Learning from Fan Fiction: Every World Needs Rules, even Heaven

My Emma Lathen fan fiction is based around Damien Smith (a new character) and John Thatcher (Lathen's detective). The fan fiction starts in heaven, where Damien's recent arrival requires that he and John give testimony about their relationship, namely why they should be together. 

Damien, John, and their advocate review each of the cases they worked together to explain how they came to fall in love and then live together, despite "lying" to a great many people (in the 1970s) about their relationship. (Neither of them cheated on anyone; Thatcher's wife died five years earlier.) 

That's Part I. 

Part II is Damien and John solving cases in heaven (or, rather, multiple heavens). The cases they solve have to do with people they met during the original cases. 

The premise here is based on my belief that death doesn't actually solve anything (which is one reason killing off a character is a writing cop-out). I get exceedingly tired of the idea that dead people get all noble and sweet-tempered the moment they die. 

Thatcher is younger in heaven.

The aura is the same.

I also don't buy into the idea that once a case is solved on Earth, the dead would be satisfied and whisk themselves off to strum harps on clouds. Why wouldn't they take revenge in heaven on people who forced them to "shuffle off the mortal coil" too early? ("I had so many plans! You ruined everything!")

But that position immediately raises the issue: Would heaven let that happen?

I realized that I needed to make up rules in order for Part II to work. 

The Rules

1. New arrivals end up in the heaven/town/region that fits their moral code. They can change heavens. But no matter what heaven they want to settle in, they must go through a "confession" for that heaven (become citizens).

2. The "confession" is not about admitting sin but rather about giving the council (of angels) and the human individual a chance to assess, "Am I in the right place?" 

3. If the confession remains incomplete, the new arrival is at the mercy of other members of that heaven/town/region. The angels cannot protect them.

4. Angels also have agency. Some of them believe in the Mike-Baxter-do-it-yourself-and-learn-the-hard-way approach to moral self-understanding. Some believe more in the social-work model. Some demand that humans earn money to take trains between heavens. Some give out free passes. Some, like Castiel, may even focus entirely on one human or set of humans.

5. The cases that Thatcher and Damien handle in multiple heavens (as consulting detectives) mostly deal with people switching heavens for a variety of reasons. Because these non-citizens have not yet completed their "confessions," they are open to assault by thugs and others. They can't be killed. But they can be kidnapped, stalked, attacked, stolen from, locked up, accused falsely, and otherwise inconvenienced.   

Continuing Story

So Thatcher's now-dead wife, who married him until "death we do part" and always saw herself as somewhat above the whole soulmates' cliche, has discovered that (a) the angels don't care how advanced/down-to-earth she is in her thinking, in part because she no longer is on Earth; (2) soulmates have cache in the heaven she has selected. 

In other words, the reputation that she had on Earth as a smart, practical, "sure I'm faithful but he is only a man, and marriage is about compromise, ladies" wife of a powerful banker--a reputation that was honestly acquired--no longer carries the same weight. 

She consequently detests Damien and doesn't understand Thatcher's consistent low-key refusal to go "back" to what worked on Earth. 

So she hires thugs to take Damien into a different heaven before he finishes his confession. 

Damien was rather sick of the heaven he was in anyway. He wants to be with Thatcher. But he is far happier in the Victorian Steampunk with Modern Attitudes heaven that he has ended up in. (His boarding house is run by a woman who doesn't mind him having a boyfriend but does insist on "no shenanigans before marriage!").

Thatcher tracks him down. Damien finally agrees to complete his "confession," after which he and Thatcher move into the heaven Damien prefers (Thatcher has the easygoing moral code of a guy who can basically end up anywhere). Steampunk heaven is their home base though they are often asked by angels to investigate disappearances and problems elsewhere. 

* * *

Why Rules Matter

Both Part I and Part II are a fun way to explore the books and various characterizations. In Lathen's first Thatcher book, Banking on Death, the victim is a completely self-absorbed man who is always looking for an angle. He doesn't bother to revenge himself on anyone when he gets to heaven--nobody ever mattered to him that much. (In fact, he keeps ending up in heavens that petition to have him thrown out. Eventually, he goes to work for the Borgias and wheedles his way into the good graces of each relative in turn.) 

But the original book includes his bitter, shrewd, selfish and hysterical mistress, who loathes the man's estranged wife for no very good reason. 

That mistress WOULD try to take out her grief on someone in heaven, such as the estranged wife. Thatcher and Damien would have to figure out who is, say, spreading false rumors about the estranged wife, then track down the culprit and get her removed to another heaven. 

But if everything was all sweetness & light--or if everything was "yeah, whatever, it's just anarchy with angels"--then, well, my detectives wouldn't have much to do. 

People have to be able to behave badly for my detectives to have something to investigate. And the problems have to be repairable for my detectives to have long-range goals.