SA and I had a conversation the other day about the liberating aspects of the near-total lack of canon in Popslash.

Hunh. Really? I often find lack of canon to be personally prohibitive. And on the flip side, too much canon acts the same way. (Hello, Batverse!)

I also think closed canon can be fun, in that "this is what you know about the characters, now feel free to go nuts" kind of way.

Hunh. Really? I often find lack of canon to be personally prohibitive. And on the flip side, too much canon acts the same way. (Hello, Batverse!)

Shrift, I've got one word for you. One word that makes everything better, makes grey skies blue, and doesn't make your brown eyes blue: Elseworlds.

Because, really, in a world where, out of Continuity, Batman is a pirate, anything can happen. So I just pretend it's all an Elseworld.

(Or: how Plei deals with the many contradictions and convoluted timelines of her chosen world.)

I also think closed canon can be fun, in that "this is what you know about the characters, now feel free to go nuts" kind of way.

Definitely. I've often found that my best plots have grown out of fanwanking apparent contradictions in canon or are a result of fitting things inbetween the lines of canon without crossing over.

Because, really, in a world where, out of Continuity, Batman is a pirate, anything can happen.

And it's funny 'cause it's TRUE. I love my crazy gay bondage fun avast ye! comics...

I'm getting better about following story ideas in spite of the fact that a) I may not know the canon as well as I'd like, or b) the canon is WACK, and c) I'm a neurotic freak.

'Cause there needs to be more comics smut out there, and we can't make Te write it all.

'Cause there needs to be more comics smut out there, and we can't make Te write it all.

I'm really, really looking forward to writing the rest of the Bart/Kon I started. I just need to stop getting distracted by things like, oh, err...

Looking around for crossdressing Bartfic instead of actually writing.

SA and I had a conversation the other day about the liberating aspects of the near-total lack of canon in Popslash.

Hunh. Really? I often find lack of canon to be personally prohibitive

Her point ( massively oversimplified) boiled down to "if nothing is true then anything can be true." Personally, I like the structure of canon - I like the mental exercise of figuring out where you can go while still working within certain boundaries. But I can see the appeal of the other side.

Personally, I like the structure of canon - I like the mental exercise of figuring out where you can go while still working within certain boundaries.

Yup. This is the same reason why I find crossovers to be so much fun to plan out and write--it's a challenge to be able to take two universes and figure out how to blend them without doing serious violence to either canon. Even more fun is finding the areas where Canon A can support canon and/or fill holes, tie dangling plot threads, etc. in Canon B.

Pirate!Batman! Pirate!Catwoman! God, that was a great Elseworld.

In a way, aren't Elseworld sort of like commercially sanctioned fanfiction?

You know, in going through the Batman Elseworlds, that's the only one I never got more than three pages into. Sure, there were others that I regretted getting far into (some of the authors were being too arch with the convention, and the Eliot Ness one was just irrelevant to anything Batty), but something about that one sent me to ShiftL.