Corpanga Divorce Truther

DISCLAIMER: This is advice for people who want it. If you just want to write whatever for funsies, write whatever for funsies, this is fandom not school, you're not getting your work marked.

As someone who has watched the show very thoroughly, I can tell you that the continuity of BMW is dogshit. Granted, they didn't have streaming services back then and probably couldn't have predicted that one day you'd be able to marathon the whole show and pick up on all the retcons and inconsistencies (Example: Eric's birthday is during the winter in S3, then in S4 he's given a summer birthday).

Unless you're a maniac (me), you don't need knowledge of every single piece of continuity in the show to write your story (the only reason I do is because I thought it would be a good idea to write a story that spans five out of seven seasons).

If you are writing a story that takes place during the show's timeline, then you've probably picked one episode or one story arc, in which case, congratulations, your task is not an insane act of hubris (I am once again talking about myself)! All you'll need is access to the episode(s) in question, and some way to write down information.

Let's say you don't have a streaming service with BMW. Don't panic! You have options.

First thing you can do is look up clips on YouTube, you should be able to find a lot. Second thing you can do is go onto the BMW fanwiki and see if it has a link to the transcript for the episode(s) you want; you can find these by looking up the episode(s) in question, then scrolling down to see if there is a transcript link.

Failing that: sail the seven seas (if you catch my meaning).

Once you've got the episode in question, watch it/read the transcript.

When you're watching/reading the episode, there's a few things you should make note of:

How many days the episode takes place over. It may be one day, it may be a week, sometimes it's a few days spaced over the course of a month. If you watch the episode, they don't always explicitly let you know when it's a different day, you just have to look out for costume changes. If one scene takes place days or weeks after another, they'll drop that exposition in dialogue, or it'll be evident from context.

When abouts the episode is set (especially when it comes to what time of year). Sometimes, you can use the date the episode aired as guidance, but episodes like ones set on Christmas will not air on the date they take place on. Just use common sense to figure those out.

Any character lore/info that gets dropped. Even if it's not revelant to the story/chapter you're writing, you might be able to use it in a later story/chapter. If the lore given is contradicted by something the writers decide later on, just choose which version you prefer. I will use a character's changed birthday rather than their original one, but stuff like C0rpanga's backstory I take all the conflicting lore, throw it in a pot, mix it up and see what I get.

Names of one off places and character names, places and people only in that episode. Again, even if they're not revelant now, you might have use for that information in the future and save yourself time.

When watching the episode, you'll want to view it at least twice to get all the info you need.

Here are my notes for S3 E22 that I wrote in preparation for writing Chapter Seven of BMR:

As you can see, I made a short description of the plot of the episode, how it ties into my fic, and (since it's a time travel plot) what changes from the original plot to my alternate one.

Knowing that Topanga’s summer camp was two months long was important info, as well as Morgan having day camp during the summer and when in the episode's timeline Cory took and hid Eric's letter from NSWSDSU.

I also wrote down information like Morgan having a favourite bear called Fluffers, and Mr. Feeny having Eric's diploma framed. Neither bits of information are used in Chapter Seven, but may prove useful to me in a future chapter.

Information from a previous episode I was able to use in Chapter Seven was the character of Arthur, who you might remember as the guy Eric was up against for the internship at WIXB. I didn’t use him in the chapters with that continuity, however he was very handy to use as the valedictorian at Eric’s graduation.

You can't see since it's cut off, but I have a tally in the bottom left corner that I used to keep track of how many days the episode takes place over.

If you found this post helpful and want more like them, let me know! I can give advice on writing multi-chapter fics, and plotting in general, and probably some other stuff. My qualifications are as follows:

Being almost three years into writing a time travel fix-it.