reasons for fanfic THE CANON

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 16370

(Oh, good grief, Vander Ark's weighing in on the canon thing... 
Delete! Quickly!)

Let me say right up front that I do not read fanfic. Anyone who's 
read things I've written over the past, what is it, a year?, knows 
that I will undoubtedly come down pretty strongly in favor of keeping 
the canon free from outside interpretation. And I know some of you 
quite well, having read the things that YOU have written over the 
past--can it really only be a year?! But I digress--and I know that 
you'll just shake your head and say "There goes that crazy Lexicon 
guy, who doesn't know what he's missing..." or tell me that hey, I do 
my own form of interpretation, so there. 

So I could go on and on, explaining my point of view and trying to 
convince all you out there with wonderful examples and reasoning. I 
could. But I don't have to. These last few posts have done it for me. 

You read fanfic to get new insights into the characters? You suddenly 
see Draco in a new light? Great! I have no problem with that, if 
that's what you like. But do you see what's happening? You're seeing 
a different Draco from the one in the books. Again, that's great if 
that doesn't bother you. You are entitled to a new version of Draco 
or anyone else if you like. But you have to realize that this new 
version of Draco IS NOT THE VERSION THAT'S IN THE BOOKS. It's not. 
The characters in the books are what they are, they aren't real 
people with all sorts of depth that JKR hasn't found space to 
include. JKR doesn't write most of her characters with the kind of 
depth you are inventing for them. She might in the future, but she 
hasn't so far.

Please please please understand that I don't care one whit that 
fanfic does this, and I am delighted that writing and reading fanfic 
provides all this additional emotional connection and opportunity for 
some of you to explore human nature and enjoy the Harry Potter books. 
We all have our ways of being obsessed. Believe me, I have my own 
ways, as most of you know. 

But fanfic, as the past few posts have clearly stated, changes your 
perception of the characters, and in ways which almost without fail 
the author did not intend. Think about the book Jane Eyre, which I 
happen to love. There was a novel written some years back which 
interpreted the same story from a totally different point of view, 
one which totally changed the way the characters of Rochester and his 
mad wife would be seen. Suddenly the mad wife was the victim, the one 
you felt sad for, and so on. Hey, it's a great book and it does 
exactly what fanfic does: it offers a whole new interpretation, a 
whole new perspective, and if updates the whole plot with more modern 
sensibilities, which feels kind of good. But it certainly doesn't 
present a correct interpretation when you think about what the 
original author intended. In fact, reading The Wide Sargasso Sea 
pretty much wrecked the original for me, since now I can't ever read 
Jane Eyre the same way again. I now have this interpretation by 
someone else tainting my impressions of characters I loved so much. 
For some folks, my wife for one, that makes Jane Eyre all the more 
interesting, and that's fine. For them.

That kind of coloring of what's actually there is what I do not want 
to have happen to me. I don't WANT to feel sympathetic toward Draco 
or Snape. That's not the way the characters are portrayed in the 
books. (No, it isn't; they're stereotypes, let's face it). I want to 
hold on to the actual characters, the ones JKR gives us, even if 
they're stereotypical, and if she suprises me with a twist somewhere 
along the line--if Snape turns out to be really a nice guy that we've 
all misunderstood along with Harry, for example--I will be delighted 
to let HER have that honor. Until then, I don't want someone else 
doing it for me.

So by all means, enjoy fanfic. I'm really, honestly not against it at 
all for anyone (but me). But understand that, as these posts have so 
eloquently pointed out, you do lose something special along with the 
things you gain. You forever lose JKR's own version of the characters 
she has created. 

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
the best Harry Potter resource anywhere (at least *I* think so)
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon