#sometimes fanon > canon

[fanfic-lover-girl]

Yeah, the canon shippers can stay mad and weep! Zutara fanfics are amazing! The best atla fanfics I read were all Zutara, even before I cared much about shipping so it can't be a coincidence.

I wish I could say the same about Dramione. I mean some fics are good in terms of plot and everything...but I just don't like how Draco and Hermione are portrayed. Plus, I hate Hermione so...

zutara 🤝 dramione

being the most hated but having the best fics

[erinwantstowrite]

the haters are trying to get me to care about canon. they're trying to get me to only fuck with canon. newsflash you stupid bitch if you are in a fandom space you are consuming fanon. i don't CARE that it's canon that bruce wayne has hit his kids in canon. i make my own world where it's common fucking sense that heroes are good people who would not be abusers. "human flaw" this my ass that motherfucker drives a Batmobile and wears a Batsuit and throws around Batarangs. live in a suspended belief and have fun before you dry up and die a sad raisin of a being

[glitter-stained]

Bruce: *gives Tim psychological abuse as a sixteen years old birthday gift*

Me: I am so close to writing you pregnant do not tempt me motherfucker

[pukopukopowpow]

when I'm reading a fanfic and the characters decide to act canon compliant:

[cairoscene]

Brian David Gilbert on Sad Boyz

feels fandom relevant.

[ID: A series of screen captures of Brian David Gilbert speaking on a podcast: "The thing that you invest your time in can feel so important to your identity that occasionally you feel, like, you need to close it off from other people in order to keep it safe. And I think that's where a lot of nerd culture, all that gatekeeping stuff, all of the toxicity stems from that thing where it's like, "In high school I didn't have a lot of friends or connect with a lot of people, but I did have this comic book, and now this comic book is super popular, but these people don't like me. That must be because they're not real fans."" End ID]

[the-witchhunter]

DP Fanon: the origin of “ghost cores”

So just to talk about this since a decent number of folks think cores are canon. This is just to clarify the difference between canon and fanon and is not a commentary on the validity of a common bit of fanon

The concept of ghost cores come from a line said by frostbite in “urban jungle”

“Your central core reading indicates extreme cold. As if your body is self generating it.”

For those of you who don’t know, core is a medical term and is being used as such in context

“The core or trunk is the axial (central) part of an organism's body. In common parlance, the term is broadly considered to be synonymous with the torso…”

In other words, frostbite was talking about Danny’s torso, that’s why “cores” are never brought up “again” they were never a thing

So to clarify

Ghost cores aren’t canon, they are purely fanon

[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

[allthegothihopgirls]

if i see one more portrayal of jason's ptsd in which it's clearly just being used as a device to feed into the whole 'reckless death machine' narrative people seem to have going for him, i'm going to scream.

but also just in general there's never a good realistic depiction of his ptsd where violent instincts/tendencies aren't the majority of his symptoms.

"he still flinches and/or has a nervous breakdown every time he sees a crowbar" i hate to break it to you but if he was really that affected by just the SIGHT of a weapon, he would fail to function as a vigilante.

"he still can't face bruce or batman because of the role he played in his death" i'm throwing tomatoes at you through the screen. bruce was not responsible in any way for jason's death, please read a comic.

don't even get me started on pit rage.

[aalghul]

Thinking about Jason's outward expression of emotions. He tends to only get angry as a response to perceived injustice (the same way Bruce, Dick and most of the others do). But unlike some other characters, Jason rarely every gets wound up in it, nor does he get angry even when he sees injustice if the situation doesn't call for it. Some characters get angry first and then manage their response to whatever's more appropriate, but my interpretation has always been than Jason doesn't need to because he doesn't often begin with the rage. It's not a default, instinctual response for him in most situations. It seems to be that he becomes angry when there is a perpetrator (and specifically, of a crime that hurt people with less power than the perpetrator has, in some way) towards whom he can direct that righteous anger (righteous as in the cause is his drive for justice. I'm not discussing the rightfulness right now). Can he hurt the man who was about to hurt a woman enough that he doesn't dare to try imposing his power over another woman again? Can he do something, anything to stop a serial rapist who has already caused the suicide of at least one woman? But he doesn't possess the sort of blinding anger that could become a driving motivator for his actions outside of someone in front of him to punish. He doesn't need the anger (mostly because he will instead fixate on the crime without rage to fuel him).

