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Thinking too hard about fanfic again
Oct. 4th, 2009 09:44 pmThe ramblings below are going to be mostly about Cable and Deadpool/Marvel Comics, but if anyone who's completely unfamiliar with that fandom wants to throw in their two cents on broader canonical-accuracy-in-fanfic issues, please do join in. I'm in a discussion-y sort of mood.
With Let Slip the Dogs of War mostly done now (main story finished, epilogue two off to the beta reader) it's time to get working on the next idea that's sunk its little plot-snake fangs into me for this fandom. The only trouble with this particular idea is that it requires a lot of early scenes set in the early New Mutants/X-Force era – and that's a bit awkward, because outside of the Deadpool-related issues, I've read next to nothing from that part of the series, and only have a very vague understanding about who was around and what was going on. Since the whole idea depends on sending the timeline veering into AU territory I have leeway to fudge the details, but I'm not going to get very far without mentioning anything about the non-Cable-or-Deadpool characters and conflicts from around then. More importantly, I run the risk of putting off people who do know that part of the series well by getting things wrong.
Sure, most of the people likely to read it will probably be in the same boat as me – in it for C&DP, and interested in their earliest appearances mostly for backstory reasons, but I've been thrown out of fic myself before because a minor character I'd gotten myself attached to was acting wildly OOC. * I should be making at least a token effort not to make the same mistake.
So, yeah – in short, I'm stuck in that old fanfic question: just how well should you know canon before you can get away with writing about it?
( Ah, the joys of comic book fandom )
With Let Slip the Dogs of War mostly done now (main story finished, epilogue two off to the beta reader) it's time to get working on the next idea that's sunk its little plot-snake fangs into me for this fandom. The only trouble with this particular idea is that it requires a lot of early scenes set in the early New Mutants/X-Force era – and that's a bit awkward, because outside of the Deadpool-related issues, I've read next to nothing from that part of the series, and only have a very vague understanding about who was around and what was going on. Since the whole idea depends on sending the timeline veering into AU territory I have leeway to fudge the details, but I'm not going to get very far without mentioning anything about the non-Cable-or-Deadpool characters and conflicts from around then. More importantly, I run the risk of putting off people who do know that part of the series well by getting things wrong.
Sure, most of the people likely to read it will probably be in the same boat as me – in it for C&DP, and interested in their earliest appearances mostly for backstory reasons, but I've been thrown out of fic myself before because a minor character I'd gotten myself attached to was acting wildly OOC. * I should be making at least a token effort not to make the same mistake.
So, yeah – in short, I'm stuck in that old fanfic question: just how well should you know canon before you can get away with writing about it?
( Ah, the joys of comic book fandom )