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pebblysand · 3 years

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[the thoughts on canon-compliance you did not ask for.]

last night between 2 and 3 in the morning (look, i couldn’t sleep, got up to write, then got caught up, okay? don’t judge me for my terrible sleeping patterns please) i had a super interesting discussion with a few people on the hinny discord channel about the definition of canon-compliant-ness. i think this is fascinating because to be honest, before getting into the hp fandom, i didn’t even think this was something one could disagree about. to me there was what was canon, and what wasn’t. a very black-and-white sort of system. i’m finding that it’s not.

through the discussions that i’ve had both on my fics and other people’s fics, it seems that i can narrow down - in the hp fandom - three elements of canon.

i. the events of the books/films

now, as a general disclaimer, you can obviously argue about whether the films are ‘canon.’ you can also argue whether cursed child is canon. there’s a lot of elements which differ between those and lots of opinions about how to look at them. personally, i tend to ignore cursed child. as to the books v. films, i pick and choose what suits my story more. generally, that’ll be the books. but for instance, i’m writing a harry&hermione friendship one shot right now, and there are a lot of movie-isms in that story because that is an aspect that was more explored in the films. however, for the purposes of this post, i’m mainly considering the source material to be the seven books. nothing more or less.

having said that, to me personally, that’s what ‘canon’ is: the events of the story and the characters that gravitate around those events, as described in the source material. things like: tom riddle killing lily and james, or harry, ron and hermione rescuing the philosopher’s stone. anything departing from that is, de facto, an ‘au.’ the whole world of what-if scenarios: what if Harry was sorted into slytherin, what if dudley was a wizard, all of those, to me, are aus.

generally, both as a reader and a writer, those are not scenarios i’m particularly drawn to. my default answer to those what-if scenarios is: ‘well, if harry is sorted into slytherin, there’s no story.’ or at the very least, there’s no story as i know it, and if there’s no story as i know it, then i’d rather read/write original fiction. it’s obviously a very personal preference and there are exceptions to this preference. i loved the changeling [1] for instance, and love the self-aware style of dirgewithoutmusic’s aus [2]. but as a general rule, that is not my preferred genre.

now, aside from the what-if scenarios, there’s also the question of filling in the gaps of the story itself. like, i find it interesting that we only make tsunamis [3] is labelled as ‘canon-compliant’ because i get the feeling that a lot of people would disagree that a fic in which hermione is harry’s first kiss is canon compliant. but, by exploiting the silence sometimes left by the author and turning it to your advantage, are you writing an au? is a negative space canon? is silence canon?

again, as a matter of personal opinion, i would not push my definition of canon-compliance as including blank spaces. to me, as long as it does not contradict the letter of the text, adding in events to the books to suit your story (i’ll address character in point ii) does not make your fic an au. to give another example that was brought up to me regarding my own work, i don’t believe that the events described in chapter nine of castles [4] are au because they exist in a blank space of the books. the fact that harry didn’t notice the 1:1s between ginny and amycus doesn’t mean they didn’t happen, it just means that they’re not in the positive space described by the books.

ii. the characters/characterisation

(as a quick vocab note, please note that below, i’m using the terms ‘ooc’ to mean that the characterisation of a character in a fic is not canon-compliant. they’re synonyms to me.)

now, while the above was pretty straight forward, i believe that this is where i perhaps differ from the masses in my interpretation of what “canon-compliance” means. more i discuss with people, the more i realise that i don’t really think there’s a real ‘canon’ characterisation. or at least not in the big things. like, yeah, it’s canon that harry likes treacle tart, because that’s a fact. but anything that is down to psychology or perspective of the character is, to me, generally up for grabs.

as a human, i believe that there’s things that people do, events that they go through, that condition them to act a certain way. while there is a core to every human being, i personally believe that in life, anyone would basically be capable of doing anything, given the right circumstances. i’ve recently - rightfully - been told my writing is all about the power of choice in our life, the reasons why we make those choices and the people those choices lead us to be. for example, do i think i might murder someone tomorrow? probably not. do i think i might be capable of murdering someone in wartime? perhaps? i don’t know, that’s not the world i live in and my life choices have not lead me to find out the answer to that. however, my point is: to me, good ‘characterisation’ is down to the circumstances and choices outlined in any work of fiction. hence, good characterisation is essentially, to me, equal to good writing.

