"Tainting the canon"; one author's philosophy offanfic

[cassandraclaire at mail.com]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer > 

(snips recommendation list)
Now, people have argued (and you might agree) that the characters in
> *all* of the above stories are not true to their canonical selves.  
It's a subjective judgment though.  I think Lori did an outstanding 
job of extrapolating traits & characteristics of the canon characters 
for her adult characters.  I know others disagree (apparently with 
respect to Hermione in particular), but I don't think they're OOC at 
all.  When you've aged the characters by over 10 years, they aren't 
necessarily  going to meet everyone's expectations -- it's a very 
subjective matter. It's easier to use your strict "do they adhere to 
their canon selves"  standard when you're evaluating fanfics set 
during the Hogwarts years.
> 
> Draco -- he's definitely different in the works of Cassie & Heidi 
than he is in canon.  He is *not* his canonical self.  He *is* though 
a *possible* canon self.  I don't think the Draco created by either of
> these authors is implausible at all.


Quietly wanders over to play Devil's Advocate. 

I wouldn't agree that those stories (including mine) belong on such a 
list. <g> Quite a lot of people regard PoU, DD/S, TiP, and so forth 
as veering far from canon in tone and style. And I don't say that 
they're wrong, either.

I think it's a matter of perspective and what you see as canon-true. 
I have heard the arguments about OOC-ness against PoU and TIP and 
such forth, and while I consider them to be examples of reasonable 
extrapolations based on canon characteristics, I recognize that there 
is a certain subjectivity there. You are never going to get a 
characterization that pleases *everyone* because we all see these 
characters in different ways. Witness the wild differences of opinion 
regarding Ron on HP4GU. There is no way to characterize him in a way 
that will please everyone, or agree with everyone's interpretation, 
given that some are convinced that he is the true hero of the 
stories, and others are convinced that he is one chess game away from 
Death, and still others believe that he is two knuts away from 
selling out his friends and family. <g> Ditto Snape, who some people 
see as a flawed hero and some people see as an irredeemable 
sleazebag. And so on.

People might also disagree on what seems like a reasonable 
interpretation of canon. For instance, both Heidi and I think it's a 
reasonable interpretation of canon to assume that Draco is fairly 
bright. His father's comments in CoS and his own dialogue points 
towards that, IMHO. Other people however violently disagree on this 
point. Yet if you're going to write a Draco story, you pretty much 
have to pick an interpretation and stick with it. So not everyone 
will regard it as 'canon-true.'

There are other matters to take into consideration besides 
characterization, like style, dialogue and content, even views on 
magic. I've seen complaints that PoU isn't canon-true because its 
style reads more like that of a spy novel than JKR's. I've seen 
complaints that it isn't canon-true because of the way the characters 
use magic -- glamours, for instance, which some consider wouldn't be 
possible in JKR's world. I've seen comments regarding TIP that 
Malfosoft isn't something we'd ever see in canon; that the view of 
magic doesn't mesh with JKR's, that the style is far more romantic 
than hers. I've gotten plenty of the same kinds of comments myself, 
like that demons don't belong in a story set in JKR's world, that 
it's too "Buffy" or that wizards would never learn sword fighting 
because they do all their fighting with wands, etc. <g> And those are 
all valid observations, but it's certainly subjective as to whether 
that sort of thing affects your enjoyment of a story. It doesn't 
affect mine, at least in the case of PoU and TIP--I think they are 
two of the most enjoyable and well-done fanfictions out there.

I've read other stories which seem to be striving far harder to 
capture the exact tone, style, dialogue and characterization of JKR's 
original work, yet which IMHO lack the animating spirit that makes a 
story, to me, unputdownable. I can admire them for their technical 
excellence in mimicry yet be unable to maintain interest in finishing 
them. One of them was recently discussed on the PoU list and I recall 
that Penny and a few others said they couldn't hang with it either. I 
recognize that this is totally subjective, which leads into my next 
point.

It's simply a matter of what you read fanfic for and what you find 
enjoyable in it. I don't read fanfic because I want book 5. (I do 
want book 5, but that's not what I'm looking for in fanfic.) I read 
it because I love the characters and I love discussing them and I am 
interested in seeing other viewpoints on them, other people's 
extrapolations of possible futures. Certainly wild OOC-ness with no 
justification bothers me -- crying wimpy Harry, a less-than-bright 
Hermione, a saintly Draco who gives all his old clothes to Oxfam. But 
I don't mind incorporations of other styles in fics -- stinkerbell's 
stories are distinctly noir, Al's have a gangster theme, Sphinx's 
read like Oscar Wilde fairy tales, and I enjoy them all. If I stopped 
reading fanfics that I thought strayed in tone and viewpoint from the 
canon, I'd have to give up "Snitch!", "TIP," Rhysenn's work, 
Alicia/Sue's work, Sphinx's stories, stinkerbell's work, and those 
are most of my favorites. (And I'd have to stop writing my own stuff, 
as well.) There are plenty of well-written, well-done MWPP's out 
there that hang with the tone of the canon and present realistic 
canon-true viewpoints on what the Mauraders might have been like, and 
I've never been able to get through any of them with the exception of 
Hyphen's humor work (which might not count.)

So, I suppose my point, which I left behind long ago, is that for 
me, "sticking in tone and style exactly to the canon" does not 
necesaarily translate into "something I want to read" (although it 
doesn't necessarily mean I don't want to read it, either.) We all 
read fanfic for different reasons and, to coin an obvious truism, we 
all have different taste in what we like.

Cassandra