#disregard of fanon

[sanguinesmi1e]

So uhh. . . I recently got access to a college library system again and for whatever reason (that reason is a ghost obsession. Or rather, an obsession with a particular half ghost), I thought to myself, "You should look up Danny Phantom and see if anyone has referenced it in a scholarly article." And apparently this exists:

Grant, Krista, “Canon” and “Fanon” in the Danny Phantom/Detective Comics (Dc) Comics Crossover Fandom: Expanding Authorship and Authority in Transformative Fan Works. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4894061 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4894061

Abstract

In 2020, a new crossover fandom emerged, that of Danny Phantom x DC Comics (DPxDC), prompting thousands of fanfictions and participants. As neither media connected in their canons, how did this crossover fandom come to be? The content tags on these crossover fanfictions and on Tumblr posts collected Jan–April, 2024 were collected and analyzed in a mixed-methods discourse analysis approach with inductive coding for key words “canon” and “fanon”. This is the first time for which a crossover fandom is being investigated in writing studies, and it is one of the first articles to explore fanfiction within writing studies, especially in a mixed methods study. Underpinning this research are grassroots activism, critical theory, and agential theories of resistance practices. I found that DPxDC fans consciously resist canon material, enacting agency through distributed and communal writing practices and claiming a kind of authorship and authority over works, offering a new way of understanding agency and distributed authorship in writing studies.

Keywords: distributed authorship, writing studies, fanfiction, canon, fanon

I haven't finished reading it all yet, but if you've been active in the DPxDC phandom for a few years, you might be cited. Just saying, I recognize a few familiar usernames already.

[ky-landfill]

If ya in the mood: can you do Kon, kid jon and kid Chris please or whenever you can?

Kent household unearthed camcorder footage

[anxi04]

steph and babs don’t need personas, as far as anyone is concerned they’re just family friends.

bruce has his “brucie wayne” persona, very clumsy, playboy, kinda air headed but still very smart and wants to do good for gotham. which of course makes him seem naive cause good?? for gotham??

dick has “richie grayson-wayne” who’s dabbled in modeling before becoming a gymnastics teacher. also very vocal about his “adorable little siblings”

jason never really had a “nickname” after all he was from crime alley and he had to look GOOD for them or else they’d go back to “he’s just like the rest of them”. his persona was very empathetic and kind though, which worked great for him since that’s how he was like. he always talked about doing several non profit charities. the elites switched their opinions of him on a dime, although the rest of gotham adored him.

damian refuses to go by a nickname. his persona is based around animals, mostly about abandoned animals. it’s very clear his goal for the future is to make good animal shelters and help every animal he can. it’s the only persona he could stomach and there were SEVERAL other ideas

cass is “cass wayne” very quiet, polite, generally just there in the background. normally hanging around one of her siblings, most often tim. although her being around him unnerves some of them, she’ll get a look in her face and then her and tim both know they were lying. they fully get why she hangs around tim

duke is regularly seen as the normal one. pleasant to be around, kind, but generally also just there. very normal student, not really sure what he’s gonna do. the elites don’t particularly for him, though the rest of gotham love him.

tim’s persona differs from the rest pretty heavily. he can’t get away with being like bruce, the elites vividly remember janet and see her in him very often, which vaguely scares them if they’ll be honest. he’ll act like “Tim Drake-Wayne” to unsettle them, after all he’s a Drake why is he acting clumsy? they’ve seen him when he was younger and he was the spitting image of perfect. it makes more sense to them when he trips and lands right where he can tell them something no one else can hear. “Timothy Drake” is what scares them though. the tim that casually whispers secrets no one else knows, who points out someone they’re supposed to have a “private meeting with” in a week. who has nearly cause several of them to go broke with such simple actions, and the only reason they didn’t was cause he let them stay rich. there was one elite who insulted damian near tim and suddenly said elite had to get an apartment in crime alley, pay his now ex-wife, a kid he had with some random person, and several debts

the fact that lex luther and tim are some kind of friends also doesn’t make them feel super great but that’s another issue

[thenonbinarydetective]

"There is canonical mischaracterization in the batfamily" and "they are nuanced characters that cannot be summed up in one word/phrase" are two things that can exist at the same time and more people need to remember that

