Thirty Days of Fanfiction: Day Thirteen
Jul. 13th, 2011 07:30 am13 – 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?
As to the former, by and large, canon. Even if it's an open canon, we're talking about backstory and I happen to like the one I wrote/read about better than the one the show eventually gives us, which was the case in Torchwood with Owen's backstory and his first meeting(s) with Jack. Still, if I wrote Owen again I'd use the backstory as given in the episode Fragments; I wouldn't be emotionally capable of using the one I made up before Fragments was broadcast. When it gets to the point where what canon tells me makes no sense whatsoever for me anymore I quit the fandom (alas, Heroes).
(Sidenote: as a reader, especially in fandoms I haven't written nor intend to write in myself, like Harry Potter, I find it sometimes interesting and/or amusing to be able to follow specific clashes of fanon and canon and being able to date stories from that. For example, pre-Half Blood Prince any number of stories featuring Snape out of Hogwarts gift him with "Snape Manor" (huge, naturally) and a Gothic House of Usher type of background, so the revelation he lives in a small city house in a northern industrial area instead entirely jossed that. BTW, this is one instance where I vastly prefer canon because I think it's far more interesting than Usher!Snape's dwellings. And then there are all those Jossverse stories (including a media tie-in) dealing with Spike's backstory written before and after Fool for Love was broadcast; not just relating to the Sire question but also in how Spike was like as a mortal. Not to mention that my girl Darla was peripheral or non-mentioned in most Angel-related backstories written before Angel the show started, due to her brief appearances on BTVS which didn't yet have the in depth characterisation she was to get in the spin-off, and that massively changed when canon established she and Angel(us) were hardly apart from the time she made him till the curse 150 years later.)
There are, of course exceptions to every personal rule. I am quite fond of what fanon![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andraste, myself and a few others created for the Centauri and Narn in Babylon 5, and kept using it in my stories. Too late now for JMS to tell us Centauri male tentacles aren't called brachiarte. :) Or about how the G'Kar/Mariel affair went, whether or not Londo speaks some of the Narn language and how he learned it, or what became of the four female Centauri telepaths.
As to the second part of the question: well, yes, to a point. Participating in a number of ficathons meant that I wrote the human characters of B5 as focus of stories which I had never done before (what with the aliens being more interesting to me, other than Bester), and that in tern enhanced my fondness and interest for these characters upon rewatching. Conversely, sometimes what was only a mild annoyance pre-fanfic writing can be an infuriating red emotional button when you rewatch and have to engage with that part of canon specifically for a story; certainly this happened to me in DS9, when I rewatched some Ezri-centric episodes in order to get a grip on her voice in preparation for writing Let It Be, and the way Ezri's mother was dealt with in Prodigal Daughter angered me so much that I wrote a rant about it. (Otoh writing Cold Heaven and Second Coming did neither appease nor inflame my Prophet dislike and fury about Sarah and what was done to her; it was there before, during and after writing in equal proportion.
( The rest of the questions )
As to the former, by and large, canon. Even if it's an open canon, we're talking about backstory and I happen to like the one I wrote/read about better than the one the show eventually gives us, which was the case in Torchwood with Owen's backstory and his first meeting(s) with Jack. Still, if I wrote Owen again I'd use the backstory as given in the episode Fragments; I wouldn't be emotionally capable of using the one I made up before Fragments was broadcast. When it gets to the point where what canon tells me makes no sense whatsoever for me anymore I quit the fandom (alas, Heroes).
(Sidenote: as a reader, especially in fandoms I haven't written nor intend to write in myself, like Harry Potter, I find it sometimes interesting and/or amusing to be able to follow specific clashes of fanon and canon and being able to date stories from that. For example, pre-Half Blood Prince any number of stories featuring Snape out of Hogwarts gift him with "Snape Manor" (huge, naturally) and a Gothic House of Usher type of background, so the revelation he lives in a small city house in a northern industrial area instead entirely jossed that. BTW, this is one instance where I vastly prefer canon because I think it's far more interesting than Usher!Snape's dwellings. And then there are all those Jossverse stories (including a media tie-in) dealing with Spike's backstory written before and after Fool for Love was broadcast; not just relating to the Sire question but also in how Spike was like as a mortal. Not to mention that my girl Darla was peripheral or non-mentioned in most Angel-related backstories written before Angel the show started, due to her brief appearances on BTVS which didn't yet have the in depth characterisation she was to get in the spin-off, and that massively changed when canon established she and Angel(us) were hardly apart from the time she made him till the curse 150 years later.)
There are, of course exceptions to every personal rule. I am quite fond of what fanon
andraste, myself and a few others created for the Centauri and Narn in Babylon 5, and kept using it in my stories. Too late now for JMS to tell us Centauri male tentacles aren't called brachiarte. :) Or about how the G'Kar/Mariel affair went, whether or not Londo speaks some of the Narn language and how he learned it, or what became of the four female Centauri telepaths. As to the second part of the question: well, yes, to a point. Participating in a number of ficathons meant that I wrote the human characters of B5 as focus of stories which I had never done before (what with the aliens being more interesting to me, other than Bester), and that in tern enhanced my fondness and interest for these characters upon rewatching. Conversely, sometimes what was only a mild annoyance pre-fanfic writing can be an infuriating red emotional button when you rewatch and have to engage with that part of canon specifically for a story; certainly this happened to me in DS9, when I rewatched some Ezri-centric episodes in order to get a grip on her voice in preparation for writing Let It Be, and the way Ezri's mother was dealt with in Prodigal Daughter angered me so much that I wrote a rant about it. (Otoh writing Cold Heaven and Second Coming did neither appease nor inflame my Prophet dislike and fury about Sarah and what was done to her; it was there before, during and after writing in equal proportion.
( The rest of the questions )
