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What I'm about to say seems so obvious it's silly to even say it, yet I found myself thinking about it after some recent conversations, including some in the comments of my last post. We were talking about fandom splitting down the middle with Purists vs. Revisionists in LOTR, for instance, and how in HP it sometimes seems like Gryffindor vs. Slytherin fans. This connected to recent discussions about people leaving fandom etc., and canon defenders, and the thing that always confuses me is
Last I checked, Slytherins were canon too.
Now, I know that the Slytherin fans=/=canon fans is shorthand for the idea that they "don't like" the Gryffindor characters or the Trio, or they have problems with those characters. Sometimes they might side against them in a scene (in the strawman version they think Voldemort's right). "Why doesn't anyone like Harry or the Trio anymore?" I've heard a number of times. Why doesn't anyone defend the good guys? Okay, granted from where I sit the Trio is still as popular as ever, and are defended all over the place, sometimes even without being criticized to begin with, but that's not the point.
The point is, if being a Slytherin fan means you happen to be most interest in characters from Slytherin, how does that set you up against canon necessarily? I mean, my favorite character has always obviously been Draco, and I also like Snape, Pansy, Crabbe and Goyle, Blaise, Phineas, Regulus--a lot of Slytherins. The Slytherin I'm probably the least interested in is Slughorn. Not too into Bellatrix and some others. However, I'm also interested in Harry, Ron, Hermione, Sirius, Remus, Neville, the Twins—I’ve been interested many Gryffindor characters at different times just as I am with the Slytherins. But even if I wasn't particularly interested in them and didn’t "defend" them all at times, I've honestly never considered my interest in Draco to be subversive or any different than an interest in Ron, really.
I know I'm not alone in having always considered myself a canon!Draco fan who felt like I was interested in the actual character JKR was creating. Of course being a fan of a character doesn't mean you always get him/her right every time. But isn't it obvious at least by now that a lot of the interest in Slytherin characters including Draco but especially Snape was just as canon as interest in Gryffindor characters? Sometimes more so, depending on the person. It’s not like there’s never been a fan of a Gryffindor character who claimed their character was going to be hugely important to the story in ways s/he isn't and probably won't be. I can't help but find it ironic that after being told to accept Draco would be invisible by the sixth book I was actually surprised at how much attention he got while another person can cheerfully claim that the seventh book will climax with their favorite supporting character (who up until now has had an even smaller role than Draco) killing Voldemort--and that the seventh book may even split its povs equally between him/her and Harry.
And then there's Snape. True Snape is in no way the protagonist but it surprises me that anyone would say that paying attention to Snape is a subversive reading. From where I sit the guy sits in the middle of canon; all roads lead to Snape. (He's a big spider in the middle of that web.) Draco was more like a silvery strand that seemed like it would eventually be tugged to some effect, Snape's always dominated the story.
So sometimes I guess it seems like people don't really stop to think *why* someone who's a Slytherin fan should be seen as not a canon whore, especially at times when it frankly seems to me they might be more focused on canon. That is, I know there are people who like Slytherin characters and totally rewrite them. I get why this is considered subverting canon, if a Trio character is shoved aside and replaced with a "negative" character in the lead, or where it turns out all along these characters were "good" in ways Harry and his friends were "bad." But this kind of thing exists in its own way with the Gryffindor characters as well, of course, because as long as we've got fans of characters we're going to have Meta defenses and fanfics where that character has always been victimized and has always had Everyone's Best Interests At Heart or has always been truly more special and great than the hero.
So if we group those fans together, we're still left with a whole lot of people honestly interested in the characters as they appear in canon that fall all over the map. Even if they lose patience with the material. Someone can love Hermione for five books and then get disappointed with the way her character goes the same way one can be fascinated in finding out about Tom Riddle and then get disappointed with his back-story. Are those people not canon fans? Well, they're maybe not pleased with canon as it eventually went but they probably wanted to be canon fans. And are you not a canon fan if you, for instance, question the way the Weasleys act towards Muggles? Because sometimes it seems like the official “canon-whore” reaction to this is to mock others for thinking the Weasleys are DEs, yet to me both reactions are equally focused on the canon that’s in the books. Is the former view the "Slytherin" one? Perhaps it often is, but it’s still just as canon-based as the idea that the Weasleys are the epitome of respect to all.
I guess what I've gotten impatient about is the idea that being a fan of one group of characters, perhaps more accurately having a certain reaction to characters and things in canon makes you the fan of canon more than someone else because it just seems to often hide a lot of non-canon stuff. You can be an H/Hr shipper and still have a more objective view of a lot of canon than an H/G shipper. This is not meant as a slam on H/G-shippers specifically, but for instance, I've seen plenty of people who ship them and predicted the ship still completely miss the boat on plenty of things, even things about that ship in canon, you know? Same with any other ship.
