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

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Obviously late comment is late.

First, as far as Lyall is concerned, my impression from the bio was actually not so much that he'd necessarily passed, but that he and Remus had a strained relationship, between some self-blame on Lyall's part and Remus just wanting to move forward from the past and only let people in so much. But it doesn't say for sure that he's alive, so having him be deceased works as well.

Backtracking...


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.

It's been a long time since I've dabbled in R/T verse - oddly reading the bio made me want to dabble again, that and re-reading PoA - but the bio pretty much threw my Remus backstory out the window, although some of it wasn't as canon compliant as I'd wanted it to be anyway. But there's still some things I just don't... like about the backstory, things I never liked in R/T fics and was disappointed to see become canon. (That is, if backstory can be considered canon in the same way as the books.) I guess I'm trying to find the middle ground in this case by staying true to the canon universe, but... tweaking things so the story fits better. Does that make sense?

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

First, as far as Lyall is concerned, my impression from the bio was actually not so much that he'd necessarily passed,

Right, I read it that way, too. But the bio also didn't, as I recall, state straight out that Lyall was still alive in the canon years. So it's easy enough for me to go on working with a Remus backstory where his parents died before PoA.

But there's still some things I just don't... like about the backstory, things I never liked in R/T fics and was disappointed to see become canon.

That's interesting -- I almost had the opposite reaction, because the backstory was pretty much in line with the way I've always seen the characters' personalities. My problem was things like, for example, I'd written the scene where Remus found out that Tonks loved him, only it wasn't on the roof of a Death Eater's house. And I'd written the "quiet wedding," but I'd used Molly and Arthur as witnesses rather than the strangers from a wizarding pub in Scotland. That sort of thing.

(That is, if backstory can be considered canon in the same way as the books.) I guess I'm trying to find the middle ground in this case by staying true to the canon universe, but... tweaking things so the story fits better. Does that make sense?

Makes lots of sense. I don't think backstory has the same status as book canon. And, frankly, since we're all writing fanfic for fun, I think ultimately we should get to set whatever rules for ourselves are most conducive to fun!