CANON vs. FANON -- Reality vs. Imagination
People who aren't really part of any so-called obsessive fandoms may not be aware of this, but there are really quite a few large-ish battle being waged by sometimes even fanatic people, mostly on this one subject: canon. Is it equivalent to the Holy Bible or not? Is the word of the author really and truly what goes? But wait, maybe I should back up a little.
To put it simply, canon includes everything about a book series etc. that has been verified by the author/other creator. It can include anything from birthdays and deathdays to who married who, and indeed it's often the latter, usually referred to as "shipping", that lights the biggest fires. Everyone has their own personal favourite, and if JK Rowling never intended for Harry to be gay and fall in love with Draco Malfoy, so what? What does it matter that JRR Tolkien probably never have envisioned Legolas and Gimli embarking on a wild, inter-species romance? This, my friends, is what we call fanon. Anything and everything that isn't officially verified but is still recognised within fandoms as something some people "ship", think, or otherwise believe.
But why should we be interested in the differences of canon and fanon?
Well, the reason is simple, really: I want to investigate whether people prefer canon or fanon. This goal would be easiest to accomplish using a survey study. The most practical solution would probably be to design a series of questions and then start spreading them on the internet along with an email address, mainly in places that members of various fandoms frequent, such as Facebook fan pages and other various fan sites and forums. It would be important to remember to spread the survey amongst multiple fandoms, unless the goal were to find out the percentage of canon supporters in a specific fandom -- which, in this case, it isn't.
Using this method, one wouldn't really need other materials than the questions themselves and a working email address for answers to be sent to. Of course, having some kind of system to record answers and display them clearly at any part of the process would also be useful -- you could, for example, make a table with the number of the question in the vertical row and a slot for each of the answers in the horizontal row, if the questions were multiple choice. This way you could easily keep track of how many people have picked which answer.
Some example questions that could be asked:
- On a whole, do you prefer canon or fanon?
- When considering ships/pairings only, canon or fanon?
- Do you consider Wikias (fan-made article databases, based on the Wikipedia format) strict canon?
Also, it may be interesting to ask some demographical questions like age, gender and country to see whether stereotypes such as "young people believe everything and therefore support canon" or "Indian people love happy endings" are true, even in the slightest.
My hypothesis is that if a "I support both" option is given, the vast majority will pick that. Speaking from personal experience as a member of a so-called obssessive fandom, it's near impossible to pick just one, because so many people ship so many pairings etc. that you can't ask them to pick only half of them. If, however, you were to be so cruel, I estimate that well over half would side with fanon, since the support of gay pairings and other unofficial things has skyrocketed in the past few years.
and that, my friends, is 600 words of pure bullshit, also known as the Psych research plan I'm turning in on Friday unless I can think of a better reseach question and type it all out before then :p
People who aren't really part of any so-called obsessive fandoms may not be aware of this, but there are really quite a few large-ish battle being waged by sometimes even fanatic people, mostly on this one subject: canon. Is it equivalent to the Holy Bible or not? Is the word of the author really and truly what goes? But wait, maybe I should back up a little.
To put it simply, canon includes everything about a book series etc. that has been verified by the author/other creator. It can include anything from birthdays and deathdays to who married who, and indeed it's often the latter, usually referred to as "shipping", that lights the biggest fires. Everyone has their own personal favourite, and if JK Rowling never intended for Harry to be gay and fall in love with Draco Malfoy, so what? What does it matter that JRR Tolkien probably never have envisioned Legolas and Gimli embarking on a wild, inter-species romance? This, my friends, is what we call fanon. Anything and everything that isn't officially verified but is still recognised within fandoms as something some people "ship", think, or otherwise believe.
But why should we be interested in the differences of canon and fanon?
Well, the reason is simple, really: I want to investigate whether people prefer canon or fanon. This goal would be easiest to accomplish using a survey study. The most practical solution would probably be to design a series of questions and then start spreading them on the internet along with an email address, mainly in places that members of various fandoms frequent, such as Facebook fan pages and other various fan sites and forums. It would be important to remember to spread the survey amongst multiple fandoms, unless the goal were to find out the percentage of canon supporters in a specific fandom -- which, in this case, it isn't.
Using this method, one wouldn't really need other materials than the questions themselves and a working email address for answers to be sent to. Of course, having some kind of system to record answers and display them clearly at any part of the process would also be useful -- you could, for example, make a table with the number of the question in the vertical row and a slot for each of the answers in the horizontal row, if the questions were multiple choice. This way you could easily keep track of how many people have picked which answer.
Some example questions that could be asked:
- On a whole, do you prefer canon or fanon?
- When considering ships/pairings only, canon or fanon?
- Do you consider Wikias (fan-made article databases, based on the Wikipedia format) strict canon?
Also, it may be interesting to ask some demographical questions like age, gender and country to see whether stereotypes such as "young people believe everything and therefore support canon" or "Indian people love happy endings" are true, even in the slightest.
My hypothesis is that if a "I support both" option is given, the vast majority will pick that. Speaking from personal experience as a member of a so-called obssessive fandom, it's near impossible to pick just one, because so many people ship so many pairings etc. that you can't ask them to pick only half of them. If, however, you were to be so cruel, I estimate that well over half would side with fanon, since the support of gay pairings and other unofficial things has skyrocketed in the past few years.
and that, my friends, is 600 words of pure bullshit, also known as the Psych research plan I'm turning in on Friday unless I can think of a better reseach question and type it all out before then :p
