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

[leethet.livejournal.com]

It's only when the canon was revealed that the fanon around Snape's lineage and upbringing stopped being written

I would say that it didn't stop being written *g* (though it was done less often).

For me, when I say fanon, I'm talking about stuff that is extrapolated by the fandom from what isn't explicitly there

I think I understand - would you not call canon-contradictory stuff fanon? That is, alive Snape is not fanon because it contradicts canon?


Or am I still not seeing the distinction? I keep reading what you've written and going "I think I see ... no, wait, this sounds like the same thing ..."

Mind you, I'm rather dim lately. I blame lack of sleep.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

For me, fanon tends to be the 'why' rather than the 'what'... for example, because we don't have canon in UNCLE about how IK and NS first met, there's a whole genre of stories telling us about that in a wide variety of scenarios, all of which have to explain how the relationship we see in canon came to be.

When it comes to canon-contradictory stuff then you're leaning heavily into the territory of AU of various kinds - if you're taking what's in canon and then running with it, rewriting and/or explaining away what you don't like then that's not really fanon because it doesn't need to explain/be consistent with what's in the canon.

In that case, why bother with Voldemort at all? Why not have him hit by the Knight Bus and squashed in Harry's first year and then save all the trouble and misunderstandings? ;)