Valiants unfinished threads

[Shadowman99]

i know they are way bigger, just saying that valiant tries better than those 2 to have tight continuity. But a hickup or two are bound to happen

I agree with Herc here: Sure, by all rights the VU is small enough that loose ends probably didn't really ought to occur in the first place, but I think we need to chill with unresolved plots to some degree because at the end of the day none of us are sitting in the VEI creative offices and don't therefore know what the gameplan is. It's easy to say that VEI have 'forgotten' this or that plot thread or character, and this may well be the case at times, but for all we know VEI might just be brainstorming the next big appearance of the Bleeding Monk or Sandria Darque (etc.) as we speak. Gotta remember that VEI seem pretty fond of sowing plot seeds to return to in the future: I mean Dead Hand on Mars, you think that's not going to be resolved at some point in the future? Things we perceive as 'loose ends' may well be 'plot seeds' in the eyes of VEI creative

I think it pays to remember that writers only have a set amount of page space in which to tell a story every month and I don't think there's a single person here who'd argue that the overall plot should suffer for the sake of tying up some weird little loose end here or there simply because of limited page space - as long as the main story gets told well that's the main thing right? So the electric woman alien from Armour Hunters is cruising around out there in the internet somewhere checking out your browser history and judging you, so what? She can stay there until there's some sensible reason to bring her back into a new story. The thing to remember is that VEI have to keep the universe moving forwards: it wouldn't do them any good to waste resources on tying up loose ends here or there, years after the initial event occurred, because it's not really going to achieve anything in the long run. I respect someone's suggestion to show Gin-Gr dropping off Quartz and electric woman alien on another planet somewhere to have effectively brushed them under the rug once and for all, but what does that *really* achieve? On the other hand, Valiant now have two 'wild card' characters waiting in the wings that could potentially reappear to cause any manner of chaos at some point in the future - surely that's a more exciting prospect than officially discarding the characters simply to tie up a loose end? And that's the main thing isn't it: it only makes sense to resolve these loose plot ends now when it makes sense within the context of a new story. There's potential that when a character reappears the interim period could be addressed and explained over a page or two within a new story and there's your problem solved - but reintroducing characters for a page or two before killing them off just for the sake of tightening continuity won't impress anybody when it comes to it

I guess it makes sense when reading this to keep in mind that my opinion probably differs from more 'hardcore' fans on the board here and that I'm probably seeing things in a different way, no harm in that really. To me the main thing is that VEI continue to move the universe and its characters forward in the most exciting way that they can. The way I see it, if leaving the odd B-rank enemy character (or whoever) in some undetermined limbo is the way to most effectively progress a comic then I'm fully in support of that. If the Bleeding Monk had no place in 'Imperium' for example then what sensible reason is there to shoehorn him into the comic just so that readers know he's 'not been forgotten'? Reintroducing some old character just for the sake of explaining what eventually happened to it, years after it last appeared in a comic, just isn't that important to me. I'd rather see how mainstay characters continue to develop into the future.

And hey, if old characters reappear again in the future meaningfully within the context of a new story, then great

[grendeljd]

i know they are way bigger, just saying that valiant tries better than those 2 to have tight continuity. But a hickup or two are bound to happen

I agree with Herc here: Sure, by all rights the VU is small enough that loose ends probably didn't really ought to occur in the first place, but I think we need to chill with unresolved plots to some degree because at the end of the day none of us are sitting in the VEI creative offices and don't therefore know what the gameplan is. It's easy to say that VEI have 'forgotten' this or that plot thread or character, and this may well be the case at times, but for all we know VEI might just be brainstorming the next big appearance of the Bleeding Monk or Sandria Darque (etc.) as we speak. Gotta remember that VEI seem pretty fond of sowing plot seeds to return to in the future: I mean Dead Hand on Mars, you think that's not going to be resolved at some point in the future? Things we perceive as 'loose ends' may well be 'plot seeds' in the eyes of VEI creative

I think it pays to remember that writers only have a set amount of page space in which to tell a story every month and I don't think there's a single person here who'd argue that the overall plot should suffer for the sake of tying up some weird little loose end here or there simply because of limited page space - as long as the main story gets told well that's the main thing right? So the electric woman alien from Armour Hunters is cruising around out there in the internet somewhere checking out your browser history and judging you, so what? She can stay there until there's some sensible reason to bring her back into a new story. The thing to remember is that VEI have to keep the universe moving forwards: it wouldn't do them any good to waste resources on tying up loose ends here or there, years after the initial event occurred, because it's not really going to achieve anything in the long run. I respect someone's suggestion to show Gin-Gr dropping off Quartz and electric woman alien on another planet somewhere to have effectively brushed them under the rug once and for all, but what does that *really* achieve? On the other hand, Valiant now have two 'wild card' characters waiting in the wings that could potentially reappear to cause any manner of chaos at some point in the future - surely that's a more exciting prospect than officially discarding the characters simply to tie up a loose end? And that's the main thing isn't it: it only makes sense to resolve these loose plot ends now when it makes sense within the context of a new story. There's potential that when a character reappears the interim period could be addressed and explained over a page or two within a new story and there's your problem solved - but reintroducing characters for a page or two before killing them off just for the sake of tightening continuity won't impress anybody when it comes to it

I guess it makes sense when reading this to keep in mind that my opinion probably differs from more 'hardcore' fans on the board here and that I'm probably seeing things in a different way, no harm in that really. To me the main thing is that VEI continue to move the universe and its characters forward in the most exciting way that they can. The way I see it, if leaving the odd B-rank enemy character (or whoever) in some undetermined limbo is the way to most effectively progress a comic then I'm fully in support of that. If the Bleeding Monk had no place in 'Imperium' for example then what sensible reason is there to shoehorn him into the comic just so that readers know he's 'not been forgotten'? Reintroducing some old character just for the sake of explaining what eventually happened to it, years after it last appeared in a comic, just isn't that important to me. I'd rather see how mainstay characters continue to develop into the future.

And hey, if old characters reappear again in the future meaningfully within the context of a new story, then great

Well said, and I basically agree with both of you - it's probably a case of the occasional "swept under the carpet" (seems to be the case with the Houses concept in EW), the odd "forgot to pick up that thread" combined with "haven't had time to pick it back up in the publishing schedule", and finally - best of all, too - it's largely a case of leaving plot seeds for future stories.

I think the timing of it makes it seem frustrating for some - they're small, so they're only publishing so many titles per month & juggling what titles are active throughout each year, so plenty of things we want to see just take longer to get back to.

It's only unfortunate when something that was really cool gets left dangling for too long, worse still if one writers good themes & ideas don't get picked up by the next one to handle a title.

But for the most part, I think unresolved stories/characters/ideas are all ultimately seeds for the future to be picked up. And most shared universes have this issue to some extent regardless of the size of the company/publishing schedule.