Are you claiming that plot twist is a retcon?
@Juxtapose
Well, then we’re at an impasse. I don’t see how either of us can put our argument over the other.
Its not me. Go look up the definition.
Depends on the retcon though, it’s kinda subjective. If the plot twist is that Raynor was a Xel’Naga the whole time, then it’s a retcon. Same with the Overmind being enslaved to a dark god and following his will the whole time.
Okay, well, it’s a very bad definition.
I’m not sure if the difference between plot twist and retcon is subjective; it doesn’t sit right with me. (The irony doesn’t escape me.)
Regardless, the kind of debate over word’s definition is a battle that I’m poorly equipped for.
Retroactive continuity is a very broad definition, any addition to a story after its first publication is by essence a retcon, Tychus for instance can be considered a retcon since he was not mentioned in Sc1 yet he apparently existed the whole time. We don’t call him a retcon because we commonly use retcon for additions that contradicts old material, which he doesn’t because Raynor’s past was irrelevant in Sc1 and nothing forbade him from having an old friend in jail. In short, retcon has 2 definitions : the formal one which includes the Tychus example, and the common one which doesn’t include Tychus and only concerns contradictions.
As for the whole retcon Vs Plot Twist, there’s a lot of overlap, but they aren’t the same : the former is an external process to the story while the latter is internal. Bruce Willis being a ghost all along in the Sixth Sense isn’t a retcon since there was no external addition to an already existing story : the story was built with that twist in mind. On the other hand, if you have, say, a blonde character in a story and then make her a brunette in the next one without explaining the change, it’s a retcon but not a plot twist unless the hair color was an important part of the story.
It’s not always easy to make the difference, but here’s a rule of thumb to help you :
If you see a plot twist, was it something the author had in mind from the inception of his story, and was the story built considering the eventual plot twist ?
If yes : It’s no retcon.
If no, it’s a retcon :
Does it make sense considering what you previously knew in the story ?
If yes : it’s a retcon only in the formal sense.
If no : it’s a retcon as we usually understand it, aka a contradiction.
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What Mar said. 
But I assumed it was obvious that I wasn’t talking about plot twists that were built into the story. Hopefully that didn’t actually need explaining.
Hopefully, one day, Blizzard Entertainment will better explain the ascension process!
It was obvious. It is just that my brain goes overclock at the word definition.
If we ever do the FAQ thread this one has to go in.
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Psionics are remarkable by general TERRAN standards, hence why both the Confederacy and the Dominion work hard to collect them for making Ghosts.
And you do understand that comparing Protoss to Terrans is like comparing tomatoes to pumpkins, right? Most, if not all, Protoss are psionic to some level, whereas in Terrans, it’s not as prevalent, with enhanced empathy being more prevalent than basic telepathy.
The point is Kerrigan is an extraordinary individual who COULD, by some plothole of epic proportions, can serve as the “purity of form” needed to tag on to Zerg’s Purity of Essence, seeing as how Zerg and Protoss DNA cannot comingle naturally.
I can tell you exactly why Kerrigan was chosen. She had the psychic power level of many many archons or high templars together. the PSI level is all that counts to the Xel’Naga, expecially when it is made of Void energy. When she got posessed by the Overmind, pure Void energy got into her. Protoss and Zerg are both psychic, terrans secretly even much more, but terran psychics have been executed by law. the whole psychic hokus pokus stuff got banned from humanity, and those who practiced it got hunted down by the force of state, as if they were hunting witches. Kerrigan was a human with such high PSI levels, the void simply couldn’t resist in posessing her. the Xel’Naga had to have her. human psychics are way too powerful and the Xel’Naga doesn’t want that, Kerrigan was only allowed because they mixed up the Void gene of zerg into her. Most creatues can’t stand that amount of Void energy in their bodies, even though very psychic, most of them get destroyed by it. Kerrigan has the potential to make the Void grow on inside her without being consumed completely by it, and that’s exactly the reason. She’s capable of channeling crazy amounts of Void energies. Ghosts are psychic terrans as well but if you check the story, Ghosts are being suppressed by their very suit to prevent them of using unauthorized psychic power. And they have been under the Ghost Programing since birth, being controlled by the state.
^-Not sure if post above me is a joke or serious.
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strictly lore what i’ve written above.
That’s a serious one. Actual trolls don’t make as many mistakes.
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so you rather accept what seems to you as “contradiction” and go on. and then, when people like me offer some way of understanding, all you can do is to play them down. even though you had no answer on your own to explain the events. Not adding any input at all, just saying that the event was nonsense. it’s the most lazy answer one could figure out in trying to understand something. you’re telling people to stop trying to understand and take the contradiction. many people who talk about blizzards lores often say that some parts of the stories are “nonsense” and just “made up quickly” or whatever. see thats it right there. you are no experts… not even smart if you ask me. just saying that it’s all nonsense doesn’t mean in any way that you’re right.
It’s the authors job to make the story make sense, not mine or yours to go through complex mental gymnastics and grasping at straws to try to justify a poorly written plot. Do that if you want, but it doesn’t make the writing any better. Not that your explanation really helps.
This is an outlandish statement for instance. Most people will stop reading right here. At best, she’s above Artanis or Zeratul going by the cinematics. The fact that she controls the swarm doesn’t make her a powerhouse though. Stukov controls a brood and he’s supposed to have no psychic powers.
Not to mention it’s dumb that a human (even supercharged by zerg) can even approach the most advanced psychic species in the galaxy. Makes it hard to take the story seriously.
When she got posessed by the Overmind, pure Void energy got into her.
