W/T: Canon vs. Fandom

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darkmagicwillow	W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	Lead	[-]
Posts: 1538 (04/26/03 15:39:39) 12. Recently Gay Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tags : None Looking at Pens, I've realized that we've written far more about Willow and Tara than was ever shown on screen or even in the Buffy novelizations. I've also spent more time reading and writing fanfic than I ever spent watching Buffy, and that has deeply affected how I see Willow and Tara when I go back and watch an episode of the show. I can't watch Tara without seeing the woman who had the strength, compassion, and intelligence to make it through the three tests of Lisa's Unexpected Consequences. For me, Dawn is the lovely young girl from Tulipp's Terra Firma who was essential to bringing W/T back together, and Anya is the Tara's supportive friend of Sassette's Answering Darkness. When I see a Scoobie meeting, I can't help but think of those from Antigone's Gods Served and Abandoned where everyone was there to support Tara's new confrontation with her family. The reader is always an essential participant in making a story come to life, but fanfic allows the reader a larger scale of participation as a writer too. When does fandom supersede canon? What moments and portrayals have affected your perception of W/T? -- "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."
frumpycat	Re: W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	#1	[-]
Posts: 187 (04/26/03 17:01:47) 4. Extra Flamey Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	...actually reading your story the Dark Rose. I never was one for that much fan fic until coming from Buffy Guide to here. I'd always been upset what had happened to Tara from S6 and it made me lose a lot of pleasure from the show. She was, for me, the last sympathetic character and I felt her death was a bad plot point that did nothing to advance the story of Buffy, the show, and Willow's character, whom has always been my favorite. And then I read about the Lesbian Cliche and I thought...crap...they're right. That's when I really started giving up on the show. I've always wanted Willow to become strong and in charge of herself...your Willow did that in a very Dark Company way. I agree with you that Willow's story arc should have followed Wesley's from Angel...been seperated from the gang from his/her darkness and then been reunited (for me by Tara's love but oh well.) After hearing arguments from kittens on Buffy Guide I decided to head out here and check it out. I latched on to your story and now I've been reading fanfic ever since. From Lisa's stories to yours I've found fics better than what I can buy. Thanks. Frumpycat
lipkandy	Re: W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	#2	[-]
Posts: 350 (04/26/03 19:09:25) 6. Sassy Eggs Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	woo and hoo! what a great thread as usual dmw. and I'm actually going to post this. Really. I'm not going to write a page and a half and delete like I keep doing on your writing thread (I have feedback fear). and, for the record, I'm in total agreement with both of you. so my two cents: Katharyn's resourceful, kick-ass, intelligent and still-sensitive Tara in The Sidestep Chronicle is a good place to start. and I really love technopagan's Giles in Doppelganger Redux, but then I love everyone in that fic. oh! and mariacomet's Buffy in The Stone Circle is a miraculous thing. I didn't think I could ever like her character again, but she somehow makes her believable as a caring, intelligent friend. which is quite a feat. not to mention the sheer loveliness of her more mature W/T in the Now. and Tulipp? I bow at the characterization goddess (that's you Juli)'s feet. everyone in Terra Firma makes me want to cry for what was lost. there are so many great chacterizations on Pens. I'm sure this will be a VERY long thread. thanks as usual DMW. xomel edited to add: and Rane's Caitlin (Tara's Mom) in Working out the Kinks. so wonderful to watch Willow interact with Tara's mother, something we obviously never got from the show. not to mention Tara actually having a beautifully supportive relationship with an actual family member. and Caitlin is a complex character torn between wanting happiness for her daughter and worrying for her safety. so...kudos to rane too and did I mention tommo's high school W/T in Final Exam? I can't even watch the old reruns anymore without imagining Willow sneaking off to 'snuggle' with sexy, insecure, take-charge Tara in the library. heh. see, I'll just keep going and going and going...so, shutting up now. really.
sam7777	Re: W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	#3	[-]
Posts: 3282 (02/10/15 11:51:42) 20. Not one Much for the Timber Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	*Quote:* When does fandom supersede canon? What moments and portrayals have affected your perception of W/T? DMW: Great thread. I agree with you. Fanic has greatly ehanced my enjoyment of Willow and Tara to more than what I saw on the show. The writers at pens really love Willow/Tara while the writers on the show saw them (especially Tara) as plot points. I have rejected the series canon because the real Willow and Tara are here. Stories like Lisa's "Unexpected Consequences" and Triscuit's "Edge of Silence" both show us a strong Tara and a Willow with all the power and quirks of the real character. It's also great to read stories with Willow actually acting in character. Willow is so much more than magic and power. Willow simply can't exist without Tara. Willow and Tara are soul mates and they will always find each other. Nothing else matters.
