I am way overthinking this... (Kaleidoscope manifesto)

[shimotsuki]

...but it's so ironic that the Remus biography was released just as I've been making a push to seriously finish Kaleidoscope. As much fun as it was to get more background information, it has shut down my fanfic brain just as effectively as DH did until I decided to write them a new ending. ;)

Seriously, what's hard about this is I've always prided myself on being strictly canon-compliant (except for that pesky death thing), and now by definition Kaleidoscope can't be -- I've got too many specific details in there that we now know aren't what JKR imagined for them.

So I think to get over the writer's block problem, I just need to make myself some new ground rules for finishing Kaleidoscope. Here goes: For anything that happened before Remus makes his first appearance in canon, I will hew to the new information from the bio. So this includes Remus's childhood, parents' names and histories, and so on. (I do have to assume that Lyall dies prior to OotP, but I don't think the bio explicitly contradicts this.) But from the time-frame of PoA onward, Kaleidoscope is compliant with book-canon only.

I think I can work with this. And venting about it here has already made me feel better. ;)
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Comments

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

I have been tempted to orchestrate a campaign of "search and replace" through my existing fics to change 'Theodore' to 'Edward,' for example.

Oh, I can relate!

But I second alias_amy's suggestion that canon is the seven books.

That's certainly true; I've always prioritized book-canon over interview-canon (or, heaven forbid, movie-canon, lol).

But I cried (a bunch) reading Kaleidoscope; I didn't cry reading the Lupin bio.

Awwwwww. I really, really appreciate the encouragement.

If anything, I was struck by how much Kaleidoscope is in line with Rowling's ideas. It made me think, huh, you've intuited a lot about these characters from details she provided. And that's cool.

Thanks for that, too. As much as I love reading lighthearted Remus, or Remus/Tonks, set during OotP -- and that scenario does make for fun and fantastic stories, and is not in the least incompatible with the stated details of book-canon -- I see Remus as too closed and controlled and too used to relying only on himself for him to embark on flirtation or a relationship lightly. He does have a resilient sense of humor, and he does deal with all the crap in his life with a surprising amount of grace (at least until HBP?), but I think it would be like pulling teeth to get him to admit that he was in love. So yeah, I'm a little bit pleased that my version of how the relationship would have progressed seems to be a close match for what JKR had in mind.