Kerrigan doesn’t have void energy. Otherwise she wouldn’t have needed the dark templar to kill the Overmind for her in BW.
I’ll stop right there because you seem to like pulling uneducated guesses out of a hat and then acting like it all makes sense.
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first thing…
“In infested form, Stukov possessed/retained psionic abilities”
-starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Alexei_Stukov
Kerrigan is just much more psionic than stukov 
see you are no expert at all, but just throwing that stukov isn’t psionic. and that already reveals how much you don’t know yet, i mean the whole lore is about psionic powers xD so yea man… let’s say stukov isn’t psionic huh? defying all laws of physics in the sc lore 
second thing…
“She had the psionic power level of many many archons or high templars together” that’s just a supporting argument for the fact that she is the most psionic creature in midst the zerg, protoss and humans… and no surprise, it doesnt make sense to you. you say that most people would have stopped there reading on, but saying that is just lame and ignorant. to add on, terrans have a big history regarding psionic powers. psionic humans have been eradicated from the surface of earth, in the name of the UPL, who said that genetic alterations and mutations are a perversion of the divinity/purity of mankinds genepool. so they killed off 400 million psionic humans to pursue their philosophy. And their Ghost program of course, which is there to suppress and weaponize the psionic minds of humans. secretly and in truth, humanity is the most powerful psionic potential in the sc universe. Still the UPL didn’t want to embrace it, though they knew everything about psionic powers. The only reason for that is, that the UPL denied to serve the Void. They must have known about the Void and that humans can be psionicly possessed by it. This suggests that Kerrigan might have lost her soul to the Void. it’s the human gene in kerrigan which beared the potential of such high psionic powers, allowing her to be uplifted to Xel’Naga. maybe the UPL killed off those psionics to prevent them of being more and more possessed. to kinda save them. i’m pretty sure that’s their perspective. Not sure if it’s the right one though. but remember, raynor didn’t want her to be uplifted to Xel’Naga neither.
third thing…
blizzard doesn’t help very actively to make you understand the whole lore. they encourage us to find out things in the lore on our own. One guy once asked in the WoW forums how the Light exactly works when humans utilize it and he wanted a direct explanation from blizz. Blizzard answered and i quote “Without telling too much, it has to do with ones willpower.”
last thing…
kerrigan was bound to the source of the Void, since she has been infested by the Overmind, which was created by the “friendly” Xel’Naga itself. she was bound to their will by then and since now. once the Void got into her psionic mind, she DID become a powerhouse for the Xel’Naga. after the transformation, she wouldn’t necesseraly need the Overmind anymore. The Void in her would remain even when the Overmind died. How do you think does Kerrigan command the zerg to do things? Through the Void with her psionic mind of course. She couldn’t talk to the zerg if there was no Void in her. Same goes for Stukov. The epilogue even does explain some of this. saying that the first people of the Xel’Naga were powering up the very Void in their bodies, through their psionic minds. =utilizing the Essence of the Xel’Naga itself.
poorly written plot? xD if you don’t study or take seriously the lore, how then do you expect to understand anything?
Rule n°1 when discussing the lore : take anything from the wiki with a grain of salt, as it is a fan work, not an official source. And in this case they have no source about Stukov being psionic and merely speculating, since they assess that he could have retained Psionic powers from pre-infestation, which would make his position in the UED a big mystery since, as you mentioned, Psionic Humans were slaughtered on Earth and shouldn’t have risen this far into their ranks.
First of all, not all of those 400 millions people were psychics. There were also cybernatically enhanced people, hackers, criminals and dissidents among them.
Second, Earth population was around 23 billions at that time, which means that the purge killed 1.7% of the population, considering that not even all of them were psionics, that makes psychics humans a small minority on Earth even without the purge, compare this to the Protoss where even a Khalai worker has psionic powers.
Lastly, the psi power of those humans weren’t high, the best they could pull was telepathy, which on the psi index is a 5-6.
And even among the Koprulu Terrans, psi powers weren’t even high compared to the Protoss : Kerrigan, the most powerful human psychic to the point that they had to remake the psi scale for her, can blow the brain of 2 people when her powers are unleashed in a fit of rage. When a Protoss’s power is unleashed, they cause psionic storms all over the planet and their mere presence disturb over lifeforms to the point they have to train themselves into suppressing the disturbance, not to mention having developed a psychic link on their own that got the interest of Amon.
As Gradius told you, why would she need the help of the Nerazim to kill the Second Overmind if she had Void Powers ?
The Hivemind, aka a genetic trait shared by all Zergs and is barely if not related to the Void ? Ethan Stewart, a man described explicitely as not being a psychic, was able to command some Zergs after getting infested, on the other hand Nerazim and Tal’darim can’t command the Zergs despite being master users of the Void, and Ulrezaj, the most powerful Dark Archon ever, could only take control of a Zerg Brood by using modified Khaydarin crystals, a Xel’Naga creation that every X’N creation are sensible to by nature (The Conclave was able to understand Zerg directives with those crystals.)
ahah i can’t believe it. who sais that human psionic power can’t be suppressed without killing them? i dont even answer to your whole nonsense. i expected people in here to actually know the lore so i could exchange. but whatever. peace out
Which isn’t something I even remotely suggested, but whatever 
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it’s about the potential of PSI in humans, not the actual results on earth… how does kerrigan, a human get to be uplifted into higher form? you make mathematics here about 1.7% stuff of the populiation but this is no exact science here… you don’t know the full extends of the efforts they do to suppress human psionic power on earth. though you should know, since the ghost program and all.