So sometimes I just think--why have we made this false division in fandom? Not the division between Gryffindor and Slytherin fans, because that can certainly exist, even if it's not always right to assume that a person can't be both. (Personally, I've never understood the Snape vs. Sirius fights-to me those two characters are easily liked at the same time and one has little to do with the other in my head.) I'm cool with the fact that some people care a lot about Hermione in ways I probably don't, and don't find FuckUp!Lucius Malfoy more interesting for the brilliant mess he's made of things. But it's extremely strange for me to think that the fan of Lucius or Snape isn't as much a fan of *canon* as the fan of Luna or Sirius, especially at points where Lucius and Snape are more plugged into the central line of the story.
Not to speak to the author, but how can this be an insult to her? Didn't she create these characters too? Isn't the universe just as dependent on them as the others? Sure she's been open about descriptions of them she doesn't think fit, stressing the hard, ugly parts of the characters, but I still don't think that makes it less canon that they're worthwhile characters. She seemed to pretty much put down the idea that there was any romance to H/Hr, but that doesn't mean it's uncanonical to be interested in the interaction between those two in canon, even including parts that seem to stress the boy/girl aspect of the pair.
I guess it just comes down to my pet peeve again of people trying to define canon by what's in their head when naturally we all give more room to interpretations we like rather than those we don't like. I think I've just rarely seen anyone truly able to not cross the line when they're defining canon. I just think it's more honest, for instance, if one was running a fanfic site to say that the stories were chosen based on stuff the maintainers liked instead of "canon compliant" which is impossible. When I imagine an archive like that based on stuff I've heard people say in fandom over the years, I can easily imagine the HP books themselves not making it--OotP might have gotten rejected based on MWPP not being bullies; HBP made Draco too sympathetic. Meanwhile on other grounds I can imagine stories that by some would be considered really canonical getting thrown out: Remus/Tonks? Canonical, but these characters are not as central to the plot as they're being made here, so no. R/Hr? The pairing's fine, but Hermione's a sidekick, not the one Voldemort is really after so you’re out.
In an ideal fandom, we can all do our bit. Every character can have his/her fans, some of whom explain him/her in a way that spreads the love to others, some of whom defend him/her to the point where you can't stand it. The self-proclaimed Gryffindor fans can look through their Protagonist-Harry lens, safe in the knowledge that there's a crowd of Slytherin fans looking through the lens of that primary antagonist, Snape. That way the whole book gets held up, everything the author created and wrote. Iow, all of canon. They need each other for the story. I think we need each other for a fandom.
Last I checked, Slytherins were canon too.
Now, I know that the Slytherin fans=/=canon fans is shorthand for the idea that they "don't like" the Gryffindor characters or the Trio, or they have problems with those characters. Sometimes they might side against them in a scene (in the strawman version they think Voldemort's right). "Why doesn't anyone like Harry or the Trio anymore?" I've heard a number of times. Why doesn't anyone defend the good guys? Okay, granted from where I sit the Trio is still as popular as ever, and are defended all over the place, sometimes even without being criticized to begin with, but that's not the point.
The point is, if being a Slytherin fan means you happen to be most interest in characters from Slytherin, how does that set you up against canon necessarily? I mean, my favorite character has always obviously been Draco, and I also like Snape, Pansy, Crabbe and Goyle, Blaise, Phineas, Regulus--a lot of Slytherins. The Slytherin I'm probably the least interested in is Slughorn. Not too into Bellatrix and some others. However, I'm also interested in Harry, Ron, Hermione, Sirius, Remus, Neville, the Twins—I’ve been interested many Gryffindor characters at different times just as I am with the Slytherins. But even if I wasn't particularly interested in them and didn’t "defend" them all at times, I've honestly never considered my interest in Draco to be subversive or any different than an interest in Ron, really.
I know I'm not alone in having always considered myself a canon!Draco fan who felt like I was interested in the actual character JKR was creating. Of course being a fan of a character doesn't mean you always get him/her right every time. But isn't it obvious at least by now that a lot of the interest in Slytherin characters including Draco but especially Snape was just as canon as interest in Gryffindor characters? Sometimes more so, depending on the person. It’s not like there’s never been a fan of a Gryffindor character who claimed their character was going to be hugely important to the story in ways s/he isn't and probably won't be. I can't help but find it ironic that after being told to accept Draco would be invisible by the sixth book I was actually surprised at how much attention he got while another person can cheerfully claim that the seventh book will climax with their favorite supporting character (who up until now has had an even smaller role than Draco) killing Voldemort--and that the seventh book may even split its povs equally between him/her and Harry.
