Rating:
PG
House:
HP InkPot
Genres:
Meta Essay
Era:
Unspecified Era
Stats:
Published: 05/05/2006
Updated: 05/05/2006
Words: 1,855
Chapters: 1
Hits: 450

The Myth of Total Fanfic

Sister Magpie

Story Summary:
A look at the ways authors strive to make fanfiction "real" so that readers can feel a fic actually "happened" on some level of reality.

Chapter 01

Posted:
05/05/2006
Hits:
450


When I was in school I remember learning about the myth of total cinema. The idea, as I remember it (hopefully at least somewhat accurately), was that certain inventions have always existed in theory. Man has always dreamed of flying and tried to fly, long before we had airplanes. Where as something like the telephone or computers or electric lamps weren't as familiar. Sure people might wish they could talk to their friend in the next town, but they couldn't imagine it as clearly.

Photography is more like flying in that people are more instinctively driven to do it. Not to take pictures, but to "capture" reality--a moment, a time, a feeling--and be able to experience it again. I suppose it's connected to a battle against death or time at heart, but the point is that photography is one step, and it also leads to movies, which are a bit more like "reality." The ultimate idea would be virtual reality. You're trying to recreate reality, erase all difference between this and the real thing.

I think that there's a strain of this in fanfic. Probably the highest praise you can give a fanfic writer is that s/he writes "in character." On one hand it's obvious why somebody would say that--you don't look for a story about Hermione to read about a prom queen with highlights calling people "dude." But I think it goes beyond that--why else would someone, for instance, rant about wanting to read stuff that's like canon and then write Dumbledore/Harry, for instance? Obviously they don't really mean they want to be reading the books themselves, because that's one thing we can be pretty sure isn't going to happen there. It seems to me what they want--what I want at least, maybe--is the illusion that this thing that will never happen, but that I might like to happen, has actually happened.

It's a twisted thing to think about because...happened where? The books themselves haven't "happened" at all--they're fiction just like the fanfic is. But as fans I think we all recognize something "real" about the actual canon, even if it's a reality we have a hand in creating ourselves by suspending our disbelief. We together all lift it above our own fiction. On some level it is a reality, because for all the casual, "If you don't like canon you should just write fic!" that, I think, is very hard to do. Many people find themselves unable to do that because canon has a weight and fanfic is all about pushing against that weight. Sometimes we're surprised just what things we can't overlook. Sure we can stretch things to pretend that Snape and Harry are really attracted to each other--but we have to find new ways to do it with each book as the canon changes.

I feel like behind it all there's this drive to create something like virtual canon, fanfic that becomes "real"--only real=canon. Sometimes this takes the shape of arguing for a logic beyond the words in the books. For instance, imagine three Dogstar Shippers faced with Remus/Tonks. One Remus/Sirius shipper might not see any problem--their idea of canon easily fits Remus/Sirius into the timeline of the books that include Remus/Tonks. The second perhaps has always set her Remus/Sirius in an AU anyway, so the idea that Remus isn't actually gay is not new information (I use this ship because there was a lot of open discussion about whether it could be canon, if unstated). A third person might feel far more stung by the revelation and argue that Remus/Tonks feels forced, it was stuck on to appease homophobes, it came out of nowhere, etc. Remus/Sirius makes more sense, feels more real than Remus happening to date a character with few ties to the storyline etc. That's what I mean about arguing for logic beyond the canon. The fan basically feels the author did something artificial or even wrong.

I will admit here that on the question of whether an author can write his/her characters out of character, I think that hypothetically they can, absolutely. Authors are people, they change. George Lucas deciding years later that Greedo should shoot first, in my opinion, does not make Greedo shooting first canon. If JKR became a Scientologist tomorrow and Book VII started with Harry having been converted too, I'd say that was out of character. I thought much of the last days of The X-Files demonstrated this as well. So I don't think that the mere fact that people are arguing for a logic beyond what the author creates is wrong. Fans aren't just passive viewers without any voice about logic if they've read the story. Storytelling depends on this fact, depends on the audience being able to do this, even if sometimes it's inconvenient for the storyteller. I'm not saying the fan is always right of course--fans can have agendas of their own, or bad ideas, and not all listeners are as good at following stories as others. But, for instance, with Star Wars, fans in general I think accept Hayden Christensen showing up at the end of Return of the Jedi much more than they accept Greedo shooting first in A New Hope.

