I’m pretending we don’t have another snowstorm predicted this week.

[marcicat]

(By making a list, of course!)

I’ve been thinking about fandom vs canon, and how things become fanon, and how characters are written, and what things become part of my mental landscape because of the things that I watch and read. And I’m wondering, how do we come up with these things?

The Inception Smoking Thing: Okay, so I’ve only seen the movie once, and my google-fu isn’t even *close* to ninja!level. But I don’t remember anyone smoking in the movie. Like, at all. And yet — fanon is full of Arthur and/or Eames as smokers.

The Swearing Thing: I’m looking at you, Supernatural fandom. It’s a 9 pm show on a major network (not even cable!). They don’t swear. Same goes for Star Trek Reboot*, Hawaii Five-0, Inception (again!), Burn Notice, Stargate, etc. [I'll totally give a pass to the Fast & Furious fandom, because -- yeah, canon's all about the swearing for that one.]

The Tats: Okay, this one doesn’t really fit on the list, but tattoos are totally making a comeback (as far as I can tell), and I’m super curious as to whether there’s an identifiable chicken-and-egg thing. Like, is the increasing popularity of tattoos because they keep showing up in our pop culture? (Prison Break, Hawaii Five-0, Inception, Supernatural) Or are they being allowed/highlighted more in pop culture because they’re gaining ‘real world’ popularity? Also, this one has a lot of interesting actor/character crossover implications. (The reason fanon Eames has tattoos is, I’m guessing, because Tom Hardy does.)

[*In the interest of full disclosure, there's totally swearing in my reboot fic. Sorry about that.]

([ETA @ 9 pm] For those interested in more info on the 'swearing' topic, particularly when it comes to the word 'fuck,' the wikipedia entry has some thoughts.  I think the phrase 'This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps' will never not be funny.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

The boys of Supernatural swearing is so canon. For one, they swear in canon; case in point, the episode entitled Criss Angel is a Douchebag, other cases in point, the prevalence of the words 'bitch', 'whore', and 'slut'. (Theme. I sense it.) For two, somebody who was on set for the filming of Ghostfacers swears she heard the actual F-word in the bits that got bleeped for airing. (Frankly I'd rather they say 'fuck' on air than 'slut', since the latter has connotations of female oppression that the former does not, but sadly whoever's in charge of what's legal to say on air is not sensible.) *goes back to beating canon with the Bechdel stick*

[marcicat]

Okay, fair point. Swearing encompasses a lot more than just fuck and shit. (Mostly I notice words that will get me in trouble at work if I say them out loud, but I can certainly see the larger issues of gender bias as well.) Thanks!

[alexseanchai]

They say 'dick' a lot too, but that never pings me as a swear word, see also gender bias.