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The Stations of the Canon: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{Mechanics of Writing}}
Predominantly a [[Fanfic]] trope.
The inevitable result of a [[For Want of a Nail|Divergence Fic]] or a [[Peggy Sue]] Fic: You move across certain plot points from that point onward. These events tend to be quite fixed, and thus they can, when done poorly, come across as merely crossing over '''The Stations of the Canon''', rather than an actual plot, which is where this trope comes in.
This trope is named after the [[w:Stations of the Cross|Stations of the Cross]], a traditional set of 14 or 15 iconic scenes from the Passion and crucifixion of [[The Bible|Jesus Christ]] used in some denominations of Christian worship, and which are frequently reinterpreted in various media.
For example, if you have "[[Harry Potter]] raised by someone else" Fan Fic, you must cross over the Stations of The Letter From Hogwarts, The Visit To Diagon Alley, The Trip To Hogwarts, The Sorting Hat, and, depending on how you play things, The Troll, all the way up to The Confrontation With Quirell/Voldemort—all iconic moments that establish key points of the setting or characterization as the fandom knows it.
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Examples should be of works whose fanfic show this tendency, rather than individual fanfics, since this is very much one of [[Sturgeon's Tropes]]. Connected to [[Broad Strokes]] - How broadly the events are painted relates to how many Stations the work bothers crossing.
A [[Sub-Trope]] of [[Fandom Tic]].
{{examples}}
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*** ''[[Team 8]]'' {{spoiler|only mentions the Wave Country mission in passing as a [[Noodle Incident]] that happened to Sakura, Sasuke, and Kiba; it's clear a few things changed, such as (yes) Haku surviving}}.
*** There's at least one where Naruto "misses the prompt", then gets so paranoid about the team sent "in his place" that he fakes being sick and trails them there in secret.
*** ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20120424132650/http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6557238/1/Better_Left_Unsaid Better Left Unsaid]'' does [[Sincerity Mode|one of the more creative interpretations]]: since Naruto is on Team 10 in this fic, {{spoiler|Chouji calls for Team 10 as reinforcements after Team 7's initial battle with Zabuza}} which leads to a number of noteworthy creative differences in the arc: {{spoiler|Zabuza dies sooner and against ''Asuma'', while Haku survives and parts ways with Naruto as a friend}}; but even more unusually, {{spoiler|''[[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Gato]]'' of all people survives the arc!}} The author actually lampshades in the AN (following the arc's end) that he's tired of writing the Land of Waves mission after only 2 interpretations, because of how hard it is to be flexible with the arc.
* ''[[Ranma ½]]'': Girl-type Ranma being introduced to the Tendos, "I'm Ranma Saotome. Sorry about this.", etc.
** Alluded to in the opening of Eric Hallstrom's ''[[Ranma and Akane: A Love Story]]'' even as it [[Lampshade Hanging|hangs a lampshade]] on how it's ''avoiding'' the usual opening for a ''Ranma'' fic:
{{quote|Rain. Postcard. Kitchen. Bed. Dojo. Bricks. 'FIANCE'?!' Girl. Panda. Fight. CLONG! GROWF! Knock. Ranma.
Seen it before, yes? In your sleep, behind your back, with your eyes closed, in the rain, right?
...
[[Well, This Is Not That Trope|This story doesn't start like that.]]}}
* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'': Shinji's "reunion" with his father, the battle with the Third Angel, etc. Many have described the EVA canon as one of the most stiff and rigid to bend for fanfic purposes without going to full blown [[Alternate Continuity]].
** Well, the Angels keep coming, on a preexisting schedule and with preexisting forms (the later ones evolve slightly to deal with prior ones' defeats, but that can't kick in until later). What else is going to happen? The only one that really averts this is ''[[Nobody Dies]]'', which has the Third {{spoiler|killed somehow by Rei before the story even begins, in a manner that postpones the Fourth by a few years}}, and that's only possible because the
** Even the official rebooted continuity, ''[[Rebuild of Evangelion]]'', hardly changes anything from the first six episodes - ''Evangelion 1.0/1.01/1.11'' goes through the stations at a rapid pace, but still every one of them, with the only changes being some new and different [[Foreshadowing]]. Then the second movie comes along and everything goes completely and totally [[Off the Rails]] as far as the plot goes.
*** Even so, the second movie still keeps a number of major points. A lot of angels are skipped, but Unit 02 still appears high in the air spinning about, Unit 03 still does
* Done often with
* ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'': Irene Chang {{spoiler|dies ([[Fix Fic|or not]])}}, [[Storming the Castle]] to kill Brian J. Mason, etc.
* Oh, ''[[Wolf's Rain]]'', how do they repeat your episodes, let me count the ways... Heck, [[Whole-Episode Flashback|even the canon]] does it.
* ''[[
** No matter who the familiar is they will '''have''' to go to town to buy a sword. Even if they honestly have no reason to just so that they can buy Derflinger. Writers like having the sword around even if the familiar might end up never using it in combat.
*** [[Unfamiliar|Alex]] [[Prototype (video game)|Mercer]] says [[I
* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', what are we going to do with you? Many [[Original Character
* ''[[Death Note]]''. If it involves Mello after Wammy's House, no matter how AU the fanfic is, Mello will get scarred or already be scarred. Also, [[Fix Fic]]s ''really'' love following the Stations up through the start of the [[Memory Gambit]], then seeing how spectacularly they can derail it.
* ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'' has about twelve episodes, each with at least one important event happening in each of them. It's almost impossible for a [[Fix Fic]] to not go along the plotted line until it starts making its changes.
