Picture one line in a game from 1998. A guard says: this kingdom has never had a king. Nobody thought about it. Twenty years later a writer wants a story about the old king. The line is still there. It was a promise, and nobody meant to make it.
A fact is shown→It is now a promise→The next story must keep it
People call the keeping of those promises continuity. The word just means the facts of one story carry on into the next. Who is alive. Who is whose child. Which city burned. Every fact a story shows is a promise the next story must keep, or be caught breaking.
Three things about a game. Tap the one that is a promise the next game must keep.
Tap the part of the picture that answers it.
A characterdied on screen
++
The boxwas blue
++
The makingtook three years
A character died on screen
Right. A death is a fact inside the story. If the next game shows that person alive and well, every player who saw the death will ask how.
The box was blue
Not yet. The colour of the box is a fact about the shop, not the story. The next game can come in a red box and no promise is broken.
The making took three years
Not yet. How long a game took to make is a fact about the company. It says nothing about who is alive inside the story.
Ash, 1997ten years old
↓→
Ash, 2023still ten
Most promises are made by accident: a date on a letter, an age in a manual. A few are kept on purpose for decades. In the Pokémon anime, Ash Ketchum was ten in 1997 and still ten when his story ended in 2023, after 26 years and about 1,230 episodes. The show never let a year pass.
Put in order how a small fact becomes a tangle.
Tap them in the order they happen, first to last. Each tap gets a number.
Shown→Promised→Forgotten→Contradicted→Noticed
Right. Shown, promised, forgotten, contradicted, noticed. The gap in the middle is where the tangle grows: the promise outlives the people who made it.
to 1966First actor
↓→
from 1966Second actor
↓→
by 2024Fifteen Doctors
A promise can also be made on purpose, to free the hands that come later. In 1966 Doctor Who's lead actor was leaving. The writers had the Doctor's body change into a new one, with the memories kept. Now any actor could take the part. A promise, written into the story, that the lead would change.
Picture a story where each new part shows about thirty facts. Move how many parts have been told and watch the promises pile up. Made up to show the shape.
Parts1 made up
Promises to keep30 made up
Parts told: 1 part
One part: thirty facts, thirty promises. The writer remembers all of them.
Parts5 made up
Promises to keep150 made up
Parts told: 5 parts
Five parts: 150 promises. One head still remembers most of them.
Parts10 made up
Promises to keep300 made up
Parts told: 10 parts
Ten parts: 300 promises. Most were made by people who have left.
Parts20 made up
Promises to keep600 made up
Parts told: 20 parts
Twenty parts: 600 promises. Nobody alive on the team made the early ones.
Parts40 made up
Promises to keep1,200 made up
Parts told: 40 parts
Forty parts: 1,200 promises. The newest writer inherits all of them, from a list if there is one.
How many promises does the writer of part 41 inherit?
Only the promises the writer happens to remember.
Not yet. What the writer remembers is what the writer will keep. The rest are still promises, and breaking one you forgot is still breaking it.
Thirty promises, the ones in the last part.
Not yet. The last part's thirty are the newest, not the only ones. A promise from part one is still a promise; the readers who saw it are still around.
About 1,200 promises, most made by people who have left.
Right. Thirty a part, forty parts. The pile does not shrink when people leave; only the memory of it does.
Move the control.
One new fact
vsvs
Every old factmust agree
A tall pile is only half the trouble. Promises do not sit side by side. They must agree with each other, and a new fact has to fit every old one, not just the last. The next lesson counts what that does to the pile.
Earlier gameshe walked through it
vsvs
New gamedestroyed before her birth
An earlier game showed the hero walking through her home town as a child. A new game says the town was destroyed before she was born. What has happened?
It only counts as a contradiction if the owner says so.
Not yet. The owner decides what is on the list, not whether two things on the list agree. Both games are on it, and they disagree.
A promise has been broken. Players who know both games will notice, and the writers will have to explain it or hope nobody asks.
Right. Two facts that cannot both be true, both on screen. Chapter 3 is about the ways a franchise explains it away.
No problem. Each game stands alone.
Not yet. They share a hero and a name, and the new one is sold as her story. The childhood walk is a promise the new game just broke.
Lesson complete
Every fact a story shows is a promise. The next story must keep it, or be caught breaking it.