RPS and Canon

[and_chocolate]

In my non-RPS fandoms, I'm an absolute canon whore. It goes along with my being an absolute characterization whore. But the concept of canon in RPS fandoms feels contradictory and uncomfortable to me.

First, let me define the concept of canon as I see it: it's the factual structure of a fandom; the details of the characters and their lives that are gleaned from the source material and maintained (or at least not contradicted) in order to support the authenticity of the fanfic narrative, thus allowing it to be viewed as belonging to the fan-controlled segment of the source material's universe.

Looking at that definition, the entire concept of canon seems to me to be inappropriate to apply to real people. The "source material" is someone's life, and as such it's a really personal thing; I'm torn between my need to have the authenticity provided by canon and my desire to intrude as little as possible upon the person's actual existence.

The argument is easily made that we're fictionalizing the people we write RPS about, which makes applying the concept of canon to their lives no different than it is for any other fandom. That's all well and good, except that (barring a few RPS a/u shared universes) the canon we're using still consists of real facts about real people, regardless of how fictionalized the end result is.

Despite my discomfort, I still find myself being a canon whore, even in RPS. I have a collection of transcribed interviews and articles, my Pictures folder overfloweth, my TiVo is set to auto-record anything to do with LotR or any of the main actors, and I have a calendar specifically to record the dates of various appearances, location shoots, etc.

I don't honestly have any answers, but I welcome discussion. What do y'all think?

Comments

[libitina]

Long before reading/betaing RPS, I was a bit of a canon whore for actors. For example, I do alcohol geeking: I consider it am important part of my fannish geeking to know (to the best of my ability) what a favorite actor likes to drink. Peter Wingfield pimps Brain's Dark (a Welsh beer). Viggo Mortensen likes Carlsbad beer, and every reference to his hard alcohol tastes (one of his photographs and a scene in G.I.Jane) is to Jameson's.

And, yes, I did talk a writer out of having Viggo drink single malt for just that geeky reason. I am all for using whatever knowledge you can glean from publicly published fora.