[HPFGU-OTChatter] "Tainting the canon"; one author's philosophy of fanfic

[Horst or Rebecca J. Bohner]

> I enjoyed your fanfic musings!  :--)  Are your stories on ff.net or
> elsewhere?  I'd be interested in reading them (well, HP ones that is ...
> I know nothing of Dr. Who or X-Files).

Thanks, Penny.  So far, thanks to my obsessive polishing and repolishing of
prose, I only have one completed HP fic, "The Potions Master's Apprentice";
it can be found in the Files section of HP_Fanfiction and Snapefans and also
on FF.net.  (Note that's "Potions" not "Potion" in the title -- people who
complain of not being able to find the fic usually have made that mistake.)

[snip list of recommended fics]

> Now, people have argued (and you might agree) that the characters in
> *all* of the above stories are not true to their canonical selves.

I would agree with that, not all of them are -- or, perhaps I should say,
not quite true to the way I personally can believe their canonical selves
would develop.  But in the case of some of the above (I have read at least
part of all of them, though I didn't always make it through to the end), my
quarrel wasn't so much with characterization as plot and setting.  It didn't
feel like JKR's universe to me:  the spirit didn't quite ring true.

Most of the really popular HP stories feature a lot of unwarranted
intrusions into the narrative -- obvious cameos by friends and relatives,
homages to the author's favorite TV shows, music groups, non-Rowling books,
etc. -- which delight many readers but for me make it impossible to maintain
my suspension of disbelief.  (I can handle one or two if they're subtly
done:  there's a grand old tradition of quoting Pet Shop Boys lyrics in
DOCTOR WHO novels and fanfics, for instance, and I often don't find them
until the second or third read.  But even so, the story would probably be
better without them.)

I know that these homages and in-jokes are fun for a lot of readers and that
fans clamour for more of them; but they're so far removed from anything that
JKR would put in her universe that for me they spoil the story.  Especially
when they colour the characterization, as when a wizard character suddenly
acquires unprecedented knowledge of Muggle pop culture just so he can make a
joke.  For me, coming across something like that in an otherwise promising
story is like settling into a warm bath and starting to unwind, only to have
somebody dump a bucket of ice water over my head.

> 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.

FTR, I thought "Draco Dormiens" was hilarious.  And although as you say
Draco in Cassie's stories isn't strictly the canonical Draco, the spirit of
the DD universe felt enough like JKR's universe that I was able to relax and
have fun with it.  I wound up really enjoying CC's take on Draco, although
it in no way changed my belief that the real Draco is an noxious little
maggot with no particularly attractive qualities.

On the other hand, "Draco Sinister" doesn't work for me very well at all,
because it feels like the story is taking place in the Buffyverse instead of
the JKRverse, among other things.  But I've already talked to Cassie about
that, and I know I'm in the minority.

> In any case, all of my recommendations clearly meet all your criteria
> IMO, with the only category for some argument being whether the
> characters are true to their canon selves.

Well, not really.  Like I said, in most of the cases you mentioned I just
can't get myself to believe that the universe of the story and JKR's
universe are the same.  Too many of those authorial intrusions / homages /
crossovers again.

Oh, well.  It's no doubt a bad habit, and perhaps even unreasonable, to
judge fanfic by professional standards.  But the professional fics I've read
(by which I mean those that were actually published, such as the Sherlock
Holmes / Mary Russell mysteries by Laurie R. King and the BBC's official
line of DOCTOR WHO novels) have proven to me that it really is possible to
tell a story in another person's universe with another person's characters
and have it be just as satisfying and believable as, or even more so than,
the original.  So I guess I'm kind of spoiled on that point.
--
Rebecca J. Bohner
rebeccaj at pobox.com
http://home.golden.net/~rebeccaj

P.S.  This is not to say that I think *I've* come up to professional quality
with my stories either.  For one thing, I'm not the best judge of that:  no
mother really sees her own child's faults.  But I've tried, and I would
certainly welcome criticism on the points where I've failed.