On Canon, Narrative Tendencies, Etc.

[brainwane]

I was having lunch with a friend and we were talking about what we're reading and watching, and he said that he doesn't love when the people working on a series/franchise/universe choose to go backwards rather than forwards -- to get into doing prequels, filling in backstory, rather than stories about what comes NEXT.

And so I've been thinking shaggy thoughts about that, and about how safe it is to know where things are going to end up, and about how if your audience is really knowledgable about and attached to existing canon, to the point where it becomes part of their identity, then it's really pleasurable to do prequels and revisits and so on. And time travel stories are part of that.... a time travel story is a way to turn something into a bit of a prequel or a revisit to an earlier part of the current story. And this spoilery post about MCU and HP by ghost_lingering reminded me of how the two are similar in this way, and I just watched the Discovery Season 2 finale which also hooks in because it's thoroughly about time travel (within a prequel show). And I do like prequel-y stuff but also I want to stop trying to squeeze more story into a diorama that was already pretty full.

I'm pretty handwavy about all this.

Comments

[audrey_eee]

I haven’t seen any of the ones you mention, but I was talking to my partner about narrative time-arranging yesterday because I’m sick and a thing I like to do when I’m sick is watch the Fast & Furious movies. It’s interesting how they wrote the series into a corner because they didn’t expect it to continue, then had to pivot a couple of times before they could claim that *now* is when the third movie takes place. I don’t mind that as much as the thing where it seems like the creator just doesn’t know how to move forward.