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crazysamaritan MOD Since: Apr, 2010
2018-02-04 08:00:18

Sounds like Trailers Always Lie to me.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
cricri3007 Since: Jul, 2014
2018-02-04 08:13:19

They didn't tell she was a pro only before the game came out, even afterward. As I said, the Game Director said she was a pro not even a month ago, well into the game's second year of existence.

NubianSatyress Since: Mar, 2016
2018-02-04 08:15:02

This isn’t the first time Blizzard has “revealed” new details about their canon that contradicted old info.

At this point, their ability to deny the past like some kind of Orwellian Retcon is downright creepy.

Edit: In fact, I think that’s the trope right there.

Edited by NubianSatyress
cricri3007 Since: Jul, 2014
2018-02-04 09:04:02

So it does qualify as a retcon? HA!

Thank you.

crazysamaritan MOD Since: Apr, 2010
2018-02-04 09:31:23

Your description, "a month before the reveal", sounds like the addition of D.va to the characters available for play. If the character was released with a certain backstory in the game, and they are changing the backstory available in the game, that would be a retcon.

Advertising doesn't count as information available within the game.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
cricri3007 Since: Jul, 2014
2018-02-04 09:33:08

I should have precised. a month before Chu wrote that twitter".

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
2018-02-04 11:06:46

From the description, it seems a majority of the stuff declaring d.va a Starcraft player is all meta, not in game. I don't recall if her official backstory ever specified what game(s) she was pro in, just that she was a pro. Honestly, to me it seems all that's really there that's truly valid is the conflicting developer statements, so I'd call it Flip-Flop of God

Edited by sgamer82
number9robotic (Experienced Trainee)
2018-02-04 21:49:26

cricri, I wrote a gigantic writeup in the Discussion page explaining the reasoning as to why I considered it not a retcon, and you just straightup ignore almost the entirety of it; you have never even acknowledged any of its existence nor have attempted to refute/rebut any of the context that led me to call this not a retcon, and you have not mentioned any of it in this post before deciding to change it without letting me know.

> I just don't understand how you can acknowledge that they talked about her as a Starcraft player for years, but then not admit it's a retcon when they suddenly say that she actually wasn't pro starcraft player.

Do I have to post this relevant thing here again?

She originally had that Starcraft profile that was just meant to be a fun teaser through an already-established format in said profiles, and because it was relevant to her status as a gamer, not specifically as a pro Starcraft player. He even admits this was probably a slightly misleading idea in hindsight, but still, if you look at every even archived versions of D.Va's profile, it has always only simply listed her as "Pro Gamer (Formerly)", with nothing more specific, with the idea that "she was most known and specialized in a game with a skillset that was closer mapped to the skills that she (and the other MEKA pilots) utilized while piloting their mechs", and it seems that this was always intended to be the case by the whole writing team.

> interview with Jeff Kaplan himself calling her a "Starcraft pro"

The issue I take with this is 1) Jeff Kaplan is not Michael Chu, and 2) Jeff Kaplan is also not infallible in regards to the lore and has made minor lore mistakes in the past. If we're getting down to really specific details like that, Jeff repeatedly calls Bastion by "he"/"him pronouns" despite multiple verifications by Michael Chu that it's genderless and is referred to as "it" in the official bio and even in-universe in the comics.

Slip-ups happen, and so do sustained misconceptions even among the same team within the same company, and the writers behind things like that Starcraft 2 post (which I ALSO directly linked that says the same thing as that screencap [and the link's still perfectly functional for me btw]) are also not infallible, especially since it was likely written by a member of a separate team whose only real connection is working within the same company, writing about a character he doesn't have the full understandings of from what's effectively an entirely separate game.

A Retcon is when something previously established has been retroactively rewritten and actively changed. Like I said, though, this technically was previously-established, albeit ambiguously, mainly by listing her as a "Pro Gamer", and as stated by Chu, it was meant to be taken of a game that's not Starcraft, which in no way contradicts this official, unchanged description.

While there is a fairly reasonable explanation as to why people jumped to the idea that "D.Va is specifically a pro Starcraft player" and why that stuck — it just makes a lot of sense — and people, some even within Blizzard itself didn't get the memo about this really specific detail, that does not make this revelation "retroactive continuity", because it doesn't change anything officially pre-established in the fiction by the main people behind writing it; this was simply an error by official sources within the same team (or in one broad case, one general company) used to describe it (that's what the Cowboy BeBop at His Computer pothole was for), but weren't consequential.

Stop leaving vital context out for discussions; at least PM me before you start giving the wrong information to people outside the fandom who know exactly what's going on, then congratulating yourself when they agree with you when you only present your side of the argument.

There is no Flip-Flop of God or Orwellian Retcon going on here (the accusations of the lore team gaslighting fans is absolutely bogus, all my sources have remained unaltered); this was always intended. It was vaguely communicated (but in fact was communicated) and birthed an assumption most people took as fact, an assumption other members of Blizzard (some not even from the game itself) fell victim to, but against a giant wall of other evidence that you've willfully chosen to leave out in this place, it's very clear that it was an internal communication error that counts more as Cowboy BeBop at His Computer, but one that contradicts nothing, especially when we're talking about the actual lore team. It is not a retcon.

