~~ the myth of the anti-fanfic
Aug. 5th, 2005 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaI was just thinking earlier that oddly enough, after my initial indignant 'wtf??!' reaction to the idea that many people felt new canon (both HBP & OoTP) was 'just like another fanfic', I find myself fascinated with the idea. Often enough people seem disappointed that it's not somehow qualitatively different enough from fanfic-- that it's not... inherently superior? That it doesn't, as a piece of writing taken on its own merits, re-establish the hierarchy of canon on top, fanon on the bottom. Suddenly, after years of swimming in the fanon sea, canon is just another fish, albeit a much larger, more puffed-out fish.
Actually, I can empathize with the feeling pretty well-- it's just that I found myself thinking, with both books 5 & 6, that this is much better that any fanfic I'd read at, er, predicting canon, I guess? I don't know if that makes sense, but whenever I read extrapolative in-Hogwarts fics, something is -always- off. Always. With the actual books, even if something happens that I didn't expect, they're so inherently linear and rational that I could always see the progression, the why, so in the end I can accept it.
In nearly all fanfic, either some character isn't given enough attention, or some other character seems to be drawn too sympathetically (that is, one thing I really love about Rowling is how unsympathetic even her heroes are a lot of times, though I realize most people hate this), or we have plot devices (that is, ways to kill Voldy or what have you) that come out of nowhere and don't seem really all that connected to the rest of the books. I can't think of one, not even one in-Hogwarts H/D fic where I felt the Riddle and Snape storylines was dealt with satisfactorily, without something being brushed off or left well enough alone entirely.
Then again, I'm very very very picky with fanon, perhaps moreso than with canon because fanon has definite guidelines (that is, canon is its constant shadow) whereas I do believe canon has much more... uh, ability to redefine itself by introducing new information, sometimes out of left field (which always feels even more anvilicious in fanon, though it's still groan-worthy in canon). As a reader, I'm much more willing to swallow things whole in canon because... well, the closest analogy I can come up with is that it's like a floppy disk that has both write and read access enabled, whereas with fanon you have read access but to write you'd need to use another disk.
I do think that differences in this 'willingness to swallow' are behind people's response to canon as if it was a fanfic. I mean, I can even see how a fanfic could be seen as having more leeway, because canon -should- be more 'responsible' whereas a fanfic has no responsibility and can be 'just for fun'.
So yeah, the thing I kept feeling very strongly (especially with OoTP) was that here, finally, was someone who played with nearly every ball in the air-- Rowling herself. So perhaps I read the books in comparison with fandom too, since one can't help it, it's just that I don't have such a high opinion of what fandom produces (not in terms of quality but in terms of believability), so JKR's stuff was a breath of fresh air. Not that the books aren't full of their own inconsistencies and errors and implausible turns and sloppiness at times, but that this was still miles better than fanon, which often doesn't even try to patch up all the holes, only the interesting ones to the author, so to speak. I dunno.
This is really odd and contradictory and hard to make sense of entirely-- a fandom's quirky, often nearly confrontational relationship with the canon that spawned it. The sense of ownership we secretly start to have a lot of times, the exponentially growing expectation to be surprised even after a million monkeys write a million possible directions for canon to go, and the disappointment if we're surprised in any way we weren't expecting (that is, but some things we wanted canon to leave well enough alone, didn't we-- just like good old fanon would).
I think, basically, I was satisfied with canon largely because what I was looking for was the anti-fanfic like everyone else, yes, but in a very particular way.
Perhaps most importantly, I don't really see fanfic as being "that thing that is shippy" (like some people do) or canon as being "that thing that isn't", so this probably helped me along. Because no matter what, I think canon is shippy in a different way than any fanfic I've ever seen-- no matter how emotionally explicit it gets, it's not really an emotionally-driven narrative, so it doesn't feel shippy. Perhaps this is what freaked people out (because they know what they like, and they like their shippiness emotionally explicit), whereas for me it was great because it was different.
Harry doesn't actually think that much about his own emotional states, much less those of others, and I like him that way. Nearly no one else writes him like this but JK Rowling. I guess it's too tempting to be like, 'well, let's give Harry an inner Hermione so that he might get a clue and we might like him more'. I tend to think of that as cheating, on some level. I like my teenagers clueless and semi-assholish and dorky and realistically dense-- thanks, JKR. I really... really hate sugar-coating things, and this pet peeve has just grown worse with 3 years of fandom and fic after fic with misunderstood, intellectual, debonair Draco and me wishing him to die a messy, ugly death. (To be fair, it's not just Draco-- I kind of hate debonair people unless they're pure pulp testosterone icons like James Bond or like, secretly assholes like Sirius.)
