Hey guys! A bit of a long winded question that I would love to get peoples opinions on.
As I create and write the snippets, and write my stories in general, I keep running into a concept or issue.
There are a wide swath of stories, from Mechwarrior to 40k, Marvel and DC comics, even Monster Hunter and beyond, where I would love to write in but I can't because I'm either not interested in involving the story, or I'm unfamiliar with the the whole breadth of lore, usually because there is just so much. A large part of me wishes I could just pause the setting, and/or shift everything so it was "stable" so that I could insert my character without having to worry about the rest of the story complicating things.
My question is, how do people feel about that?
For example, lets say I have an idea for a fanfiction that takes place in a setting with a long complicated story, filled with huge, world changing events. Or, the story is crammed full of little story landmines that I dont know about because while I enjoy the setting, I can't read all 120 books and play the fifteen video games that detail the characters, planets, continents and more. I want to write a character who goes on adventures or dives dungeons or learns the magic and/or the tech that populates this hypothetical world, not deal with a canon demon invasion, or that the canon town I picked for their starter base is actually where the demon lord's mom lives.
I wouldn't necessary be ignoring the story, the beats and characters would still be around if I wanted to engage in them, the setting would just be sort of quasi paused until I as the author, or the character wanted to engage parts of it. Sort of like how I handled Brink and Back.
Now, I'm sure a lot of you will say just write what you want, and I appreciate that, but i do genuinely want to know what people think about this concept. Does it worry you that I might not involve a certain character? do you think stripping down aspects of a story to just what I want would diminish the setting? Are you fine with the concept as long as I use the right settings? Please comment with your thoughts, this may very well inform my future story generation!
TLDR: How do people feel about me using stripped down and simplified settings for stories, where I pause the setting in favor of the MC's exploits. Think Star Wars without the active wars, where I just want to write a merchants story, or Monster Hunter where I just want to have some guy hunt monsters, without worrying about a dragon the size of a Walmart stomping around.