"In your story C is a bad guy, but he isn't."

"You paired D and E in your fic, but in fact they never met each other."

If you're a ficwriter or is in the habit of reading criticisms offered to other ficwriters in Mailing Lists or sites like Fanfiction.net, you probably found similar sentences before. Maybe you even wrote them to someone. Maybe you even heard them from me.

If you heard them from me, there are two possibilities:

1.) I'm beta-reading for you and you've specifically asked me to alert you whenever you inadvertently write something non-canon.
2.) It was a face-value comment; what you wrote is non-canon and for some reason I thought this was relevant enough to be mentioned -- it wasn't in any way meant as disapproval.

The word canon, according to the Oxford Dictionary: n 1 general rule, standard or principle by which sth is judged: This film offends against all the canons of good taste. 2 (a) list of sacred books accepted as genuine: the canon of Holy Scripture. (b) set of writings, etc accepted as genuinely by a particular author: the Shakespeare canon.
> canonical adj 1 according to canon law. 2 included in the canon(2a) 3 standard; accepted.

In our small universe of Fanfiction we use the terms canon and non-canon to state whether a fanfic is (intends to be) or isn't (doesn't bother to be) rigorously faithful to the story that inspired that fanfic. A synonym for canon is Original Flavor.

Let's leave aside, for the sake of argument, two obvious difficulties in determining how canonical a fanfic can be: one, that different people will see the same thing and offer different interpretations of it; two, that in Anime/Manga Fanfiction you often have two different sources of the same story, making possible for a fic to be canon regarding the manga and non-canon regarding the anime, or vice-versa. Let's pretend for a moment that it actually is possible to decree what is canon and what is not, under all circumstances, without starting a big fight and having lots of fans jumping down each other's throats (I wish...)

Some believe -- and preach -- that being canonical is the main challenge of a ficwriter; that a fic can only be good if it's canon; that a fic can only be called a fic if it's canon; that non-canon is the same as cheating; that non-canon is an insult to the author of the original story.

I don't believe any of that, and you won't find me preaching any of that. As far as I'm concerned, writing canon fics is an option. And as in all options, choose whatever feels good for you, and let everyone make their choices just as freely.

I'm not an English native speaker. However, I've seen all Yu Yu Hakusho and Card Captor Sakura episodes and movies, and I have the complete manga collections. It's only natural then that the ficwriters that invite me to be their beta-reader would be more interested in my knowledge of these fandoms that in my editing and linguistic skills. Hence most ficwriters I beta for have made the option of being canonical and ask me to pay attention to possible "non-canon slips".

What was my option? Do I write canon?

Not really. Like all ficwriters, I write about what I like. I tend to be canonical about original characters and story because currently I only write fanfics about two anime I fell utterly in love with. I don't write about a mushy, illiterate Hiei because that's not the Hiei I met and loved in the YYH anime. I don't write about an emotionless, devilish Yue because that wasn't the Yue that stole my heart in the third season of CCS.

But I have my bias. I hate the colors and layout of the Sakura Cards, so in my Clow no Tenshi series I kept them exactly as they were as Clow Cards, except for the sun/moon/star symbol in the back. This non-canon detail isn't due to ignorance of the real layout of the Cards in the anime, and I honestly don't think it would be the factor to define if I'm a good or a bad writer. And it's not meant as an insult to CLAMP. I don't argue that it kinda makes sense for the Sakura Book and Cards to be pink (although this argument makes me wonder if the Clow Book and Cards shouldn't be black then). If I think that the Sakura Cards are uglier than the Clow Cards, and if that particular shade of pink is awfully far from being my favorite color, that's simply a very subjective and idiosyncratic matter of taste.

No one has to agree with me. If you feel that changing the color of the Sakura Cards make my stories completely indigestible for you, okay, don't read them. Hopefully there will be readers who will frown a little, then shrug, dismiss it as a ridiculous quirk of mine, and go on reading. I never held any ambition of pleasing everyone anyway.

How do I fell about fics starring a mushy, illiterate Hiei or an emotionless, devilish Yue?

Well, first I must clarify that I was introduced to YYH and CCS under very different circumstances. With CCS, I'm the average fan. I wanna read fics about my favorite characters, relive the joyful experience of watching the anime for the first time and feeling all hanyaan. So if you hand me an emotionless Yue fic, or a cynical Tomoyo fic, or a mean-talking Kero-chan fic, or a mushy Sakura+Syaoran fic, I'll have to confess that's just not my cup of tea. There probably are some good stories around dealing with these topics (why not?); I'm just not interested in reading them.