Anyway, what was my point?
I'm just rambling, wondering if, aside from my own reasons for attraction to HP canon over fanfic lately (ie, bitterness), there -is- such a thing as 'the anti-fanfic'. Of course there will be elements that seem too familiar (deja-vu, anyone?) and elements that come uncomfortably close to some bad fic (because there are, of course, enough fics written that it's pretty inevitable) and elements that are purely 'wtf??!' because they don't mesh well with our expectations or desires or prior understandings or... whatever. But this desire to have canon be perfectly, 100% plausible and "real" also makes me laugh, because this is HP, of all things, and plausibility and fully realistic progression was never high on its list of goals or actual attributes, I don't believe. So it's like, why the surprise?
I do like the idea of canon being made non-hierarchal, non-dominant, by some repeated re-evaluation in the fans' minds. The ultimate in reader-as-consumer-driven culture, in a way, is to say that whatever doesn't satisfy you or work for you isn't really good enough.
And I'm thinking of the many books that ultimately didn't 'work' for me on the instinctive 'this should never have happened' level (like say, Alcott's 'Little Women'), and how I never doubted it -did- happen and I just had to suck it up. The fannish reader is a different, evolved sort of beast, I think. Or perhaps not evolved; maybe the metaphor of having bitten on the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge would work better.
Actually, I can empathize with the feeling pretty well-- it's just that I found myself thinking, with both books 5 & 6, that this is much better that any fanfic I'd read at, er, predicting canon, I guess? I don't know if that makes sense, but whenever I read extrapolative in-Hogwarts fics, something is -always- off. Always. With the actual books, even if something happens that I didn't expect, they're so inherently linear and rational that I could always see the progression, the why, so in the end I can accept it.
In nearly all fanfic, either some character isn't given enough attention, or some other character seems to be drawn too sympathetically (that is, one thing I really love about Rowling is how unsympathetic even her heroes are a lot of times, though I realize most people hate this), or we have plot devices (that is, ways to kill Voldy or what have you) that come out of nowhere and don't seem really all that connected to the rest of the books. I can't think of one, not even one in-Hogwarts H/D fic where I felt the Riddle and Snape storylines was dealt with satisfactorily, without something being brushed off or left well enough alone entirely.
Then again, I'm very very very picky with fanon, perhaps moreso than with canon because fanon has definite guidelines (that is, canon is its constant shadow) whereas I do believe canon has much more... uh, ability to redefine itself by introducing new information, sometimes out of left field (which always feels even more anvilicious in fanon, though it's still groan-worthy in canon). As a reader, I'm much more willing to swallow things whole in canon because... well, the closest analogy I can come up with is that it's like a floppy disk that has both write and read access enabled, whereas with fanon you have read access but to write you'd need to use another disk.
I do think that differences in this 'willingness to swallow' are behind people's response to canon as if it was a fanfic. I mean, I can even see how a fanfic could be seen as having more leeway, because canon -should- be more 'responsible' whereas a fanfic has no responsibility and can be 'just for fun'.
So yeah, the thing I kept feeling very strongly (especially with OoTP) was that here, finally, was someone who played with nearly every ball in the air-- Rowling herself. So perhaps I read the books in comparison with fandom too, since one can't help it, it's just that I don't have such a high opinion of what fandom produces (not in terms of quality but in terms of believability), so JKR's stuff was a breath of fresh air. Not that the books aren't full of their own inconsistencies and errors and implausible turns and sloppiness at times, but that this was still miles better than fanon, which often doesn't even try to patch up all the holes, only the interesting ones to the author, so to speak. I dunno.
This is really odd and contradictory and hard to make sense of entirely-- a fandom's quirky, often nearly confrontational relationship with the canon that spawned it. The sense of ownership we secretly start to have a lot of times, the exponentially growing expectation to be surprised even after a million monkeys write a million possible directions for canon to go, and the disappointment if we're surprised in any way we weren't expecting (that is, but some things we wanted canon to leave well enough alone, didn't we-- just like good old fanon would).
I think, basically, I was satisfied with canon largely because what I was looking for was the anti-fanfic like everyone else, yes, but in a very particular way.
