Peter’s Backstory

This post will make better sense if you've read either this post or this post first. Or both. :3

Author’s Notes: I was looking back through my post history for the blog and realised how long it’s been since I posted actual story content. I admit I haven’t written anything new for some time, but months ago I wrote a prose piece about Peter’s backstory from his mother’s perspective that I’d planned to post on the blog. However, I showed it to a friend whom I’d hoped would help me edit it, and the problems that she pointed out were so intrinsic that I despaired of ever being able to fix them short of totally rewriting the whole thing. So I put it away and didn’t look at it.

But just now I thought, what the hell. I’ve already established that I’m willing to put up first draft excerpts on this blog, so why is it so important that this one piece has to be of uber-high quality? Yeah, the execution isn’t great, but it’s the events that are relayed that matter more to Peter’s character, and which are likely to be of interest to you, readers of this blog x3

Even with my newly lowered standards, though, the beginning wasn’t really worth posting xD So I’ve missed out Peter Pan: The Toddler Years and skipped straight to when Peter is nine years old and already attending secondary school…

The Evolution of Characters: Peter Pan

When writing an alternate-universe fanfiction, I tend to make sure that the characterisation is as consistent with the original book/series/film as can be, and the same goes for crossovers. If you’re going to change the setting, the time period and the what have you, then all that’s left for the readers to recognise are the characters; without those it wouldn’t even feel like a fanfic, just your own work with some familiar names and faces slapped on. Plus, aren’t the characters what we love the most about any given fandom? I know I do.

With that said, this has to be the AU fanfic where I’ve changed the most about the characters. Some of it is necessary to the setting – this is (almost) the real world, so Peter can’t fly and he does grow up, extremely reluctantly and resentfully. Other stuff, I’ve changed just because it seemed like a cool idea at the time. I’m actually enjoying seeing how much of my own spin I can put on the characters while still keeping them recognisably faithful to Barrie’s original.