History Fanfic / TheNewRetcons

-->'''Elly:''' "I've come too far, been made to give up too much not to recieve some sort of compensation for the pain."

** Anthony’s [[Liliteral-mindedness and bluntness constantly get him in hot water with people.

** Gavin is cold and distant to Anthony, treating him like a child instead of an adult. He also refused to get his son help for his Asperger’s Syndrome, resulting in Anthony’s NoSocialSkills.

** According to WordOfGod, Connie is this to Lawrence because [[spoiler: she tried to give him to family members when he was born like she did with her first son. But they refused to take in a biracial child.]]

* ExplainExplainOhCrap: Happens to Anthony as he puts two and two together that [[spoiler:His father murdered his mother and covered it up.]]

* WeddingEnhancedFertility: Elizabeth comes back from her honeymoon pregnant. [[spoiler: It isn't Anthony's.]]

The result was ''The New Retcons'', an interactive story that took on a life of its own as various authors assumed the personas of the characters of ComicStrip/ForBetterOrForWorse, and made them more than just plot devices, hindrances, and caricatures. They made them ''people'', with as many flaws as normal people have.

* AccidentalMurder: When [[spoiler: Connie]] is discovered to be the one involved with Elly’s death, they claim that Elly tripped and fell down the basement stairs. [[spoiler: She lied. Connie pushed Elly down the stairs in rage after Elly rejected her AnguishedDeclarationofLove.]]

* AmbiguousDisorder: ''Not'' Robin, who's eventually diagnosed as autistic, or even Elly, who was eventually diagnosed with being under a fugue state, but Anthony. [[spoiler: Word Of God is that he has undiagnosed Asperger's-undiagnosed because his obsession with numbers suited Gavin's needs just fine.]]

* CreatorBreakdown: Michael goes through one after [[spoiler:both Elly’s death and the realization that she may have never really loved him.]] It’s years until he snaps out of it.
* CruelMercy: Simply put, it was not worth the court's time to prosecute John for attacking Elly. Thanks to SelfServingMemory, though, he thought he beat the legal system.
** It proved effective as it led to his HeelRealization.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Jim acknowledges he screwed up in [[spoiler:sending Elly away to give birth and put the baby up for adoption]] but said that was the norm at the time, a view Iris backed up.
** Elly admits that she never actually ''wanted'' kids and clearly never should have been a mother, but due to social expectations, she ended up having them.
* DisproportionateRetribution: Gavin opposed investigating whether Millborough being built over a former nuclear site had an effect on its citizens. And why? To get back at Anthony through Tracey and Gordon, first for going to work for them instead of him, then for opposing his expansion plans because they were outdated.

* DysfunctionalFamily[=/=]DysfunctionJunction: Hoo boy, is it ever.

* FatalFlaw: Anthony’s literal mindness and bluntness constantly get him in hot water with people.
** Elizabeth’s fear of commitment and settling down, which damages her marriage to Anthony.

* FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo: Michael Patterson finds out from John that [[spoiler: he’s not his biological son. His real father is Elly’s first husband, Stan Watson. He was conceived as an attempt by Elly to keep Stan from traveling. It didn’t work and he left shortly after Michael’s birth. John married Elly when he was a toddler and Elly pretended that Stan never existed after that, lying to him that Michael hated him. This makes his sisters Elizabeth and April Michael’s half sisters and Stan the biological grandfather of Meredith and Robin.]]
** [[spoiler: According to Word of God, one of Lawrence’s cousins is actually his half brother. Connie had a Teen Pregnancy and sent him to live with relatives. She met Elly at the same mother and baby home when the latter was pregnant with Claire.]]
* ForeShadowing: When Elizabeth returns from her honeymoon with Anthony pregnant, Elly reacts with delight that she managed to "catch" him, much to Elizabeth’s confusion. [[spoiler: Turns out, that’s how Michael came about - she pulled TheBabyTrap on Stan.]]

* FreudianExcuse: Elly's hatred of motorcycles stemmed from being rejected by a man that rode one. [[spoiler:That man was Frank Day, Elly's one time fling and the biological father of Claire.]] She also became a NeatFreak [[spoiler:to cope with her own feelings of dirtiness after her grandmother called her unclean for having a child out of wedlock, a feeling made worse after her first marriage ended.]]

* GlorifiedSpermDonor: Wilf regarded ''both'' Elly and John as this, with regards to April.