Perhaps most importantly, I don't really see fanfic as being "that thing that is shippy" (like some people do) or canon as being "that thing that isn't", so this probably helped me along. Because no matter what, I think canon is shippy in a different way than any fanfic I've ever seen-- no matter how emotionally explicit it gets, it's not really an emotionally-driven narrative, so it doesn't feel shippy. Perhaps this is what freaked people out (because they know what they like, and they like their shippiness emotionally explicit), whereas for me it was great because it was different.
Harry doesn't actually think that much about his own emotional states, much less those of others, and I like him that way. Nearly no one else writes him like this but JK Rowling. I guess it's too tempting to be like, 'well, let's give Harry an inner Hermione so that he might get a clue and we might like him more'. I tend to think of that as cheating, on some level. I like my teenagers clueless and semi-assholish and dorky and realistically dense-- thanks, JKR. I really... really hate sugar-coating things, and this pet peeve has just grown worse with 3 years of fandom and fic after fic with misunderstood, intellectual, debonair Draco and me wishing him to die a messy, ugly death. (To be fair, it's not just Draco-- I kind of hate debonair people unless they're pure pulp testosterone icons like James Bond or like, secretly assholes like Sirius.)
Anyway, what was my point?
I'm just rambling, wondering if, aside from my own reasons for attraction to HP canon over fanfic lately (ie, bitterness), there -is- such a thing as 'the anti-fanfic'. Of course there will be elements that seem too familiar (deja-vu, anyone?) and elements that come uncomfortably close to some bad fic (because there are, of course, enough fics written that it's pretty inevitable) and elements that are purely 'wtf??!' because they don't mesh well with our expectations or desires or prior understandings or... whatever. But this desire to have canon be perfectly, 100% plausible and "real" also makes me laugh, because this is HP, of all things, and plausibility and fully realistic progression was never high on its list of goals or actual attributes, I don't believe. So it's like, why the surprise?
I do like the idea of canon being made non-hierarchal, non-dominant, by some repeated re-evaluation in the fans' minds. The ultimate in reader-as-consumer-driven culture, in a way, is to say that whatever doesn't satisfy you or work for you isn't really good enough.
And I'm thinking of the many books that ultimately didn't 'work' for me on the instinctive 'this should never have happened' level (like say, Alcott's 'Little Women'), and how I never doubted it -did- happen and I just had to suck it up. The fannish reader is a different, evolved sort of beast, I think. Or perhaps not evolved; maybe the metaphor of having bitten on the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge would work better.
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Date: 2005-08-05 10:08 pm (UTC)I got the sense with HBP of something being reined-in that could have run away; and although I like the wildness of OotP, HBP felt like the arc of a thrown ball returning to earth. It dealt with things that 99% of fanfic (even good fanfic) would stay away from; romantic subplots that are purely about snogging and silliness. So, although there are times when fanfic hits it on the nail, for me it's not yet quite the time to read it.
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Date: 2005-08-06 02:45 pm (UTC)*dies*
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Date: 2005-08-06 02:52 pm (UTC)I can feed your obsession, you know *points to icon*.
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Date: 2005-08-06 09:06 pm (UTC)And I know exactly what you mean, I think, with the reining-in, probably because the two last books are pretty much the denouement, whereas 1-5 were build-up and OoTP was transitional. Hehe, I am sort of gleeful that HBP dealt with shippiness in a way fanfic wouldn't (which annoyed most fans); then again, I don't have all these expectations of what JKR 'should' write,'cause if I did, I don't think I'd start with the HP books in the first place.
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Date: 2005-08-05 11:32 pm (UTC)Harry doesn't actually think that much about his own emotional states, much less those of others, and I like him that way... I like my teenagers clueless and semi-assholish and dorky and realistically dense...
Yes, exactly! People complain that JKR's writing is emotionally retarded, but really, I think it's sort of Harry and I love him for it.
secretly assholes like Sirius.
LOL! And I love you for that. <3
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Date: 2005-08-06 09:38 am (UTC)On top of everything else, just the way JKR names things (U-No-Poo, anyone?) is just so canon it kind of hurts... how could you mistake it, really... argh my poor brain...
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Date: 2005-08-05 11:54 pm (UTC)But what I love about fanfiction is the little moments, the pieces, because they don't feel like they're trying to be anything and failing, they feel more like footnotes, to me. I'm not sure I've ever felt that way - uncomplicatedly loving a fic for everything it is - about anything longer, but that's the way of it, really; it's harder to sustain something for a long time.