reyjawk	Re: W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	#4	[-]
Posts: 138 (04/27/03 07:18:48) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This is a really interesting thread. I have noticed that sometimes I have problems remembering if something happened on the show or in a fic. All of the fics mentioned above I loved and thought that they better represented W&T then the last part of season 6 and I wont even mention season 7. I wish the BTVS writers had started reading fanfic around the end of season 5 then maybe they would have gotten to know their characters better. Because the last 2 seasons have pointed out how badly they lost touch with W&T and really all of the other scoobies. The sad thing as fanfic has pointed out the opportunity was there for the writers to write some really good dramatic stories instead they copted out for 2nd rate soap opera plots that they couldnt even keep straight. Well I guess my hoping that they had read fanfic was a bit much considering they apparently dont even watch their own show!!! Toni "We live as we dream, alone." - The Heart of Darkness
mariacomet	Start the converter!	#5	[-]
Posts: 383 (04/27/03 16:38:58) 6. Sassy Eggs Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	As far as this subject goes, I believe in the 'Heart' on canon more than canon. Canon is: Xander is a constructor worker who once was engaged to an ex-demon. But the heart of canon on Xander is: He is the every man. The one guy with no special powers. Even if I were to GIVE him special powers, I would then write it from the prospective of the every man character who suddenly found himself in an unusual situation. With regards to W/T - while we have a LOT on Willow, we don't have much historical background on Tara. So strict canon for Tara would be somewhat limiting. Officially speaking there are NO limits. We can write whatever we like. But when I write I want the world clearly recognizable as Buffy's and the characters clearly to be the ones I grew to love. If I didn't care about either of those things - er insert sarcastic comment about season 6 and 7 here. Ahem... There are intrepretations to worry about. For some people, X/A are a great couple. Others, I have heard, refer to X/A being a couple on the edge of emotional abuse. I think a case being made for both points is possible. But I wouldn't buy Xander as someone who suddenly beats up Anya. I once thought of a Farscape/BUffy spinoff where Tara is a peacekeeper. Rough bunch, those peacekeepers. But one of the key problems was that I could never see Tara casually, remorselessly killing for the empire. Killing? Yes. Fighting? Yes. But killing anyone that she is ordered to, and doing so with efficient detachment. I don't think so. No matter what she had been through or been trained to do. That change in her character would not only be very hard to justify, it would change who she is elementally. Thusly if I do ever write that one, she'll be a peacekeeper who isn't actually all that good at her job. One of my favorite pieces of canon involves the duality of Willow. The good and potential for evil. People have take this to wonderful places on the pens. And I have seen people stop at differing seasons with canon. Before season 4, and even after season 6. I think the explorations are wonderful, and I love how vastly different they are. I will say one thing...when new elements of a story directly conflict with canon, it makes me a bit stubborn, as a reader. For instance, if Willow was the slayer. Or Tara was. On a character level and as a Buffy fan, I think that might be a bit hard to adapt to
darkmagicwillow	Re: Start the converter!	#6	[-]
Posts: 1538 (04/28/03 06:43:16) 12. Recently Gay Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm glad everyone's enjoying the thread. I found your comments on the heart as opposed the word of canon very insightful, mariacomet. That's the essential part to creating an interesting story with characters who are still recognizable. I've found myself running up against the limits of the word of canon on Tara often recently, because we know so little about her as you point out. In many stories, that leads to a similarly limited view of the spirit, so we get Tara portrayed as a flawless angel or saint, which does a disservice to her humanity and the potential for complexity in her character offered by the lack of definitive canon about her. We see the duality of Willow, but only rarely do we see the duality of Tara. One way I try to jar myself out of that trap is by reading fanfic. While I can't follow the same history that the Tara of Sidestep Chronicle that lipkandy brought up, I can gain insight on the heart of Tara's character from that story and you know, I could see peacekeeper Tara as much like that Tara. Hmmm...and I could see Willow as Sekozu, but that's getting off-topic. Sidestep also provides me with the definitive vampire Willow. In most stories she's rather one-dimensional like we see in The Wish, but in this story, we get to spend lots of time with her, allowing us to see how she thinks and feels in so many little incidents like her unintentional gift of a kitten and her distaste for dealing with the limitations of a mortal, sick Tara. -- "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."
the vamp nurd	2 pence.	#7	[-]
Posts: 847 (04/29/03 02:38:50) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I think the fan fic allows for the characters to build up. Willow's character was built up in the fall. Mistress of pain - I don't think so. Tara wasn't allowed to be grow. But in the FF she is. As they say, fiction is better than fact.