The notable exception to this being his behaviour preceding his death (which is explicitly referred to as atypical for Jason by both Bruce and Alfred. The whole reason he's forced to take a break from Robin is because that anger is so unusual for Jason that Bruce and Alfred are worried about Jason's mental wellbeing).

We see in Lost Days that Jason’s default state has become (to the concern of Talia and Ra’s) seemingly unfeeling, and he shows signs of a persistent flat affect throughout Lost Days, with exceptions for when he sees injustice (which is responsive, as compared to the aloofness he uses as a constant state of defence -> see: his and Talia’s conversation after he killed for the first time, Talia being glad that his sense of empathy and justice were able to overcome his general coldness). Jason's aloofness was entirely a conscious defence, but at times he was consciously exercising it (his reaction to Tim in front of Talia vs alone).

We see him cry for himself a few times, which tends to be how Jason first reacts to what hurts him deeply. Then there's his cold hatred for Bruce, which can be taken as anger in the face of heartbreak and perceived betrayal. But that anger never goes very far: Jason couldn't even make himself blow up the batmobile. In the end, it's Jason's belief that he hates Bruce and must make demands of Bruce to force him to redeem himself in Jason's esteem that fuels him. Because Jason wants Bruce to redeem himself, even if it's unlikely that he will.

All throughout Lost Days and UTRH, Jason uses teasing/biting humour in a very Robin manner to direct attention to whatever he pleases, whether that be pulling attention away from vulnerabilities or drawing attention to distortions of the truth. This habit returns to Jason strongly around times when he breaks out of his apathetic state (when he’s killing people who hurt others, pretty much), but the undertones of coldness and derision even with that humour don’t leave. We can see in this habit especially how Jason's become a distortion of who he was as Robin. He's still witty and he still teases people and you can hear the humour in his voice. But now he's using that wit to say cruel things to Batman, deceiving him constantly, and his voice no longer has a youthful kindness to it.

One of the most Helena-esque character traits that Jason’s picked up (in fanon and reboot canon) is anger as an initial defence and reaction, actually. It’s nearly the opposite of Jason’s pre-flashpoint defensive state but is essential to Helena’s. It’s actually not surprising that this happened (even ignoring reboot kicking Jason’s character into a closet and superimposing much of Helena onto him) because of how DC pushed “angry” as Jason’s defining trait, and how fans have believed it for so long. It seems almost natural for a misconception this severe to happen, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because every action of Jason’s is misconstrued as proof for an angry temperament.

[tempestmothstorm]

crazy how the sanshee plush is one of the few actual direct confirmations on what a non-act 2 Natsuki’s home life is like because of how cagey she is on literally everything. Like this isn’t anything surprising or something you wouldn’t be able to extrapolate from the games but unlike everything else we know about her the implications are right there on the tin.

They literally did the character bio trope where where all the likes are normal but the dislikes are about their very specific trauma it’s just so funny they did that on the plushie card

[blindmagdalena]

i wish folks could better appreciate that fic, headcanons, etc don’t necessarily have to come from a place of “this thing i am saying about this character is Factual and all of fandom should accept it as The Truth” and can instead be from a place of “this is the way i choose to interpret this character/media because that is how i personally best enjoy them”

[scintillyyy]

ngl sometimes i think the inverse to the fanon inability to meaningfully interact with a character flaw that's not "my friends and family would say that my main problem is that i care too much" is the canon hyper critical you can only like a character because of all their flaws and you should never say anything nice about what you think their good points are without a million astericks about how much they really do suck, actually

[awsok]

okay. let's talk about shin, sabine, and whatever the hell is going on here:

i've been trying to figure out this moment, and why shin responds like this. because it feels like a change, right? the shin of episode 1 would be thrilled to have permission to hunt down and kill sabine. but here, she's clearly protesting the order (indirectly, because she can hardly outright say 'no' to thrawn).

on one level, this is definitely at least in part because the order is coming from thrawn. orders from baylan are fine for shin: baylan is her master, and by this point in the series it's obvious how much she respects him. but thrawn? baylan told her finding thrawn would bring them power, but instead both she and baylan are being treated like his underlings - this is not what shin thought they were signing up for.

