xkcd: Strunk and White
Jul. 11th, 2011 08:40 amThis...
Has made my day and my week, and quite possibly the month and the remainder of 2011.
Has made my day and my week, and quite possibly the month and the remainder of 2011.
Jul. 11th, 2011
Thirty Days of Fanfic - Days 13 and 14
Jul. 11th, 2011 11:46 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?
This is two rather different questions.
1 – I am not – as I’ve indicated elsewhere in this survey – not a canon purist. But that being said, I love canon. I love the way that canon has developed the characters I play with, and I admire and respect canon for what it brings to the creative process. And yet, canon, by its very nature, has its limitations and its flaws. For example – in this season of White Collar, Mozzie and Neal have acted in ways that are contrary to expectation and to a certain extent, the level of human decency that was previously established. My own fanon, or head canon, has them going through numerous scenarios to correct their behavior. I prefer this. It makes me happy. In fact, Moz and Neal’s actions with regards to the treasure is so distressing that I wonder if I would have stopped watching if I and my fellow writers weren’t writing fic to correct the problem.
2 – Fan fic has, in some cases, changed the way I look at canon. Early on, I enjoyed reading a particular fic writer’s extensive redux of entire episodes, and they recast a lot of the action and development when I went back and rewatched those episodes. So much so that I started to wonder if there were problems with the videos, since certain scenes that I was certain were there – or bits of dialogue – were now missing.
Admittedly, that is an extreme case.
More recently, I’ve read fic that has given me new and better views of characters. Even though it was an A/U,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lionessvalenti’s story Bought and Paid For Fantasy and the follow ups (sorry for the lack of a link) made me see Kate as something more than the cardboard cutout the show gave to us. Going back and watching Forging Bonds was a revelation – even though the story took place in a ‘verse where Neal wasn’t a criminal and Peter had never chased him.
14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?
Oh, I am comfortable with the complete span of ratings. I’ll write NC-17 more often than I’ll write G. I have written stories that started out as NC-17, but ended up R because I got a little lazy and decided not to be explicit. I’ve had stories that have gone the other way too.
This is two rather different questions.
1 – I am not – as I’ve indicated elsewhere in this survey – not a canon purist. But that being said, I love canon. I love the way that canon has developed the characters I play with, and I admire and respect canon for what it brings to the creative process. And yet, canon, by its very nature, has its limitations and its flaws. For example – in this season of White Collar, Mozzie and Neal have acted in ways that are contrary to expectation and to a certain extent, the level of human decency that was previously established. My own fanon, or head canon, has them going through numerous scenarios to correct their behavior. I prefer this. It makes me happy. In fact, Moz and Neal’s actions with regards to the treasure is so distressing that I wonder if I would have stopped watching if I and my fellow writers weren’t writing fic to correct the problem.
2 – Fan fic has, in some cases, changed the way I look at canon. Early on, I enjoyed reading a particular fic writer’s extensive redux of entire episodes, and they recast a lot of the action and development when I went back and rewatched those episodes. So much so that I started to wonder if there were problems with the videos, since certain scenes that I was certain were there – or bits of dialogue – were now missing.
Admittedly, that is an extreme case.
More recently, I’ve read fic that has given me new and better views of characters. Even though it was an A/U,
lionessvalenti’s story Bought and Paid For Fantasy and the follow ups (sorry for the lack of a link) made me see Kate as something more than the cardboard cutout the show gave to us. Going back and watching Forging Bonds was a revelation – even though the story took place in a ‘verse where Neal wasn’t a criminal and Peter had never chased him.14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?
Oh, I am comfortable with the complete span of ratings. I’ll write NC-17 more often than I’ll write G. I have written stories that started out as NC-17, but ended up R because I got a little lazy and decided not to be explicit. I’ve had stories that have gone the other way too.