30 Days - day 13

[graculus]

13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

What is this, I don't even... Who on earth is going to admit they prefer fanon to canon? Never going to happen around here.

I suppose you could say that writing slash has made me more aware of the subtextual stuff going on (eye contact, body language) rather than just the dialogue but I'm not sure if that's what the question is going for. I prefer to think of it as seeing stuff that was already there rather than influencing how I see the source material.

Comments

[captain-tiv.livejournal.com]

I love a lot of the fanon in a fandom. Usually, it makes a lot more sense than canon. Plus, it's from us. It's part of the "world" we create from the show that's exclusively ours.

For instance, in the Hardcastle and McCormick fandom, the Judge never mentioned his son's name on the show. Fanon holds that his name was Thomas.

In Stargate, the fans made Major Davis' first name Paul. That was fanon, but they made it canon later on. :)

The problem is that sometimes the line blurs and we think that fanon IS canon.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I think there's a major difference, however, between tiny bits of fanon like people's names and major conceits in respect of who the characters are that get picked up en masse.

I guess my view has also been affected by the prevalence in Mag7 of the ATF universe which has its own canon, though I'm not sure any other fandom has things in it which are quite as drastic as that...