Follow-up poll to the below...please answer if you can.

[shadowkat]

[Poll #976647]

Comments

[herself_nyc]

I neither love nor hate the comics but I am buying them and enjoying them, which wasn't a choice in the poll. As for caring about canon, I care about it but think fanfic reserves the right to break or play with or ignore key pieces of it, though the charm of the all-human AU continues to entirely elude me.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I'd also say that I am buying and reading the comics, mostly like them, do care about them, but wouldn't say I love them yet.

[tyreseus.livejournal.com]

FYI, the "other" ticky box I checked refers to my written but never posted/shared fanfic in which the whole story of Camelot turns out to be yet another showdown between Dream and Desire of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. (Desire thinks s/he's won because s/he brought down the kingdom, but Dream trumps him/her in the end when Camelot becomes an inspiration for idealized government - the dream of a perfect state).

Not really important to your poll, but I felt like sharing. ;)

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Re your post aboutwhether the Buffy Season 8 comics are canon (http://shadowkat67.livejournal.com/270108.html) and why we should or shouldn't care:

My not-so-brief answer is that, no, the comic books are not the same canon as the TV show. The Buffyverse is and always will be Joss Whedon's baby, no denying it. But there were many other creative powers involved in the TV show that aren't involved in the comics -- actors, directors, crew, composers, costumers, etc -- and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was as much about them as it was about Joss.

The best analogy would be Superman canon. There's the overarcing canon, which includes everything EVER that has used the name Superman. But comics canon =/= movie canon =/= Smallville =/= Lois and Clark =/= Bruce Timm cartoons, etc. Even within comics canon, there are contradictions, disputed canon, different trends in characterisation.

I think trying to figure out what is or is not canon is very important -- even if there is still some disagreement, it's good to debate, it's good to try to find common ground or at least decide where my boundaries lie versus your boundaries. We can't assume that my stop sign is your stop sign, then hope nobody gets hit by a car.

I mean, the simplest proof that canon is important? The next completely out-of-character fic that's posted. Sure, she's a vampire slayer and lives in Sunnydale and has a kid sister, Watcher, Scoobies, and a vampire hanging around. But if she's suddenly, with no explanation, meek and timid, stuttering and not at all quippy, unfashionable and good at chemistry, selfish to an extreme, I'm gonna call foul and say the author needs to damn well pay attention to what they're watching on TV.

Re your poll: I always care about canon. As a big ol' fangirl, I'm often obsessive about details. As a writer, I care about canon as far as I want to use it to serve my story. My missing scenes and futurefic are more canon dependent than my (slash) romances, which are more canon dependent than my AUs (characterisation is still canon, even if setting and plot aren't). As a reader, I still care about canon but I'm much more flexible. I read a LOT of fanfic, and I've learned to be tolerant of mildly out-of-character, out-of-canon writing. And I love AUs, genderbender, crossovers, crackfic, etc. As long as it's well-written, I'll probably give it a shot.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

I've been following the discussion about canon with interest. I know I'm one who prefers fic that follows canon but I've come to realize that what I really prefer is fic that follows characterization. Which is not to say a character can't be written as deviating from their primary traits, but when they do I want a story that explains to me why. Even Joss (et al) did it directly with "The Wish". Few of the characters were anything like we'd come to expect but we knew why. In "When She Was Bad" Buffy came back to town as an 'uber-bitch' but by the end of the episode we, again, knew why.

I grew up reading comics during the 'Silver Age'. And I can definitely say that I preferred a story that was directly labeled "imaginary" to one that (to me) essentially erased everything because it was a dream. (I once read a four-book series of BtVS novels that went to some very interesting places only to press the reset button at the end to happily tell us it never happened). Imaginary, "what if" or alternate universes more or less announce that what I'm about to read is an exploration that wouldn't/couldn't happen in the official story. But even there, it's really characterization that I still look for, or reasons why. And for some reason, heh, "Buffy was mean to Spike this week so I wrote her as an weak, ugly bitch" isn't going to convince me to read. And, heheh, if it's "Xander and Spike get together for hot sexxoring" then that scene's gonna need a few reams of story showing how those two, Xander in particular, got to that point. (I suggest an alternate universe where they don't instinctively hate each other on first sight).

There are so many story possibilities that aren't/can't be in canon. Anything in the Buffy or Angel series that happened over the summer isn't in canon, for example, because there is no canon about it other than a detail or two. Hank buys Buffy lots of shoes between s1 and s2, the Scoobies bury the Master's bones during that same summer, somehow Buffy ends up waitressing between s2 and s3, Willow begins some serious training between s6 and s7, etc. But if the story is suppose to fit in between the known canon events, then it's the characterization that still remains the issue for me.

Sorry for babbling on, but thinking about it this time clarified some thoughts about the difference between 'canon' and 'characterization' for me.

[spacedoutlooney.livejournal.com]

For the last question, I put "don't care" but really it's more like
"it's too soon for me to tell."