#consistency issues

In writing, consistency means essentially keeping all the details consistent throughout the story. You have to write with a consistent vision. You have to erase anything that potentially can distract a viewer/reader. You have to remember the dumbest of details.

I’m sure we’ve all read a book where a name was misspelled by accident. That happens, it’s an annoyance, but we move on. Have you read stories where characters completely changed names or appearances halfway through the story? Lot more annoying because it’s no longer consistent with the first half of the book.

Prodigal Son right now is engaging in what I call “writers remorse.” They’re changing Malcolm’s characterization to fit their sudden idea of who his character needs to be this season and completely ignoring the areas where they established these parts of him in the first season. Example:

His tremor. In the current episode, Malcolm tells Dani:

Ignoring the piss-poor caption job here... 😂

We have a flashback from season 1 where we clearly see young Malcolm with that tremor:

That’s not years, it is weeks. Maybe months. Can we say he maybe didn’t recognize his tremors until he was older? Yes. However, the narrative implies differently. They’re saying years. It’s inconsistent characterization.

And no, Malcolm being an unreliable narrator doesn’t justify it.

Second point of inconsistency. All season 1, Malcolm is haunted by his fear of the girl in the box and what he might have done to her. He’s upset by his recalling he stabbed John Watkins in an act of self-defense. His stabbing of his father (contrived by Martin as a way to manipulate and control Malcolm as to help catch the Carousel Killer) torments him to the point he and Dani have a falling out over it.

But we get this (sorry, no video of this scene on YouTube for me to grab so I am linking to a blog with gifs):

So, Malcolm essentially plans out an entire act of revenge on a kid who bullied him at boarding school that almost kills the kid and is totally fine with it?

I don’t think so.

Inconsistent characterization.

If he was okay with essentially pushing a kid into an asthma attack and giving them their “empty” inhaler (okay, he “saved” him in the end but still), he’d have had no problem in shooting Endicott. He was justified in shooting Endicott. The man had a hand in his “girlfriend’s” (less girlfriend, more user, sorry) murder, in his father nearly being killed/sent to Rikers, his being framed for murder, murdering his lawyer, having Gil stabbed, and essentially assaulting his sister (to the point she snapped and killed him).

Yeah, Malcolm okay with almost murdering a bullying classmate is not tracking well here, and no, unreliable narrator doesn’t cover it. This is writer remorse. They had places they wanted to take Malcolm in season 1, reversed on them at some point, and are now trying to shoehorn those things in now as character development. It’s inconsistent. Can they still pull this together in the remaining ten episodes? Sure... but I’m not optimistic given the choices they have made so far.

Especially since the laziest writing of all was perpetrated in episode one by them having Malcolm chop up and dispose of Endicott. That is called jumping the shark. All suspensions of belief were basically ignored as they went with the safest and most predictable angle they could to explain the end of season 1 without having to revisit the missing elements from season 1 (thanks to the Whu Whu bug). Does it add drama? Sure. Is it good drama? Not really. I can think of a number of ways they could have gone with this that were as dramatic and built a story they could have worked into season 2.5 or 3 (depending on what happens in the next few months).

That statue in the repository... no one realizes it’s a spirit bound to or possessing an item?

Everyone’s just like, “Oh yeah, that statue talks. Weird, right?” And the Templars, are like, “Yeah, the mages talk to it sometimes. Whatever.”

Excuse me?! You are a Templar! That thing should have been reduced to a pile of rubble the moment it uttered a syllable. And if it couldn’t be destroyed, you would have locked it away and charged any mage talking to it with consorting with demons.

Sorry for the small text, here’s the original post. I thought it was interesting seeing how Larries attempt to explain their fake baby theories to people outside the fandom. I’m always super curious about how all the “I told my friend about Larry and they saw it immediately!!” stories because so much information has to be delivered in the proper order, otherwise the reaction is a combination of amusement and horror. (Was anyone converted to being a Larry after they started listening to stuffed bears and spending loads of time analyzing them? Because I am super curious what and when you were told about that!)

What stands out for me here is that 1DHQ selected Briana in 2014 and started preparing this stunt at least half a year in advance but supposedly couldn’t manage to consistently fake Briana’s bump. (Or maybe Larries have been lying about when pictures were taken and are apparently COMPLETELY stymied by what the color black and a front angle do to the appearance of a pregnant belly.) I’d seen them talk about it being wiped but I still sometimes naively assume they have a good reason for drawing the connections that they do, and figured the wipe wasn’t at least 5 months before Louis and Briana even met, before Zayn left the band, etc etc. If the pregnancy was NT as some think, this means Azoff has been involved for over a year now.

It’s sad because if you say this shit to someone who knows and trusts you, they aren’t going to say “are you sure his hand wasn’t just over his tattoos? because I know you guys are SUPER WEIRD about handling angles and lighting in photographs” or “oh, you’re sure Fizzy didn’t see one of the many fake accounts pretending to be Briana’s family?” They’re going to say “oh wow, they photoshopped a picture of him with his baby? why would they do that, how strange.” All of these are assumptions and lies, but when they say it confidently to people who don’t know about the situation or how much Larries twist facts, they have no reason to really doubt - except for how fucked up the whole concept is, of course. But even then, they’re presenting this as a reasonable method to stay in the closet and a lot of people don’t immediately question things that they’re told.

[x] Oh, verily. Literally asking Perez Hilton to out the people you claim to love and support. @thelarrative was just asked about the same thing and had more insights from the time. Apparently Larries pretended that Perez was like… I guess seeding? And then was going to be part of the outing? So he was 1D approved in this, therefore justifying their vocal interference and outing attempts.

Once you’re actually egging on Perez Hilton, that should be the sign that you’ve maybe gone a little too far. The ways Larries manage to justify their behavior - how many people has Perez hurt by forcing them out of the closet before they’re ready? Bringing him into the mix is really a reminder of how harmful all their behavior could be if Harry and Louis were genuinely closeted. 

And the way they justify it is with secret messages and their unfailing confidence that they’re right all the time. Have you seen them working on the nut tree mystery lately?? They know they’ve only ever been able to glean meaning from the bears after the fact. Secret messages are a terrible way to convey meaning. They know that there’s no way to be sure that those bears are from Harry and Louis, or that Louis wore a rainbow on his shirt to send a message to them. When you’re talking about digging into people’s private lives and trying to expose what you believe are very intimate secrets, that’s not enough to go on!