I think what I am saying is, some fanfiction just does something for me that canon never will. Simply because that's the way it is. But I love them entirely separately, and I have never read a piece of fanfiction and thought, yes, that's exactly how Book Six should be, down to the last detail!
Ahem, that's all. Though for the record, I would not mind if misunderstood, intellectual, debonair Draco died a messy death either. Although I will admit to liking a few fics that contain him. :"> I cannot be iron-willed all the time!
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Date: 2005-08-06 09:31 am (UTC)I love fanfiction too! And I love exploring the things canon wouldn't (slash, anyone?) and seeing backstories and reading about how Sirius fell in love with Remus 1001 different ways, and imagining 100 different ways for Draco's family life to be like, and even silly things like Veela!Draco amuse me when you don't have people taking them seriously or anything. I know what you mean about loving short stories-- it's much easier to do it right, much easier to sustain a style, a mood, an inspiration. I can't think of a longfic I've really loved all the way through, actually... I tend to either burn out or feel it drove itself into a rut or betrayed its premise at some point near the end, usually, or whenever the real slash starts (grr). Short stories have much more power to imply things & thus get away with them better :D
So yeah, fanfic & canon do different things, are good at different things, are pretty much apples & oranges. They are related in terms of sharing context, obviously, but that doesn't make them interchangeable. *sigh* Why do these questions even come up? *facepalm*
I'll admit to loving quite a few Dracos that are a bit on the bad-for-me, fattening side. Oh yeah, leather pants included :D
Fanon v. Canon
Date: 2005-08-06 11:56 am (UTC)"I do agree with you on a lot of things, and I'm vaguely baffled by the people who say they like fanon better than canon, because I'm like, what, how can you?"
I think some people might like canon over fanon because it is feels more artistic and less commercial and possibly less passive. Fanfic is written by fans for fans, it is a communal experience that is done all for love and not for profit. While all fanfic writers are indebted to JKR for creating Harry Potter, it might feel like a less empotionally statisfying experience for some people because it is feels anti-democratic and anti-communal. JKR writes about Harry Potter, we get to merely absorb. With fanon we can absorb but also comment and create. You can change what you don't like about the books.
Fanon also allows people to explore things that JKR would not touch with a ten-foot pole. I don't know if JKR knows what slash is but I am fairly certain that she would be appalled by the concept of romantic and sexual undercurrents existing between Harry and Draco. Not because she is a homophobe but because she intended for them to have a purely anatagonistic relationship and has made that clear in all the books. Draco and Harry simply hate each other. There are no hidden feelings of love or lust between them. My biggest fault with most slash is it's constant desire to confuse antagonism with secret signs of attraction and eroticism. I have also seen a fair amount of Harry Potter fanfics use prostitution as a theme. I am also fairly certain that JKR would not like that as well.
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Date: 2005-08-06 12:05 am (UTC)Brava!
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Date: 2005-08-06 09:22 am (UTC)I'd say this
Date: 2005-08-06 12:58 am (UTC)Whereas in OoTP I can actually bring myself to reading and enjoying fanfic based around it (because the book is so unweildy and vague at times), in HBP I'm avoiding fanfic that deals with the issues presented.
Does that make sense?
Re: I'd say this
Date: 2005-08-06 09:10 am (UTC)...And then... and then... no one did it, not in anything resembling a complete fashion that satisfied me & answered my questions and remained in-character and took things slowly & didn't use silly plot-devices. And I became bitter (...more bitter) and grouchy and really relieved at HBP, which somehow managed to give me better H/D slash than any fanfic that came before it. Woe.
But yeah, overall, I love the seamlessness and just... the way canon both raises questions and eventually answers them in such a metered, careful fashion. OoTP was really much more about asking questions & HBP started to answer them, so it makes sense the feel would be different-- more complete in the latter case. Though I'm really glad I don't feel like reading fic on the issues, really, if only because I have next to no faith fanfic is up to dealing with them in a way that seems fully plausible anyway, even though we do come up with some awesome, zany ideas that JKR wouldn't conceive of after the most sleepless of nights. Fandom should be proud of itself, really.