=== [[Literature]] ===
* ''[[Harry Potter]]'': As described above.
** It was [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past]]'' - Harry [[Peggy Sue|goes back in time to fix things,]] [[You Can't Fight Fate|but finds that some things keep happening anyway.]] He wonders whether or not he actually has any free will.
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' gives us Frodo inheriting the Ring, running from Nazgul, meeting Strider, the Council of Elrond (Even if a [[Sailor Earth|Tenth Walker]] [[Mary Sue]] has skipped over the previous bits, we invariably get the "and you have my X" lines.) Caradhras, the Mines, Boromir's betrayal, etc.
* The [[Circle of Magic]] books invite this by starring a [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]] who all followed the same general template to begin with—so it's inevitable that half the fanfics are about [[The Woobie]] experiencing a traumatic event (or an entire tragic childhood) resulting in [[Parental Abandonment]], having their unusual ambient magic discovered at a late age, being whisked off to [[Wizarding School|Winding Circle Temple]], and getting transferred to Discipline House because they don't fit in.
* Discussed in the RPG rulebook for ''[[The Dresden Files]]''. In one section about what to do with the eponymous wizarding PI, it mentions that whatever you decide to do with him, there are some defining events of the setting that need to be taken into account—usually because Dresden himself was in a wholly unique position that let him stop [[The End of the World as We Know It]]. Therefore, if you go the "kill off Harry in the background" route, the GM needs to either figure out a way that the world continues to not be a [[Zombie Apocalypse]], or perhaps have the PC's deal with it.
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* In ''[[Til the Sun Grows Cold|Til the Sun Grows Cold and the Stars Grow Old]]'', which is basically a fanfic novelization of ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]: [[Twilight Princess]]'', this is done with a twist. The major plot points of ''Twilight Princess'' are the stations to be crossed, since the stations ''are'' the plot, but it also introduces some of the stations of the canon of other ''Zelda'' games because Link keeps having past life flashbacks.
* In ''[[The Sims]]'' fanfiction, Bella will always go missing and many times she will be revealed to be in Strangetown all along.
* Endemic in the ''[[Undertale]]'' fandom, as the most popular kind of fanwork are [[Alternate Universe Fic]]s that more often than not consist in retellings of the game with some perspective change or some cosmetic change.
=== [[Western Animation]] ===
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== Outside of
=== [[Comic Books]] ===
* Superheroes tend to have their origins retold over and over again (sometimes in completely alternate realities), but certain plot points ''must'' be hit. E.g., [[Batman|"I shall become a bat!"]], [[X-Men|Professor X getting crippled]], [[Hellboy]] joining the BPRD, etc.
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** ''[[Superman: Secret Identity]]'' flip-flops on this, partially because of its [[This Is Reality]] message. Clark still grows up in a suburban town and then moves to a big city, swapping a Superboy identity for a Superman identity, gets a writing-related desk job and marries a Lois (Chaudhari, not Lane)... but no equivalents appear for any other classic ''Superman'' characters, such as Lex Luthor or Lana Lang.
=== [[Literature]] ===
* This is what the transmigrated Shen Yuan has to deal in-universe within ''The Scum Villain Self-Saving System''. Because he is living in the body of Shen Quingqiu, one of the villains from the in-universe web novel ''Proud Immortal Demon Way'', Shen Yuan is forced to get with the stations of the original canon's plot, which include relieving the infamous scene where the original Shen Quinqiu kicked down the protagonist Luo Binghe towards an abyss to literal hell, even if ''he'' spent several years building a more positive relationship with the protagonist than the original character and thus lacking its motivation. Shen Yuan even uses one of the canon stations to leave the main plot {{Spoiler|by faking his death and transferring his soul to another body}}. Of course, when the System forces him to get back to the main story, the cumulative effect of all the small acts Shen Yuan did on his attempt to avoid the original goods' gruesome ending has now [[Off the Rails|utterly derailed the original plot]], leaving him completely lost on what to do next.
* Endemic on the [[Trapped in Another World|Isekai subgenre]] of "Girl Trapped in the last [[Otome Game]] she played/shoujo web novel she read as a Noble Villainess or as a Cannon Fodder character". Invariably, all the heroines will try to stick with the in-universe stations of the canon or use them for their benefit, with variable amounts of success.
* Du Ze from ''The Reader and Protagonist Definitely Have to Be in True Love'' is transmigrated into a particular station of the canon of the ongoing web novel he was reading, and being a loyal reader he takes consolation in that he knows how the plot is going to be, as the events he is dragged to initially following the plot (and he eventually do save himself due to his plot knowledge). Unfortunately, he attached himself to the main hero of the story, who has fixated romantically into Du Ze and, being both a porter of a rather spectacular plot armor and somewhat yandere, ends derailing the plot repeatedly whenever the poor Du Ze's life ends threatened.
=== [[Toys]] ===
* ''[[Transformers]]'' will ''always'' find themselves on Earth at some point, no matter the continuity or how improbable it seems. Megatron and Optimus Prime ''will'' have a showdown, lines from [[Transformers: The Movie|the 1986 film]] battle will probably be spoken at some point, and Optimus Prime will die.
** And probably come back to life, usually with an upgrade. Also, Bumblebee is always younger/smaller and Starscream is always, well, [[The Starscream]].
=== [[Video Games]] ===
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[[Category:The Stations of the Canon]]
[[Category:Sturgeon's Tropes]]
[[Category:Fandom Tic]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stations of the Canon, The}}
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