Akoochemoya
- Thread starter Ragitsu
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There are some fanfiction readers who insist that everything be canon-compliant.
Then there are those of us who enjoy the AU stories (alternate universe, aka "what if the story happened a different way?").
As long as you mark it as AU - ideally in the story description - people can decide if they want to read it or not.
Many of my favorite fanfics are AU, ie. if Seven of Nine and Sam Wildman get married, or if Janeway chooses to have Q's baby, or (in other franchises) what if Sirius Black doesn't go to Azkaban/die or what if Hermione travels 20 years back in time and falls in love with either Remus or Sirius (there are many excellent stories either way).
If you want to write stories in which Joe Carey doesn't die, go for it. I'd read them, because I like that character and always thought he was poorly treated by the writers. And I'd bet there are plenty of Joe Carey fans who enjoy stories about him.
I prefer AU to official canon when it comes to fan fiction. Official canon is boring.
The reason why I try to follow official "canon" as much as possible is because if I don't, my stories would be heavily criticized and dismissed by most of the Star Trek fans.
If I write a story about how the Voyager crew decides to stay in the Delta Quadrant and settle down on some planet where they decide to start a community and in the long run a new federation in the Delta Quadrant, then many will dismiss it. It's actually bade enough when many of my suggestions when it comes to improvement of one ill-treated Voyager character are met with comments like "but this isnt canon" or references to a certain horrible episode which never should have been made as "the real story".
However, I'm no slave to "canon" in every detail. In my second Kes story, I tried to follow the ongoing storyline in the Voyager Relaunch book by omitting characters like Tuvok, Seven and The Doctor from the Voyager crew. Janeway too since she was now an Admiral. However, I did find that development so crappy that in my third story they were all back on the ship. When I write another story (time is a problem for me), then they will remain there and I might bring back Carey as well.
Your stories would only be heavily criticized and dismissed if you wrote them poorly, ie. plot that doesn't make sense, mischaracterization, poor grammar, spelling, punctuation, and lack of proper use of paragraphs when changing speakers.
On fanfiction.net alone there are over 10,000 Star Trek: Voyager stories, and I would guess that most of them contain some AU elements. Some stories have hundreds of chapters, hundreds or even thousands of reviews, and have been going for years. There's one specific author I'm thinking of, who specializes in C/7. Her name is scifiromance, and most of her stories are epic. She wrote the one I mentioned earlier, in which Seven gets pregnant when the Hirogen are on the ship, and when it's discovered later, Chakotay gradually comes to care for her and they and their child become a family.
I don't recall the author's name who wrote the one in which Seven adopts Mezoti and the two of them and Chakotay decide to live together when they reach Earth. Much of the story is from Mezoti's point of view as she tries to cope with new things like school, having more than just two friends on a ship, getting to know Chakotay and Seven as parents, and dealing with the still-prevalent prejudice against the Borg.
These are AU stories, they diverge from canon, and the readers love them.
Maybe some would dismiss it. Many wouldn't. I've read an excellent story in which Janeway opted not to engage with the Borg during the time of "Endgame" and just keep going as they were doing. The crew went to different places, met new people, added newcomers to the crew, Seven finally decided she wanted her own quarters, and so on.
As for your discussions here... I'll be candid and admit that I don't like Kes. I'm perfectly happy with stories that don't include her, or at least keep her presence to a minimum. But it's obvious that there are plenty of people who do like her and feel as you do.
All I can say at this point is that if you never try, you won't know if you'd succeed. Writing takes practice - I know this as someone who tried for 9 YEARS to succeed at NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). That's a writing competition that's held every year in November, and the objective is to write at least 50,000 words of a story or novel in 30 days. It sounds daunting, but if you break it down, it's 1667 words per day. If you do an outline first - know where the story needs to be at certain points - the challenge and fun are in how you get there.
It took a long time for me to figure out the best way for that to work for me. I tried a Star Trek story and it turned out like crap. I tried other projects and some only got a few hundred words before I gave up.
But one year I finally did what I'd wanted to try for years... novelize a fantasy RPG gamebook, turning a Fighting Fantasy game into a novel. I did this in 2016, with a fanfiction story that ended up over 60,000 words... and damn, did that ever feel great! I entered the Camp NaNoWriMo competitions the following April and July, to make sure it wasn't a fluke - that if I did it once, I could do it again.
It worked. And after 2018, I have never failed to finish any NaNoWriMo competition I've entered, all three per year. It helps that I finally found my writing niche, which is novelizing games. My current project has been on the go for 4 years now, and the end is nowhere in sight. It's been a lot of hard work and after somewhere in the vicinity of three-quarters of a million words (I have written every single day since November 2018, and ramp it up during the three NaNo months), there's a lot left to go.
