My fandom *is* fanon.

[odditycollector]

 
Last week, DC Comics put out Batman 644, the conclusion of the War Crimes storyline. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

(For those of you lucky to have no idea what I'm talking about... Bill Willingham wrote an issue wherein Leslie Thompson - a doctor who was steadily characterized as a pacifist for decades - was suddenly revealed to have murdered one of Batman's sidekicks. Other people have already written about the nearly impossible stupidity levels on the storytelling, stoyteller, and meta levels, so I'll just take that as read.)

My first reaction after reading it was fairly predictable: a goodly helping of Oh, bitch, you didn't, and Well, that certainly didn't happen. My second reaction was to open Photoshop and, well, *retcon* it.

It was very therapeutic. But also very strange because, in my brain, the Leslie-Bruce confrontation I threw together gets waaay more canon points than what Willingham put out, which gets none. Despite, you know, actually being canon.

I was thinking a little bit about that, because I still don't understand the Harry Potter fans who got upset after The Half Blood Prince came out and announced that it was a diverting read, thank you, but totally unacceptable as canon and everyone ought to continue as if it was never published. And I'm sure I'd love you guys if I knew you better, really, and I'm glad you're happy in your little AU bubbles... but that doesn't make you less delusional. The characters are JK Rowling's, and she can do with them as she pleases.*

And I think that, right there, is the problem. For something like the DCU, which is complicated and has very little immutable history and has creative minds in charge who grew up as fans themselves... who exactly owns the characters? (No, I'm not talking copyright here.) Bob Kane "invented" Batman in 1939 - but hundreds of writers, artists and editors have worked with character since. Some of them have left more of a lasting impression on the characters than others, but I challenge anyone to point to one person - or two, or three - who are totally and solely responsible for his development up to now. Or who will be totally and solely responsible from this moment on.

It's impossible, even ignoring the movies and the cartoons and the influential out-of-continuity stories and that there's a lot more feedback between the fans and creators of comics than in most other mediums. So whose characters are they? Who has the right to fuck the DCU around?

Well, it sure as hell isn't Willingham.

And I think many things people have been shouting that I agree with - that Willingham doesn't understand or respect the characters he's writing, nor the people who he's ostensibly writing them for - stem from his inability to grasp that. These characters are not his. They did not spring into existence when he started writing them, and they do not merely exist to forward the stories he would like to tell. (If anything, it's the other way - any stories he involves them in should forward the characters.) Every writer in the Batverse comes in with his or her own interpretation of the characters, but this should be built from stuff that came before.

Leslie is not "a doctor" and Bruce is not "a rich guy who dresses up like a bat and fights for justice" and Tim Drake is not "a boy who got involved in the justice fighting for a bit" and Steph was is not "his girlfriend".

Now personally, I like Fables, also penned by him. It's not the greatest thing going, but it's usually one of the better books I spend money on. And I'm not going to boycott that title, just because its writer is an insulting idiot who incites homicidal rage in myself and many people I like and respect. But Fables is Willingham's world, and if he decides that the major baddy is going to turn out to be Snow White, that's just fine. He'd better at least try to make me believe it, but even if he fails, it's ultimately his prerogative.

I know I'm picking on Willingham here (but wow, does he deserve it). My point wasn't actually meant to be that this guy in particular sucks, but that the DCU (and Marvelverse, I'd assume) of comics is just one big exercise in fanon, for which the original canon has long since been lost. Writers are playing with someone's interpretations of what one fan speculated about the artwork in that AU an editor suggested as a response to a story the first writer scripted.

More often than not, it works reasonably well. It's fun. And occasionally the entire fandom will get together and have a Crisis-themed ficathon, but you know it'll all blow over sooner or later and everyone will get back to their Batman/Gotham WIP and their Supergirl crack-fic and their arguments re: Lex Luthor's motivations. Because that's the way fandom is.

It's just that every once in a while some n00b starts posting the equivalent of gorilla ass-rape mpreg stories all over the place - and means them to be serious and angsty and epic - and you have to ignore them until they go away. Or, you know, mock them mercilessly. Whichever.

*IMO, as someone fairly totally outside the fandom. It may be that book and tv series and movie fandoms feel the same for other people as the DCU one does for me, but the argument that there's more of a definite *line* between canon and fanon still stands (until someone knocks it down).


 

Comments

[specialagentm.livejournal.com]

Although he seems like a complete ass in his overall comments, I do note that he seems careful to use the term "seems" twice in that post.

Like, maybe this whole plotline is not as it seems? I'm not tracking things closely enough to know, but is it possible that Bruce and Leslie are putting on a show? That somehow, Leslie is lying, or both of them are lying for some purpose?

