I hate to do this, because this topic is fairly controversial and this is sort of a 'refute and run' reply. This is regrettable because I'm sure there are going to be a number of intelligent replies that I nonetheless disagree with, but this is a rare opportunity for me to talk about the nature of fiction and canoncy, something I've contemplated for a long time now. However, school has started and it's going to be a busy year, so I can no longer get into the endless back and forths I usually do in debates like these, so I'll just have to make my answer here as comprehensive as I possibly can.
Stories aren't just blocks of pieces you can play around with at your leisure. They have arcs; beginnings, middles, and ends. Fanfiction posits this belief that everything the writer included in their works is open to negotiation. That strikes me as phenomenally disrespectful, which is so weird to me, because I'd imagine the last thing a fanfiction writer wants to do is throw shade at their favorite creator.
With all due respect, that is
precisely what stories are. They are, as you say, arranged in a cohesive structure that makes sense to narrative sensibilities, but they
are bits and pieces, and there is nothing wrong with playing around with them. That is infact what the original writers do, and it is only disrespectful insofar as the personality of that original writer. But truth be told, they don't own their work. The fact of the matter is that there is a gross misunderstanding of how writers write their material, and the reason fanfic is derided is because people believe it lacks 'original content', when in actuality it's as original as anything else written without a set reference. In truth, there is actually no functional difference between fanfiction and alledgedly original fiction, and I will explain why.
Before we understand what fanfiction is, we need to understand what original fiction is. How it's made. Lets take Hannibal the character for example, from Harris' book, in broad strokes. He's a cannibal serial killer who was captured and gives advice from his prisons and is very polite. What part of this inherently original? Cannibals existed before Harris ever put pen to paper. So have serial killers. So have captured criminals. So have prisons. So have advisors. So were good manners. But in combining those things into a particular structure, they create Hannibal Lector. I use the word structure in particular because it's important, but the important thing to focus on now is that there is no single element of Hannibal that was introduced to the world with Hannibals introduction, even if we might say that Hannibal himself was a new character.
At it's most basic level, that is how all fiction works. I like to think of it as similar to how we understand matter in our universe. The periodic table of elements is complete. We know every element that exists in the universe. We do not, however, know every object that is
composed of those elements in the universe, because the combinations may as well be infinite. Similarly, we generally have every base element of storytelling introduced. In the past 20 years of my life spent reading, watching, and listening, I don't think I've ever encountered a character which any individual trait was not traceable to something that existed before him, even if I may have encountered that element for the first time in a story personally. No matter how far you look back, you can see how any piece of fiction is just a combination of other traits that already exist. The first person who ever wrote about dragons most likely saw a lizard and thought "What if it was huge? And had bat's wings so it could fly? And could breathe fire!" That person put those known, mundane elements together and created a creature that may not exist holistically, but each element of him exists individually. Or lets take a more concrete example. Lord of the Rings. Original, right? Well, yes and no. Tolkien established the general high fantasy genre with his Lord of the Rings, which means before him nothing quite like what he wrote existed. But you can find traces of elements that existed in others work that he based his on, both fictional and non. For example, he based the dwarves off of the Jewish people, in having their land taken from them. Now, Dwarfs are obviously not Jewish people, Tolkien altered them to be a unique fictional structure of them on themselves, but like Hannibal and the common dragon, they were based off known elements. A small peoples. A diaspora. Miners. Beards. Etc. And Edmund Dantes could go on and on about the various myths that influenced Tolkien. Tolkien created a unique world, but even every a creative genius like him, who made one of the most intricate fictional worlds that anyone has ever seen, drew from known elements, not just with the dwarfs, but real life experiences, myths, social movements, etc.
He took a bunch of blocks from other structures, and made his own structure out of them. So that
is what fiction is. But there is a difference between writing from nothing and writing in an established universe, correct? Nope. Well, maybe sorta, but in a highly limited way. Again, let me explain.
But before I do, let me just point out how inadequate a term 'fanfiction' is. Literally, it just means fiction from a fan. Now, while I'm sure there are exceptions, I think we can generally say that most fiction put out by writers is something they are happy with, feel a connection to, and think it's good. I'm sure there are people who phone it in, but I think it's safe to say that atleast the writers like what they put out. This makes them fans, unless you have some bizarre definition of fandom that excludes liking your own work. This makes even the most original fiction fanfiction. In this discussion, what we are referring to is not 'fanfiction' but rather 'unofficial fiction as dictated by the copyright holder'. For the purposes of brevity, I will reffer the latter as fanfiction, but understand I am operating on the latter definition, and that's a horse of an entirely different color.
