seek away from real life.

[pmcd9]

I think Onstad isn't concerned with continuity, but he's not "deliberately fuck*ng with us."  Stuffed Animals in a guys house, stuffed animals in their own world, real car, cat sized car, it's all a matter of what fits the strip on that particular day.  Onstad has great difficulty maintaining his schedule as it is.  It is a five times a week strip right?  It's rare [when was the last time it happened?] that he actually puts up five strips in a single week.  If he were to bother with whatever constraints of continuity that have developed it would surely slow him down even further.

~Paul

[wombat]

Real life is fairly entertaining, and continuity is guaranteed -so I can pretty easily forgive gaps in continuity in the entertainment I seek away from real life.

You know now that you mention it, I can't help thinking that real life would probably be better with less continuity too.

[Ben-San]

The DC Universe has this worldsetting conceit they call "hypertime". There's all kinds of bullshit about quantum parallel universes involved, but it boils down to an official diagetic excuse such that any writer can freely use or disregard any past chunk of continuity as he desires and as benefits the story he wishes to tell, and the fans are not allowed to bitch about it because the past is in a state of constant quantum whatever.

Achewood takes place in hypertime.

[AlohaDawg]

That's interesting - a concept (is that a conceit?) that allows the writers to be somewhat lazy (if as creative as they want) and really makes nothing actually canonical unless there is a list of things that can't be touched.

That would make the comics difficult to read over long periods of time, unless they are never referential to the same past from one story arc to another...which would still be difficult if that is what you were expecting.

[CortJstr]

That's interesting - a concept (is that a conceit?) that allows the writers to be somewhat lazy (if as creative as they want) and really makes nothing actually canonical unless there is a list of things that can't be touched.

That would make the comics difficult to read over long periods of time, unless they are never referential to the same past from one story arc to another...which would still be difficult if that is what you were expecting.

Isn't this what caused Crisis on Infinite Earths or somesuch?

And then there were the comics like Lois Lane which were practically all "what if" stories where one issue would have 3 stories that all contradict each other.

[V-Adore]

The DC Universe has this worldsetting conceit they call "hypertime". There's all kinds of bullshit about quantum parallel universes involved, but it boils down to an official diagetic excuse such that any writer can freely use or disregard any past chunk of continuity as he desires and as benefits the story he wishes to tell, and the fans are not allowed to bitch about it because the past is in a state of constant quantum whatever.

Achewood takes place in hypertime.

Somehow I knew I was actually ripping something off. Thank you, Ben.

Is it sad that I just thought about the Holodeck problem? I think I need to go, I don't know, drink beer and boywatch or something.

[Ben-San]

That would make the comics difficult to read over long periods of time, unless they are never referential to the same past from one story arc to another...which would still be difficult if that is what you were expecting.

When it works well, it's generally because (a) writers tend to agree on a certain "core" for a given character so that relationships and characters stay recognizable or mutate slowly and (b) there is a general obligation for any writer to be internally consistent, and to at least acknowledge whatever the author immediately before him did.

The main reason Hypertime was implemented is that the accretion of minutiae over the decades rendered comics nearly inaccessible to anyone who wasn't a long-term and dedicated reader, generally of several titles. Comics fans love to nitpick, and eventually DC found that to shed things they had done twenty or thirty years before and now no longer wished to deal with, they had to put in another knot to the continuity to work around it, so that eventually the whole thing became a tangled mess.

With Hypertime, it's no longer necessary to field questions like "How can Neron be the ruler of Hell when Captain Marvel met Satan in 1954?" Instead of having to come up with a complicated and (on a gut level) unsatisfying hierarchy of Hells and rulers thereof, it's Satan when the Captain Marvel writers want to use Satan and it's Neron when whoever thought Underworld Unleashed was a good idea does his thing.