fandom quiz

[jmtorres]

echan and I have spent seriously, like, three hours, discussing fannish categorizations of material as it strays further and further from canon. We are interested in your opinions on the following:

In reference to vidding:
What constitutes canon (or nonviolation of canon)?
What constitutes an AU?
What constitutes constructed reality?

Where are the lines between these categories? What separates them? What rationales and characteristics can you use to differentiate between them?

Where does crossover fall in this scale?
Does the use of secondary sources make a vid fall into one category or another?

Second verse: would you care to tackle the same questions (as relevant) wrt fanfiction?

If you're very good, I may post my own thoughts on this matter when I am less drunk.

Comments

[niqaeli]

I pretty much view constructed reality as a vidding term and something that involves going abroad from your main source to construct. So, my Barrayar vid concept: well, given I don't have *any* A/V source for the fandom, it's pretty much a pure constructed reality. Then also things like vids for fic that require you to go afield of the original source qualify for me.

My view of canon vs. AU is really stretchy because I spent a long time in comics fandom and ahahahaha. Yeah. Also, I'm a huge genre fan so. Yeah. Canon AUs happen a lot. But I do make a distinction between an AU and an alternate timeline. Alternate universe, to me, is dragons, or high school, or 18th and 19th century military. Alternate timelines, are fairly obvious: the what-ifs and could-have-beens and if this-had-been different. I actually regard always-female or always-male AUs and their related ilk to actually strictly be alternate timelines. It's one tweak and then everything falls out from how their lives would be different.