If we’re going to dive into actual discussion and analysis, though, let’s get that cleared up: literally no one who hates the retcon thinks the GO cast’s selling point was their misery.

We spent literal years with these characters, both IRL years and in-story years. We watched them grow up, mature, and struggle. The narrative openly acknowledged that they had major, MAJOR issues getting in their way. The fans who miss these characters so bad wanted to see them overcome those issues. We wanted them to crawl out of their misery, wrestle through their flaws, and stand triumphant at the end.

Instead, they died. All that misery never gets closure. It just fades into obscurity, forever denied any chance at a happy ending.

In their place, we get characters whose journeys we skip. We get characters who should have the same issues to overcome as before, yet apparently they solved them off-screen, still denying us any closure or triumph. (“Show; don’t tell” is a rule of thumb for a reason.) At least, we have to assume they’ve been solved, because the story sure doesn’t acknowledge them as a problem anymore.

Except those solutions don’t add up. Because Vriska slapped a bottle out of Rose’s hand, that means Rose worked out the problems that CAUSED her drinking? Who did Rose even talk to about her self-esteem and “I was a terrible daughter” issues? How was this actually solved? Why does canon never bother to address this?

Even if we give the retconned timeline the benefit of the doubt and assume that the meteor crew had some genuine character growth that we just never witnessed, when did Jane have time to confront the fact she threatened to rape Jake while under the tiaratop’s influence? When did Jake and Dirk have a chance to make amends after their breakup? When did John confront the fact that his “father” is a stranger and the sister he spent three years with is still dead?

Am I supposed to just assume they solved all of these painful, fragile, stressful subjects off-screen in the short period between Collide and Act 7? Because it seems far more likely that the narrative just swept it all under the rug and slapped a bunch of unearned smiles and hugs on everyone.

Frankly, after punting character epiphanies off-screen this consistently, canon does not deserve the benefit of the doubt.