But it's fun, and I know there are some people who would prefer that I stick strictly to canon... but canon doesn't make a lot of sense in some places (whoever wrote the script for the computer game I'm novelizing had it take place in the 11th century but includes anachronistic mentions of Shakespeare and Little Red Riding Hood). So I changed some things to make it make sense.
Fanfiction is what YOU make of it, since you are the fan who is writing it. I'm not telling you anything I haven't said to a few dozen other people on the NaNoWriMo forums who also express doubt about veering away from canon. It's YOUR story. Tell it how you want to, and while you won't please everyone, you will probably please more than you think. And anyway, the first person you have the right to please is yourself.
I've had quite a fanfiction career as well. Don't know what my page count is up to, but it's pretty huge. I think the centerpiece is still "The GPers go to Hogwarts", a huge multi-author epic that ran six years, 735 chapters, and a higher word count than the seven HP books. In addition to creating the project, I managed it for a time, wrote over 100 chapters, and moderated the site it was on.
Also done heavy story action in the Pokémon, Skyrim, Fallout, and Destiny universes. Who knows if my time in this fandom will be as prolific?
Also done heavy story action in the Pokémon, Skyrim, Fallout, and Destiny universes. Who knows if my time in this fandom will be as prolific?
I've discovered that the only time I can even manage to write Star Trek is if it's some kind of crossover parody. Imagine Voyager crossed with Bonanza. I'm having fun with it.
Lots of people have written Dune fanfic. I couldn't manage it until a crazy idea popped into my head one day, and thus was born a crossover parody between Dune and the Peanuts comic strip.
None of it even pretends to be canon-compliant. But it's fun, other people liked it, and that's the main thing.
Lots of people have written Dune fanfic. I couldn't manage it until a crazy idea popped into my head one day, and thus was born a crossover parody between Dune and the Peanuts comic strip.
None of it even pretends to be canon-compliant. But it's fun, other people liked it, and that's the main thing.
Though I may enjoy fan fiction every now and then, to me what happened on screen is 'the real story' and anything directly contradicting that in a fan fiction story are 'what might have happened if ...' or 'alternate universe' stories at best, even if I happen to like what happens in the fan fiction story much better than what I saw on screen.
(Doesn't mean I need to criticize stories not conforming to that. Why spoil the fun for others, both readers and writers? )
(Doesn't mean I need to criticize stories not conforming to that. Why spoil the fun for others, both readers and writers? )
Way I see it, there's two types of Trek stories: canon-compliant and AU. The former are incidents that could have happened in the canonical story (perhaps discussing a part of canonical events we weren't made privy to). The latter are incidents that directly contradict canon events (Janeway spares Tuvix, or Seska is never caught). Note that "Parallels", while it features multiple AU settings, is still canon compliant, because the AU's are woven into the canonical story.
Of the Trek stories I've completed so far, most are AU by their nature, since they feature more than one different ending. And the endings are generally silly or at least lighthearted.
The one serious one I have is in the "Parallels" vein. It allows prime characters to visit an alternate universe where they made different choices (it was actually just an excuse to explore what Janeway would say to Tuvix, if she met him again).
Of the Trek stories I've completed so far, most are AU by their nature, since they feature more than one different ending. And the endings are generally silly or at least lighthearted.
The one serious one I have is in the "Parallels" vein. It allows prime characters to visit an alternate universe where they made different choices (it was actually just an excuse to explore what Janeway would say to Tuvix, if she met him again).
Pfftt... Trek fans will criticize anything. The point of fan fiction is fun not canon adherence.
Exactly. My wife writes prolifically in Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit as an AU and she loves it so do her readers. It's all in the characters and the story.
"Give me better scripts, damnit!"
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Good morning.
What did you think of Robert Beltran and his character of Chakotay? Was he given enough to chew on or should he have played a more prominent role? Was he hosed by the politics of broadcast television at the time? Did you find his attitude during interviews unreasonable or did he have a point?
Ok I'll answer honestly...I love Robert Beltran and his character of Chakotay. Yes he was underutilized sometimes but he played the role very well. I strongly believe that maybe his character could have had a bit more depth at some points, especially in the beginning when he was part of the Maquis crew. I don't think he was hosed by the politics of broadcast television at the time but he might have been slightly typecasted. I honestly found his attitude strikingly interesting, as well as sarcastic at times. You either love his attitude or hate his attitude. There is no in between.
And I would like to add, I had the pleasure of meeting Robert Beltran in Las Vegas this past August. He is not AT ALL what the fans have described him: arrogant, self absorbed, a jackass, etc. He is HILARIOUS and was an absolute prince to me. But of course, I was both awestruck and lovestruck when I met him face to face for the first time-HOLY COW!
This is Star Trek, and despite all of us fans trying to claim its 'more realistic' than other franchises, at the end of the day, its not... we have just as much 'space magic' as the rest of them, if not more.