Mrs Vertigo	Re: W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	#8	[-]
Posts: 619 (04/29/03 09:02:05) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	*Quote:* When does fandom supersede canon? Four words, baby: Once More, With Bitterness. I consider that to be pretty much the top of fandom comedy. All hail Ruth and Julia their jolly little helpers. *My 2 cents: keep a dream-diary. Your brain is always best uncensored.*
The Inward Sea	Re: W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	#9	[-]
Posts: 187 (04/29/03 20:00:25) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hi everybody A long time ago I was captured by Fan Fiction through my interest on The X-Files. At first I couldn't believe that I -hey, I <G>- would be interested in any fiction written by fans... how bad could that be! But soon I found that the quality levels of some of them were surprisingly high. The X-Files fanfiction was followed by ST:Voyager's and there I was, big fan of some fanfiction writers! The point was that there's a lot that the show writers leave out of the scripts, or a lot that the actors act without actually being in the script, that leaves you wanting for more. Specially different kind of tensions created on screen that never hit the scripts. Being a wonderful relationship -the best and healthier couple in Buffy for certain- one actually knows very little of Willow and Tara's story. A lot is left to your imagination. The first kiss is a classical -as in The X-Files -. It also happens to me now, I can't tell what I read in fanfic and what really did happened on screen. The characters have become more rounded, with a full back story to complete them, and not just Tara -as has already been said- but also Willow, a character that depended a lot from the beginning on Alyson Hannigan's acting habilities. If you think about it, Willow and Tara's story and background was told mainly with touches, looks and smiles. I can mention two bodies of work that have enriched my view of W/T, one being Katharyn Rosser's "The Beginning's Cycle" and the other Sassette's "Vignettes". Others, like Tulipp's wonderful "Terra Firma", gave me aspects of the characters and their relationship that rounded them and some new stories, like DMW's "The Dark Rose" showed me a lot of possibilities and made me think of the whole story retrospectively. As it happens to you, when I watch W/T on the TV I watch this creation completed by fanfic and not just the show's writers doing. It enhance the feeling of knowing these people whose life you follow on TV. Once more, darkmagickwillow, you've set a very interesting issue There's a very good article about it called "Filling in the Gaps: Fans and Fan Fiction on the Internet", by Sue Hazlett, which I strongly recommend. Sea
the vamp nurd	Re: W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	#10	[-]
Posts: 847 (04/30/03 01:36:59) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Once More, With Bitterness. Will some one please tell me where I can find it???? [The vamp nurd looks desprate]. Woops, bad spelling. "Tara's the vixen I'm fixing steal her damn she's fine." That line summons up Fan fic for me. Willow (with pointy ears): "NO kissing and gay love?!!!! That's illogical!" The Sci-Fi Bard W/T trekkie ramblings. Bardlet no #27 "Why Mother because I won't be baking cookies for the mental patients at the county Hospital?" Alex It's In The Water
darkmagicwillow	Re: W/T: Canon vs. Fandom	#11	[-]
Posts: 1538 (04/30/03 20:06:44) 12. Recently Gay Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Sea, thanks for the article reference. I liked the idea of fanfiction harking back to an earlier era of oral storytelling, where there was no clear boundary between author and audience, with the audience participating in the creation and modification of stories instead of being only passive listeners/readers. One of the wonderful things about modern computers is their production and communication capabilities, allowing the audience to once again participate in creation. However, our laws are designed to prevent the reworking of stories in this fashion, though I'd love to see a season 6 done right fan movie in the spirit of The Phantom Edit, the version of The Phantom Menace sans Jar Jar. However, we do have the written word to use to make things right with canon and overall, I prefer it to television. Edited to add: Thinking of memories from fandom, I can recall in Superstar how Tara's friends Jo and Dani helped her and called Willow after they found Tara in the janitor's closet, hiding from the monster. And I can almost remember how they helped her again in season 6 after she left Willow, but you know, Triscuit hasn't even written that part yet! -- "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."
darkmagicwillow	Thread title	#12	[-]
Posts: 1538 (05/03/03 14:08:47) 12. Recently Gay Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	If anyone could suggest a more clear or obvious name for this thread, please let me know? You can just post or you could email me. -- "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."
Sakti	Re: Thread title	#13	[-]
Posts: 7 (05/04/03 20:55:59) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hey Kitties! I was wondering if any of you filled out the Buffy survey being conducted by a prof at Rudolph Mackin Uni. You can find the survey in Willow and Tara's Room Links. Apparently, this prof is examining how TV affects life, and/ or how experiences of the world affect interpretations of Buffy. She is also examining the specific fanbases of Buffy characters, like right now there are Spike questions up, but she indicated that Willow and Tara would be next, so if any of you are interested in tell her how you fell about W/T, or Buffy in general, go check it out.
