Thirty Days of Fanfiction: Day Thirteen
Jul. 18th, 2011 01:49 pm13 – 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?
In my opinion, fanon is the icing and canon is the cake. Cake without icing is edible, but lacks finishing touches. On the other hand, serving up a pile of icing with no cake underneath is just silly.
There are plenty of bits of fanon I like, and some I've made up myself and use over and over. I find fanon most useful when it fills in details that the canon is never going to cover - it's not like we were ever going to get Word Of God on what the Centauri call their tentacles, so when I needed to put that in a story I consulted Selena for ideas and made something up. (This? Is my most enduringly popular bit of fanon. Which I find hilarious.) Fanon that contradicts my view of canon annoys me, especially when it becomes all-pervasive, but I don't see it as harmful in and of itself.
I don't think I've ever changed my mind about the source material because of writing fanfic, but I've certainly written fanfic because of changing my mind about the source material.
( The rest of the questions ... )
In my opinion, fanon is the icing and canon is the cake. Cake without icing is edible, but lacks finishing touches. On the other hand, serving up a pile of icing with no cake underneath is just silly.
There are plenty of bits of fanon I like, and some I've made up myself and use over and over. I find fanon most useful when it fills in details that the canon is never going to cover - it's not like we were ever going to get Word Of God on what the Centauri call their tentacles, so when I needed to put that in a story I consulted Selena for ideas and made something up. (This? Is my most enduringly popular bit of fanon. Which I find hilarious.) Fanon that contradicts my view of canon annoys me, especially when it becomes all-pervasive, but I don't see it as harmful in and of itself.
I don't think I've ever changed my mind about the source material because of writing fanfic, but I've certainly written fanfic because of changing my mind about the source material.
( The rest of the questions ... )