[nezz-cringe-crib]

maybe i'm not looking in the right places but god i need more daisuke content why do i rarely see daisuke content and why is all the content of him either him being silly and dumb or him just dying. he's such a deep character just like everybody else why does nobody draw him with that same tragic air it's giving me kel from omori flashbacks </////3

daisuke has gone almost his entire life being told how much of a useless dumb wreck he is, that the only thing good about him is his physicality and even then he's still worthless because he can't put that physicality to good use. then he gets sent to this job that he barely knows anything about but he swears to do his best in order to make his parents proud and to prove that he can be a good son for them. AND THEN HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH SWANSEA MAKES IT ALL FEEL EVEN WORSE????

daisuke probably became really attached to swansea because even though swansea would constantly remind him of how useless he was, swansea was still taking a chance on him and teaching him the basics of the job. even if daisuke knew it was just because swansea was forced to, and even if he knew all the jobs swansea gave him were easy jobs swansea knew he couldn't mess up, he was still probably really happy about it anyways because of how much it seems like he's never been given a chance on life???? AND THEN FOR DAISUKE TO DIE BY HIS HANDS???

I ALWAYS SEE DAISUKE'S DEATH FROM THE POV OF SWANSEA. LIKE HELLO???? HE WAS PROBABLY TERRIFIED??? TERRIFIED THAT THE ONE PERSON WHO HAS EVER GIVEN HIM A CHANCE, EVEN OUT OF PITY, WAS NOW PRACTICALLY PUTTING HIM DOWN OVER THAT SAME PITY TOO?????? THAT HE DIED BEING A FAILURE TO EVERYONE HE'S EVER KNOWN???????

WHY DOES NOBODY TALK ABOUT THIS DO NOT LET MY BOY DOOWWNNNN

[wolves-in-the-world]

the thing about eliot spencer as a character, right. the thing about him.

(and as always your mileage may vary on my analyses so if we disagree that's cool actually)

is that he is in fact a somewhat emotionally constipated idiot who is occasionally sensitive about his perceived masculinity and gets defensive about emotional intimacy around other men (largely hardison, who's much more comfortable expressing affection and embracing a softer kind of masculinity), but eliot displays enough emotional awareness and sensitivity and respect for women etc etc that anyone who's been subjected to that era of television will put on rose-tinted glasses without even looking twice.

(and he is, don't get me wrong, incredibly emotionally aware for a professionally punchy guy with enough trauma to sink the titanic. it still startles me to see.)

on top of which we have the layers and the accessories and the excellent hair with the secret braids and the way he barely has an ego and he's good with kids and protective of his team without taking it too far, and some of us never stood a fucking chance.

[bestworstcase]

Wouldn't mind that Blake & Birdbandit post, not least because fndm's whole 'catGF's role here is to Protectively Glare at the badmom and/or rub her loyalty to Yang in Rae's face'…thing has struck me as reductive & blinkered for quite some time.

lol yeah it’s… kind of obvious that a lot of people aren’t thinking about it in terms of characterization and narrative, they’re thinking about it in terms of wanting yang to receive some degree of protection from raven’s abandonment (even if it’s performative, even if in reality that kind of behavior from a romantic partner in a situation where you’re trying to work out a relationship with your absent/estranged mother is… obnoxious at best, making it all about how the partner feels at worst.)

but like

the thing is blake ran away from yang out of self-loathing cowardice too, and by the time she meets raven, raven has come back and made a serious commitment to make amends, not just to yang but to everybody. she’s back in the inner circle, that suggests a monumental effort to change –

and blake, uh, knows how hard it is to make that kind of change, to come back and apologize and face those fears after running away, because She Did That. not just with yang but also her own parents!

blake is also by a… pretty wide margin the most forgiving member of team rwby, the one most willing to offer second chances, to listen and empathize with people she thinks can be reached, we saw this play out with ilia. and weiss, after weiss acknowledged she’d done wrong and demonstrated willingness to change back in v1. she’s the only one of team rwby who isn’t claws-out toward emerald at the top of risk, and she’s the first one to voice her understanding of why ozpin lied and hid from them. she is, in general, not vindictive or spiteful.

