Know what ticks me off the most about the “we’re canon” and “but that’s not canon” and “your ship is not canon” nonsense? It buys into the whole proprietary ownership of storytelling that Disney exemplifies: tales as commodities controlled and dispensed by suits with their own self-serving agendas.
If you tried to tell the bards or poets or ballad-writers of centuries past that there’s such a thing as “canon” and it’s superior, they would have laughed in your face. Try telling even the famous storytellers like Shakespeare or Homer or Sappho or Ibn Tufail.
The recent preoccupation with “canon v. fanon” in the culture battles makes the Textual Poachers author’s quote more relevant than ever:
“Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.”
– Henry Jenkins, 1997
I did my undergrad comp thesis on Pavel Chekov’s potential realization and fufillment in Star Trek fanfiction; Textual Poachers is a great resource. 🙂
And yeah, the moral of the story: people need to chill the fuck out about canon and ships (did you write The Thing? If not, stop.), read up on reader response theory, and enjoy the fan-works they enjoy and don’t participate in the ones they don’t. In the end, it’s your experience and others, and as much as people think fandoms are communal, they’re comprised of individuals with different perspectives and desires experiencing a work through their own worldviews.
I laugh because the term “canon” to mean true and authoritative is appropriated from religion, and that’s a very recent phenomenon pushed by the commercial imperative; “canon” as it pertains to fictional works means “collection” – e.g. the American literary canon, the canon of classical Hollywood cinema; “The girl’s bookshelf was filled with the canon of children’s literature…”
How ironic that people are using “canon” – i.e. scriptural authority, the doctrinal truth, the Truth so true it is the decisive Word of God – for something which is literally fiction.
If there’s “canon” in fiction then most of the TV writers in Hollywood are heretics.
nonbinary robots are cool and all but imagine a robot designed to be genderless and it sees a girl and is like “wtf girls are cute im a girl now” and the scientists are like u cant do this thing but she is already out the doorÂ
past me: canon is sacred I must carefully fact-check everything to make sure it is canon-compliant
present me: canon is a box of scraps in a cave I’m gonna tear that shit apart throw away 90% of it and out of the good bits build something absolutely beautiful and amazing
[picture of an ao3 tag saying “Canon has been slow roasted @ 225 and carved for juicy bits]
[Image is a thread of tweets from Micro SF/F stories (@MicroSFF), which read as follows:
The robot opened itself, took out five power cells, and placed them at the pentagram points. Not blood, but it hoped the sacrifice would do.It began the incantation. A sticky darkness fell over the center of the pentagram, the power cells exploded, and a shadowy figure appeared.The demon probed the mystic bonds, then turned to the robot. “Why have you summoned me?” “Do I have a soul?” “Would you bargain with it?”“Do I have a soul?” the robot repeated. “A machine can not summon or bind my kind,” the demon said. “Yes, you have a soul. Do you offer it?”“Now I know,” the robot said, and performed the banishment ritual. It could not smile, nor frown, but stood still in thought. “Now I know.” The End]
“Wait a minute can they even do this they’re freaking cars”
You start to write something about ears or hands and then you remember like “…oh wait-”
getting anxious about putting human food in a scene so you just say oil to make it less conflicting
C A R  H U G S …
“THEY’VE GESTURED WITH THEIR TIRES LIKE TEN TIMES ALREADY DO SOMETHING ELSE YOU STUPID VEHICLES LIKE I LOVE YOU BUT PLEASE MAKE IT EASIER FOR ME”
unsure about how to make a scene more dynamic cause the characters can really only just sit there talking to each other
“IS. LIGHTNING. MCQUEEN. OOC. I SWEAR HE’S OOC IN THIS SCENE”
Or, alternatively: “IS ANYONE IN-CHARACTER IN THIS SCENE OH GOD I DON’T KNOW THIS SERIES AT ALL DO I I’M HORRIBLE”
“wait do they even have windshield wipers”
“how far can they stretch their axles out like arms omg this must read so awkward”
when you have to write Mater’s dialogue and you start  to say it out loud in the Larry the Cable Guy voice cause good God how do you write that voice properly (i.e. occasional horrid grammar and/or catchphrases)
*incoherent screaming about car anatomy*
“Okay would McQueen really cry here no he’d hold it in- but wait a second wouldn’t it be more powerful if he broke down here- alright listen up here-”
“OKAY IS IT THE ENGINE OR THE BATTERY THAT’S THE HEART I’M SO CONFUSED AND I’M THE ONE WRITING IT”
i’ve never been more baffled by any single post on this website and i’ve been here for four years
Cars fanfic is a thing which I both somehow knew must exist and at the same time was perfectly happy never acknowledging the existence of.
content-wise, this is the least relatable post i’ve seen in weeks
and yet somehow i feel like i ghostwrote it because op’s frustration at writing is universal
* means non-white protagonist, $ means disabled protagonist, # means trans protagonist, % means aro/ace spectrum protagonist, & means protagonist of a marginalised religion (Jewish, Muslim, etc)
• Under the Lights – Dahlia Adler *
• Starting From Here – Lisa Jenn Bigelow
• Dare Truth or Promise – Paula Boock
• Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit – Jaye Robin Brown
• Between You & Me – Marisa Calin
• Style – Chelsea M. Cameron
• Fat Angie – E. e. Charlton-Trujillo $
• Lunaside – J. L. Douglas
• Annie on My Mind – Nancy Garden
• Being Emily – Rachel Gold #
• My Year Zero – Rachel Gold &
• The Flywheel – Erin Gough
• No One Needs to Know – Amanda Grace
• Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel – Sara Farizan *
• Ask Me How I Got Here – Christine Hepperman
• A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend – Emily Horner
• Ask the Passengers – A. S. King
• Everything Leads to You – Nina LaCour *
• You Know Me Well – Nina LaCour and David Levithan
• Taking Flight – Siera Maley
• Dating Sarah Cooper – Siera Maley
• Time It Right – Siera Maley
• Colorblind – Siera Maley
• On the Outside – Siera Maley
• Girl Friends – Milk Morinaga * (five volume manga)
• Kisses, Sighs and Cherry Blossom Pink – Milk Morinaga * (manga short story collection)
• This Is Where It Ends – Marieke Nijkamp *
• Keeping You a Secret – Julie Anne Peters
• She Loves You, She Loves You Not – Julie Anne Peters
• Lies My Girlfriend Told Me – Julie Anne Peters (protagonist’s ex girlfriend dies before the book starts)
• Boyfriends with Girlfriends – Alex Sanchez *
• Wandering Son – Takako Shimura *# (twelve volume manga)
• Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before – Karelia Stetz-Waters
• The Space Between – Michelle L. Teichman
• The Summer I Wasn’t Me – Jessica Verdi
• Afterworlds – Scott Westerfeld *%
• Dirty London – Kelley York
Please suggest books and I will update this!
🍓🧀 (archive) 