The STARS-verse -- inception and the Stations of Canon

Still working on the second half of the latest Character Corner, but I do have this ready to go to accompany my fic New Dogs, New Tricks. This'll be the first of several posts that will establish some world-building and ground rules for my Road Rovers series, Road Rover STARS.

A long, long, long time ago, my RR stories were meant to mostly run concurrently alongside the Road Rovers: Quick Strike, or QS-verse series of fics, written by That One Evil Writer. His fics would've also been canon to my fic-verse, along with my own personal (old cringe) ideas and characters. Gradually however, seeing television series and movies, as well as reading various books in addition to a lot of great fanfiction, and higher quality reboots (both fan-made and official ones) made me start to wonder "What if?..."

.. Hunter had his own set of character flaws to overcome? Not external, out of his control "weaknesses" that exist purely to make people go "Aww poor baby", but real flaws that could make people come into conflict with him, or even not like him? As someone who does not like the character (lol), I felt going this route will ground the character and make him genuinely sympathetic, because I will be getting into his mindset and exploring why he behaves the way he does. 

... The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Mighty Ducks met the Rovers? I feel the non-human superheroes should hang out a lot.

... What if some characters found different partners than they did in the QS-verse?

What if, what if, what if?

Watching new and old shows makes me wanna emulate the things I like about them for RR. I take a lot of inspiration from series with ensemble casts (Northern Exposure and Band Of Brothers -- there's definitely a number of other shows I could add to this list that I've missed out on and do plan to watch) assorted animated series (Steven Universe, Transformers Animated, One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba, My Adventures With Superman, and The Owl House are some primary examples). Another influence was fanfiction for the series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. People have done every kind of alternate universe story for that fandom under the sun and then some. It was definitely a big source of inspiration for revamping my cast and setting.

STARS wound up developing into its own unique thing separate from what anybody else is (or was) doing for their stories, though I do take certain influences and headcanons from a select few other fan writers. Of course if the original creator is still around I ask their permission. Regardless, any creator whose OCs appear are always receive credit in my author's notes. The deviantART portion of the fandom seems to get its rocks off on the idea of people going around stealing characters. That's not what's going on here, and if you believe it is, you're always welcome to actually come and ask me.

I love lore. 

 

No, not that Lore. Story lore.

I have a simple rule of thumb for this setting: KISS. What is KISS?

Keep

It

Simple 

Stupid/Sweetie 

Streamline everything. I don't want any kind of convoluted, sprawling, overly complex backstories or plotlines (the hero was separated from their mother who was captured by the villains and cloned, and the evil clone traveled back in time to assume the real mother's place, while the real mom lost her memory and became a new villainess named La Strega!) or anything of the sort. This is also why I'm mostly keeping clear of time travel. I don't want any soap opera style stories or melodramatics either. I know people and their emotions can be really messy, but this is not Days Of Our Lives.

I also went and chucked a lot of the more clunkier, awkward concepts I devised previously.

Make it fun and engaging. It should be like sitting down to watch a compelling series, or following a series of books or an old-fashioned serial you really like, so you tune itn every week just so you can see what happens next.

While the original thirteen episode run is canon, there are minor details here and there that have been changed to varying degrees to suit my own personal tastes; I.E.: Prince Charles and Princess Diana becoming werewolves. That doesn't occur in STARS because I straight up think not only was it really dumb and pointless, but also dates the show really badly. Colleen's master is the actual guy who served as England's Prime Minister in the mid-90s, not the pseudo-Queen Elizabeth the show uses. 

I only include characters that I actually want to write in some capacity. So if you don't see your favorite fan character, or one you might've made, then that's why. Some characters I feel are just better off being written by their creators. I'm not the creator, so I can only do so much guesswork about how a creator might approach their OC. A bunch of characters from the prelim versions of this setting, a number of my own included, were eventually dropped because I think they would have stretched plausibility way too much/or I wasn't sure how I could even properly fit them in (or, in the case of my personal OCS, were just lame, derivative characters). Some are just -- sorry to say -- either too underdeveloped to use or their presence became unnecessary. The only thing I know about them was a name and sometimes a species, if the latter even.

