Retcon Proposal
Take a continuity failure the franchise never fixed, propose the repair, and account for everything the repair breaks.
Due: 3 May 2027 · Weight: 30%
The brief#
Take a continuity failure the franchise never fixed, and write the repair.
There are four repairs: the retcon, the soft reboot, the multiverse and the recast. Each one fixes something by breaking something else. When Thor: Ragnarok (2017) declared the gauntlet in Odin’s vault a fake, it fixed a contradiction with Avengers: Infinity War and cost Thor (2011) nothing but a prop. Most repairs are not that cheap. This proposal is marked mostly on whether you know what yours costs.
The failure can be the one from your Continuity Audit. It must still be broken. If the franchise has repaired it on screen, choose another.
What you submit#
A proposal of no more than 1,500 words, as a PDF, written as a memo to the franchise’s head of production. It covers, in order:
- The failure. Where it is, what class it is, and why it matters to the people who remember it.
- The repair. What happens on screen, and in which title, specific enough that a writer could draft the scene from it.
- The cost. What the repair breaks: the scenes that stop meaning what they meant, and the viewers who lose them.
- The alternatives. Why not the other three repairs.
Learning outcomes
This assessment tests:
- Design a repair (retcon, reboot, multiverse or recast) and argue what it costs.
- Diagnose a continuity failure in a shared universe: locate it, classify it, and trace the production decision that caused it.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- no more than 1,500 words, not counting the source list
- the failure has not been repaired on screen by the due date
- the repair is a retcon, a soft reboot, a multiverse or a recast
- at least two things the repair breaks are named, each with the scene or episode that stops working
- each of the other three repairs is considered and rejected, with a reason
How it is marked
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Diagnosis: the failure, located and classified | 20% |
| The repair: specific enough to film | 30% |
| The cost: what the repair breaks, and for whom | 35% |
| The alternatives: why not the other three repairs | 15% |