* GoldDigger: [[spoiler:What Frank and Stan both believed Elly to be, with some of TheBabyTrap thrown in for good measure for Stan.]]

* HeelRealization: A couple of months after Elly is committed John realizes what he's done and who he is. Because of this he tends to stay away from everyone as he knows he would just make things worse.
** While not quite being a Heel by any means Anthony gets something like this when he realizes all the crap he's done to Elizabeth.
* HiddenDepths: According to one of her letters, Mira is a Trekkie.

* HypocriticalHumor[=/=]{{Irony}}:

* LukeIAmYourFather: [[spoiler:Elly is Claire's biological mother.]]

* MarriageOfConvenience: What Elly and John’s relationship essentially is: John only married Elly because he needed a wife and no other woman could stand his sexist behaviors and Elly [[spoiler:was scared to be a single mother after Stan divorced her.]] While there’s some implication that they grew to love or at least tolerate each other, [[spoiler: John had been long cheating on her by the time Elly died.]]
** [[spoiler: By the story’s end, Elizabeth and Anthony have become this, but they’re more stable than John and Elly.]]

* NeverMyFault: A favorite of the Patterson bunch, especially Elly, who is keen on blaming April for letting Farley and Sera loose when she and Connie never bothered to spay and neuter them, then when confronted over the gate accuses April of dredging up the past.
** And this is probably one of the things Connie enabled her on, seeing as she was the same way: blame John for Elly getting better and trying to make amends (or as she sees it, turning Elly against her), [[spoiler: Claire]] for seeking out Elly, and Liz for Lawrence's homosexuality, since she believes CureYourGays works.

* PsychoLesbian: [[spoiler:Connie.]]

* ReleasedToElsewhere: Elly tried to pull the 'sent the pet to a farm' variant on April to explain what happened to an aging and ill Dixie. April was ''pissed''. Not so much because of the lie, but because Elly decided to get rid of her because tending to Dixie was "too much work", even though April was the one tending to her and Dixie was getting better.
** Later on as Elly fell deeper into her madness she said that she would flip a coin and that Edgar would go to a 'farm' if it came up heads. When Meredith asks what would happen if it landed tails she was told that Meredith would be the one going to the 'farm'.
* RescueRomance: [[spoiler:Invoked by Elly to get Anthony and Elizabeth together.]]

* ResentfulGuardian: According to WordOfGod, Connie is this to Lawrence because [[spoiler: she tried to give him to family members when he was born like she did with her first son. But they refused to take in a biracial child.]]

* SarcasmBlind: One of Anthony's failings; he takes sarcasm at face-value.

* ShoutOut: Meredith's toy tiger Roary is based on [[ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes Hobbes]].
** Meredith sees Roary as her [[Literature/HisDarkMaterials daemon]].

* ThereAreNoTherapists: Inverted. There ''are'' therapists. John just refuses to seek them out for Elly until he's no longer given a choice in the matter.

* TheUnfavourite: April, so damn much. She's at best ignored, and at worst effectively disowned, when John gave up on convincing Elly she was their daughter. Here's a good indicator of this status: only Michael and Phil attended her high school graduation. While two people had good excuses (Liz was in Vancouver dealing with her own family crisis and Jim was on his last legs), that does ''not'' excuse her parents (Elly still denied that April was her daughter, and John just couldn't be bothered).

-->'''Liz:'''[[spoiler: "Said "friend" was a forty year old (she'd just turned the big four-oh April the first) woman named Claire Thompson; when Anthony said she could be my sister, Frank said that was for a good reason: she was!!"]]
-->'''Michael:'''[[spoiler: "On the way back, our house sitter called with the news that the Patels filed kidnapping charges on my mother."]]
-->'''Deanna:''' "Mike and I have tried to fight this out, cry it out, pray it out. Saturday, he moved out."
-->"Valley Voice Exclusive: Elly Patterson Found Dead"
-->'''Brad:''' [[spoiler:"Seal it up. [The Caine house] is now a full on crime scene.]]

* WickedStepmother: Step-family, more like. Once Elizabeth got pregnant, it was like Francoise didn't exist to the Pattersons. Elly even called her 'someone else's castoff'. Only April showed her decency until Elizabeth got a wake-up call by seeing how unhinged Elly got. Then she started behaving more like a mother.
** [[spoiler:John becomes this to Michael when he reveals he's not Michael's biological father.]]

