You probably won't be surprised that I agree with you on all of this, most emphatically of all on the essential integrity of the canon of any fandom. If the canon allows for - or deliberately creates - spaces to be filled by the audience, then I'll do that (in my head or by fic). If the canon includes things I feel uncomfortable about, I'll work with them insofar as they don't break my enjoyment. So, for example, though it took me a while to reconcile the Season One Torchwood's relationship angst, with Ianto in the end so clearly and helplessly entranced, and Jack perfectly truthfully able to declare to Real!Jack that there was no-one else in his life at that moment... I DID reconcile it! They weren't equals in the relationship then, such as it was. Which, indeed, is why Owen's barbs were able to provoke such an atypically passionate reaction from Ianto.
And if the season Two canon had continued with a sexually interested but emotionally indifferent Jack, and a doggedly besotted doormat Ianto - I guess my interest in the show would have waned somewhat, because that relationship in particular fascinates me so much, and I would find a passive, victim-y Ianto considerably less appealing than the clearly complex but reasonably self-interested young man we do have by the end of the season.
If canon itself is the thing in a fandom that's harshing your pleasure, I've never understood the logic of stomping right through it and creating something which is no longer fanfiction in the sense that I understand it. There is room for an AU which essentially plays intelligent what-ifs with the characters and circumstances as we commonly understand the,. But not so much, for me, in either the kind of rewriting which changes substantial aspects of character (Gwen seducing Jack, say) or that which transplants characters into an entirely un-canon universe (Jack and Ianto as two librarians on Saturn, say). If what you crave is librarians on Saturn, either find a fandom where you can take the canon there without losing sight of the point of origin, or write your own universe!
And ITA on not panicking over lj, either. People seem mad keen to throw up their hands in horror on the evidence of a half-mangled Chinese whisper these days. Oddness.
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Date: 2009-01-08 12:36 am (UTC)And if the season Two canon had continued with a sexually interested but emotionally indifferent Jack, and a doggedly besotted doormat Ianto - I guess my interest in the show would have waned somewhat, because that relationship in particular fascinates me so much, and I would find a passive, victim-y Ianto considerably less appealing than the clearly complex but reasonably self-interested young man we do have by the end of the season.
If canon itself is the thing in a fandom that's harshing your pleasure, I've never understood the logic of stomping right through it and creating something which is no longer fanfiction in the sense that I understand it. There is room for an AU which essentially plays intelligent what-ifs with the characters and circumstances as we commonly understand the,. But not so much, for me, in either the kind of rewriting which changes substantial aspects of character (Gwen seducing Jack, say) or that which transplants characters into an entirely un-canon universe (Jack and Ianto as two librarians on Saturn, say). If what you crave is librarians on Saturn, either find a fandom where you can take the canon there without losing sight of the point of origin, or write your own universe!
And ITA on not panicking over lj, either. People seem mad keen to throw up their hands in horror on the evidence of a half-mangled Chinese whisper these days. Oddness.