Wow, a top science school? I think you said you lived in the US so if it’s not too rude, may I ask which one?

I do, but to be clear, I don’t actually work in science! But I get to see a lot of top research and work with top experts in their fields, and it’s absolutely awesome. 

It’s not rude to ask! But I might decline to say publicly. Which is probably stupid of me because I know I’ve posted my face here and mentioned the city I live in before, so. 

Do you think it’s fair to call a character like Kenny Ackerman a Psychopath or suffering from Psychopathy? He displays several of the common symptoms and wanted to become like Uri so he could feel like him.

I don’t. It’s actually kinda one of my pet peeves: people misunderstanding psychopathy or sociopathy and throwing around the term casually, without realizing that the term is outdated and is a way of spreading fear about a very real and very sad personality disorder. The medical term is antisocial personality disorder, and it’s a very complicated diagnosis to make that requires a degree on behalf of the diagnoser and interaction and observation of behaviors, all of which are impossible to make in relation to a fictional character. 

It’s different to talk about how characters are coded a certain way–for example, in Tokyo Ghoul Kaneki is clearly coded as suffering depression, and Mutsuki with a dissociative illness, and in Star Wars Kylo Ren is coded as mentally ill–but you can’t actually diagnose a character like Kenny or any of them, especially with complicated illnesses like personality disorders. I do think Kenny displays traits of such a disorder, but I wouldn’t say he’s got antisocial personality disorder. 

I also get uncomfortable because usually such fictional diagnoses are then used to condemn the character, and to condemn fans for feeling empathy for such characters, which is really quite ablest. To be diagnosed with a mental illness a patient must undergo evaluations by trained experts, and personality disorders like Antisocial Personality Disorder, are extremely complex and really need careful evaluation.  

What counts as plot holes and/or retcons? People commonly use these words to throw criticism at shows and stories but a lot of the time, they come off as being buzzwords. So how can you tell if something is one of the two and not just an unexplained part of the narrative.

So since literature is by its nature subjective, the definition thereof changes. Retcon is deliberately going back on something previously stated about the work,–like, for example, “it was all a dream” as a plot twist so that nothing that happened then matters, etc. Or for a famous example, making Luke and Leia twins in Star Wars when they were initially set up as love interests (Luke was always intended to have a twin, but it wasn’t intended to be Leia). 

A plot hole is something that an author should explain but does not, and if you think about it, the story doesn’t make sense. Like again in Star Wars (which I love and shout THE FORCE in response to because #ohwell, I don’t enjoy being critical about the OT) when Leia says she remembers her mother, but her mother died in childbirth. That’s also kind of a retcon because Padme was written after. So yeah. 

I do think people overuse the terms and not everything needs to be spoonfed to a reader/viewer, but if you’re contradicting yourself as a writer, you have to explain yourself in general, or else it’ll just come across as one of these. It is your job to help the reader connect the dots even if it’s not to hold their hand, and if the dots aren’t connecting–that’s a sign it’s one of these.