But that's not the only way for fans to push towards virtual fanfic. They can do it from the other direction too. That path starts with the fan wanting to stick to canon closely, seeing "this is so in character!" or "this sounds exactly like the Original Author!" as a high compliment. I sometimes feel like this kind of presumption flies more under the radar when it comes to accusations of arrogance or entitlement, because the fanfic author starts with this attitude of respect and never puts his/her own preferences over another fan's, just, allegedly, the author's. But just as the fans arguing from logic are sometimes reasonable and sometimes deluded, so can these fans be the same way. "This could happen within the framework of canon" can slip into "my readers should consider this as having happened within the framework of canon" or "I'm a little bit more like the original author than another fanfic author is." They also sometimes wind up saying "well, I'm right and the author's wrong!" a different way.

To give an example, there's three fans who all have some investment in their fanfic being "like canon." They've all written a fic where DeathEater!Snape takes Polyjuice to look like Ron, then gets stuck in Hermione Weasley's bedroom, as her husband. Unable to transform back because he's left the antidote back at DE headquarters, Snape acts like Ron and has lots of sex with Hermione, sex which is far better than the sex she usually has with Ron. They conceive a silky haired baby and he falls in love with her. By the time bald!Ron's let out of the cellar, Hermione's ready to flee her marriage with her true love, Snape.

Someone comments to the author that Polyjuice only works for an hour. Unless Snape keeps drinking it regularly and has brought a bottomless vat of the stuff, he'd change back probably within 48 hours.

Arguing From Her Own Logic About The World Fanficcer says: But it makes no sense for wizards to not have improved Polyjuice by this time. The only reason it's like that is so Rowling can give Harry and Ron a reason to run from the Slytherin Common Room in Chamber of Secrets. I'm going to have Snape explain in my fic how he made long-lasting Polyjuice years ago, and consider that canon when I write. That's the fan arguing from her own logic about the world.

Somewhere In The Middle Fanficcer says: Damn, you're right. Let me pull that story down and stick in some reason Snape doesn't change back--something funky about this kind of Polyjuice, or he's changed some other way. I think anybody who can deal with the premise of this fic can handle whatever explanation for the Polyjuice I make up! This fan has thus accepted the canon, and changed her fic to suit it, but also said she's going to do what she wants other places.

Canon Worshipping Fanficcer says: Well, yes, in canon we are told that in Chamber of Secrets, but Hermione is a young witch and it was her first time making the Potion. We're never told that Fake!Moody is literally taking the Potion every hour--Hermione would have noticed that. So I think it's safe to say there are forms of Polyjuice that are stronger than the recipe we hear about in Chamber of Secrets and that my version of it does exist in canon as written by JKR.

All three of these fanfic authors consider being "like canon" a goal. The first one changed something in her story to keep the illusion from being broken. The second one also changed her fic, but still made a claim on canon. She acknowledged that canon says Polyjuice only works for an hour, but gave her explanation a bit more weight than fanfic author 2. The third author argued space for herself in canon. Rather than acknowledge the fact about Polyjuice, she stretched canon to fit the fic.

I guess part of what I find interesting is the issue of power. All three authors are lacking the power of the author. The first one makes a show of submission to the author's dominance and does what she wants. The second two challenge the author in different ways. The first fanficcer comes right out and places herself on the same level as the author as an interpreter of the canon, feeling she has enough basic information from the author to argue her own conclusions. The third author is also putting herself on the same level as the author as an interpreter of canon, in a sense, blurring the line between reader interpretation and canon.

Either way, I feel like those last two authors are definitely moving towards the same goal, which is wanting their ideas about canon to be in some way real, either by openly challenging the author or by sort of granting themselves permission to speak for the author as a reward for being such a loyal fan. In X-Files fandom, because it was TV, I think this was more obvious as certain fans would try to group themselves with the creators rather than the audience. Having spoilers gave credentials in that direction, for instance, as did TV production knowledge, things like that.

In the end I guess the lesson is that the real power is in the very thing that creates the fandom: the ability to create a fiction that draws people in. There's lots of different ways fans express this type of power themselves. Sometimes it's by scootching themselves ever closer to the actual creator of the canon by getting themselves a rep as an "insider" or a canon expert or the author's biggest fan. Sometimes it's through sub creation, writing a fic that sparks a smaller version of the original spark in readers. The goal is always to make something "real" only in this case real still means fiction.