A better version and phrasing of the Unicorn in The Garden rule is that you can do anything you want that is fantastic and strange... as long as you don't change the basic groundrules you established early in the story.
Fanfiction that takes place in fantastic settings or science fiction settings is just like regular sci-fi and fantasy. You have to establish the ground rules, and you have to establish them SOON, rather than later. And once you've set your ground rules you must NEVER break them. Ever. Even if you want to.
A great example of this is Full Metal Alchemist. The author quickly establishes the basic rule of the universe, "equivalent exchange" is the basis of all the 'magic' of the setting, and nothing in the setting is allowed to contradict equivalent exchange. In fact, the entire story revolves around the protagonist's examination of exactly what this means and his attempts to circumvent it.
In fact, you can have setting full of strange, fantastic elements as long as you establish their possibility early on. It is fully possible that you could have a setting which includes both magical unicorns, UFOs and all sorts of stangeness. Take at look at the X-Files, for example. It has everything from mutants to prehistoric lost species to aliens to vampires to ghosts and on and on and on. But they don't break the basic "rules" of the setting (which are, explicitly "strange shit happens and no one knows/can prove why").
This rule, like all other, is double-edged. Once you establish the rules you must follow them to their logical conclusion. If you say that, to steal an example, a sci-fi setting involves putting people into cryogenic suspension for intersteallr flight you have established that such a thing exists. Then you must allow it to be used for other purposes. A severely wounded character, for example, could be put in suspension until appropriate medical attention is available. If they don't, there had better be a good reason (for example, the suspension chambers are destroyed or unavailable).
But yes, the basic point of this rambling is this: When writing any sort of speculative fiction (including fanfiction based off the same) you have to establish the ground rules early on and never break them. Thankfully when it comes to fanfiction in many cases the ground rules have alreayd been laid out for us. For instance, we know how supernatural powers work in Naruto, and we know what the technology in Star Wars is capable of.
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Epsilon
Fanfiction that takes place in fantastic settings or science fiction settings is just like regular sci-fi and fantasy. You have to establish the ground rules, and you have to establish them SOON, rather than later. And once you've set your ground rules you must NEVER break them. Ever. Even if you want to.
A great example of this is Full Metal Alchemist. The author quickly establishes the basic rule of the universe, "equivalent exchange" is the basis of all the 'magic' of the setting, and nothing in the setting is allowed to contradict equivalent exchange. In fact, the entire story revolves around the protagonist's examination of exactly what this means and his attempts to circumvent it.
In fact, you can have setting full of strange, fantastic elements as long as you establish their possibility early on. It is fully possible that you could have a setting which includes both magical unicorns, UFOs and all sorts of stangeness. Take at look at the X-Files, for example. It has everything from mutants to prehistoric lost species to aliens to vampires to ghosts and on and on and on. But they don't break the basic "rules" of the setting (which are, explicitly "strange shit happens and no one knows/can prove why").
This rule, like all other, is double-edged. Once you establish the rules you must follow them to their logical conclusion. If you say that, to steal an example, a sci-fi setting involves putting people into cryogenic suspension for intersteallr flight you have established that such a thing exists. Then you must allow it to be used for other purposes. A severely wounded character, for example, could be put in suspension until appropriate medical attention is available. If they don't, there had better be a good reason (for example, the suspension chambers are destroyed or unavailable).
But yes, the basic point of this rambling is this: When writing any sort of speculative fiction (including fanfiction based off the same) you have to establish the ground rules early on and never break them. Thankfully when it comes to fanfiction in many cases the ground rules have alreayd been laid out for us. For instance, we know how supernatural powers work in Naruto, and we know what the technology in Star Wars is capable of.
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Epsilon