Edited by number9robotic Thanks for playing Kings Quest V!
Chabal2 Since: Jan, 2010
2018-02-04 22:42:47

Could be Armed with Canon if different info is provided by different writers.

number9robotic (Experienced Trainee)
2018-02-04 22:47:49

Except it's not a matter of disputes between different writers. The lore team has been very consistent with D.Va not specifically being a Starcraft pro in-game and out; the only "official" sources that claim she is, according to cricri, are Jeff Kaplan — who is the game's creative director, not the writer (who's made similarly minor and ultimately trivial lore slipups in the past) — and that page on the Starcraft 2 announcement page... which was written by people probably only within the same company, not even in the same team. Neither of them have anywhere near as much final say in the lore as the actual lore team and lead writer Michael Chu.

Thanks for playing Kings Quest V!
cricri3007 Since: Jul, 2014
2018-02-05 00:30:29

Considering Chu took more than two years to clarify that, it still needs to be written under a trope or another.

Also, I'm pretty sure she was called astarcraft pro at different panels.

Also also, while we're at it, should the fact that winston's graduation picture isn't canon be mentionned as well?

number9robotic (Experienced Trainee)
2018-02-05 00:53:35

The thing is that it's such an ultimately minor detail (like, D.Va is still a pro gamer who uses her skills to pilot a Mini-Mecha) and there are so many people out there writing/saying things about her that it's completely within the realm of possibility that Chu and most of the team didn't notice these incidents for them to correct. Hell, I (and I bet a majority of people out there) weren't even aware of those two confirmed cases (any citations for those "different panels" claim, by the way? These are the only two major instances I can think of, and still none of them come from the actual lore team) before this mess.

Also, no. I wrote that thing down as just a Word of God trivia, I'm not here to discuss the nature of that scene.

Thanks for playing Kings Quest V!
cricri3007 Since: Jul, 2014
2018-02-05 00:55:27

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OypMqQIbeGE At around the 21 minute mark.

Also, I meant, under which trope should the fact that winston's graduation picture isn't canon be?

Edited by cricri3007
number9robotic (Experienced Trainee)
2018-02-05 01:04:15

Hm, got me there. I'd probably argue a bit more that in that moment, he was just leaning more towards Starcraft, and as pointed out in the Battle.net post, "D.Va is absolutely a world champion professional gamer which was what got her recruited into MEKA in the first place. However her best game wasn't Star Craft (which was what I was attempting to clarify)," so if we're bringing Exact Words into play in the same way this whole mess started, maybe he was only saying she played it sometimes on top of being a world champion at unspecified games? I dunno.

That said, even if that one instance is contradictory, it's still only one instance. The rest of the official lore presented, however, has been pretty consistently vague as to what game she's a pro in, and I'm still firmly led to believe it was always intended to not be Starcraft, and nothing has directly been contradicted/retconned.

Also, no, I'm not gonna discuss that Winston picture bit, because that's not what I'm here for. Sort that out with someone else if you feel the need to.

Edited by number9robotic Thanks for playing Kings Quest V!
cricri3007 Since: Jul, 2014
2018-02-05 02:39:51

so, in which section should that go?

crazysamaritan MOD Since: Apr, 2010
2018-02-05 07:08:42

"Official Lore" is really "what is in the game".

Beyond that, we have All There in the Manual and Advertising.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
number9robotic (Experienced Trainee)
2018-02-05 10:10:34

To me, it's in the place where I originally put it: In the Trivia page as Word of God.

Thanks for playing Kings Quest V!
cricri3007 Since: Jul, 2014
2018-02-05 10:36:34

As I said, it's a retcon for me.

NubianSatyress Since: Mar, 2016
2018-02-05 11:19:02

Personally, I think it qualifies as Flip-Flop of God.

We can't really prove that they DIDN'T intend for her to be a SC player, but we CAN prove that there was a disconnect between Michael Chu and Jeff Kaplan's understanding.

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
2018-02-05 11:24:26

Honestly it never for a moment occurred to be that D.va's pro game was Starcraft. At most I might have figured an In-Universe equivalent, but even then my mind went to fps games rather than rts.

I second Flip-Flop of God, at most, if only because, on skimming all this, all the main evidence for d.va playing Starcraft seems to be either meta rather than In-Universe or All There in the Manual, and the contradictions come from people who have made slip ups before, though who are in the creative team.

Also, I wonder if this hasn't reached the point it should go to the discussion page at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/remarks.php?trope=Characters.OverwatchTank

Edited by sgamer82
number9robotic (Experienced Trainee)
2018-02-05 12:31:05

Me and cricri have been already kinda discussing this in the discussion page for Trivia, but at this point, honestly I think I'm more inclined to just settling on calling this a Flip-Flop of God. Gonna wait for cricri for his input before adding it, though.

Edited by number9robotic Thanks for playing Kings Quest V!
cricri3007 Since: Jul, 2014
2018-02-05 23:36:24

Flip-Flop of God sounds good, let's go with it.

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