thoughts on "personal canon"
A few weeks ago I wrote a story in which a character committed suicide. Without going into too many details of the story (or even the fandom), it was just a story that got stuck in my head and I had to tell it. But I had never written a deathfic before, and I found it immensely sad even as I wrote it. And what disturbed me more was that the more I thought about it, the more I logically considered the characters and the situations they find themselves in (in canon), the more I started to believe that the story had to end at least partly the way I'd imagined it.
Every time I considered, "What would life be like in this situation?", I couldn't sugarcoat it or come up with a happy rationalization. I couldn't imagine, realistically, that things went differently. I couldn't come up with an ending that was better than bittersweet at best. And I told myself, "That's okay, it's just for this one story. It's not like this is canon." Except for me, the more I thought about it, the more it sort of was. The more I tried, almost desperately, to come up with a happier ending, the more this ending, the most logical I could come up with, became part of my "personal canon."
I tried to explain this to a friend of mine, how disturbed I was to find this depressing suicide story sneaking its way into my personal canon. She's a fannish person, but she expresses her fannishness in different ways than I do-- she focuses less on fanfic than I do, and more on characters and costuming and collecting. She didn't really know what I meant by "personal canon," and I tried to explain it, but I was sleepy and I don't think I did a very good job. So here I am trying to explain it, having had a few more days to think it over and consider just what it is I meant.
When I become personally attached to a story-- a movie, a TV show, a book, a musical, whatever-- I take it in and make it part of me. It becomes part of how I see the rest of the world. I judge other things against it, I relate other things to it, it becomes part of my personal filter. When I see something new, I think, "Wow, that was just like the symbolism in X" or "Hmm, they did that better in Y" or "That was so stupid, I hated it in Z and I hate it now." I make connections between completely unrelated texts and I build my little personal pastiche of meaning.
But there are always parts of any story that just don't ring true for me. I'm trying to think if there's any text anywhere that I love completely, perfectly, with absolutely nothing I would change. I can't come up with anything. (Some of this is, unfortunately, dependent on casting or actors or whatever. There might be a movie I just adore, but if I don't like an actor in it that might make it just slightly less than perfect.) Usually, if it's something I love, the things I'd change are tiny, but they exist.
Or there are parts of any story (fanfic included) that don't get fleshed out. Sometimes it's just not part of the story you're telling, or you don't want to detract from the main, important characters, or you don't have time to examin every interesting thing you come across. You have to gloss over some things. But as a reader/viewer (especially a reader/viewer who's also a fanfic writer), sometimes it's those little scenes that aren't shown that are fascinating. (I spent a good portion of my high school years wondering just what happened between Han and Leia on that trip to Bespin...)
And of course the written/filmed story ends at some point. Sometimes that's the end of the story, but most of the time it's not, and we're left wondering what happens afterwards. Sometimes what happens afterward isn't important (I have absolutely no desire to read/write/imagine post-Moulin Rouge stories, for instance-- that story is over). But sometimes the implication is that the story isn't over-- maybe that it's just beginning-- and it just begs for us to imagine what happens next.
So in my head, I develop my personal version of what happened. I try to remain true to the spirit of the source text, the intent and integrity of the story. (Sometimes I think, in my oh-so-humble opinion, I can be truer to the story's integrity than the source itself, but that's a ramble for another day.) Maybe I conveniently leave out a scene or two. Maybe I imagine an offstage conversation to fill in a plot hole. Maybe I spin up my own backstory or my own sequel.
And those additions become part of my personal story. My personal canon. How does the story end? In my version, in my imagination, it ends this way.
Then I write a story. Sometimes I write a story because I feel the need to elaborate on my personal canon (or to figure out what my personal canon is. As in, how do I think this tangential story the writers left hanging really ends?)
But most of the time I write stories because I have some "what if?" idea, some cool scene or conversation in my head that I want to explore, to see how it plays out. 99% of the time, this is not because I think this is really how the story should go. I'm not going to absorb it into my version of the text. It's not part of my personal canon. It's just a what if. What if so-and-so's memory didn't come back after episode X? What if what's-his-name didn't let her walk out on him so easily? How can I look at this situation another way, interpret this line of dialogue to mean something else, follow this tiny change out to its logical conclusion? How would that change everything? (Or how would nothing at all change, no matter how much I want it to?)
It's disturbing, therefore, when I start with a what if-- a dark, depressing what if-- and follow it out to its [logical, dark, depressing] conclusion, and then work backwards to its logical source and discover that it's the original source text. That I don't have to change anything for this ending to make sense-- for this ending to make perfect sense. For this ending-- or at least certain sad elements of it-- to be suddenly the only ending I can envision. If I want to be true to what I feel is the spirit of the source text, certain things can't be changed, and those certain things lead inevitably to certain conclusions. I can't change it without betraying the original or envisioning a full-fledged sequel.
