Question to fic writers re inconvenient canon details/RL details

[rainsometimes]

This question is for anyone who's ever written a fic who happens to read this!

Have you, like me, ever found yourself taken in with an idea for a fic or a scene within a fic you really like, only to later remember that there's an inconvenient canon detail, or a RL detail that's relevant to canon, which will make the idea as you first pictured it impossible?

Did you manage to rework the fic or scene to fit better in with canon? Did you decide to disregard the small detail because it's not in the end all that important? Or did you give up on the idea entirely and wrote a different fic or another scene instead?

An example: Recently I've had an idea for a ficlet which would depict a quiet scene between two former enemies, sharing something of themselves and trying to get used to being on the same side now. Since they're both Japanese and since I love bath scenes, plus I wanted a kind of semi-intimate vulnerability involved, I wanted to put the scene in a public bath. That's how it arrived in my head. With a different setting, the atmosphere would also be different, and it wouldn't feel like the same idea anymore.

But then I remembered that one of the characters was recently shot in the stomach in canon not long before when this scene would take place. These are ridiculously strong shonen characters who heal very fast, so if I wanted to I could probably get away with not mentioning the wound at all. But unfortunately that wound is relevant to their characterization and where the plot has taken them. In a scene where they're undressed, it would feel remiss of me not to mention it... but that means the wounded character wouldn't take a bath at all, especially not one shared with other people.

So I will either have to shelve that idea entirely or find a way to rework it, however I decide to do that. Unless I will disregard that canon fact after all and hope nobody notices.

What kind of experiences do you have with this?

Comments

[naye]

Set it in the sauna of a public bath? Nice and warm and intimate without being wet!

(And oh yah this happens a lot. Especially with canon. Where to set things: It should be before this... But after that... But then thing X hasn't happens yet and I want it to have - and Y will have happened and that's a huge complication! And then I get stuck and shake a writerly fist.)

[rainsometimes]

Hmm, that might just work! I didn't think of saunas at all. But since it's Gintama I'm free to make it as modern as I want to, or not!

Canon points are so hard. For all those reasons you're saying (why did Y have to happen?? why? and why couldn't X happen earlier, that would make things easier!), but also sometimes because the canon doesn't give you enough time to put a fic in.

Back when I wrote One Piece fics on the regular so many of them took place in that same one week where they travel from Thriller Bark to Sabaody, and pretty much none of the few fics I've set post-timeskip could really have taken place where I vaguely placed them, because Oda is mean to fic writers and doesn't give them enough time margins to work with between arcs.

[naye]

Sauna conversations are canon, too! :D

Ugh the time margin between One Piece arcs - I know! A constant struggle, that. Mild AU/unspecified time I think is my way around it. (The benefit of a closed canon is you can just set things then!)

[rainsometimes]

God, I totally forgot! And Gintoki and Hijikata had that huge fight in the sauna when they were locked in and didn't even realize, too! :D

Yes, you just have to sometimes lean around the lack of time margins. Some fans do insist that all the cover page art is canon and the Strawhats really do find time between arcs to hang out with random animals and random islands, even if the whole Log Pose set-up and canon time details don't seem to allow for that...

[kalloway]

Definitely happens. Sometimes I just acknowledge that this couldn't happen 'in canon' because X-reason, but the idea was persistent.

I suppose I second the sauna idea or have the other character comment on how quickly/well the other has healed up in such a short time.

[rainsometimes]

You've never abandoned an idea entirely for the sake of a pesky detail? Or managed to avoid having to rework it extensively? Then I salute and congratulate you!

But I've done that kind of thing, too - mentioned in the author's notes that there's a detail that doesn't quite fit, so I ask the reader to be indulgent and pretend it's fine. :D

Oh, that kind of comment might work, too! Especially since the character who comments could be a little surface-annoyed by that kind of super-fast healing.

[kalloway]

I'm sure I have, but nothing comes immediately to mind. Though I'm also 100% sure I have stuff sitting in my WiP folder that, if I ever get back to it, will either need some extensive tweaking or a big 'I started this before we knew Spoiler From Season Three so I know this is impossible but I liked the idea'. (It's fanfiction. There really are no rules.)

I'm way more likely to realize, three thousand words in, that a story is rambling and not quite feeling right because I've come at it from the wrong direction-- either wrong POV, wrong starting point, wrong set-up, etc. But when I realize that's happened it's usually easy to find the right direction and things work out.

[silverr]

"but that means the wounded character wouldn't take a bath at all, especially not one shared with other people."

Any possibility that the wounded one could dip out a small basin of water and do a washup with that?