Something I'm very eager to try out is utilizing story elements that I wish other RR stories had but usually lack, like having a middle ground between the characters being animals, but uplifted animals that have expanded minds. Just about every story I see it's either one extreme -- they're humanoid dogs, but the writers treat them as being regular dogs mentally who still want to keep acting like and living like regular dogs... even though the author also wants human-style weddings for their OCs or Hunter and Colleen at the same time. If Hunter and Colleen are perfectly fine with stuff like allowing their children to be given away to humans to live with them, instead of just raising them themselves (because they're sentient now, so they totally have that option available to them), then why the heck would they even care about having a wedding? Or courtship? Wouldn't Hunter just start humping Colleen right there on the spot? I'm sorry to be crass about this, but people are so inconsistent about this kind of thing. And in regards to giving away their offspring, wasn't the very last episode of the show all about Hunter trying to reunite with his mom because he desperately missed her??? Do people even pay attention to canon?

The other extreme is the Rovers being written like they're humans in animal costume. You could just take off the dog mask and it'd be just some boring rando looking back at you.

I want a linear timeline that flows chronologically and normally. There are so many stories out there where the Rovers seem to go on thousands and thousands of missions every day, yet the canon Rovers act the exact same way they do in the show, no one ever develops or changes physically or mentally, and no one seems to age. If the canon Rovers are still acting the exact same they do in canon after 80,000+ life and death missions, or getting attacked/mutated/brainwashed/cloned/RRMC being invaded and blown up/etc, then, uh... I call bs. I want characters to have reactions to and be affected by the things that happen to them, not just glossing over it just so they can move on to the next adventure/or shipping.

A major problem with a lot of old school fanfiction is that concepts and characters were never explained from story to story unless you'd been there from the beginning or spoke behind the scenes with the fan writers. Sometimes the opening stories weren't available to read either. Plus, even way back when I know I didn't wanna include everything that happened in the QS-verse as part of my setting. Recently, while talking with a friend of mine, I asked myself this question: if you're borrowing a concept or an idea from somebody else for an AU setting, then why copy it to the exact tee? Why not take it and put your own unique twist on it? I want to really push the AU aspects in order to truly differentiate STARS from RR: QS. As part of this, some characters are basically rebooted versions of themselves (think like how Mr. Freeze was presented in the original 1960s Batman series and how he was updated for Batman: The Animated Series) in order to fit in better with this brand new setting and because I don't know everything about them. Some of the other canons I've incorporated have likewise been tweaked. In the case of DC and Marvel, I'm just mashing together select elements from the various media we've gotten over the years. 

Now, on to that "Stations of Canon" thing I mentioned in the title of this entry. Some stories, ideas, and events that occur in STARS are my personal takes on things other writers have written about or were planning to write. They will play out in a completely different way here though, just because they'll be filtered through this new setting as well as my own thoughts as a writer. Since I have a different take on the canon Rovers and co as opposed to other fan interpretations (to say nothing of other characters in STARS, such as say Batman or Demona), there's no way that an event should go down in the exact same way. Likewise, the presence of new OCS and other canons existing together in this shared universe would also affect a number of situations.

I don't want to undermine either the Master or the canon Rovers. A lot of stuff does that, in some case unintentionally. He had the intelligence and skill to build a Transdogmafier, except no, not really, someone else did and he just took their idea. Oh look, all these other groups and random people out on the street now have Transdogmafier technology too!... somehow. Hey, he's getting in the way of the fan writer's precious donut steel, so we need somebody to swoop from the shadows, blackmail him, and basically take over the Road Rovers! And so on and so forth. The Rover should not feel like walk on cameos within their own setting. So many times it feels like they're made stupid and weak just to make the OC or whatever look better by comparison. Also, if you read my Character Corner entries on Blitz and Exile, then you know that I plan on having all the canon Rovers level up in some form or fashion so they're not left in the dust by more powerful characters.

As I said, some of the romantic couplings between the various characters are going to be different from what you've seen done before. I don't see a point in copying what another writer does, especially when I don't even have all the details of how the relationship is supposed to play out for their setting. Plus, as I've said elsewhere, I enjoy playing around with new possibilities and character dynamics. I find those elements very interesting to explore. Romance is not going to trump and dominate everything else either. 

I want to tell stories that, to borrow a phrase I've seen elsewhere and which I think perfectly describes what I envision -- scratches that itch in my brain in a very satisfying way.

So that's it, that's all I got to say. Hope you enjoy the stories.