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Date: 2005-08-06 01:01 am (UTC)What fanfics occasionally manage to do which canon can't do (because of the way she's chosen to keep us mostly to Harry's point of view) is tell the story from a different angle. Harry misses things. A lot. One of the hardest things to do is to try to keep him just as heedless and self-absorbed as he is in the books and still manage to get the information across to the reader that allows us to see that maybe Harry hasn't figured it all out.
rabbit
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Date: 2005-08-06 09:03 am (UTC)I love fanfic, ideally, 'cause it's not as if we're about to read that much about how Sirius', Remus' and James' friendship began, or what really happened after The Prank, or how Draco Malfoy really feels, or what would happen if (this or that or the other thing) say-- Harry was gay :D :D Of course Harry's pov is limited and there's such a rich world around him to play in-- so many backstories to create, alternative voices to use. I love fanfic. It's just... not canon :>
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Date: 2005-08-06 04:05 am (UTC)*g*
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Date: 2005-08-06 08:37 am (UTC)Uh. Possibly to Harry...? *hedges quickly*
...I really need a Sirius icon :D
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Date: 2005-08-06 06:09 am (UTC)Personally, I'm one of those people who felt that HBP (and OotP, too, for that matter), was "just like another fanfic." Not because I was expecting it to be inherently superior (the vagueness and plot holes in OotP most definately cured me of that expectation), but because, after so many years of reading so many different people's interpretations of the Harry Potter world/characters/story, so many different interpetations that were all, in their own way, equally valid, HBP felt like just one more interpetation. Think about, say, Arthurian legend. There are scores of novels and films based on the King Arthur stories, from TH White's "The Sword in the Stone," to "The Winter Prince," to Marion Zimmer Bradley's "The Mists of Avalon." All are different takes on the same story and characters, the same legend viewed through different mirrors, and once you've read enough of them, you tend to say, "oh, another King Arthur book. Let's see how this writer does Lancelot," rather than "S/he is merey writing fanfic for Geoffrey Monmouth/Sir Thomas Mallory/etc., the only true arbiter of Arthurian canon." After a while, I started doing the same thing with HP fanfic.
This is how JKR sees these characters, I thought to myself as I read, as opposed to how Jaida or Switchknife or one of a hundred other writers sees them. And wow, she sure is good at writing an IC Harry.
Not so good at taking advantage of all of the potential complexities and shades of grey and moral dilemmas she could be investing her books with, though--if we're meant to take what she's done with Snape at face value, it's far too simplistic (like everyone else who's ever been mean to Harry, he's a bad guy, because Harry's perceptions and objective reality are one). But that's another rant--and recent comments about how JKR never saw herself as a fantasy writer, was trying to subvert the genre, etc. make me suspect I'm coming at literature from a different perspective than she is anyway.
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Date: 2005-08-06 08:36 am (UTC)While say, Mary Stewart and Jennifer Roberson and Parke Godwin created whole in-depth, believable worlds that each stand entirely on their own, most fanfic writers barely scratch the surface of either the characters or the world, and on top of this, most write Harry -and- Draco wildly, ridiculously out of character to the point where I laugh remembering some of the fic I used to find gripping and inspiring because you'd have things like heartfelt declarations of love, crying in corridors, love potions leading to True Wuv Omg, sudden changes of heart over the summer leading to nice!Draco (and let us not forget Veela!Draco), evil!Ron, and so on and so forth. Plausibility, thy name is definitely not rivalslash fanfic (mostly what I read)-- but then, most of the Sirius/Remus I read is uh... not much better in the ICness department (cue more crying, girlyman!Sirius, saintlike!Remus, super-wolf-powers!Remus, etcetc). But, er... sorry, I tend to rant~:)
So I cannot say the books are 'equally valid' because I wouldn't call most fics I read valid extrapolations of canon, no matter how well-written or gripping they are. To be 'equally valid', you'd have to pass the plausibility test, and most of them fail in one way or another and not just in the showing-not-telling dept like JKR does, but also in the 'wtfeth, this makes no earthly sense' dept, which... JKR tends to avoid if only 'cause she's such a logical writer, always depending upon her own subtle clues and hints & interweaving plot-points that later matter & so on. I seriously felt that the H/D interaction in HBP was the only fully plausible one I've read ever since OoTP came out, not counting all those hatesex fics that might work in an AU sort of way where Harry's actually gay, etc. But as I said, I realize I've become bitter & I don't read much gen or het, so perhaps I'm missing out on untold genius.
