Progress Report: AFSS Ch. 3 - Take 4
Hahaha, so it's been over a year since I've updated "Action Figures Sold Separately." Crap.
On the upside, I now finally have access to (again) Daredevil Season 1, and have re-watched. Not only have I re-watched, but I've taken copious notes and am compiling a spreadsheet. (I can hear the (one) person who reads this blog going, "Oh no, not again". I will actually post the other spreadsheet I wasted tons of time on (the Star Wars chronology) at some point. Not that anyone cares.)
The issue that's been tripping me up is the canon timeline. I remembered kind of vaguely that I had some time for some days to go by and stuff to happen that could be unrelated to the canon, in the rough timeframe of the Season 1 episode "Stick." So I initially set the fic between Episodes 7 and 8. As Chapter 2 revealed, I needed Mrs. Cardenas to be an available out and possible place to squirrel Steve away, but I remembered that in canon there were some things that happened very quickly in the Mrs. Cardenas timeline - namely, her tenement being sold to Fisk and Mrs. Cardenas dying. For my purposes I needed to get Steve in there before that happened (because I had no idea where to stash him otherwise) but I couldn't remember how much time I had to fill with non-canon stuff before Mrs. Cardenas died. Also, I wasted a bunch of time trying to figure out where exactly Mrs. Cardenas's tenement was, since in Daredevil S1 they never give you an address for it. But I wasn't too fussed about it until I kept watching through into S2.
And then in Daredevil Season 2 and the Defenders that damn tenement turned out to be really important. I'm going to detour a little now and complain about it a bit, because I had the damndest time trying to figure out where exactly the stupid tenement is supposed to be located before I threw my hands up. The implication is obvious once you get to the end - that the block Nobu wants, that Fisk kills Mrs. Cardenas for, is the block that her tenement is on - which Nobu does eventually get and on which Midland Circle is built (address 560 44th St, courtesy Defenders S1E7).
BUT if you look at the map Nobu is looking at, at the end of Daredevil S1E1, the block of 45th & 46th between 9th & 10th is outlined in blue marker. It's not close enough to see in any other episodes if it's still the same block that Nobu points to and insists on having, but that's the implication. If you pay attention to the four addresses given for the Russians in the S1E4 and S1E5 episodes, none of them are actually close enough to that outlined block, to blow out the windows and knock people down as happened when Fisk had Gao's bombers blow the Russians to hell in S1E4 to S1E5 "World on Fire" arc. The closest is probably 44th & 11th (though there's another a comparable distance away), which becomes Midland Circle in the Defenders. But that's still got a full block of buildings providing a buffer between Mrs. Cardenas's apartment and the explosion. It also didn't make sense that Mrs. Cardenas would have her tenement on the same block as the one of the Russians' addresses and still be a problem to Fisk.
Unless I'm missing something (someone, please tell me what I'm missing), there's a wrinkle here that I can't quite press flat. It would be easy enough to ignore the S1E1 picture evidence (even though they have labelled the damn streets if you freeze the screen) of the tenement 45th & 46th between 9th & 10th as the marked block, if not for the Russians having a warehouse blown up at 44th & 11th (which is the later Midland Circle address). If that's the location, why do they need the tenement so badly that they need to kill Mrs. Cardenas? I suppose that I'm supposed to assume that since Nobu et al want an entire city block, Mrs. Cardenas's tenement is on one portion of the block and the Russians' warehouse is a building or two over on the same block... but I'm pretty sure NYC zoning doesn't work like that.
I'm probably going to give up and just put the tenement somewhere on that block, but it just irritates me. I know it makes more contextual sense, in the sense that the tenement has to be close enough to one of the given Russian outpost locations for which actual addresses are given, in order for the windows to blow in, people to get knocked over and seriously hurt when the Russians get bombed. And I can probably excuse it with the Japanese needing an entire block and the tenement only comprising part of it, but I just start to scowl when I think about all the freeze-framing I did to find the outlined block in S1E1 and then I start thinking about zoning and I have to suspend my disbelief and it doesn't want to suspend. It's also very possible that there's a throwaway line in that Daredevil S2 episode where Matt and Elektra are staring down into the huge hole in the ground, which reveals the address. Pretty sure the construction is where the tenement used to be. But damned if I've found that reference yet.
To get back to the issue of "how much time do I have between Karen getting jumped and Mrs. Cardenas getting killed": I have another plot device showing up next chapter and needed some time for it to come into its own. But I had no idea how much time I was dealing with. I also didn't really remember when exactly Karen got jumped outside Mrs. Cardenas's appartment in the timeline of when Mrs. Cardenas died, even though I referenced it in the fic, and realized I couldn't have it happen the night before Mrs. Cardenas died or anything like that.
So, I've started the timeline based on my frankly ridiculously detailed notes from each episode, which I had to watch exhaustively. It was for research purposes. Absolutely necessary. :)
And my other excuse is that I've been fighting my way through the POV of a character I've never written before. Simultaneously a fandom I've only ever taken a passing glance at decided to become yet another useful plot device, and I'm working really hard not to lose the threads here. Long term plotting-out of storylines has never been my strength (it's what killed the massive snowballing of the ECverse, when I had so much going on I decided to split the next installment by what the characters were doing and ended up with TQW, SAS, and BWT and thoroughly confused myself). I'm endeavoring to avoid that pitfall this time and grow as an author by planning ahead. We'll see how well that works.
So I just need to force myself through this POV that's, let's admit it, more than half-done at this point, and complete my timeline so I know how much time I'm working with, and can figure out what's going to happen when. Proof positive that I haven't abandoned the fic, I promise; this timeline construction stuff I'm talking about I worked on about two weekends ago.