The essence of the argument is that there is some kind of inherent connection between 'creator' and 'creation', such as that the creator 'owns' the creation. There isn't, or I've never seen a good argument for it anyway. It's just one of those things people assume there is, but when you look at it logically, it makes no sense as to why a creator would have any sort of claim outside a legal one over his creation. And it's not how several industries work either. As established, no one 'owns' serial killers, or cannibals, or manners. And yet there is somehow an 'ownership' of Hannibal. This isn't because Hannibal is a
unique creation, but because he's a
claimed creation by some entity to make money off. And, frankly, it's often that the actual writer does not own the the content himself anyway, especailly in movies and TV and videogames. Doctor Who, for example, is owned by BBC as a corporation, not any of the literally hundreds of writers that have created the actual story content you see when watching the show. The same is true of Batman from DC (and superheroes in general). Nor any of the classical mythological figures, or characters that have fallen into public domain are owned by anyone either, even though there were content creators by them. The people who have been licensed to write some of the best stories in hundreds of mediums have no ownership of the content they produce. It seems absurd to me to suggest there is any sort of sanctity in copy right for this reason between the 'creator' and the creation. Copyright is purely a mechanism to ensure that creative endeavors are monetarily rewarded. At which point that the "creator" can no longer be monitarily rewarded, they become free game for anyone to use. Which is fine, btw, because creative people need to eat too so it's a good way to ensure people can live off writing, so I'm not criticizing copyright as a legal mechanism. However, there is no artistic value to it, just a legal/financial one, because art may as well be defined as playing around with elemental structures and rearranging them to create something 'new'. They might be base enough like the concept of 'serial killers' so as no one can possibly claim that they were the first to introduce the idea of a killer that has killed more than 3 people, or they might be something more elaborate like the basic character traits I've outlined in Hannibal Lector or even something as elaborate as using 95% of the world Tolkien made and using the remaining 5% to tell your own story, but they're all just blocks/structures to varying degrees of complexity, and all of them are completely open to being manipulated however any given person wants.
This is where you might say there is a fundamental difference between playing with small blocks like general concepts vs playing with fairly extensively established blocks. Again, kinda, sorta, but not really. This time, lets examine how fanfiction is made.
It can be done in several ways. Sometimes, it's a retelling of the general story with some alterations. Lets say, you're a fan of Naruto and you decide to give Sasuke a sister that survives along with him (Uh, Sasuke's entire family was killed by his brother, fyi), which means they still follow the general outline (Water Country arc, Chunin exam arc, Sasuke's defection), but things are done differently because of the presence of a new character. HP and the Methods of Rationality is also "What if everything in HP happened but had science applied to it". Lets call this reimagining. Then we have fanfics that continue beyond the point where the original story ended, continuing plot and character and setting development beyond what the show had. Lets call this continuation. Other stories go in a completely different direction, where they take pieces of the another work, such as the Lord of the Rings setting, but do it with their own original characters and maybe a setting that works differently. Alternate universe, I guess? KEep in mind that I am just mentioning a few to save time, but there are literally hundreds of types of fics.
And all these things are fundamentally different because they're working with such large blocks, right? No. Take for example GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire. He has admitted several times that he based this largely off the War of the Roses. Explain to me what is the fundamental difference between saying "Hey, lets take the Harry Potter setting and give it science!" vs "Hey lets take war of the roses and give it magic!" If fanfiction is in some way illegitimate for working with 'large blocks' then GRRM's entire Magnum Opus must be similarly illegitimate for having working with the same kinds of large chunks. Continuation fanfiction is just another word for "sequel" as far as I can see. Both original writers and fanfic writers take an established world and characters and plot and continue it. And the last, well...Here's something many people don't understand about writing: It's a constant process. When most writers say they revise, they don't mean they run it through spell check, changing only a line here and there. Atleast not usually. Revision can and often does literally mean that you rewrite whole storylines. Again, Tolkien himself did this, but I can speak from personal experience with myself where I wrote out a story, established a world, but then decided to write a completely different story revolving around different characters with a different plot with roughly the similar world, but not quite. That sounds like an alternate universe to what I originally wrote out to me. One may have been sent out to my class while the other remains unread by anyone but me, but it still exists. If someone stumbled upon it, it would just be an alternate version of what I ended up going with.
The overall point I'm making here is that there is no functional difference between 'original' and fanfiction. The only distinction is chronological. Where as JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter and considered it finished at some point and published that, a fan simply says "You know, this story could use more work" and continued the process of revision. As a result, maybe they added characters, rewrote universal rules, continued a plot beyond where it ended in a book, wrote from the perspective of a different character. This is all things the original writers may have done. And remember that 'canon' does not depend on the content creator but rather the
copyright holder. Hypothetically, the copyright holder may not even read Batman or watch Doctor Who, but it is them that 'owns' the content and can decide what the 'official' version of the story is, for any reason, so it doesn't even matter if it's the original writer who wrote it, as long as it's what is considered the official version by the 'owner'.
"But still!", I hear you think. "Still! There must be something more to being the first to arrange the pieces into large blocks in the first place, right?" Well, this is where I might concede that you have a limited point, but only very limited, because you only get to make those large blocks once, and the vast majority of writers don't stop there.
