Author's Forward (contains information concerning timelines and which of
the various tellings of the series were used):
Patlabor has got to be my favorite anime series out there. I've grabbed
every Patlabor tape out there I've seen. It feels to me that the series
has enormous potential for fanficking... but there are almost none that I
can find (sorry- Patlabor: Stateside is a fine piece of writing, but it
doesn't deal with any of the characters that I like- and since I don't like
the series for the mecha, and there really isn't anything outside of the
characters and the mecha that makes Patlabor different from other
series...). I was very busy with a bunch of Ranma fics, however (three
major projects at the moment, with several shortfics partially written and
several possibly epic length\possibly shortfic projects in planning or
planned out but not started), and decided I didn't have the time to start
one until I finished some of my other stuff.
In the middle of a rather boring lecture on the origins of the
carpetbaggers one day, I kept drifting off, and absent-mindedly wrote out a
small Patlabor scene. Then the teacher shifted on to something more...
well, something more able to keep my attention (I'd hardly call it
interesting, since I feel as if I've heard everything he's said before in
about five or six other classes on American History I've had... ah, the
joys of being a transfer student forced to retake classes which tell him
nothing he didn't already know from High School...) and I stopped it, and
returned to taking notes.
During lunch that day, I looked the scene over a little, and continued it a
bit. Didn't do much, but a little. I went to my next class, but I might
as well not have. During the whole class, I was thinking things like, 'No,
that was a mistake. Gotoh is more subtle than that,' or, 'You know, if I
were to write a similar scene, but use Ota instead of Matsui...' and things
like that. It was too late. I was hooked on working on the fanfic, and
scribbled down my ideas as they hit me.
Then I came home, and felt inspired to write. Did I write any of these
Patlabor scenes? No, instead I wrote a chapter of one of my Ranma fanfics-
Three Souls, One Heart, Chapter 2, was essentially typed up all in one
sitting after that (though it was not sent out to prereaders for a couple
of days). I still didn't think I had time to devote to a Patlabor fanfic.
I still don't, really, but...
I continued on in classes, writing various scenes. Mostly, though, I
ignored the ideas I sketched out after the actual writing sessions. A week
after I started, I realized that I was really putting a lot more time into
it than it appeared to me. I was essentially spending half my history
classes and all my lunch hours writing, and I spent my time in my other
classes penning out ideas while listening to lectures. I looked through
the notes to my history class and realized I had more written on the
Patlabor scenes than I did on the history class. I also noticed that the
scenes, while not directly connected, could almost follow a timeline of
events, and if I were to flesh out the scenes with the ideas I had written
in my other classes the would definitely follow a timeline.
I realized I had a full-fledged Patlabor series in the works. So, I
started working on the technicalities- things like, 'Which Patlabor series
will I take it from? Classic Series? New Series? The old OAV series?
The New Files (new OAV series)? The movies? The manga? What?' I
borrowed some of the manga from a local comic books store I have some
friends at, and decided to scrap the manga. I'd already heard the manga
was not as good as the anime, which I'm not certain I agree with, but when
I saw it I realized the style was not what I wanted. The old OAV series I
couldn't find anywhere, and decided not to struggle to find out more about
it because it would just add to the confusion. I owned (at the time) only
tape 1 of both the Classic Series and the New Series (now I own tape 2 of
NS, and tapes 2 + 3 of CS), and I also owned the movies and New Files. So
I decided, in the end, to just stick with what I owned. Problem- all the
series and movies have incompatibilities with regards to timelines, etc. I
talked to several people in order to get suggestions about what to do, but
got little helpful response. I resolved to figure it out for myself.
Solution- take the Classic Series and the New Series. If it ever comes up
where I need to use contradictory sequences (such as Noa's entrance), use
whichever setup works best for the scene. Adjust the timelines of the two
series so that they fit behind the first movie (not too tough for Classic
Series, but the New Series appears to start after the first movie). Set
New Files after the first movie. Start fanfic at the end of the New Files
boxed set (yes, I know some New Files episodes are supposed to be set in
between certain New Series episodes, but they CAN be independant to a
degree), which would be late December, 2000. Continue at least until I
reach the second movie, and make a point of inserting the second movie into
the plot line (easy enough to do- after watching it a few times, I realized
you could even have Noa and Shinohara married during the second movie and
there wouldn't be a problem, as long as you had them decide to keep thier
last name). Continue on from there, since I have a few scenes penned out
set after the second movie dealing with the repercussions from it. Since a
number of these scenes were speculation about what happened between the end
of New Files and the start of Movie 2, this works... (questions I
considered- what happened to Kanuka? To Takeo? Where did Shinshi go to
work? Why aren't Noa and Shinohara both part of the SV2 any more? How
close have Noa and Shinohara become? What happened to that 'third
division' they mentioned at the end of New Files? Do Noa and company win
the Policeman's Picnic's Softball tournament? Etc... Essentially, I want
to explore the lives of the characters... both in and out of the SV2...
Suddenly, I find myself having few excuses for not writing this fanfic- I
have plenty of ideas, I have some of it written out already, and I've
figured out how to solve my timeline problems. Sure, I could go back to
that 'I'm doing too many other fanfics' excuse, but then why am I not
working on them in class? I decided I have to write it, just so that I
don't completely ruin my GPA because of this... er, obsession? and started
to type it out.
And so it begins...
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Sir Desaix, member # 116 of the Knights of the True Fiancee
desaix@sysnet.net
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7872
fanfics available at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7872/fanfics.htm