And then there's Snape. True Snape is in no way the protagonist but it surprises me that anyone would say that paying attention to Snape is a subversive reading. From where I sit the guy sits in the middle of canon; all roads lead to Snape. (He's a big spider in the middle of that web.) Draco was more like a silvery strand that seemed like it would eventually be tugged to some effect, Snape's always dominated the story.
So sometimes I guess it seems like people don't really stop to think *why* someone who's a Slytherin fan should be seen as not a canon whore, especially at times when it frankly seems to me they might be more focused on canon. That is, I know there are people who like Slytherin characters and totally rewrite them. I get why this is considered subverting canon, if a Trio character is shoved aside and replaced with a "negative" character in the lead, or where it turns out all along these characters were "good" in ways Harry and his friends were "bad." But this kind of thing exists in its own way with the Gryffindor characters as well, of course, because as long as we've got fans of characters we're going to have Meta defenses and fanfics where that character has always been victimized and has always had Everyone's Best Interests At Heart or has always been truly more special and great than the hero.
So if we group those fans together, we're still left with a whole lot of people honestly interested in the characters as they appear in canon that fall all over the map. Even if they lose patience with the material. Someone can love Hermione for five books and then get disappointed with the way her character goes the same way one can be fascinated in finding out about Tom Riddle and then get disappointed with his back-story. Are those people not canon fans? Well, they're maybe not pleased with canon as it eventually went but they probably wanted to be canon fans. And are you not a canon fan if you, for instance, question the way the Weasleys act towards Muggles? Because sometimes it seems like the official “canon-whore” reaction to this is to mock others for thinking the Weasleys are DEs, yet to me both reactions are equally focused on the canon that’s in the books. Is the former view the "Slytherin" one? Perhaps it often is, but it’s still just as canon-based as the idea that the Weasleys are the epitome of respect to all.
I guess what I've gotten impatient about is the idea that being a fan of one group of characters, perhaps more accurately having a certain reaction to characters and things in canon makes you the fan of canon more than someone else because it just seems to often hide a lot of non-canon stuff. You can be an H/Hr shipper and still have a more objective view of a lot of canon than an H/G shipper. This is not meant as a slam on H/G-shippers specifically, but for instance, I've seen plenty of people who ship them and predicted the ship still completely miss the boat on plenty of things, even things about that ship in canon, you know? Same with any other ship.
So sometimes I just think--why have we made this false division in fandom? Not the division between Gryffindor and Slytherin fans, because that can certainly exist, even if it's not always right to assume that a person can't be both. (Personally, I've never understood the Snape vs. Sirius fights-to me those two characters are easily liked at the same time and one has little to do with the other in my head.) I'm cool with the fact that some people care a lot about Hermione in ways I probably don't, and don't find FuckUp!Lucius Malfoy more interesting for the brilliant mess he's made of things. But it's extremely strange for me to think that the fan of Lucius or Snape isn't as much a fan of *canon* as the fan of Luna or Sirius, especially at points where Lucius and Snape are more plugged into the central line of the story.
Not to speak to the author, but how can this be an insult to her? Didn't she create these characters too? Isn't the universe just as dependent on them as the others? Sure she's been open about descriptions of them she doesn't think fit, stressing the hard, ugly parts of the characters, but I still don't think that makes it less canon that they're worthwhile characters. She seemed to pretty much put down the idea that there was any romance to H/Hr, but that doesn't mean it's uncanonical to be interested in the interaction between those two in canon, even including parts that seem to stress the boy/girl aspect of the pair.
I guess it just comes down to my pet peeve again of people trying to define canon by what's in their head when naturally we all give more room to interpretations we like rather than those we don't like. I think I've just rarely seen anyone truly able to not cross the line when they're defining canon. I just think it's more honest, for instance, if one was running a fanfic site to say that the stories were chosen based on stuff the maintainers liked instead of "canon compliant" which is impossible. When I imagine an archive like that based on stuff I've heard people say in fandom over the years, I can easily imagine the HP books themselves not making it--OotP might have gotten rejected based on MWPP not being bullies; HBP made Draco too sympathetic. Meanwhile on other grounds I can imagine stories that by some would be considered really canonical getting thrown out: Remus/Tonks? Canonical, but these characters are not as central to the plot as they're being made here, so no. R/Hr? The pairing's fine, but Hermione's a sidekick, not the one Voldemort is really after so you’re out.
In an ideal fandom, we can all do our bit. Every character can have his/her fans, some of whom explain him/her in a way that spreads the love to others, some of whom defend him/her to the point where you can't stand it. The self-proclaimed Gryffindor fans can look through their Protagonist-Harry lens, safe in the knowledge that there's a crowd of Slytherin fans looking through the lens of that primary antagonist, Snape. That way the whole book gets held up, everything the author created and wrote. Iow, all of canon. They need each other for the story. I think we need each other for a fandom.
