it really is so funny that two separate cases in aa3 talk a lot about how eagle river is deadly and if you fell in no one would ever find the body and then we only ever heard about two people falling into it and they’re both totally fine.
Dramatic irony XD
hey asking for a friend but uh. what’s it gonna take for fandom to relearn the difference between “canon” and “word of god”?
★ canon = the text itself; the show/movie/book/comic; the actual up-on-Netflix content; anything a casual fan would reasonably interact with
★ word of god = anything else, i.e. interviews with cast/crew/showrunners; DVD commentaries; comments from the crew on social media or at cons; literally any written or verbal remarks about the text made by writers or showrunners or actorsword of god does not equal canon, and yet i increasingly see fandoms conflating the two and acting like word of god comments from The Powers That Be count as canon and are equivalent to canon footnotes to the text and i’m. NO. listen. it’s not. that’s not what canon means, and word of god comments should not be treated as part of the canon text. this isn’t just me being a pedantic text purist, this has actual negative consequences for shows and fandoms and people’s experience of the stories, i mean:
- it privileges the creator’s interpretation of the text as the only “correct” one. death of the author? no one’s heard of her. writers and showrunners get to tell fans how to interpret the text, and a solid 80% of fandom is going “okay, if you say so!”
- it stifles fandom debate and analysis, because fan analysis of the text at hand is rejected outright by other fans on the basis that “well the showrunners said it’s like this”
- it contributes to fandom bullying, in which word of god comments are used to harass people who have the audacity to want to interpret the work differently, or who disagree with the powers that be, or just don’t want to consider those comments at all in their understanding of the story
- word of god comments may be confusing; they may change over time or contradict earlier statements; they may even contradict the text itself. all of which leads to fans frantically trying to reconcile word of god comments with actual canon, rather than going “okay fuck this, it doesn’t make sense so i’m disregarding it”
- again: this only creates more arguments in fandom; if creators say x at one point, and y at another, you end up with more fandom slap-fights over which comment was the ‘correct’ one and which interpretation ‘wins’
- it encourages lazy and unsatisfying storytelling. if fanon will accept word of god comments as canon, showrunners develop an attitude of “it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense, we can just handwave it in an interview”
- this results in poor writing, or important plot points being explained in word of god comments rather than in actual canon
- this in turn makes the story confusing and incomprehensible to anyone who’s not knee-deep in fandom. casual fans, kids, someone bingeing the series 5 years from now on crunchyroll… they’re not reading the interviews or tweets or watching the comicon panels. those viewers still need to be able to understand the story, and we are slip-sliding towards a creator-fandom model in which they won’t be able to, because word of god comments run the risk of becoming required reading for understanding the story
- this has serious implications for how stories handle representation: if fans start accepting word of god as equivalent to canon, it means shows can keep canon rep (particularly queer rep) vague and ambiguous, and prop it up with word of god comments that “confirm the representation”. there’s no incentive to actually commit to unambiguous, clear canon rep if stories can lean on word of god to compensate for the utter lack of actual diversity in the canon text itself
the canon text has to stand alone. word of god should serve as a trove of fun trivia or behind-the-scenes tidbits about the writing process; it is not supposed to be a substitute for clear, concise, and comprehensive storytelling. a story that doesn’t make sense unless you’ve read 8 different explanatory interviews by the writers is badly written. showrunners who treat interviews as a place to offload all the character development or plot explanations they didn’t bother to include in the actual text are lazy hacks who are bad at their jobs.
word of god can be handy and fun and informative, and for people who are interested in creator comments or interviews there’s no harm in paying attention to that stuff. but it’s not canon. the canon is the text itself. anything else is supplementary to that, and fans are absolutely allowed to disregard anything not in canon if they choose.
Dahlia Hawthorne.
I can’t think of any others, unless we’re talking crack ships like Kirstoph x Manfred Von Karma, or Kristoph x Damon Gant.
I can say firmly there aren’t any ships that I can think of that aren’t with other convicted culprits that would squick us.
Before I Sleep (580 words) by thesavagesabretooth
Summary: After having his legs maimed by a monster Simon is about to freeze to death in the woods. Another monster, one who calls himself Bobby Fulbright, shows up to rescue him.
Based on @mio-nika ’s amazing Yokai Hunter AU artwork!
–
Simon was thinking about undoing his bandages, but he’d probably already stopped bleeding, anyway. The injury from his fight wasn’t severe enough to kill him on its own, just to cripple him in a way that his legs couldn’t bear his weight. He had walked as far as he could on it, until he’d fallen on his knees in the snow. There was no way he could make it the two miles back to town.
It was a shame. He’d rather bleed to death than freeze to death. He’d heard that those who froze to death felt so hot at the end that they stripped off all their clothes.
Simon wasn’t feeling warm right now. He was feeling desperately cold. He leaned against the trunk of the tree and stared up at the branches of it as the snow filtered down between them, piling up around him.
It was beautiful, at least. The quiet, still forest full of mist and snow and silvery moonlight. It was a beautiful place for a samurai to die alone.
If he’d had something to write with him, he’d have composed a haiku for the momentous, foolish occasion.
He shouldn’t have chased the creature so far out into the woods on his own. It had been hubris, perhaps. In the end he’d dispatched the beast, but not before it had maimed his legs. In the end, neither of them would leave the woods.
Simon was ready to let himself go to sleep when he heard the sound of crunching in the dry, snowy underbrush. It was probably an animal, but his instincts couldn’t ignore it. He grabbed his sword where it lay by his side.
A figure materialized slowly out of the mist.
Fulbright.
Or rather– the menreiki who wore his face. He wasn’t wearing it now, as he materialized– rather Simon saw the ghoulish theater mask that might have been the creature’s real face. Or one of them.
“Come to gloat, then?” Simon demanded, sneering up at him.
The yokai waved a hand across its face, and the one that Simon had grown accustomed to appeared in its stead. Fulbright grinned his wide, stupid grin at him.
“Now, sir! Is that any way to thank your rescuer? It would be terribly unjust for you to die here, you know!”
Before Simon could protest any further, Bobby reached down and picked him up carefully, maiden style in his arms. Simon resented how well he managed it– how little it hurt and how easily he fit in the false man’s embrace.
He flushed and glowered indignantly at him. “Put me down this instant!”
“And die in the snow with you, sir?” Fulbright’s smile waxed almost nostalgic. “I’d only be able to pretend, though, I’m afraid.”
Simon’s scowl and flush both deepend, and he twisted his body sullenly in the yokai’s arms, jabbing him in the shoulder with the hilt of his sheathed sword.
“And here I thought you lacked the capacity for romance,” Simon muttered.
They both fell silent as Fulbright carried him through the mist toward the lights of the village.
Simon started to feel warm again as the yokai held him, and he resented that too. But it was hard to focus on. As the dizzy pain started to return with the warmth in his body, he rested his head against Fulbright’s broad chest.
Looking up at the stolen mask of a face, in a moment of weakness Simon let himself imagine a fairytale.
Autocorrect thinks they’re married I guess. 🎉