and while i can absolutely see her being more defensive of yang than she is of herself, there is no universe where i can imagine blake of all people engaging in – pardon me – catty mean girl behavior towards raven on yang’s behalf. if she snaps at raven at all it’ll be to rebuke raven saying something caustic, but i don’t think raven is going to be much inclined to be caustic at this juncture.

i imagine it will be more, blake is aloof and wary of raven but cautiously optimistic on yang’s behalf and wholeheartedly supporting whatever yang wants out of reconnecting with her mom, and raven maybe avoids her for a while before venturing to make awkward stabs at conversation, and then blake’s diplomatic and interpersonal skills kick in. they have a fair amount in common personally, and they also have caring about yang in common, and if blake were to express any feelings she has about raven trying to be in yang’s life it would be concern, and probably confided in yang to make sure she understood what yang wanted and how blake can help her. maybe having a careful conversation with raven, later, if they builds up a good enough rapport.

at the end of the day, blake is a) a diplomat and b) way too mature to let whatever private resentment or indignation she feels on yang’s behalf get in the way of letting yang take the lead here. which is the correct way to deal with this situation. incidentally.

[camaelczarka]

I miss the days when people would just explore their headcanons and kinks in fanfic or in specific posts rather than arguing with other people about how it’s actually canon

[korkorali]

Hokay, we’re gonna have a small little fandom etiquette lesson here:

#Anti [Character] #[Character] Critical

See these two tags? They’re very good to use (if you want to write negative posts about a character) and very good to block (if you don’t want to see negative posts about a character)

Because yeah, you should be able to voice your opinion! You shouldn’t have to pretend to like a character just because a lot of other people seem to like them.

But maybe

Just maybe

When a character tag updates, like, once every two days on average

Maybe it can get a little tiring for people who like that character to see a bunch of hate towards that character instead of enjoyment

(And then they do stupid things like engage with and argue with that dislike instead of just blocking and moving on, which is genuinely A Dick Move most of the time)

Maybe it can get a little upsetting to see the same

Exact

Mountain of misinformation that maliciously mischaracterizes the character they like

That just gets repeated over and over and over

And stuff out the posts that are about enjoying the character within the tags

So try to use #Anti [Character] and/or #[Character] Critical when you are bringing up your grievances with a specific character, and try to block #Anti [Character] and #[Character] Critical if drama about that character is likely to upset you

Live and let live, and don’t muck up everybody else’s space to engage with what they enjoy

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

3l!grian is frequently depicted as a tragic figure and sometimes i wonder if we even watched the same series

[baskeigh-ball]

I loooove your separated au, it's so interesting. And since the brother that is the biggest hasn't been in the picture does that mean Donnie is now the (relatively) responsible eldest brother and looking out for his little bros (mostly Mikey)?

Actually, he and Leo have been in a decade-long competition for the title of eldest brother. Donnie has the technology to check who is biologically the oldest but refuses to do so as it is, quote, "irrelevant" according to both of them. It's whoever's the oldest in spirit that matters

(Having said that yes he is VERY protective of their littlest brother and indulges in his antics all the time)

[sophfandoms53]

Hi, same ‘how can I make this about Striker’ anon from before. I dont know how to feel about the ‘Satan is Striker’s father theory’ because on 1 hand I guess it could work??? But also it just doesnt sit that right with me, like I feel like if Striker was literally half sin he’d act/be more powerful than he was shown to be so far. My numerous ideas for his backstory basically change by the daily because I think about him too much but I only gave credence to the ‘Striker’s half royalty’ idea once and even then I wrote it in a way where Striker didnt know about it/had zero idea that was the case to begin with.

Not to mention that him being half-royalty would technically be a way to dismiss his (very valid) arguments about the upper class but maybe thats just me imagining the worse case scenario. For all I know it could be the most well-executed plot point ever.

If Satan isn’t Striker’s father than once we actually see the Envy Ring we’re gonna get ‘Leviathan is Striker’s father’ theories instead because they’re both snake-based. If Striker IS half royalty, than I could imagine it to be some sort of goetia, maybe, but half deadly sin? Next Striker ep appearance would need to have him pull off the most insane shit ever that a imp cant do for me to consider it plausible

I’m responding to this so late but omg anon yes you’re so right.

