User:Afker/Fanon

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Notes for the discussion over at Talk:Fanon wikis.

[edit] The meaning of "Fanon" outside of Wikia

• Wikipedia:Fanon (fiction) - Fanon, a portmanteau of fan and canon, is a fact or ongoing situation related to a work of fiction that has been used so much by fan writers or among the fandom that it has been established as having happened in the fictional world, but which does not appear in any official work from the original authors, scriptwriters or producers.

Doing a google search on "fanon fanfic" (otherwise too many results on someone named Fanon):

• Canon and Fanon and Points Between - "Those conventions and extrapolations from canon which become so popular and widespread in a fannish community, that they turn up in much fan fiction, and often people cannot remember where the idea originally came from."
• Canon? NO! It's Fanon! (a Tolkien fandom site) - "Fanon are inventions of fan fiction authors that for one reason or another appear to have taken the status of a canon within the Tolkien's fandom. I.e. it is believed that these ideas were put forward by Professor Tolkien himself, which of course is not the case."

• Urban Dictionary - "a term used in fanfiction to describe commonly accepted ideas among authors even if they are not actually expressed in the canon work."

• www.everything2.com - "In fandom, a body of ideas about characters, events, etc., that are not part of canon, but are popular among fans. These may be theories widely accepted in fan discussions, or conjectural events and elements of characterization frequently used in fanfic. Fanon elements often arise from a well-expressed theory, or from a particularly effective fanfic, and become widely accepted and used because they address a discrepancy in canon, make for good drama in fiction, or are simply aesthetically pleasing ideas."

• http://littlecalamity.tripod.com/Text/Dictionary.html - "Fanon" is a detail about a particular show or character that was created by a fan but has now been generally borrowed/copied/accepted as canon by many other writers."

• A Writer's Life - "fanon: things that fanfiction writers accept/assume as true about the subject, but that the original author has not directly supported"

• TFN Fanfic Lexicon - "FANON. Fan created fact that nearly all fans take for granted as true but is not supported by the official source."

• [1] - "Fanon - Fan canon. A fan-created fact or event widely accepted as canon, or a fact deemed to be unstated canon."

• TV tropes wiki - Fanon is the set of assumptions based on that material which, while they generally seem to be the "obvious" or "only" interpretation of canonical fact, are not actually part of the canon. Occasionally, the explanation seems good enough to just be "common sense."

• The Fanfiction Glossary - Information or characterization that has never been confirmed in canon but is accepted as such by fans"