My personal canon rewrote itself without my permission, and that's darn unsettling.
Every time I considered, "What would life be like in this situation?", I couldn't sugarcoat it or come up with a happy rationalization. I couldn't imagine, realistically, that things went differently. I couldn't come up with an ending that was better than bittersweet at best. And I told myself, "That's okay, it's just for this one story. It's not like this is canon." Except for me, the more I thought about it, the more it sort of was. The more I tried, almost desperately, to come up with a happier ending, the more this ending, the most logical I could come up with, became part of my "personal canon."
I tried to explain this to a friend of mine, how disturbed I was to find this depressing suicide story sneaking its way into my personal canon. She's a fannish person, but she expresses her fannishness in different ways than I do-- she focuses less on fanfic than I do, and more on characters and costuming and collecting. She didn't really know what I meant by "personal canon," and I tried to explain it, but I was sleepy and I don't think I did a very good job. So here I am trying to explain it, having had a few more days to think it over and consider just what it is I meant.
When I become personally attached to a story-- a movie, a TV show, a book, a musical, whatever-- I take it in and make it part of me. It becomes part of how I see the rest of the world. I judge other things against it, I relate other things to it, it becomes part of my personal filter. When I see something new, I think, "Wow, that was just like the symbolism in X" or "Hmm, they did that better in Y" or "That was so stupid, I hated it in Z and I hate it now." I make connections between completely unrelated texts and I build my little personal pastiche of meaning.
But there are always parts of any story that just don't ring true for me. I'm trying to think if there's any text anywhere that I love completely, perfectly, with absolutely nothing I would change. I can't come up with anything. (Some of this is, unfortunately, dependent on casting or actors or whatever. There might be a movie I just adore, but if I don't like an actor in it that might make it just slightly less than perfect.) Usually, if it's something I love, the things I'd change are tiny, but they exist.
Or there are parts of any story (fanfic included) that don't get fleshed out. Sometimes it's just not part of the story you're telling, or you don't want to detract from the main, important characters, or you don't have time to examin every interesting thing you come across. You have to gloss over some things. But as a reader/viewer (especially a reader/viewer who's also a fanfic writer), sometimes it's those little scenes that aren't shown that are fascinating. (I spent a good portion of my high school years wondering just what happened between Han and Leia on that trip to Bespin...)
And of course the written/filmed story ends at some point. Sometimes that's the end of the story, but most of the time it's not, and we're left wondering what happens afterwards. Sometimes what happens afterward isn't important (I have absolutely no desire to read/write/imagine post-Moulin Rouge stories, for instance-- that story is over). But sometimes the implication is that the story isn't over-- maybe that it's just beginning-- and it just begs for us to imagine what happens next.
So in my head, I develop my personal version of what happened. I try to remain true to the spirit of the source text, the intent and integrity of the story. (Sometimes I think, in my oh-so-humble opinion, I can be truer to the story's integrity than the source itself, but that's a ramble for another day.) Maybe I conveniently leave out a scene or two. Maybe I imagine an offstage conversation to fill in a plot hole. Maybe I spin up my own backstory or my own sequel.
And those additions become part of my personal story. My personal canon. How does the story end? In my version, in my imagination, it ends this way.
Then I write a story. Sometimes I write a story because I feel the need to elaborate on my personal canon (or to figure out what my personal canon is. As in, how do I think this tangential story the writers left hanging really ends?)
But most of the time I write stories because I have some "what if?" idea, some cool scene or conversation in my head that I want to explore, to see how it plays out. 99% of the time, this is not because I think this is really how the story should go. I'm not going to absorb it into my version of the text. It's not part of my personal canon. It's just a what if. What if so-and-so's memory didn't come back after episode X? What if what's-his-name didn't let her walk out on him so easily? How can I look at this situation another way, interpret this line of dialogue to mean something else, follow this tiny change out to its logical conclusion? How would that change everything? (Or how would nothing at all change, no matter how much I want it to?)
It's disturbing, therefore, when I start with a what if-- a dark, depressing what if-- and follow it out to its [logical, dark, depressing] conclusion, and then work backwards to its logical source and discover that it's the original source text. That I don't have to change anything for this ending to make sense-- for this ending to make perfect sense. For this ending-- or at least certain sad elements of it-- to be suddenly the only ending I can envision. If I want to be true to what I feel is the spirit of the source text, certain things can't be changed, and those certain things lead inevitably to certain conclusions. I can't change it without betraying the original or envisioning a full-fledged sequel.
My personal canon rewrote itself without my permission, and that's darn unsettling.