i often say that good writing could make me believe anything and i mean it. i don’t tend to gravitate towards these fics because these ships are not my personal taste but i genuinely believe that good writing could make me believe in drarry or rarry if it tried. it’s funny because over the course of the discussion yesterday on discord, this was brought up ‘well, no one tags drarry as canon compliant,’ and i’m kind of like, i don’t know whether or not they do because i don’t read it but if they did and none of it contradicted the events as detailed in the books, perhaps it could be? like, that would take really good writing (imo), but good writing has - on occasion - made me believe in dramione a couple of times, so why not? in ‘til the sirens come calling [5], good writing made me 100% believe that harry and hermione would have an affair together. in we only make tsunamis [3], it makes me believe that they had this quiet little relationship building throughout hogwarts that we never knew about.

now, though, i suppose the question isn’t: do i believe it? the question is: is it canon? and, i think that’s where i differ from most people because to me, it is. to take ‘til the sirens come calling [5] as an example, i believe the fic is an au because hermione marries victor krum in the end. that’s going against the hard fact presented by the epilogue, and thus makes it an au. but i don’t believe the concept of a harmony affair is inherently au, because nothing is inherently au, character-wise. it’s about how you write it. how those people get to that place. that’s what makes canon-compliantness, in my opinion.

for example, for that fic, truth be told, we don’t know what those nineteen years include per canon, so they could very much include an h/hr affair. and whilst i don’t believe that the characters as they are in the books would have an affair together, i believe that the characters as they are presented in the fic, with the events and hardships that they go through, definitely would. good writing, to me, is - in part - recognising that characters are moving on a spectrum and that whilst their decisions/actions might not make sense in book-verse, they make sense in fic-verse. good writing is convincingly moving your characters from book-verse to fic-verse, and it not feeling ‘off.’

if it does feel off, that is bad writing to me, and that is also ooc-ness/non-canon compliant. it means that for whatever reason, the writer has not successfully transitioned and explained said transition through the events outlined in the story. with the right prose, you could make me believe draco decided to take on a career as a ballerina dancer after the war, and it would still be ‘canon-compliant’ to me. on the other hand, i have read fics (i won’t name them because that would be shit and also i don’t keep track of my ‘bad’ reads) where harry, ginny, hermione, or ron all act according to book canon and yet, their motivations felt off to me and completely ooc because the writing didn’t successfully lure me in. specifically, there was a lack of character evolution that i found uninteresting. i read mostly post-war stuff because i want to see my characters grow up [6].

as a last, additional note on characters, i also think that the characters in a story only exist within the prism of how we view them. this means that to me, locking my own understanding of a character's personality as 'canon' is particularly difficult because my understanding of a character is unique. i believe there are as many harry-s or ginny-s or hermione-s as there are readers. so i think saying someone's interpretation of a character isn't canon-compliant is odd because i don't actually believe there's any wrong or right answer. as i said, do i believe it likely that draco would become a professional ballerina? no. but if that works within your understanding of his character as described in the books, who am i to say that is or isn't canon compliant? i'll admit, the idea makes me sort of lol though.

iii. tone

lastly, i’ve come to find (in potter particularly) that canon-compliance might include tone. as in: hp is a story that is a) written in a certain style and b) written for children/young adults.

regarding style at a), this is honestly the main reason why it took me 15 years to write potter fic, despite the fact that i’ve been a fan for even longer than that. i genuinely thought you had to write like jkr. and i, well, don’t write like jkr. i love the books, but i don’t even particularly like her style. i like: camus, and sorj chalandon, and sally rooney, and dirgewithoutmusic and copper_dust [7]. i have zero ambition to write like jkr and don’t particularly want to read stuff that is written like her stuff either. it’s a style that imo works for her, but it doesn’t work for me as written by other people. i don’t particularly think you need to stick to her style to be canon-compliant.