but if this were solely about thrawn giving orders, i'd expect shin's reaction to seem irritated or offended - she's hardly a stranger to anger, after all. but i think it's fair to say that shin's response here can be best characterised as alarmed? she's clearly surprised that they aren't letting sabine go, and more than that: she's not happy about it.

so then, i thought maybe that this was about honour - that shin was so disturbed by this, because it is dishonourable for baylan (who has made a point of insisting on keeping his word to sabine) to break their agreement. (and i know it may seem counterintuitive to assume that shin cares about such a jedi-like concept as honour, but judging by the way baylan speaks of the jedi and shin's padawan braid, he probably instilled her with their values if not their morals.) but then i remembered where episode four left off (which is indicated by the show to be a most a day or two ago):

this takes place literally immediately after sabine has made a deal with baylan. if shin cares enough about honour for it to override her hatred of sabine in episode six, it doesn't make sense for her to disregard honour (even in the heat of the moment) to try and kill sabine in episode four.

so if this isn't about thrawn (not entirely), and it isn't about honour (probably not at all), what is this about? what has changed to make shin go from homicidal obsession to protesting seemingly on sabine's behalf?

sabine, of course.

(by which i actually mean: shin.)

let's talk about The Look!

shin staring at sabine is nothing remotely new. shin staring at sabine without a homicidal glare or a mocking smirk? that's extremely new. this scene makes me crazy (i'm trying so so hard to keep the shipping goggles off and to be objective guys). it may not seem like much at first glance, but this is a dramatic change of behaviour for shin. she's looking at - no, observing sabine in a completely neutral and open way. there's no hostility in this gaze, no judgement, not even fear or conflict. just: observing. and she's doing so openly as well - not just that she isn't disguising herself - she turns to face sabine, as if to give sabine a better look at her. as if to let sabine observe her right back.

why??? why is shin doing this??

um. well. i actually don't know.

i can't make any remotely certain assumptions about what has changed since they left seatos. maybe shin has done a lot of introspection. maybe she feels like she's seen a different side of sabine. maybe they fucked on that spaceship.

the only conclusion i do feel it might be safe to make is this:

i don't think shin sees sabine as an enemy anymore.

i don't know when exactly that changed, i don't know what exactly caused it. but it's true. and if shin and sabine aren't enemies anymore - what are they to each other? what will they become?

tl;dr - shin doesn't want to murder sabine in cold blood anymore. also i think they should hold hands.

[malenjoyer]

I'm interested in reading tim's comics but I fear I may have gotten too many (general) spoilers about what happens to actually manage to enjoy it. if you've read his comics, how much did you know beforehand?

I knew the timeline of when he became robin, his general approximate meetings with characters like Steph, jason, Damian, and existence of Red Robin before. Who he loses.

The good thing about getting into reading character comics is that it’s impossible to know everything. It really is unless you’ve got around 10 years or so invested into it or you’ve got maybe 4-5 years of hardcore reading. Even then if you only read solos, you don’t know how the character exists in other people’s pov until you read outside of the main popular recommended comics. For example, in some comics Batman might the biggest broodiest saddest asshole, in others he’s a sopping wet cat broken hearted man, in some he’s really funny and beats people up.

Knowing things didn’t spoil enjoyment for me because knowing big events didn’t mean I knew how they were set up, which character interactions lead up to that part, and how the author weaves around elements for the build up. I don’t know about what happened in the timeline, in real life, that causes editorial to make those decisions specifically until I read the comics and I learn what happens in the background.

If you’ve got a serious detail obsessive brain itch like me, no amount of spoilers will ruin it for you, probably! You should read it anyways. Reading the comics yourself will feel good because you can feel the puzzles start to piece itself together- in a sense. And a bit of a hot take but if you are ever uncomfortable with a specific fanon depiction that ends up developing, which yknow is okay, we all play with toys. Reading the comics allows you to develop a sense of who they are in a…real way? I don’t know. In a way where they exist outside of shipping, I suppose. It allows you to enjoy the character better because he will exist for you, on a separate plane that will be hard to be ruined by any associations with fandom.

[bmpmp3]

finding out ur coworker is way older than you thought and having to very quickly reorient how you talk to them

[neutralitymybeloved]

The devil works hard but the d20 fandom works harder because in the maybe around half an episode of worthy content Dropout gave us, there are about 100 fics of Starbreaker content.

100 fics. For a pair that I completely did NOT expect. D20 fandom stays winning