Your Canon Sucks and So Does Mine
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| Title: | Your Canon Sucks and So Does Mine |
| Creator: | Merlin Missy |
| Date(s): | November 22, 2009 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | multifandom |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Your Canon Sucks and So Does Mine, page 1; page 2 |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Your Canon Sucks and So Does Mine' is a 2009 essay by Merlin Missy.
Subtitle: "When canon screws the pooch one too many times, what's a fangirl to do?"
Series
This essay is part of a series called Dr. Merlin's Soapbox.
Some Topics Discussed
- controversial changes in shows, such as Supernatural, Torchwood
- "an unsavory theme permeating an otherwise enjoyable series (see RaceFail: Stargate Edition)"
- Joss Whedon, his decisions, his statement that he doesn't give fans what they want but instead what they need
- it is not inevitable that showrunners will screw up canon (such as The Sarah Jane Adventures, Gargoyles, Farscape)
- it is inevitable, however, that "...fans will complain. We're fans. That's what we do. We're good at it."
- why do fans stay fans of shows they feel are disappointing
- every fan watching brings their own perceptions and experiences to what they see
- your love for the source may outweigh your outrage at the stupid thing it's done this time
- "Faith [in your show] can pay off. And sometimes, faith just means getting slapped down again."
- demographics rule the world, and female viewers are not in the target audience
- sometimes fans stick it out to the very end, and get shafted, such as in Battlestar Galactica (2003) and Harry Potter ("half of Potter fandom and the reaction to Book 7")
- sometimes it's best to abandon a show when it becomes something horrifying and disappointing, don't stick around as this is bad for your mental health
From the Essay
... rare indeed is the canon that doesn't do something to piss off someone somewhere. Doctor Merlin blames Joss Whedon. A lot. Loudly. Joss said that he didn't give the fans what they wanted, he gave them what they needed, and every hack wannabe who read the quote has used it to justify any and every idiotic writing decision made ever since, or at least the ones where they had to run into fans with pitchforks, emails and long, detailed letters to the production company folded up in neat little origami forms that spelled "WTF?" Showrunners who might have spent ten more minutes considering that killing off popular characters, having female characters sexually assaulted, and breaking up the canon couples on the series might possibly be bad ideas in the overall scheme of not pissing off their fanbases, they latch onto the broken logic. "You needed this story."
Sometimes we can set aside our annoyance, and calm down our anger, and remind ourselves that just because every Black male character on the show has been killed violently does not mean the writing staff are racist pricks. It could mean that they are attempting to make a metatextual statement about the racist overtones of the genre, and by doing it so prominently, attempting to draw attention to the matter to foster debate, discussion, and ultimate change.
It more likely means they're clueless, didn't notice what they were doing, and will respond to feedback on same with flabbergasted horror (which will then be followed up by either "I'm so sorry and didn't realize and I'll try harder next time," or far more likely "I'm not a racist, how dare you say that I am, some of my best friends … " and continue to miss the point). Sometimes we decide that the things we love about the canon --- be it the characters, the ideas, the relationships, the history --- are important enough to us to hold onto the rest, and hope for change.
Bring a fan can suck. A lot. Because as much as we love our shows, time and again, we get reminded that for the most part, our showrunners wish we didn't. They wish we were compartmentalized in a nice demographic box who tune in at the appropriate times and buy the right products and purchase the officially-licensed tie-in materials and never, ever register any actual opinions on their work. Not even flattering opinions. Not even fanmail. That fanvid you made as a labor of love over weeks? They don't like it. Ditto those fanfics, that fanart, and honestly, they like getting paid to talk at conventions but really wish we weren't there, either.
[Showrunners] don't mind us, most of the time. The few fans who get in to the inner circle tend to be the positive ones, who honestly like the work and how it's presented, and hey, that's all of us at least part of the time or we wouldn't have become fans in the first place. But while you'll find the occasional showrunner who likes the status of having a cult hit, know that most of them would trade in every cosplayer, fanfic writer, and icon designer for double their numbers in the 18-34 year old male demographic.
