Krypto-revisionism

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Krypto-revisionism is a concept created and named by writers Steven Grant and Mark Evanier, and describes the rejection by the audience of a storyline, concept, plot, or idea in an ongoing series.

1 Origin of the term
2 Use
3 See also
4 References

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Origin of the term

Steven Grant explained the origin of the term on a message posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.comics.dc.universe on February 14, 1998:

"I was over at Mark's for lunch one day during my Los Angeles years, and we were discussing the then-rampant trend for writers to come onto a book and in some story twist suddenly declare part or all of the previous continuity invalidated. (The 'everything you know about _____________ is wrong' syndrome.) Specifically we were discussing the John Byrne reboot of Superman. He referred to it as 'revisionism,' as in historical revisionism, the reinterpretation of past events from other than canonical points of view, and I named it 'Krypto-revisionism,' as a pun on the concept [of] crypto-revisionism."

Mark Evanier elaborates upon the concept by stating that in his own "personal DC Universe," Krypto the Super-dog is still alive. He just isn't being written into stories any more – he's off in space having adventures without Superboy. This concept was put into the fictional DC Universe during the crossover The Kingdom where writers Mark Waid and Grant Morrison proposed that the continuity of the DC universe was more elastic than had previously thought, and all previous stories had actually happened, but weren't referred to any longer because they happened when another universe connected with the main DC Universe. They called this construct hypertime, and expected it to be used to explain all so-called continuity errors.

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Use

This concept can be crucial in order to enjoy a fictitious universe with numerous authors. Most such universes contain many internal contradictions, and Krypto-Revisionism provides a means of resolving them to the satisfaction of the audience member in question. It allows the fan to construct a personal version of the fictional universe in question that is more to their liking.

DC Comics. With the continuity-altering aspects of the series Infinite Crisis (sequel to DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths), many readers refuse to accept that the DC Multiverse no longer exists; some also refuse to accept Infinite Crisis or its predecessor as canon at all.

Star Trek. Fans of the Star Trek shared universe may choose to reject any episode that does not fit in with their view of said universe. This is not to say that the viewer denies the episode's existence, but rather mentally sets aside any facts stated in the episode. A prime example would be many of the episodes from the first three seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, which many fans chose to ignore; another frequently ignored chapter is Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. In Star Trek: Voyager, the episode Fury, which undoes the happy ending given to Kes when she left the series, infuriated many fans, so many choose to ignore the events depicted therein.

Highlander. Another example of this would be the Highlander movie franchise. Many people chose to ignore the second movie because they believed it turned everything laid out in the first movie on its ear, just to make a quick buck. The makers of the third Highlander movie practiced their own form of Krypto-revisionism and continued the franchise in the vein of the first movie, choosing to disregard the whole plot of Highlander 2.

Star Wars. Yet another example would be the absolute refusal of many Star Wars fans to acknowledge George Lucas's Special Edition revision of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope that considered Greedo to have fired his weapon first in his confrontation with Han Solo in the Mos Eisley Cantina. In the theatrical release of the film, Han Solo shot first; the order was changed in the Special Edition VHS and laserdisc releases, and the changed order was kept in the DVD release, however, in the DVD, the scene has been slightly altered so that they shoot at the same time. See Han Shot First for more details. To a larger extent due to the lengthy duration between 1983's Return of the Jedi and 1999's The Phantom Menace, many had their own ideas of Episodes I-III and chose to ignore the actual films produced between 1999 and 2005 as if they did not exist.

The Matrix. Perhaps one of the most cited recent cases of rejection from informed fans comes from The Matrix franchise. Many spectators found the idea that the Matrix was a power generator made of human bodies ludicrous, and decided that the real reason for the Matrix to exist was that humans were used as computing nodes.

Robotech. In the pre-reboot Robotech universe, many fans choose to ignore the Robotech novel The End of the Circle by Jack McKinney (actually the writing team of James Luceno and the late Brian Daley). This novel was to serve as a final ending for the Robotech Saga. Many were unsatisfied with what they conceived as McKinney's hastily-conceived closure to the saga, shallow plot, and overcrowded cast cramming together all three generations of Robotech Defenders in one final adventure. Thus, writers of later comic book stories set after the departure of the Invid at the end of the series chose to keep the fate of Admiral Rick Hunter and the Robotech Expeditionary Force an unsolved mystery. There is also a significant portion of the anime fan community that rejects the entirety of Robotech altogether, considering the merging of three unrelated series, and the rewriting necessary to achieve this, to be abhorent.Template:Citation needed

Doctor Who. There is considerable discussion within in the Doctor Who fan community as to how to reconcile the original series, the original novel series (Virgin Books' New Adventures and Missing Adventures, for example), the Big Finish audio adventures, the TV movie, and the new series. Virgin's contract with the BBC stipulated that the New Adventures were a direct continuation of the original series, but they also aimed to take full advantage of their status as a literary spinoff rather than merely pastiching the TV style. Consequently fans with more conservative expectations of spinoff fiction felt they ranged too far from that mandate. When the Eighth Doctor Adventures began, there was only a small attempt made to avoid conflicting with the earlier original novels. The audio series initially existed in a complementary (or at least non-contradictory) milieu with the novels but the 2003 play Zagreus explicitly established they take place in a separate sub-continuity and references to the books were rejigged by references in later plays. A similar situation had arisen in the relationship between the books and the ongoing comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine in the mid-1990s. The retroactive rewriting of book-references in audio plays such as Terror Firma (2005) has felt by some to be at best awkward, at worst tortuous. Some fans feel that the new series (in particular, the Time War) has rendered both the audios and novels null and void as far as canon is concerned, or at best placed those earlier stories in an alternate universe. However, the new series' back story includes a Time War that at times resembles a simplified version of one seen intermittently in the books (1997-2000), both involving the destruction of the Doctor's home planet, Gallifrey. Series executive producer Russell T. Davies also alludes to the events of the books, comics and audios in fictive histories for Doctor Who Annual 2006 (2005), suggesting that he does not automatically exclude these, though - for various reasons - there are no references to these in the new series proper. Davies himself wrote the 1996 New Adventure Damaged Goods and several other new series writers, including Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Robert Shearman and Matthew Jones are veterans of the book or audio series. Cornell was reputedly instructed to give his episode (Father's Day, 2005) a 'New Adventures feel'. The biggest problem for Doctor Who continuity is not, in fact, these spinoffs but the American-made television movie, whose continuation 'innovations' have been variously adopted or ignored and - in the light of the critical and ratings success of the new series - has been dismissed by some fans as a negligible footnote in Doctor Who's history. Lance Parkin's book AHistory includes several essays which attempt to reconcile apparent contradictions between the different media. See also canon (fiction)#Doctor Who.