mincartaugh wrote:The guy saw a hopping mad guy charge up to him and try to throw his own punch. OF COURSE the guy tried to punch Jonas.
That's not quite how it went down. I'd agree with you if he hadn't let Jonas walk up to him, mouth off for a few seconds, given him time to take a punch,
grab the fist and then move to throw his own - but not spent any of that time saying "Whoa, hold up. I'm not here to make trouble."
mincartaugh wrote:As for the Watchers, Have they ever (minus the swing and miss (above)) attempted harm to any of the group? I didn't mean to imply that the Watchers had nothing to do with the Order as much as I wanted to show that there was already conflict within their ranks. OpAphid keep mouthing these dire (if somewhat veiled) threats, but the Watchers who are ostensibly under her control do nothing but--well--watch. I still say they are an unknown quantity and regardless of past performance (or innuendo) they could be pulled out as a force to alter the paradigm significantly.
That's fair enough, I suppose. It just doesn't really seem to fit
how they're being used to alter the paradigm (nor did OpAphid sending someone to kidnap Bree).
mincartaugh wrote:As for Tachyon and Brother: in my long life I have had many people near and dear to me loose touch; fall away; take a different path. It happens, and more often than we would like.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that those situations were not in any way comparable with this one. I imagine most of us have had people on the internet or offline fall out of touch - but not in a situation like
this one.
It's a really poor explanation. It just doesn't work.
mincartaugh wrote:PS: and what the he** is a "retcon"?
It's short for "retroactive continuity." It means changing something in a storyline after the fact. It's often done to accomodate a development that is irreconcilable with previously existing elements, but which a writer wants to make nonetheless. It's especially done in comics a lot (especially by Marvel).
immortal1 wrote:Sure there is ever hear of terms such as MIA? Assumed captured or killed? Missing and presumed dead?
I think we both know that's not what mincartaugh's post was suggesting. He was talking in casual terms - as though they were any one of us, who just comes here and could vanish at any time.
I never said them being MIA was a problem in and of itself. In fact, I even said having Bree say something like "I can't reach Tachyon. She doesn't respond" would have been infinitely better than "I suddenly have no way of contacting Tachyon. Please forget that I did have that a couple of weeks ago."
At the very least terminology like "MIA" suggests that something plausible actually happened. "Posters come for a while and then they go" and "I guess we just lost touch" doesn't.
immortal1 wrote:If you only watched videos and not kept up on profile updates or message interaction you would have not known this. As far as I am concerned it's never been clearly established. OpAphid is an organization of some sort, a person of unknown identity communicated on their behalf. Because the identity was unknown somewhere the representative became the character OpAphid.
I would say it was clearly established quite well. The very way she spoke showed that she had authority over those in her organization - and she had her own personal assistants and her own bodyguards.
As far as why she became the character known as "OpAphid," she signed all of her messages that way (with lower case letters, whereas we tended to associate capitals of everything but "p" with the group as a whole, as it was an acronym). If she'd signed them another way, I'm sure we would have called her something else.
immortal1 wrote:I think OpAphid by defintion of the acronym was basically a hit team. Their targets were Tachyon and Brother. Logically Tachyon and Brother "go away" then OpAphid goes away.
That doesn't make sense. It was well established that OpAPHID had existed as a division of the Order for a good while (at the least since last February) - and they even had their own facilities (one of which Tachyon broke into; heck, these guys had their own - albeit depleted - stock of P. Monkey puppets). It also wouldn't make sense that they'd just be organized to deal with Brother and Tachyon, as the two of them were only two members of another organization.
What's more, OpAPHID made it clear that BD&J were high on their radar. They even completely ignored Tachyon for a while when they were hunting down Jonas' place. Heck, OpAphid even told Bree to do the ceremony
before Tachyon even stole anything from them.
And, of course, that suggestion doesn't even address the problems with the idea that Tachyon and Brother would just go away in the first place.
I understand that you guys are trying to smooth over the potholes we have here, but they're there. Let's just call that spade what it is.
immortal1 wrote:I don't have a tremendous problem with a retcon if it makes sense and especially if it explains away why huge plot elements and characters are gone. There's a subtle way to do it of course. This thing with the Watchers is confusing mostly because the Op vid used their symbol. Of course they could have done this to portray the Watchers as bad guys and cause Bree to mistrust them but what are they mutes? Why not just say they were here to protect her? Why do they dress like the Order?
Exactly. It doesn't fit at all. While I personally dislike retcons in principle alone, in this case there's more reason to dislike them.
immortal1 wrote: love Nikki B as much as the next guy but I can't take her account as fact unless the Creators confirm it. A "mystery informant" tells her things and to prove it gives her the address of the pharmaceutical warehouse? That's hardly privledged info- Daniel found it. Then one package she finds with a shipping label happens to be intended for the guy who kidnapped Bree? That's pretty convienent. What if that package with the shipping label was planted for her to find as was everything else in the room? Could Nikki B have been a pawn?
I suppose so. But a pawn of who and for what?
In case this discussion goes further and anyone becomes confused, I'd like to say now that I'm not trying to make the Creators feel bad about the inconsistencies. I'm just trying to point out that they're there.
I know we'd like to be able to find a way to smooth them out, but I really don't think we can. At least the fans can't. Things will just have to go from here with the good and the bad.
+1000 points for the Simpsons reference 