[...]
We're just loud people on the Internet who scare off the normal viewers. Don't be lulled into thinking we're anything else.
Star Trek: Voyager, touted in the beginning as so progressive and female-friendly because of the female captain, gets retooled with a hot blonde in a catsuit. Why? Because women were watching it instead of the men, and men are the ones supposed to be watching Star Trek, duh.
Well, just like finding out what will be your personal final straw of suck, how you deal with canon screwing you over is going to be individual to you and your own needs. Maybe you do still love the characters, at least as you see them, and you love the friends you've made here. Maybe your outlet will be to write fixit fics, and denial fics, and create art specifically set before everything went to hell, and create vast, shared spaces of AUs to set yourself apart from the canon proper. According to the folks over at When I Kissed the Teacher, Snape never died and he and Hermione got together when she was legal. The Harmonians have their own private spaces close by. And of course that old stalwart from days of old, Beauty and the Beast fandom still has a whole wide swathe of the fandom who don't acknowledge anything past season two, and it's been twenty years now that they've had their contentedly non-canon-compliant worlds put to paper and electrons. Canon can be optional if you find enough friends to share. Maybe you jump ship before you absorb more canon and concentrate on the old stuff that brought you joy. Leave those later seasons and books to the whippersnappers. You can do that.
Do you despise what the canon has become? Do you hate more of the storylines than you love? Do the canon and fanon pairings make you want to vomit? Speaking of vomiting, do you become physically ill when you consider rewatching parts of your own favorite show? (Doctor Merlin actually hyperventilates and gets chest pains thinking about a particular episode of a certain unnamed series of which she was once a fan. Consider her making an obscene gesture at the episode's writers right now. Consider her making the same gesture on your behalf if the same thing happens to you.) Do you take more pleasure in yelling at your fellow fans for enjoying things you dislike about the show than you do in indulging in rewatches and fanfic writing and creating fanmixes and squeeing and speculating and metaing? Would you rather be somewhere else? Or is it all still worth it, for those moments of awesome? Is it worth it to wait canon out to see if, by some miracle, things improve after all? Is it worth it to lurk in the past when things were less sucky (or at least less obviously sucky) and create your own space with your friends to blot out The Dumb and celebrate what was The Excellent? What are you getting out of your fandom experience, your chosen hobby, and is it enough to keep you going? Don't let anyone else decide whether you go or stay. Don't let the Stupid choose for you, but instead choose because it's the best thing for you to do. And if you go, remember you can always come back later, when your head can handle it and your heart too, and maybe when the writers have finally caught a clue.
Canon sucks. Yours, mine, everyone's. Little ways that flit like a neverending series of papercuts on the soul, big ways that make you feel like you've lost a limb, or a lover. Stay and make the best of it, or walk away with your pride intact, and spend a lot of time either way sopping your woes in Ben & Jerry's and/or well-written porn. Make your choices based on what you really need, not what other fans or some dumbass showrunner tells you that you need, and change your mind if you need to do that, too. We're fans. This is how we roll.
Fan Comments
[H. Savinien]: *nods* I've had to deal with this, as most of us probably have, quite frequently - usually when my Favorite Character Ever dies or is otherwise eliminated in an unworthy manner. Generally I content myself with immersing myself in the subsection of fandom that agrees with me on it. Not much else I can do, really.
[Galadriel]: ...I have given up on Torchwood. I won't give up on the fandom, I will keep on with my happy non-canon-compliant world, keep writing and reading the stuff I love (and, I admit, enjoying my fixit fic), but I will never watch it again. It's not just that we lost him, it's that we lost him like that, and none of the actors seems happy about it, and the showrunners are so smug about it, and what was cracky and bad and fun has turned dark and hurtful.