(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

You guys, I am not going to lie. Chapter twenty-two of The Dead Isle is posted, and this chapter and the one I'll post tomorrow just plain make me happy. For the purely shallow reason that the prison scenes and signed-confession scene are some of my favourite work I've ever done.

It's been interesting going these last few chapters, because I know they hold a lot of emotional impact for some readers, and a few have been remarking about the difference in themselves between the last time they read the book and this time. I've noticed it in myself too (more on this will be posted at Extribulum next Tuesday) so I'm fascinated that I'm not alone in this. Dead Isle was written years ago, and unlike the other books I've done this with there's been a huge, significant time gap between original posting and the rewrite post.

The other really cool thing is that I realised I am MAKING CANON. ataralas offered the idea that Sylvia Bell and Elizabeth Jackson eventually meet and become kickass Suffragettes at some future date, and I was like "I like that idea I DECLARE IT CANON" and I could do that.

It's not even headcanon! It's actual facts canon, because I say so.

Guys, as a Maker of Canon, I am giving you my solemn oath, right here, right now: I promise never to kill the geeky well-dressed sidekick.

For the record I am also totally cool with fanfic. Just, you know. In case you were wondering.

Comments

[sanura.livejournal.com]

O Canon Maker, thanks indeed. I worry so for the geeky well-dressed sidekicks, because I've been burned before (as have we all).

[harkpad02.livejournal.com]

Two things:

1. (insert name of famous writer/director lots of us nerds love) should not be allowed to make decisions about the fate of characters. Great writer, good director, but he should not be allowed. So thank you for promising not to kill the sidekick.

2. I am totally going to write Dead Isle fanfic. I promise not to kill anyone.

You know, 'cause I was worried if you were cool with it.....

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Aw, write away! Have fun with it :D

[justice-turtle.livejournal.com]

MAKING CANON IS THE MOST AWESOME THING. :D

(I do not put my canon up anywhere except f-locked posts yet, because 1: I rewrite ve-ry slow-ly in little out-of-order snippets and 2: I am a coward. But it is amazing to be the person in charge of saying "yes, this is how it is" - and also very, very scary. Yes. Because... this is something I have been thinking for a while now, I hope you don't mind if I meta a bit in your journal:

...because as a Maker of Canon, I have a responsibility to make the canon right. I have to keep sort of a contract with my characters: "I will not make you slipshod and two-dimensional. If I send you into the dark valley, I will walk through it with you, and we will both come out the other side or I will stay in it and write your adventures there. And I will never bend your personal character arc out of shape to use it as a lever on somebody else's." Because if I do any part of it wrong - especially if that's because I was sloppy or lazy or scared of where it was going - I have permanently damaged the shape of a world and of people's lives. My readers can fanfic at it, if they care to, but they can't change the Actual Facts Canon. [Although my beta can if she is cogent at me hard enough, and that is why betas are God. *g*]

And because stories at their best are a way that people see themselves and grow to new things, it doesn't matter that the people I've directly messed up are fictional: the existence of that twisted, shoddy, cheap section of (we're assuming) a largely engaging world is going to mess up any readers who get invested in those characters and that world. To some extent; depending of course on how important the messed-up part was to the whole story and to the readers.)

...that may be the longest parenthetical I've ever remembered to close. XD

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there is a responsibility to make GOOD canon, definitely, but I can't help rolling around in the power a little :D

[eldarwannabe.livejournal.com]

Sam, you're an author (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author). You can declare canon all you want, but if you don't actually put it in the text, the readers are totally free to look at you skeptically, shrug, and write smut instead. (Or write analytical essays. Whatevs.)

Although it's nice that we'll never have to create a massive amount of fix-it for the geeky well-dressed sidekick.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Well, that's going to happen even if I DO put it in the canon :D I'm not fussed if people don't listen to canon, lord knows I don't, but it's just nice to know that if I make a decision about something, I don't have to call it headcanon or fanon -- it's just CANON. :D

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

Sam is not Joss Whedon. Making a note of that.

[eandh99.livejournal.com]

that writer/director has given an interview in which he confesses that fridging is pretty much the only technique he's got for motivating character movement.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

It's not even just him. It's happened multiple times in multiple media. It's more like the sidekick is there to be fridged because writers get lazy.

[tjs-whatnot.livejournal.com]

For the record I am also totally cool with fanfic. Just, you know. In case you were wondering.

askldfjas;ldfj

I was actually wondering... for a different story, but still...

♥

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

Guys, as a Maker of Canon, I am giving you my solemn oath, right here, right now: I promise never to kill the geeky well-dressed sidekick.

I LOL'd and LOL'd over this. Then I may have wept a little.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

As the geeky well*-dressed sidekick in a number of people's lives, I salute you.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I think well-dressed is apt! :)