Well, I guess I've arrived? Musings on the sources of fanon / how weird it is to realize you are one
I just read a story that had a piece of FF7:AC fanon being used as though it were canon.
What was really funny, though, was that it was a piece of fanon I'd made up. For a series that's only got three posts in it so far. I'm half flattered (people think it's plausible enough to take!) and half embarrassed (it's fanon that's GOT actual canon in its place that I just didn't use, which is a bit more awkward to try to explain than fanon that's making up for a gap in canon).
It's happened to me before -- I made up the 'four days in Wutai' story as part of the explaining-Sephiroth's-uniform fic I wrote for Ciceqi, and someone else took that and made references to it as though it were canon rather than mine.
It's just a little odd to see things that you totally invented because you didn't have background to work with being turned around and relied on as authoritative by other fanfic writers? Especially since they didn't know that what they were picking up wasn't canon.
For the record?
'Four days in Wutai,' the photographer, the PR lady, the raincoat, and everything else in here is fanon I made up. Except the character names, of course.
Likewise, the 'Strength, Wisdom, and Vessel' division is fanon I made up for the 25-streetsigns fics. Their canon divisions are that Kadaj is Sephiroth's cruelty, Loz is his strength (I kept that part because it was just too perfect), and Yazoo is his beauty/his allure. I think that distinction came out of the Ultimania guide.
I've got to admit I made it up because I thought Yazoo needed SOMETHING to make him distinct and to give him a personality, because 'beauty and allure' is pretty much surface and doesn't really give a writer a personality to get hooks into. Which with his, what, two or three lines of dialogue in the whole movie? Yeah, I kinda had to make it up in order to *give* him a headspace to get into... ^^;;;
But I wouldn't want people to go around thinking it was canon, when it's just something I'd structurally needed to make that series work. I feel badly about using something counter-canon and having it get taken for authoritative...
ETA: All smoothed out -- writer & I have chatted this one over! There are a lot of parallels between the motorcycle-ride/comic-blackmailing-Seph/OT4 picnic/Aeris-as-pie-baker sequence in this fic, when I wrote that series of events for Ciceqi in the Terrorist Activities fic she was kind enough to make part of her Mascotverse. But the writer says that it wasn't intentional and will give a reference, so I'm cool with that.
Anyway. Gotta get back to work. Just thought I should mention it, because it's really, really bizarre being taken for canon when you haven't even had the chance to play the game itself...