On Writing Fanfic Part 1 - Know Your Canon

[tsukinofaerii]

I've only been in comics fandom for a little over a year-incidentally, that coincided with my discovery of Steve/Tony. (No, seriously, I have the exact moment that I discovered the joy of Steve/Tony bookmarked. I'm weird that way.) And you know, I got really, really lucky that I came in during a relative lull, and managed to not fall down a million

Comments

[muccamukk]

This is well done, I especially liked your who, what, where, when how break down.

I would also mention that there are self-contained sections of canon that are less daunting. MA is one, and some of the smaller universes. They can make good entry points.

I do think that the though I think it would flow better with more headers.

Also, Doctor Who canonically does not have canon -g-

[tsukinofaerii]

See, this is kind of fascinating, because I tend to think that the character distortions depend on where you're standing. Someone coming in from Ultimates and looking at MA will think that MA is the distortion, while someone in 616 will think that they're both off-kilter versions of that. 1602 is pretty obviously a Historical AU from the perspective of 616, but looking the other way 616 is a modern AU of a historical story. And so on, and so forth.

It also doesn't help that our first exposure tends to color our mental picture of the character, and that's pretty well unavoidable. So someone coming in from movie 'verse, for example, may be more comfortable sticking there for a while, while they try to get a grip on the rest of the 'verses. Off the top of my head, I can't think of really any other medium that has canon AU as such a prominent thing, and that's just hard to get used to at first. (No one ever seems to explain it, either. x.X You see "universe: 1610" and it means nothing to the in-comer, though eventually things get

[elspethdixon]

Except... OSC's stuff doesn't fit smoothly with the rest of 1610 canon. Not unless you fanwank things *hard*. It pretty much took out the tiny remaining shreds of my respect for OSC as a writer, because he had, what, twelve issues of Ultimates to stay in-continuity with at that point? Making his stuff match up neatly with Millar's canon shouldn't have been difficult.

our first exposure tends to color our mental picture of the character, and that's pretty well unavoidable.

*nods* And that's why, given an option, I'd start someone off with core canon (though, I wouldn't give someone early 90s 616 canon with WTF!Teenage Tony and Jan being turned into a bug, either - not all 616 canon is necessarily good).

I think the basic difference here is that I don't think of any of the non-616 characters as individuals. I think of them as reflections of the 616 character, with varying degrees of distortion. And then judge the 'verse by whether that distortion seems to be intentional and justified by the differences in worldbuilding and/or the

[valtyr]

I think the basic difference here is that I don't think of any of the non-616 characters as individuals. I think of them as reflections of the 616 character, with varying degrees of distortion.

Honestly, I think that while that's not inappropriate for MA, which is blatantly 616 lite, it's not really appropriate for Ults - it's just so different a universe. If I try to think of Ult Steve as a poor duplicate of 616 Steve, yeah, he comes off really badly, but really you might as well treat Guy Gardner and Hal Jordan as duplicates - the differences are so profound.

[valtyr]

And sorry, by 'inappropriate' I didn't mean 'you shouldn't do it', just that it's got a high likelihood of disappointing. I'm not trying to tell you how you should and shouldn't read comics. :)

[elspethdixon]

Tha's okay - it's not like I don't tell people how to read stuff all the time ^_^.

[tsukinofaerii]

WTF LJ why do things go blue when expanded? RAWR. I shall fix you!

Except... OSC's stuff doesn't fit smoothly with the rest of 1610 canon.I think that's pretty much a hazard of anything that has multiple authors. Someone is always going to go "lalalalaWHEE" and drag things one way or the other like the proverbial brick twinkie on the threads of the plot loom. It's kind of like Teen Tony in 616. A lot of us just cover our eyes and ignore it, but someone else might like that sandbox

[elspethdixon]

That's actually similar to the way I think of various DCU verses (as parallel sets of canon) but even there, I privilege comics canon over the rest, because it was there first (well, for Batman - for Superman, it's complicated, because so much early Superman canon came from the radio show and the 1940s cartoons and then crossed over into the comics). DCU Toonverse is my preferred canon and the version of the Justice League I like best (DCAU Hawkgirl = much cooler than JSA Hawkgirl, and John Stewart = The Best Green Lantern no matter what fanboys say), but the comics are the foundational source text.

It's sort of like how every performance of Les Miserables or RENT is a different but equally valid performance, with different actors' interpretations, a different director, etc., but Victor Hugo's novel/La Boheme is still the thing it's all based on (well, except that Les Miserables is much better written than most comics, if not always as much fun).