I feel like the only way the twist of Striker being a half blueblood could work would be if he straight up didn’t know about it and/or if they suddenly give him more power and strength that we’ve never seen from any other imp, like you mentioned. But again regardless of him knowing or not, like you also said, it completely negates his entire character and everything Striker’s said up to this point about royals and how they treat those lower than them.

Which only continues to be validated to the point where Blitz is now echoing his sentiments in canon. So like ??? It wouldn’t make sense for the show to suddenly invalidate Striker’s points after directly paralleling his words with Blitz’s.

Striker’s entire existence is to be a dark reflection of Blitz anyway. They’re two sides of the same coin. Striker is who Blitz would be if he let himself drown in his sorrows and his grief. If he let his anger control him. If he let himself do things alone. For as much as Blitz pushes people away he cares too much about others to truly let himself be alone.

As far as we know - Striker has always been alone. Or at least we know he’s been alone since he lost everything. Which is honestly the big thing people are missing when they talk about the Striker is Satan’s son theory - the entire scene where Striker voices his grievances to Stolas about his experience with royals.

This is the scene that tells us everything. And if it was meant to foreshadow something as huge as Striker being a literal sin’s child then the dialogue choice and the BODY LANGUAGE of Striker during this monologue would be insanely different.

The emphasis this scene gives to his claims of having to live a hard life, losing everything, and being talked over. That is Striker talking about his experience.

His feelings. His loss. His anger.

He is SO angry. Too angry for it all to just be about being a bastard son.

I’ve watched, analyzed, and thought SO MUCH about this moment right before he cuts Stolas’ ropes.

The pure disgust and anger on his face. The way he shakes. His eye twitches. He grinds his teeth. He growls. He’s pissed.

This is insanely personal to him. This is part of him. This is who he is. This disdain runs through his veins. He’s made it part of his identity. He was so scorned that he just cannot let it go.

This is not just anger about a royal parent or a loss of status.

This is anger from a man who was failed by Hell’s system and has not healed from it. He has not allowed himself to heal and he refuses to.

This is Striker’s way of taking back control that he once lost.

And not even mentioning the fact that Striker’s canonically a WANTED MAN in TWO Rings.

Wrath (y’know Satan’s ring) AND Pride.

Considering royalty in this universe is all about status and reputation, you’d think a sin wouldn’t want their kid just having their face plastered everywhere like that?? Cuz it’s embarrassing?? Just wanted to point that out😭

[tiffanybluesclues]

Every week someone makes a post about how annoying it is that Dick Grayson fans don't acknowledge his flaws, and every week someone replies with an explanation that the flaws OP listed are entirely fanon and inconsistent with canon as it actually happened and at this point I have to assume that none of those explanations are ever going to stick because clearly some people just want the fanon to be true.

Anyway, I'm just putting this here for me to edit and add relevant-to-the-topic links later so I'll have them nicely at hand to read and sooth my frustrations when it gets real bad out there. (Echo chambers are good when we use them to drown out character mischaracterizing fanon.)

[mrspeacockwasaman]

Dykes can’t even exist in our own spaces without being called t*rfs and radfems like fuck offfff the lesbophobia is thriving…. the real issue is weird fetishization and misogyny but i never see y’all talking abt that tsssss smh

[thestobingirlie]

i think it’s really fucking gross the way some steddie’s just use robin’s sexuality for their ship.

her lesbianism is either there to stand as proof for eddie that steve is safe for queers. robin will literally come out to eddie just to put him at ease. not because she wants to come out. not because she has a bond with him and wants to share an important part of herself. but solely so she can stop eddie from assuming steve is homophobic.

OR it’s there for eddie to look down on in regards to steve’s allyship. oh, robin’s just a lesbian. steve probably won’t be okay with a real queer man. and eddie’ll go on to assume steve is a horrible homophobic asshole who will abuse him and any other queer (unless he finds it hot, apparently?), because robin’s sexuality doesn’t really matter in comparison to gay men.

either way it’s fucking disregarded, and made out to be nothing because eddie is a gay man. it just feels like so many steddies don’t actually give a fuck about robin, and i’m getting tired of it.

[deus-ex-mona]

such is the tale of a ✨chronically online hypocrite✨