which brings me onto my actual point: b) hp is a story written for children. young adults perhaps, for the later books. it sometimes explores dark themes but the writing style, the tone, etc. is lighthearted enough that it appeals to a younger audience. there’s snogging but there’s no sex, there’s violence but the torture is mostly off-screen, etc. issues like sexual assault, substance abuse, etc. aren’t explicitely brought up in the books, although they would one hundred percent fit in a book about a war that wasn’t necessarily aimed at children. the question is whether this setting and tone is part of what we call ‘canon-compliance.’

honestly, i don’t know. i didn’t think so until it was brought up to me that castles might be a dark!au and i was like: maybe? like, if you want it to be? i know what i like to read in fanfic: i love the exploration of serious themes that were not explored in the books, or explored differently due to the fact that they were written for children. one thing i will say and insist on is that i don’t think castles is all dark. i actually make a point of having lighthearted moments in each and every chapter, even just a notch, because i am attached to the fact that life as a concept is a mixture of good and bad, and you could laugh at the funeral of someone you loved, again in the right circumstances. but yeah, to me the post-war world is dark. so if tone is part of canon-compliance, then yeah in that way castles (as well as most of the stuff i read, to be honest), is a dark!au.

as a last side note, i’m not sure what that means for my other, lighter stuff though. like are the wolf’s just a puppy [8] or slipped [9] more canon-compliant than castles? i never thought about it in those terms but perhaps? it really opens up a world of questions in my mind and i don’t really have the answers to them.

conclusion:

so in sum, as a reader, what i mean as ‘canon compliant’ is basically a) the events as described in the source material and b) the characterisation of characters as they are at the start of the fic. if character evolution is sufficiently justified and well-written in the following thousands of words that the fic has, then said characterisation can still be canon-compliant, even if the characters act different than they would have in the source material itself. i’m a fan of good writing and good writing can make me buy into literally anything. it takes me places that i've never been before and convinces me that those places are the ones i should be in.

as a writer, i hope that regardless of 'compliance,' whatever i write at least makes ‘sense’ to people within the universe, even if they don’t consider it canon-compliant, per se. i feel like i can’t really be the judge of that. from the discussions we had last night, i feel like there are as many versions of what is and isn't canon-compliant as there are people.

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[1] the changeling by annerb

[2] the boy with a scar series by dirgewithoutmusic

[3] we only make tsunamis by disOrdely

[4] castles by yours truly

[5] ‘til the sirens come calling by vexmybones

[6] as a side note and to take my own stuff as an another example, i totally agree that harry in castles isn’t harry in the books. i don’t think there’s much debate to be had in that assertion. i wrote him like this frankly because every other fic i’d read didn’t. they often had him sort of continue to be perfectly himself after the war, which i felt wasn’t speaking to me on a deeper level. imo, i think the war’s done a lot of scarring and the fic is about him growing into a new version of himself. so, to me, if i get a comment that says ‘i don’t think harry would act this way but i really love your writing’ it’s somewhat flattering but also confusing because i don’t really understand how one can enjoy the writing but not the characterisation. to me, they’re so intrinsically linked. what the comment tells me is: i think you did a very poor job at explaining character evolution and justifying character x’s [harry’s] choices but i still like your writing, somehow? i suppose that’s nice, but it doesn’t particularly compute in my brain. like, if the character feels off, it means the writing feels off and thus, why are you still reading? i appreciate all and every comment that i get but it doesn’t mean they always make sense in my own brain. if i’m honest, these comments often send me into an ocean of self-doubt about how shit my writing must be.

[7] copper_dust’s work and profile.

[8] the wolf’s just a puppy (and the door’s double locked), again by yours truly

[9] slipped (and said something sort of like your name), same.

#writing #fic writing #canon compliant #the meaning of words #pebblysand goes off a tangent #also general disclaimer that these are my thoughts #there's no wrong or right answer #it's just my own thoughts about the meanings of words

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