In general: Unless I'm writing crack or humor, I like the challenge of staying canon-compliant, so aggravating details of the type you describe are usually a thrown gauntlet to my ingenuity.

[rainsometimes]

Oh, he can wash himself, no problem! But he can't stretch out in a hot public bath next to the other character. Unless I decide he's healed very fast indeed.

I might put them in a sauna instead like Naye suggested, though...

That sounds like a good attitude to have. Are there any past gauntlets like that you'd like to share?

[silverr]

Two of the fandoms I've written for, Saint Seiya and Warcraft, had bits of canon or lore that were either contradictory or just plain ... implausible? I guess you could say. (In the case of Saint Seiya, part of it was bad translation as well.) Both also had some degree of retcon, as older canons were superseded by new material.

Most of the time when there are contradictory or implausible details, I try to figure out a way to combine or reconcile them if I can, especially if I can do so by using "canon spackle."

For example, in WoW, canonically, an undead army lead by a knight of Death (Arthas) invades a forest with the intent of using a sacred magical well in a necromantic ritual. Arthas' path north to the capital city that housed the well seared a "Dead Scar" into the land from his entry point.

Older canon says that Arthas killed Sylvanas (the Ranger-General defending the forest and the city) where she and her forces made their last stand, where the Dead Scar terminated at the gates of the city.

Newer canon, however, placed a necklace belonging to Sylvanas at the southern end of the Dead Scar and quite a distance west of it, on the upper floor of a building called Windrunner Spire. As the Spire is currently inhabited by the spirits of Sylvanas' slain ranger "sisters," it can be inferred that she (and they) died there.

I couldn't accept this newer canon for multiple reasons: primarily because there is no evidence at all that Arthas took a side trip to the Spire. (Of course his army might have, but I wasn't buying that she died at the beginning of the invasion, killed by underlings in such an out of the way place, as if she'd been hiding!)

(And anyhow, an even NEWER piece of canonical material (that came out while I was still working on later chapters of my novel) puts Sylvanas' defeat back outside the walls of the city, thus retconning the retcon!)

Anyhow, to explain the necklace's presence I had my characters — who are moving through the forest in the wake of Arthas' invasion — find the necklace on the path of the Dead Scar. They assume — plausibly, I think — that it could have been lost in one of her initial skirmishes with Arthas and his forces. One of my characters then leaves the necklace at the Spire after they learn of Sylvanas' fate.

In Saint Seiya, the leader of an elite fighting force of "good guys" — who always wears a masked helm — turns out to have gone evil. this was variously explained as a) he's the reincarnation of Ares, b) he's been displaced by his "evil twin," or c) who knows, he just went off for no apparent reason and managed to remain undetected for years. :p I resolved this snarl by giving the "good" twin DID, with the third entity contributing all the nastiness, and even causing the "good" twin to see his brother as the source of the evil.

I guess the tl:dr; version is, when I have a sticking point, my initial response is almost always to ask, "Is there any other way to explain this?" and if there's an apparent contradiction I ask, "Is there any way it could be both?"

[rainsometimes]

Those sound like reasonable and creative solutions to thorny canonical questions! I'm glad you were able to come past the obstacles.

[kalloway]

I resolved this snarl by giving the "good" twin DID, with the third entity contributing all the nastiness, and even causing the "good" twin to see his brother as the source of the evil.

Yeah, I generally use the original manga canon too. Most of the confusion came from Toei not knowing too much of the plot ahead of time so the anime rambles, has filler, and then tries to retcon all over the place to cover its tracks.

[silverr]

Was that the deal with the "possessed by Ares" thing?

[kalloway]

There's absolutely nothing like that/no Ares in the original manga, just like Shion isn't in the original anime because nobody knew about him yet.

Here is an older explanation of the anime's fuckery and attempts to retcon. But yeah, everything with Ares comes from the animators/writers/etc. not knowing the big spoiler and then trying to mash it all together to make sense. They did a really awkward job and each attempt to tetris it all together just got worse. (and then, nicely, the Hades OVAs ignored a ton of the weird stuff and played it straight, she says, even though she likes quite a bit of the filler and will happily keep the Crystal Saint somehow if possible)

As for what happens in Saintia Sho, it's almost a lampshade on what happened with the anime.

[silverr]

Yowza, I hadn't known most of that — thanks for the link!

(The Ares thing must have made some sense to someone at some point — "There's already the goddess Athena! and Hades! Ares could totally be there!")

[kalloway]

(Oh likely! I mean, the movies must've made sense to someone at some point too! And we got beer saints for our troubles!)