* WomanScorned: [[spoiler:Connie killed Elly because she did not love her back.]]
** [[spoiler: DeathByWomanScorned]]

* TheUnReveal: [[spoiler:It’s never revealed if Elizabeth and Anthony ever decide to tell James and Warren Blackwood about each other.]]

** The story in general: After Elly’s funeral and the fight, the Pattersons break up and rarely speak to each other. [[spoiler: Connie spends a few years in prison, but doesn’t really learn anything from the experience, being a PoisonousFriend to Kortney while Lawrence disowns her. However, Kortney is manipulating her and all of Milborough; acting like she is a town leader and naive single mother while buying the town out and absorbing it into Greater Scarborough.]] But Michael, Elizabeth and April do rebuild their lives and slowly become better people for it.

* PoisonousFriend: Connie. [[spoiler:She was behind a lot of Elly’s actions in her life, such as trapping Stan Watson into a pregnancy.]]

* AbusiveParents: Towards the end, Elly admits that she was one, especially to April. But she plans to reconcile and start over. [[spoiler:she dies before she can really do so, but does make peace with Claire.]]
** Gavin towards Anthony, even in adulthood.

* AccidentalMurder: [[spoiler: Connie]] claims Elly's death was this, as a result of Elly tripping. [[spoiler: She lied.]]
** Elizabeth and Clarice theorized that [[spoiler: Hanneke's murder by Gavin was this. He was more the type to wait until she cheated so he could stiff her on alimony and child support, not murder]]

* AwfulTruth: Elly [[spoiler:had a daughter when she was a teenager and gave her up for adoption.]] Note that while April and Elizabeth were rather accepting of this, Michael and John did ''not'' take it well.

* BittersweetEnding: Michael and Deanna eventually find happiness. It's just not with each other.
** Elizabeth and Anthony decide to stay together and start over, but it’s heavily implied that they’re mostly doing it for the sake of the kids. This leans ''heavily'' into the bitter end of the trope when you realize this makes them [[HistoryRepeats a younger version of Elly and John]].
** The story in general: After Elly’s funeral and the fight, the Pattersons break up and rarely speak to each other. [[spoiler: Connie spends a few years in prison, but doesn’t really learn anything from the experience, being a PoisonousFriend to Kortney while Lawrence disowns her. However, Kortney is manipulating her and all of Milborough while buying the town out and absorbing it into Greater Scarborough.]] But Michael, Elizabeth and April do rebuild their lives and slowly become better people for it.

* BrokenPedestal: Anthony comes to realize that John's not an ideal father figure after all.
** April’s admiration of Jim sours after [[spoiler:learning about Claire and what Jim and Marian did when Elizabeth got pregnant.]]
* BrutalHonesty: One of Anthony's bad points, such as when he told [[spoiler: Frank Day and]] Francoise and James that Elly was dead.
* BungledSuicide: [[spoiler:Michael.]]

* ForeShadowing: When Elizabeth returns from her honeymoon with Anthony pregnant, Elly reacts with delight that she managed to "catch" him, much to Elizabeth’s confusion. [[spoiler: Turns out, that’s how Michael came about-she pulled TheBabyTrap on Stan.]]

* StayInTheKitchen: John’s attitude towards women can be summed up as this, alongside seeing them as damsels in distress. It’s especially prevalent in why his relationship with his college girlfriend Sylvia ended: he told her that she would have to drop out of her master’s program and become a housewife because “it wouldn’t look right for her to work”. Elly and [[spoiler:Kortney]] were the only women who would put up with John, the former because she [[spoiler:feared being a single mother after Stan left]] and the latter because she [[spoiler:was a GoldDigger]].

** Later on as Elly fell deeper into her madness she said that she would flip a coin and that Edgar would go to a 'farm' if it came up heads. When Francoise asks what would happen if it landed tails she was told that Francoise would be the one going to the 'farm'.

** Elizabeth and Anthony decide to stay together and start over, but it’s heavily implied that they’re mostly doing it for the sake of the kids.

** The ending implies that [[Warren Blackwood becomes one to James.]]

* JerkassHasAPoint: While [[spoiler:Fiona]] was clearly using Elly to take some of John’s money, she is right that none of her family came to visit her in the mental hospital and that the Pattersons barely visited her despite both being John’s cousin and living in Milborough. And she makes better progress in her recovery with [[spoiler:Fiona]] than in the hospital.