Make no mistake, actual 'ideas' are the easy part of writing. It's easy to have an idea, while cohesive implementation of those ideas are whats difficult, even when working with established fiction or 'large blocks'. In fact, sometimes it's harder to work with established material. Many authors have been quoted as saying how much more difficult second or third books were to write in relation to the first, partially for the outside factors like expectations and deadlines, but also because now that they have a set world, they have to be careful to not compromise what was established beforehand. Still, creating large narrative structure from small abstract pieces has it's own difficulties. However, this goes back to how writers revise.
I would like to say here that writers have very different ideas of what revision is and how it's done, but nearly everyone agrees on this: it must be done. The only time where small pieces are put together into large narratives is the first draft. Lets say you are a writer and have just finished the first draft of your story. Do you know what your going to do now? You are going to be working with an established universe, rewriting literally everything you see as you see fit. If you want to change the gender of a particular character, you can. If you want to write another storyline where a character goes to a place they passed in the first draft, you can do that too. If you want to rewrite the whole book with only base similarity to the original, that's what you do as well. For the record, you also do this on the second, third and fifth draft. In fact, you do this as many times as you see fit. But, again, notice the lack of functional distinction going on here. As of the first draft, you have stuff down now. It's no longer an unestablished blank sheet of paper. It's established. The universe, the characters, the plot, and the only thing for you to do is decide whether you want to change any of that. If you can point out to me what the functional difference between tweaking or overhauling an established universe as an original writer and tweaking and overhauling an established universe as a fanfic writer are, I'm all ears.
So is there any more authority that one person has over the other in terms of deciding what is canon? Not really. Only in the legal sense, as said before. Copyright is important as a monetary function, but it has nothing to do with legitimacy of the work itself. And the big reason of why that is is basically because all stories are are mental structures. I had expected to elaborate on the word before this, but that didn't end up working out and I'd have to go back and rewrite a good deal of this post which is long enough as it is. Bryan Fuller himself admitted in some interview on this page or the last that he doesn't consider any episode of Hannibal completed, just finished. He had a deadline, but he would have wanted more time to work on the finale we just saw, and many of the episodes beforehand. The significance of this is that the idea that Fuller had in his mind for the episode did not translate anywhere close to 100% onto the actual product we saw. It's just the best he could do under the circumstances. Which is fine, but then keep in mind that we miss a lot of what we saw because that's just how brains work. I remember sculibundo once came in and blanked out an entire portion of a whole episode. That's an extreme example, but we miss a great amount of detail when we read/watch something. It's why rewatching things can gain us new insight.
So when I say that stories are mental structures, it's because we really do have different visions of everything we see, even if we're looking at the same thing, Fuller especially who sees not just what is, but what could have been. Which fans see as well, fyi, but in a different way. One difference between creating and watching and imagining is that there is a certain familiarity with the work that comes by working with it. Fanfic writers generally won't get that with TV shows because they don't ahve to work with cameras or actors or the like. But rest assured, every episode of Hannibal that you see is not what Fuller sees, or what I see, or what anyone around you see. Hugh Darcy also sees things differently, as Fuller repeatedly mentioned that Hugh gave great insight into WIll's character that he completely missed, which he did his best to incorporate. But when we think of what we've seen, we are not thinking of the actual show, but our mental model of it, which is structured differently based on personal beliefs and biases, the amount of attention paid to the source material, how much memory has decayed from that moment, etc. By this time in 10 years, Fuller's mental model of what Hannibal is will be different as a result of time and seperatation. If he rewatches the show, he will see it in a different way, make different insights. His 'canon' will have changed. All of ours will have.
So, that's essentially my thesis on the subject. Any connection between creator and creation beyond the fact that one made the other is imagined. The creator has no rights to the creation, no special privileges, other than being able to say "I created this". They are what anyone is: people who rearrange ideas into a cohesive whole. Fuller concepts like love and murder and wendigoes, cannibalism and etiquette, and good taste and symbolism and blood and hundreds of other things, and they mix it into a particular structure to make Hannibal. Legally, it makes sense if someone were to make the same narrative arrangement that they would sue for plagerism, but understand that this is a financial self preservation measure, not a story preservation. Their arrangement would in all likelihood be worse, but it also could be better. That entirely depends on the skill of that particular creator. But it's impossible for it to actually hurt the story fuller made itself. Stories are immortal like that. They've always existed, it's just a matter of realizing that particular arrangement on paper. So it's nonsense to say that canon exists in some official capacity. The only canon I recognize is what I choose as the best version of any given general arrangement I see. Hannibal the TV show is the best arrangement of Hannibal the general idea that I've seen, so that's the canon to me, even if Harris would choose to disavow and claim only his books are the 'real' canon. He can have that as his own canon if he likes, but his canon wouldn't mean anything to me when I have my own.
Sorry for the long write up. As I said, I'm sure there will be replies to this, but I simply don't have the time to respond to what I'm sure will be very adequate replies, so I hope this covers everything.