But yes, I think fanfic -is- great at taking advantage of shades of grey & adding complexity & a modern spin to JKR's work that's not about to be written into the books-- but that's a complementary and/or intersecting, AU-type approach rather than an 'equally valid' parallel approach, it seems to me. A lot of fics I've read were great at running with and expanding the meaning & context of JKR's creations, but I've read none to do what she does, as well or better, and to me, therein's the rub.
It does depend on what the reader wants, but even if one's dissatisfied with canon, it remains a qualitatively different animal from fanfic in that case. The very critique of canon as lacking in the first place actually ensures the separation, in a way.
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Date: 2005-08-06 10:40 am (UTC)And remember, Werewolves Mate For Life (tm).
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Date: 2005-08-06 06:16 am (UTC)See, I'm the other way around. Weird. To me, canon has less potential than fanon, because fanon is less serious and is more about play and pleasure than profit and professionalism.
Which I guess is why to me, Harry is dense, but not realistically so. He was realistically so in OotP, because we hd the proper emotions involved that would come with it. But in HBP he was almost totally emoionless, D's death and his raging
Malfoy-obsessedhormonal beast in his chest aside.no subject
Date: 2005-08-06 08:46 am (UTC)I think it's different, though, potential (which fanon has more of simply because it's not constrained by any -need- be extrapolative, yeah) vs. ability to redefine what's being extrapolated in the first place. It's really like comparing apples and oranges, and I certainly wasn't trying to say canon is -better- than fanon in the post (was I?), just that they're different & suited for different things. Like, I've not seen fic as successful at extrapolating from canon as like.... well, canon is.
Re: HBP!Harry... sure, yeah... I noticed he was less emotional in HBP (even though, well, it's still a better characterization than any other in an overall way even if I'd like to pretend 5 months passed in those 2 weeks before Dumbledore came)... and yeah, that bothered me a lot.... but I don't think he was emotionless, just back to pre-OoTP Harry in a lot of ways-- more closed-in, self-enclosed, repressing, avoiding, denying. That's been pretty Harry Classic all along. He was just losing it in OoTP, projecting his emotions, whereas I really do think that's not natural for him, he's a pretty introverted, private boy. So yes, the -transition- sucked, but the characterization post-transition was totally Harry (that is... he's not an obvious, clearcut character most times, which is why a lot of people-- including me!-- only started to like him and/or get him in OoTP).
Anyway, I didn't mean HBP, I meant he was and always has been dense, and I didn't just mean Harry (as in, Ron's possibly denser, and let's not even go into how in denial Draco is), 'cause all JKR's teenagers are pretty clueless and bitchy (and often hard to like, but I love that). In HBP, Harry was -less- dense, more thoughful (for Harry), though still paranoid, pretty self-centered, pretty unaware of what others may feel,though paying more attention. For lack of a better word... Harry grew up a lot.
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Date: 2005-08-06 10:31 am (UTC)*shrugs* I dunno. O.o Were you?
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Date: 2005-08-06 10:33 am (UTC)Constant vigilance!
(Here via the Daily Snitch... :-)
Date: 2005-08-06 02:20 pm (UTC)So sometimes the evolved beast actually threaten the canon writers -- or actually, I think that's all in the canon authors' minds and they just take it out on this strange beast that they never anticipated before their work got to be this huge phenomenon -- and some other times, the author sits back and enjoys. (Or at least, feels confident enough to say, hey. Live and let live.) Because she knows she's better, or as you put it more fittingly, different from any of the fanfics.
But I've got to say, sometimes I really feel for the non-JKR's of our time. Having to compete with the poachers of your own creations... It's got to be tough, compared to what fiction writers have been used to for the past couple of centuries.
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Date: 2005-08-06 11:53 pm (UTC)Like, I don't think you can truly poach (that implies appropriation) and/or create a shared world out of one that isn't, not all the way. You can sort of recreate the fictional world and share the copy, but the original remains... original, if that makes sense.
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Date: 2005-08-06 03:39 pm (UTC)Hmm. I also wonder if this a related issue to HP's relative inability to decide what's canon (e.g., author's interviews). In audiovisual fandoms, it's easier to make a distinction, because the stuff on the screen is radically different from other sources (except deleted scenes).
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Date: 2005-08-07 12:07 am (UTC)Yeah, in HP there's also reference books like 'Guide to Magical Creatures' and so on. Haha, JKR even said she's thinking of writing an HP minor-character encyclopedia, which I find hilarious. But yes, the lines do blur as JKR likes to over-define canon, which actually seems to diminish credibility somewhat....