EDIT: Or I could have just watched ten more minutes of the episode I'd paused, which would have Matt telling Elektra that the tenement was at 44th & 11th.
On the upside, I now finally have access to (again) Daredevil Season 1, and have re-watched. Not only have I re-watched, but I've taken copious notes and am compiling a spreadsheet. (I can hear the (one) person who reads this blog going, "Oh no, not again". I will actually post the other spreadsheet I wasted tons of time on (the Star Wars chronology) at some point. Not that anyone cares.)
The issue that's been tripping me up is the canon timeline. I remembered kind of vaguely that I had some time for some days to go by and stuff to happen that could be unrelated to the canon, in the rough timeframe of the Season 1 episode "Stick." So I initially set the fic between Episodes 7 and 8. As Chapter 2 revealed, I needed Mrs. Cardenas to be an available out and possible place to squirrel Steve away, but I remembered that in canon there were some things that happened very quickly in the Mrs. Cardenas timeline - namely, her tenement being sold to Fisk and Mrs. Cardenas dying. For my purposes I needed to get Steve in there before that happened (because I had no idea where to stash him otherwise) but I couldn't remember how much time I had to fill with non-canon stuff before Mrs. Cardenas died. Also, I wasted a bunch of time trying to figure out where exactly Mrs. Cardenas's tenement was, since in Daredevil S1 they never give you an address for it. But I wasn't too fussed about it until I kept watching through into S2.
And then in Daredevil Season 2 and the Defenders that damn tenement turned out to be really important. I'm going to detour a little now and complain about it a bit, because I had the damndest time trying to figure out where exactly the stupid tenement is supposed to be located before I threw my hands up. The implication is obvious once you get to the end - that the block Nobu wants, that Fisk kills Mrs. Cardenas for, is the block that her tenement is on - which Nobu does eventually get and on which Midland Circle is built (address 560 44th St, courtesy Defenders S1E7).
BUT if you look at the map Nobu is looking at, at the end of Daredevil S1E1, the block of 45th & 46th between 9th & 10th is outlined in blue marker. It's not close enough to see in any other episodes if it's still the same block that Nobu points to and insists on having, but that's the implication. If you pay attention to the four addresses given for the Russians in the S1E4 and S1E5 episodes, none of them are actually close enough to that outlined block, to blow out the windows and knock people down as happened when Fisk had Gao's bombers blow the Russians to hell in S1E4 to S1E5 "World on Fire" arc. The closest is probably 44th & 11th (though there's another a comparable distance away), which becomes Midland Circle in the Defenders. But that's still got a full block of buildings providing a buffer between Mrs. Cardenas's apartment and the explosion. It also didn't make sense that Mrs. Cardenas would have her tenement on the same block as the one of the Russians' addresses and still be a problem to Fisk.
Unless I'm missing something (someone, please tell me what I'm missing), there's a wrinkle here that I can't quite press flat. It would be easy enough to ignore the S1E1 picture evidence (even though they have labelled the damn streets if you freeze the screen) of the tenement 45th & 46th between 9th & 10th as the marked block, if not for the Russians having a warehouse blown up at 44th & 11th (which is the later Midland Circle address). If that's the location, why do they need the tenement so badly that they need to kill Mrs. Cardenas? I suppose that I'm supposed to assume that since Nobu et al want an entire city block, Mrs. Cardenas's tenement is on one portion of the block and the Russians' warehouse is a building or two over on the same block... but I'm pretty sure NYC zoning doesn't work like that.
I'm probably going to give up and just put the tenement somewhere on that block, but it just irritates me. I know it makes more contextual sense, in the sense that the tenement has to be close enough to one of the given Russian outpost locations for which actual addresses are given, in order for the windows to blow in, people to get knocked over and seriously hurt when the Russians get bombed. And I can probably excuse it with the Japanese needing an entire block and the tenement only comprising part of it, but I just start to scowl when I think about all the freeze-framing I did to find the outlined block in S1E1 and then I start thinking about zoning and I have to suspend my disbelief and it doesn't want to suspend. It's also very possible that there's a throwaway line in that Daredevil S2 episode where Matt and Elektra are staring down into the huge hole in the ground, which reveals the address. Pretty sure the construction is where the tenement used to be. But damned if I've found that reference yet.
To get back to the issue of "how much time do I have between Karen getting jumped and Mrs. Cardenas getting killed": I have another plot device showing up next chapter and needed some time for it to come into its own. But I had no idea how much time I was dealing with. I also didn't really remember when exactly Karen got jumped outside Mrs. Cardenas's appartment in the timeline of when Mrs. Cardenas died, even though I referenced it in the fic, and realized I couldn't have it happen the night before Mrs. Cardenas died or anything like that.
So, I've started the timeline based on my frankly ridiculously detailed notes from each episode, which I had to watch exhaustively. It was for research purposes. Absolutely necessary. :)
And my other excuse is that I've been fighting my way through the POV of a character I've never written before. Simultaneously a fandom I've only ever taken a passing glance at decided to become yet another useful plot device, and I'm working really hard not to lose the threads here. Long term plotting-out of storylines has never been my strength (it's what killed the massive snowballing of the ECverse, when I had so much going on I decided to split the next installment by what the characters were doing and ended up with TQW, SAS, and BWT and thoroughly confused myself). I'm endeavoring to avoid that pitfall this time and grow as an author by planning ahead. We'll see how well that works.
So I just need to force myself through this POV that's, let's admit it, more than half-done at this point, and complete my timeline so I know how much time I'm working with, and can figure out what's going to happen when. Proof positive that I haven't abandoned the fic, I promise; this timeline construction stuff I'm talking about I worked on about two weekends ago.
EDIT: Or I could have just watched ten more minutes of the episode I'd paused, which would have Matt telling Elektra that the tenement was at 44th & 11th.