Katharyn	Re: Thread title	#14	[-]
Posts: 1913 (05/05/03 03:50:31) 14. Lesbo Street Cred Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Edited out cos I am an ass. Katharyn ------------------------- If I want a little pussy, I got my own to play with. Chance in Chance. ------------------------
Tulipp	Re: Thread title	#15	[-]
Posts: 1270 (05/05/03 06:02:34) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	This is such a compelling topic.... What you said in the first post, DMW, about the READER being a participant in fan fiction, is so important. Of course, it is a writer who might--with the conceptual help, often, of a beta reader or two or three and/or chat buddies--come up with a story idea, dialogue, images, shades of characterization--it is really the reader who has the power to say "that is more canon than canon" or "that isn't canon at all." And that's a tricky operation because the actual text of canon is fairly limited. But I bet many of us share some canon-ish sense of who Willow and Tara are that has more to do with OUR viewing of the characters on TV than with what TV actually presented us. And so there's a canonical "reading" or viewing as well as a canonical "text" or tv show. If that makes any sense. I still do --and always have--evaluate fics on the basis of how true to the characters as they were originally suggested are. Even in AU fics, I think characters must be recognizable as themselves. But this involves a complex operation because as a reader and a watcher (although I have not been watching for awhiel now), my "canon purity" test has more to do with what I see when I watch than with what was shown to me. And hence the problem for me: a good fanfic story discovers something about a character that I know to be true when held against the original characters, but I am the one who gets to say who the original characters are. There are so many fics that I have loved that it's hard to even think of starting a list here, but if I did start that list, it would contain most of the people who have posted in this thread. "Just call me the computer whisperer."-- Willow
darkmagicwillow	Signs and signatures	#16	[-]
Posts: 1538 (05/07/03 10:37:19) 12. Recently Gay Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	You're so right about the text of canon being limited, both in the amount of it as well as in all of the nonverbal interaction that's not detailed in the script, which is even more subjective than text, allowing a wider range of interpretations. However, I think you've hit on a truth that holds no matter how we view the characters: a good fanfic story discovers something about a character that I know to be true when held against the original characters Finally, your sig illustrates the confluence of fandom and canon very well for me, as I don't know whether Willow said "Just call me the computer whisperer" in an episode or in a fic. People quote both in their sigs here, which in itself is an indication of fandom becoming canon. -- "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."
darkmagicwillow	Dark magic and addiction	#17	[-]
Posts: 1538 (05/10/03 12:59:55) 12. Recently Gay Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Was the difference between dark and light magic ever mentioned on the show, especially in season 6? I've read so many fics that talk about this that I'm no longer certain, but I can't recall it ever being discussed. Overall, I don't like how most stories deal with this as they slip in the addiction idea from Wrecked which I never could accept as canonical because of its sudden, unexplained appearance in that episode. If fan fiction can add things to what we accept as canon, can it also subtract from canon as well? -- "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."
sam7777	Re: Dark magic and addiction	#18	[-]
Posts: 3282 (05/10/03 22:29:56) 20. Not one Much for the Timber Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I don't think that fanfic can subtract from canon because each fic is it's own separate world and vision. You can pick and choose what you like. This is one of the reasons I prefer fanfic to canon for the buffyverse. Fanfic can create a world where W/T are the stars and are in character, have actual sex and live happily ever after. I can still enjoy fanfic while I gave up on canon last season. ME never bothered to explain magic IMHO. I see ME using magic as a writing crutch when they can't think up a way to get out of a situation or want folks to act a certain way without taking the time to build it up in the stories. I have seen a much more consistent and better use of magic in fanfic. _____________________ I see dead lesbian cliches
darkmagicwillow	Subtraction	#19	[-]
Posts: 1538 (05/14/03 16:38:06) 12. Recently Gay Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	It's true that each fic has a separate vision, but they occur in a shared world created by someone else. One essential subtraction that Pens authors often remove from the Buffyverse of course is Tara's death. It's become canon for me that Tara's alive and well through reading fan fiction that's made me gradually forget the later events of BtVS. -- "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."
sam7777	Re: Subtraction	#20	[-]
Posts: 3282 (05/14/03 17:53:21) 20. Not one Much for the Timber Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I thought you meant subtract in it's negative sense where the fics subtract from the integrity of the shared world. I see fanfics as adding to that shared world and surpassing it when I no longer care for the world presented by the creator. I think the fanfics add Tara to a new version of the shared world that goes beyond the Buffyverse. I no longer care about the Buffyverse by the creators. I prefer the new version created here in pens. Here Willow and Tara are alive, happy and in character. _____________________ I see dead lesbian cliches

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W/T: Canon vs. Fandom

W/T: Canon vs. Fandom