Eriol+Tomoyo is a popular non-canon pairing in the CCS fandom. The reason I don't like this pairing isn't because it's non-canon, but because I can't for the life of me picture Eriol and Tomoyo in a relationship of any sort. On the other hand, I'm a big fan of Dr. Megalomania's fanfics -- most of them very non-canon, most of them even portraying Eriol and Tomoyo as a potential couple, but most of them showing the four Guardians in fantastic and deliciously narrated situations. With CCS, I'm simply a greedy, spoiled reader wanting to savor her favorite dishes: Yue, angst, Shounen Ai , clever dialogues, deep feelings. Hopefully with ice cream on top.

With YYH, I'm a researcher. Watching and analyzing YYH anime episodes and the way children assimilated them was once my Real Life job, and I catch myself still doing the same studies as I read YYH Fanfiction. I find interesting and intriguing how the same characters are described so differently by different people. I'm fascinated by Alternate Universe fics, by unusual pairings, by how much was added to the original story by the fans' creative work. I spend hours and days wondering about the curious consensus about Hiei's black teargems or the definition of Youko as member of a promiscuous race of fox-demons, while none of this was ever established by the YYH manga or anime. Sometimes even a poorly written fic, full of typos, grammatical errors and narrative incoherence will attract my attention, if it shows me a side of YYH that I had never glimpsed before. With YYH, all kinds of fics are welcome around me. Yes, even the mushy, illiterate Hiei fics -- just don't ask me to write them.

Every now and then I'll stumble on someone who posted a "guide for good fanfiction" somewhere, stating rules that all ficwriters should follow if they take Fanfiction seriously and wish to perfect their skills. My humble two cents on that: no one has that kind of authority to go and dictate how any kind of art should be done. Even if there were some international ficwriters association to establish models and regulations about Fanfiction, I'd like to point out that too many of the artists we now call geniuses were actually going against the models and regulations considered consensual guidelines at their time. Art and culture are too fluid to accept the cage of prefixed rules and standardizing for too long.

It's rare for me to appreciate a fic based on the US dub of CCS, because those will mostly show whatever was left of CCS's charming characters after Nelvana was done butchering the episodes. I confess that when I see a fic summary mentioning the names Eli, Julian, Tori and Madison, I just don't read it. Just as I don't read videofics and MSTs, not even about YYH. But that's me and my bias, and I don't have the right to tell what other people's bias should be, do I? I can create guidelines about the kind of fics I accept in the archives in my site, since it's my choice, as the site's owner, to post this instead of that, or that instead of this. I can even create guidelines about the kind of fics I'd like to read (although I had no idea why anyone would be interested in that). But I can't tell people how to do their job, how to have their fun, or how to live their lives. And my ears are permanently deaf to anyone trying to dictate me such guidelines.

And here I get to one of the most annoying nightmares of my Virtual Life: the canon-maniacs. Those that just can't live without sending flame mails to non-canon authors.

I've been relatively lucky so far. I don't get many flames, although I do get LOTS of mails that kindly (or sometimes with a gotcha!-smirk) point out that I've made a mistake somewhere, and that I should pay more attention to anime and/or manga and correct my mistake. I do get that kind of message even when I leave a dozen "author's notes" explaining my non-canon options. But it's okay, I'm not a little girl, my skin is thicker than it seems, and no canon-maniac ever got more from me than an annoyed groan.

So why am I rambling about this?

Because far too often I've seen young ficwriters courageously posting their first fic attempts and being scared away by the poisonous fangs of a canon-maniac. Because I've seen a ficwriter not getting a single decent review for his very interesting fic in a Mailing List, since all the members were busy discussing if the eyes of the main character should be described as blue or purple. Because I've seen many web-friendships destroyed at the revelation of a disagreement regarding the sexual orientation of a two-dimensional celluloid drawing.

And that is precisely the kind of thing that makes me mad enough to start rambling.

The world is pretty big and crowded. We'll always find someone to agree with us about each subject. So why would we need everyone to agree with us about everything? Are the things we hold dear less valuable just because others won't value them just as much? Do we really have to freak out and behave like jerks when someone reveals to have made options that are different from ours? Is comics and cartoons good enough reason to break friendships and start little petty wars?

"Narciso acha feio o que não é espelho." ("Narcissus calls everything ugly but the mirror.")
-- Caetano Veloso, in Sampa.