Discussion: To Canon or Not to Canon by princessofgeeks

[meridian_rose]

princessofgeeks is hosting an excellent discussion on the topic of canon,
To Canon or Not to Canon.
It talks about how many fan writers feel constrained by canon, worry about their fics being "jossed" if they don't post them before the next episode/movie. It considers what is canon, how far can we contradict it before our fic is AU?
In other words, must we write only what we are shown in canon, or can we go beyond canon if we do not contradict canon?
As a slash fan in 20th century, heteronormative Hollywood, I'm sure you know what side of that line I came down on.

I've been dealing with thoughts about this myself recently, and I'll repeat the comment I left under the cut. But I do urge everyone to go and read the full discussion post and the comments and, if you have any thoughts you feel you can express, add a comment at that post yourself.

It's a fascinating discussion. Overall I think many fan writers tend towards writing fic in the first place to explore the things (missing scenes, alternate choices, slash ships) that canon denies them. How comfortable you feel changing things and how far that goes, how much you ignore canon choices, or if you write outright AUs, is a question for you and possibly the answer varies between fandoms.

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I'm dealing with feelings about this at the moment. On the whole I'm very much "screw canon, I write what I want"/read what I want.

But if canon wants to try and insist that, in particular a slash relationship cannot happen (and sighing so hard at the heteronormativity even where we have a canonically bisexual character as one part of the potential ship) I think it makes it a little murkier. I don't know if I mean harder to write fic because again, I will write and read the ship regardless. Or if I mean harder to give a crap what canon says at all, which makes it a little less in character? IDK.

I wrote fic after seeing an episode and before the next few (deliberately spacing out my watching) and I know I wouldn't have written it that way if I'd seen the canon explanations. It would have messed with my own head canon. Jossed, as we say (and no, like the other commentators, I don't know what term we used before that :D).

So there is some level of constraint to me under particular circumstances. But on the whole I'm happy to handwave and write whatever ships, whatever au, whatever 'character is actually still alive thank you very much' fic I want to.