Fanfic Writing Meme #13
Jul. 9th, 2014 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverLucky number 13! I got married on Friday the 13th, and it's been lucky for me for almost eighteen years now!
13. Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
I don't really need to answer the first question. Canon all the way. It's sometimes pretty difficult to distinguish between canon and fanon, because I might read someone's fanfic and like a particular concept and then forget later that it came from a fanfic. An example is the concept that a Doctor's personality is directly influenced by what the previous incarnation was lacking, e.g. the Sixth Doctor was brash and arrogant because the Fifth Doctor was young and vulnerable, the Eleventh Doctor was childish because the Tenth Doctor was so emotionally scarred by his adult experiences. This is a great concept, but there's no canon support for it (and if you try, you can throw a lot of spanners into the theory). I try very hard to keep canon and fanon apart.
Certainly, writing for Doctor Who has changed how I see some things. I'd say any time you have to think critically about a subject will cause changes in how you view them. When I write, I do a lot of research; since I try to stay in canon, I'm always checking facts to make sure I stay truthful. This makes me reconsider things I might not have thought about in a long time, and there are a lot of instances in which I change my mind about things, or realize that I'm completely wrong about them. I mentioned a few days ago that writing for Donna and Martha made me dislike Rose even more; this is an example of it. More recently, viewing "Rise of the Cybermen" made me realize that Pete's World doesn't have a time vortex (the Doctor states this at the very beginning of the episode), which means no time travel is possible there; this revelation changes what leaving Rose and the Metacrisis Doctor there means. Writing The Actor and exploring the implications of creating a life using the chameleon arch (only to destroy it later) has made me think long and hard about John Smith's life, the morality of using the chameleon arch, and all of the different selves the Doctor has had and what happens to them after they die.
Meme Master Post
13. Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
I don't really need to answer the first question. Canon all the way. It's sometimes pretty difficult to distinguish between canon and fanon, because I might read someone's fanfic and like a particular concept and then forget later that it came from a fanfic. An example is the concept that a Doctor's personality is directly influenced by what the previous incarnation was lacking, e.g. the Sixth Doctor was brash and arrogant because the Fifth Doctor was young and vulnerable, the Eleventh Doctor was childish because the Tenth Doctor was so emotionally scarred by his adult experiences. This is a great concept, but there's no canon support for it (and if you try, you can throw a lot of spanners into the theory). I try very hard to keep canon and fanon apart.
Certainly, writing for Doctor Who has changed how I see some things. I'd say any time you have to think critically about a subject will cause changes in how you view them. When I write, I do a lot of research; since I try to stay in canon, I'm always checking facts to make sure I stay truthful. This makes me reconsider things I might not have thought about in a long time, and there are a lot of instances in which I change my mind about things, or realize that I'm completely wrong about them. I mentioned a few days ago that writing for Donna and Martha made me dislike Rose even more; this is an example of it. More recently, viewing "Rise of the Cybermen" made me realize that Pete's World doesn't have a time vortex (the Doctor states this at the very beginning of the episode), which means no time travel is possible there; this revelation changes what leaving Rose and the Metacrisis Doctor there means. Writing The Actor and exploring the implications of creating a life using the chameleon arch (only to destroy it later) has made me think long and hard about John Smith's life, the morality of using the chameleon arch, and all of the different selves the Doctor has had and what happens to them after they die.
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Date: 2014-07-09 10:25 pm (UTC)*HUGS*
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Date: 2014-07-10 05:50 pm (UTC)