Quote:There are two reasons I know of to avoid using any fanon.
Utterly disregarding the risk of sounding like I know nothing, I must say that the bit about avoid fanon is not completely clear to me. In particular, is it external fanon = bad / internal fanon = good/useful or external fanon = bad /internal fanon = provisionally acceptable/occasionally useful?
First, there are too many often-reused cases of fanon that don't match the source material. (I mentioned three common ones in an earlier post. Another incorrect bit of fanon is about the Doublet System in Oh My Goddess: there's absolutely nothing in canon that says every god and demon is part of the system, and there are hints that many or most are not. The fanon that says every celestial in that setting is part of the system is likely wrong.)
Second and more importantly, accepting and reusing fanon artificially limits your options when you write your own story. (I didn't care that every other writer thinks Skuld never swears when I wrote A Certain Distance and A Closer Distance - it was completely in character for her to use a mild oath at a few points in the story, so I put one into her dialogue.)
Basically, if fanon doesn't contradict established canon and works within your own story, feel free to use or ignore it. If that isn't true, though, I recommend ignoring it.
-Rob Kelk
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012