Talk:The Big Blow-Out!/@comment-4783859-20171115205000/@comment-4783859-20171117011345

Well where does inconsistency start for you? A lot of tv shows did it. e.g. Charmed, Heroes Lost and even the sitcom Friends used various soap opera elements during the final seasons which changed the narrative. Some fans approved of those changes and some didn't. Even famous videogames like Life is Strange and The Last of Us pretty much turned on themselves during the last arcs of the game.

About the time travel: I wasn't trying to imply that there were no "no rules" in time travel (in fact I think there are so many rules that probably only a few people can lay down all rules about time-traveling) what I was trying to imply is that it doesn't have such basic rules like horror movies, or werewolves and vampires. Each story has a different use of time travel and it's functions. It's not a "right or wrong" thing. When me and my auther collective tried to introduce time travel into our novel we pretty wasted 4 hours trying to define the rules and played out several possibillites to make sure that everything adds up. And I have to disagree with you I think time travel actually makes sense (as much as it would) in the MA arc. Yes Renet is from the future and she implies that the future seems to be indeed bright for our heroes. However what makes us so sure, given how she and turtle travel through time and change events after events, that everything from her future stays the same? From what we know she could have screwed everything up just by meeting the turtles and talking to them. Maybe she unintentionally influenced the turtles with certain actions and words of wisdom that changes some of their actions in the future, which lead to the scenario that we have in MA. It's a typical trope for time travelers to return to their own timeline and discover and everything turned to the worse and a common rule is that with every interaction in the past the future could change completely. And I'm honestly thinking that this was the authors intention when they came up with the MA arc. It actually makes me think of a prime example in the videogame Life is Strange: At a certain point you need to intervene in the past and hide a certain object. That leads to saving one persons life but at the same time a different persons ends up in a wheelchair and her destiny is changed for the ever. Even the main characters life was influenced by this decision. And that's the thing: Once you intervene in the past, facts and common events of your timeline change completely, so what keeps us from thinking that Renet's actions changed future into what we have in MA? Now imagine if Renet would have actually (in theory!!!) snapped and killed one of the turtles. Well that would have been an interesting future, right? If those big events are making sure that the future changes then why not the little, unnoticed changes as well? And I know I'm talking about the butterfly effect again but you just can't leave it out, I'm sorry, you just can't. It's like talking about movieplots without talking about the 3-act-structure, it simply doesn't make sense. Another example: In the TV-Show Charmed the time-travel actually becomes a common theme. And each time the main characters travel into the future we see a completely different future. At a certain point a time traveler from the future arrives to warn the main characters about a great threat (hmm... sound familiar?) and they change the future multiple times by killing of certain demons. Even though the time traveler has a certain idea of what his future is like he is still aware of the fact it will completely change due to his interactions and letting the main character know that he is from the future, which actually happend. Once again I see a lot of similarities to Renet and her arc. They explain it in a way that, the future is not really a place but rather an always changing timeline, due to your choices and affects in life, that stops to change once you enter it. And that's my overall perception of time travel and if I apply it on several tv shows/movies/games it actually makes a lot of sense and I also think it would make sense Renet's idea of the future changes under those conditions.

I agree that the writing (pretty much the writing of all the S5 arcs) does not live up to S1 and S2 standards and there are actually bunch of things I dislike about the MA arc but I honestly think that it still fits the best as a way to end the show due to the given reasons that I already mentioned. And just because we sometimes don't agree with certain decisions that the author makes or do not understand his intentions doesn't mean it equals bad writing. Calling everything that you dislike bad writing is a little bit too easy don't you think? Not saying that anybody is wrong (after all I support freedom of expression ;) but sometimes we should try to see things from a different perspective to not get disappointed too much.

I still disagree with you on the female characters thing though. At this point we've seen The turtles, April and Casey party so many times after great victories that I'm actually glad we don't see a cliché hollywood ending with everybody alive and making an appearence just for the sake of being there, because we have seen it sooo many times by now.