You want Joe Carey? His data is still stored in the transporter memory - just have a 'transporter malfunction'. A normal (lol) one, or maybe some non-corporeal entity fiddled with it so it can live as a human? As for an alternate Voyager staying in the Delta Quadrant? There are TWO others, canonically. The 'copy' that Harry Kim is from that blew up (did it really?), or the one that turned out to be those creatures that simply mimic'd Voyager and her crew. Take your pick. The first one may have been 'transported elsewhere/when' by the explosion, but badly damaged (leaving debris behind), and the second one... how do we know only one ship left that world? There could have been other copies, and one may have figured out how to survive. For that matter, how do we even know the one that made it back is 'the real one'?
Canon doesn't limit your possibilities, it just forces you to be more creative in your explanations.
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Oh, just pick up a parallel dimension copy. Close enough!
If you can't wow them with your wisdom baffle them with your...technobabble.Canon doesn't limit your possibilities, it just forces you to be more creative in your explanations.
Strangely enough, I equate 'alternate realities' with 'fanfic'.
Like, Canon 'what ifs' are just a smidge more canon than fanfic, but even less canon than beta canon. Just how I feel, nothing 'canon' of course. LOL
Anyhow, that's why I prefer bending canon, preferably using other canon, rather than just hand-waving it (which to me, another 'quantum reality' is just that). Unless you are telling a 'Q'-level story... then it makes some sense. Like, I didn't have a problem with that Nagilum dude.
Like, Canon 'what ifs' are just a smidge more canon than fanfic, but even less canon than beta canon. Just how I feel, nothing 'canon' of course. LOL
Anyhow, that's why I prefer bending canon, preferably using other canon, rather than just hand-waving it (which to me, another 'quantum reality' is just that). Unless you are telling a 'Q'-level story... then it makes some sense. Like, I didn't have a problem with that Nagilum dude.
Canon is completely mutable. Once you have an things like parallel dimensions and alternate timelines, which have existed since TOS, then anything is possible.
And Nagilum sucks. And Q sucks. That's more hand waving than quantum realities to me.
And Nagilum sucks. And Q sucks. That's more hand waving than quantum realities to me.
My favorite type of cannon...
When AC/DC uses them to close out a concert with "For Those About To Rock... We Salute You".
I've seen them four times... always awesome, every time!
When AC/DC uses them to close out a concert with "For Those About To Rock... We Salute You".
I've seen them four times... always awesome, every time!
Or a hologram. Maybe some race that uses holographic tech recreated him somewhere on Voyager's journey, with only 4.7% personality deviation.
Who says the spatial scissor only created two copies? Maybe a third went tumbling off somewhere.
With the proper use of it, you can justify anything.
That's "Parallels" for you... a whole episode of basically fanfiction.
Agreed. AU fanfics are way more fun than purely canonical ones, and you don't even have to violate canon to do it. In Star Trek, the past can be fixed, the future can be altered, and the "ultimate boundary" of death is surprisingly porous.
This is Star Trek, and despite all of us fans trying to claim its 'more realistic' than other franchises, at the end of the day, its not... we have just as much 'space magic' as the rest of them, if not more.
You want Joe Carey? His data is still stored in the transporter memory - just have a 'transporter malfunction'. A normal (lol) one, or maybe some non-corporeal entity fiddled with it so it can live as a human? As for an alternate Voyager staying in the Delta Quadrant? There are TWO others, canonically. The 'copy' that Harry Kim is from that blew up (did it really?), or the one that turned out to be those creatures that simply mimic'd Voyager and her crew. Take your pick. The first one may have been 'transported elsewhere/when' by the explosion, but badly damaged (leaving debris behind), and the second one... how do we know only one ship left that world? There could have been other copies, and one may have figured out how to survive. For that matter, how do we even know the one that made it back is 'the real one'?
Canon doesn't limit your possibilities, it just forces you to be more creative in your explanations.
You're absolutely right about "canon" doesn't limit the possibilities. Just look at The Kes Website and the page "Voyager Mysteries and how to solve them" and how a lot of contradictions and inconsistent events can be explained.
Not to mention how funny it is to find out such solutions!
Your comment about Carey was great. I might use it.
Dabbling with two Voyagers are a bit more complicated but why not? In that case the one who got back to Earth might be a duplicate with clones controlled by a species called the Bermanians who want to conqer Earth.
If anything, 'Star Trek' is relatively far on the 'soft' side of science fiction, more 'space opera' in fact, despite all the technobabble. I wouldn't take any claim that it's 'more realistic' than other franchises seriously (though of course it's more realistic than some franchises). There are enough fantastical elements that are never explained, not even in the imaginary science of the show itself (telepathy and other mental powers from species such as the Ocampa, Vulcan, Betazoid, the existence and powers of Q-like beings, the physiology of shapeshifters (calling something 'morphogenetic' isn't an explanation), etc).
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