six DIY loopholes
Oct. 31st, 2021 06:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marcicatSometimes I want to write fanfic for NaNoWriMo and the source material is just... not cooperating with what I want the backstory / world building / canon events to be. (Hahaha what are timelines???) As a reminder for myself, here are my top six strategies for getting around those sticky subjects.
1. Ignore canon and pretend it didn't happen. (A classic!)
2. They were lying. (So, if someone says a thing can only happen after, just a random example, 100,000 years, and that would just be Super Inconvenient for the story, maybe they're lying. It happens!)
2a. The corollary: they were lying because they thought someone might be spying on them and they were trying to throw them off. A MYSTERY!
3. They were guessing / making it up. (Having done teaching, retail, and customer service, there is a LOT of stuff I've said that was 80% guessing, 20% hoping no one questioned it.)
4. The "it was all a dream" thing. Which is basically unreliable narrator, right? The POV character thinks they know what happened, but WHOOPS it turns out they were wrong. It was a dream, or a spell, or they were sick, or something. Maybe they don't even know what! How convenient!
5. The conventional wisdom that "everyone knows" is being manipulated by someone for some purpose. (Maybe just because it's funny! Or a misunderstanding! Not everything is a conspiracy. But sometimes it is!)
6. Whatever the canon equivalent of SGA's 'Ancient artifact' is. Inexplicable, impossible to predict, and extremely useful to finagle out of (or into) just about any situation.
1. Ignore canon and pretend it didn't happen. (A classic!)
2. They were lying. (So, if someone says a thing can only happen after, just a random example, 100,000 years, and that would just be Super Inconvenient for the story, maybe they're lying. It happens!)
2a. The corollary: they were lying because they thought someone might be spying on them and they were trying to throw them off. A MYSTERY!
3. They were guessing / making it up. (Having done teaching, retail, and customer service, there is a LOT of stuff I've said that was 80% guessing, 20% hoping no one questioned it.)
4. The "it was all a dream" thing. Which is basically unreliable narrator, right? The POV character thinks they know what happened, but WHOOPS it turns out they were wrong. It was a dream, or a spell, or they were sick, or something. Maybe they don't even know what! How convenient!
5. The conventional wisdom that "everyone knows" is being manipulated by someone for some purpose. (Maybe just because it's funny! Or a misunderstanding! Not everything is a conspiracy. But sometimes it is!)
6. Whatever the canon equivalent of SGA's 'Ancient artifact' is. Inexplicable, impossible to predict, and extremely useful to finagle out of (or into) just about any situation.