Anyway, on your overall point, I agree. Writing for one of the Big Two, you gotta know these are not your characters to mess with. You step carefully, you get editorial buy-in, and you acknowledge that you are just the latest in a long series of weavers on this tale. Others will unravel things you put in place later (John Byrne, I'm looking at you - get over yourself), and you should be considerate of the ways in which you are altering the tales told before you.

To me, being a collaborative writer with respect is very hard. You have to be willing to be daring (because at this point, how many interesting Bat-stories or Superman-stories remain?), but also know that your time will pass too, and you should leave the characters intact enough for others to pick up where you left off.

[kadymae.livejournal.com]

Who has the right to fuck the DCU around?

Well, it sure as hell isn't Willingham.

But, irony of ironies, it is.

DC Editorial at the highest levels greenlighted it. (Then again, right now it's about 4 guys who are dictating the current direction of the DCU and everybody gets to march to the beat of their drum, like it or not.)

DC Editorial told the writers what they wanted done (write Leslie out of the books), the writers made pitches, and they chose Bill's pitch on how to do that.

The copyright holders gave their permission. This is what THEY wanted done. This is what THEY approved of.

Can I make it any clearer?

---

And as for Willingham's temper? Well, he certainly has one, doesn't he? (As if no pro's ever flown off the handle on the internet before ....)

[deconcentrate.livejournal.com]

But Fables is Willingham's world, and if he decides that the major baddy is going to turn out to be Snow White, that's just fine.

Wait, what?

. . .

Wait, what?

Please tell me that's just hypothetical. That you're not serious.

I -- what.

[apathocles.livejournal.com]

I'd try to formulate some sort of intelligent response to your post, but I'm too busy laughing my arse off at the gorilla-rape story. Oh, man. That's beautiful. *wipes tear from eye*

[thete1.livejournal.com]

This is totally right. It's... hmm. In order for me, personally, to be active in this fandom, I had to decide pretty early what would count as my One True Canon and what wouldn't. Which writers, which issues, which *parts* of which issues... and it's something I never would've been able to do in other fandoms. It's something I've actively mocked people for doing in other fandoms.

On the one hand, I'm a lot mellower just in general than I used to be about fandom issues. On the other hand, though, there is a difference. With the exceptions of things like the latest run of MANHUNTER and FIRESTORM, the entire universe *is* made up of fanon. Fan-fiction written about fan-fiction written about fan-fiction and so on and so forth for generations. It's right and proper that we mix and match -- and *not* just because many of us do it better -- or even 'better' -- than the people who are paid good money to do so.

It's right and proper because that's the actual nature of the *beast*. It's a patchwork, a Frankenstein monster, a coral structure, a... *thingy*. Anyway.

There have been, actually, some shows -- or seasons of shows -- which deserve the same sort of treatment (in both positive -- lots of post S2 due South comes to mind -- and fuck-you-canon -- SG-1 fandom -- ways), but I can't help but notice that most of these shows went through major creative shake-ups before the fans started playing toss the canon around.

[marag.livejournal.com]

Your retcon of that issue is a beautiful and wonderful thing. I am currently deleting any memory of the issue I read and substituting your canon.

I live in a much happier place now :)

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

Here from metafandom. I think that this is one of the tricky things about designations of "canon" in fandoms with multiple creators. With a single creator, as in the HP fandom (mine, alas), it's easy enough to dismiss charges of the author "getting it wrong." The further away from the auteur model you get, though, the more difficult I think it becomes to maintain the mental firewalls between "canon" and "fanon."

Have you read Matt Hills? In Fan Cultures (2002), he tries to outline some of the qualities of fiction that he believes to be typical of texts which are likely to inspire fandom activity, or to achieve "cult status." One of the three things he identifies is auteurism, the identification of a single person who (whether accurately or not) fans can point to as responsible for the fictional world.

He also points out that sometimes, as in long-running television shows, the identity of the auteur can change over time, but that it seems somehow important to fans to have the sense that there is, so to speak, someone - some individual person - in charge.

I remember thinking when I first read that passage that it didn't really work too well as a description of comics, in which corporate-owned characters are farmed out to different artists over many years. My experience with people who do "fannish" stuff (write fanfic, play RPGs, etc.) based on comics canon is that they usually need to identify ahead of time which version of the characters and of the universe(s) they are choosing to accept as canon for purposes of the activity.

As for the upset Harry Potter fans - I'm not one of them myself, but I think that the "totally unacceptable as canon and everyone ought to continue as if it was never published" statement can make sense in some very specific situations. A small community of fanfic writers, for example, might all agree by consensus to continue to write stories "as if the last book never happened." Hey, whatever floats their boat. I do agree, however, that it would be very foolish for such a group to attempt to demand this as a universal response, rather than as a niche preference in a contained community, or to refuse to recognize that everyone else will consider their work AU.