#fannon is genuinely beautiful to me for how it brings people together

[randum-famdoms]

Well. Sometimes this is true. Please keep in mind that for a lot of things, OP is fully correct and fannon definitely needs to be a hell of a lot better in a LOT of fandoms.

But, sometimes, I’ve seen fandoms where the fannon is better than cannon in a lot of ways. This can be small things, like expanding on a one-dimensional character, or adding to the worldbuilding or lore, or even small things like personal headcannons you’ve created with friends that add nothing to the story but they’re fun. Cannon doesn’t need to be tossed out entirely - if we did that there would be no story, and all fannon is based on cannon in a fundamental way.

I sometimes say fuck cannon, fannon is my new cannon. I usually say this for fandoms like Harry Potter, because JK rowling is a terf who writes largely one dimensional characters while leaving huge plot holes and not taking advantage of amazing worldbuilding (I am still bothered about her not utilizing parseltounge after book 2). I say this about BNHA, because imo it went really downhill after season 3 and everything after the class A versus class B fight featuring Shinsou was absolute trash and the story has been dragged on to the point of snapping and the characters have no depth beyond maybe 5 characters and I could rant about it for hours - but I digress. Fannon in that fandom is honestly also pretty shit a lot of the time, because the fandom is pretty shitty itself (not all of it, but still). But there are still parts of fannon that I love. Kaminari being adhd, being fluent in English, and loving classic literature. Dabi having Marie Antoinette syndrome. Red Shoe Theory. Dad for One. I could go on.

Sometimes fannon can be predictable, because we as humans often long for representation of some kind or another. In all fandoms you will see fannon of characters being queer or POC or neurodivergent. That is not a bad thing. It’s also not all of fannon. A lot of fannon expands on lore and worldbuilding, it gives characters hobbies, it retcons deaths and makes conspiracies about family ties (hello, Todoroki).

And you are right that a lot of times fannon can verge into infantalization of neurodivergence and queer identities and racism, because a lot of fandoms can be toxic in those ways. Bnha is a great example of this. But you can ignore that. You can ignore “Mina Ashido is Afro-Asian and [insert racist trope here]” and only interact with “Mina Ashido is Afro-Asian because that community needs better representation and a lot of the fandom supports this headcannon out of a genuine place”. Block the assholes, if you will. It isn’t perfect, but nothing in life or fandom is.

You don’t have to accept all of fannon. You can pick and choose what you engage with. “Fuck cannon, fannon is my bestie” isn’t how most people in fandoms actually feel, it’s just fun to say. Sometimes that is how they feel, because sometimes cannon really is that shitty, for one reason or another.

But above all, I love fannon because of how it can bring a community together. These thousands, millions of people with this shared interest looked at this thing and decided that this made up thing about it is now a universal shared truth. They saw these one or two little things in cannon and built an entire headcannon around it and the rest of the fandom saw that and decided that it was great and that is now their cannon. Fandoms do this to the point where there’s sometimes an entire new story in the subtext. It’s beautiful, it is a microcosm of culture and if I had the credentials time and money then I would love to do a scientific study on it. We have been doing this for centuries, this is how religions start, this is how language is made, this is how culture and media and stories and humanity is built.

I’m not trying to tell you that you are wrong. I’m not telling you that the way you engage with fandom and cannon is incorrect. I’m simply trying to give a different perspective, from someone who loves the ways that fannon can build up both a piece of media and the people who engage with it.

I think I dislike ‘fuck canon fanon rulez’ takes because time after time I see how boring and predictable fanon is and how often it reinforces racism and misogyny etc. in ways canon never did

and I think having to work around canon and with canon to make something new usually ends up pushing people to make something weirder and cooler