popular fanon as desire path: crowley's feet at the beach

[cimorene]

CROWLEY: Sorry. Consecrated ground. It's like being at the beach in bare feet.
FANON FROM PEOPLE WHO HAVE EVIDENTLY NEVER BEEN TO THE BEACH: Crowley nearly died... Crowley's feet were burned to blisters for weeks... Crowley still has white scars all over his soles eighty years later.

I've read a direct treatment of this scene and concept that was clever and which I quite liked just now - this one:

Burnt (10069 words) by flamethrower
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley, Cassiel, God, OFC, OMC
Additional Tags: GFY, the London Blitz, 1941, Dumpster Fire of Angst, with a happy ending, Non graphic mentions of burn wounds, Crowley is still seriously bitter about the Crucifixion, the Church scene except sideways, Nazis die and all is well, Ineffable Idiots, ineffable husbands, meant to become canon compliant, mostly - Freeform, Shh, Panic, PTSD, the old hurt/comfort tag makes an appearance
Summary:

Crowley has time to prepare for the fact that he's going to have to enter a bloody sanctified church to save an idiot during the Blitz in 1941. It's too bad there isn't really enough prep time in the world to cope with this consecrated ground shit if you're a demon.

- which definitively, knowingly, and explicitly departs from canon in this point, as indicated by the tags.

But the greater portion of the above fanon trope that I've seen are simply sprinkled around in the background of other stories, many of them good, but with no indication that it is a departure from canon (or to put it another way, a very slight AU on this one point only, along the lines of 'Everything the Same Except They Kissed Once' or 'Everything the Same Except He Spells His Name Differently', or to borrow from another fandom, 'Everything the Same Except He Wears Glasses and Has Long Hair in a Ponytail').

Of course, you can wriggle around the canon by assuming that Crowley was lying when he said that, much like any spackle. And an awful lot of people choose to do that, possibly because the angstier and more melodramatic alternative is like catnip.

... But maybe also a little bit because following fanon can be a lot like following a desire path through a field: it's faster and feels comfortable and peer-endorsed and you might not even consciously notice that you've done it; although I think usually these runaway popular bits of fanon are ones that don't come so close to contradicting canon.

So my conclusion is that fanon has carved out a well-worn interpretation of least resistance and that people for the most part aren't noticing any conflict between it and canon.

This conclusion, however, I feel relies on a large portion of the fanon's adherents not having much experience of the beach in bare feet, at least not enough for the memory to leap up in their minds and say "That's not AT ALL what the beach in bare feet is like" every time they read it (not all of them, obviously, and not in the cases like the above rec; more the ones where it slides by unquestioned in the background as a throwaway).

Perhaps they've been on asphalt in bare feet and are (incorrectly) extrapolating.

Comments

[yvannairie]

"following fanon can be a lot like following a desire path through a field: it's faster and feels comfortable and peer-endorsed and you might not even consciously notice that you've done it" is kind of the bane of my existence sometimes b/c it hits less well-established characters much harder than it does the characters who the audience has a lot of time to get to know to and become familiar with their various modes and languages, and then they carry that "we don't know much about this character's internal life" energy into the fandom where it becomes "so they don't have one, lol", leaving me screaming into a pillow on a far couch.

Which sounds like I have a problem with the user experience of fandom not being exactly as the text stands, I guess? But that's not where I'm at, it's more that at some point a certain subset of fandom puts railings around the path and at that point I start feeling like I'm doing something wrong by really enjoying dipping into the weeds of it and popping my head back up after crawling with my face to the dirt for five meters into an arbitrary direction. Fanon is kind of a blessing and a curse because on the one hand there's my experience, but on the other there's all the poor saps who get tripped into the sandbox and get hit with overwhelming analysis paralysis.

[cimorene]

"we don't know much about this character's internal life" energy into the fandom where it becomes "so they don't have one, lol"

Interesting, because a lot of the time I end up thinking about the secondary and background characters' fanon a bit differently - namely, a popular interpretation of a character with less canon presence is copied and pasted so widely that it goes beyond a mere fanon meme and starts to annoy me because it precludes anybody thinking for themselves about the character or exploring any other interpretations of them, and instead you're essentially just seeing a lot of fanfic of the popular fanwork about them instead of anything canon-based (even when for the story or premise in question another take would have been more interesting).

[yvannairie]

Yeah, that's another way it can go, and it's no less annoying b/c at least if you're working with an entirely blank slate wholly ignored character you get to call all the shots, but if fandom is set in its ways already you're obligated to tread on some toes.

(My friend has been dealing with this, lately -- they lean into the manipulative, controlling aspects of a character's personality and there's at least one person who keeps taking issue with that character not being portrayed as a smol uwu bean who never means any harm)

[niqaeli]

I mean, beach in bare feet on hot enough sand will fuck the soles of your feet the fuck up as bad as laying prone in the sun too long and burning them will, but then again most people have the sense to stop being in bare feet post-haste if the sand's that hot (I mean, honestly, most people have more sense than to be barefoot on it in the first place, if it's that hot). Given the way he's mince-stepping in that scene, you have to figure what he meant to be comparing it to is the slightly too-hot sand where you just have to Keep Moving and you're okay, but if you stop for too long it stings like a mofo.

I like the comparison of fanon to desire paths a lot. It feels like it's a really good/useful way of explaining the things that tend to happen in fanon that are directly contradictory of canon but NOT in a way that feels considered and deliberate. People are taking the quickest route, not necessarily the best supported one.

[cimorene]

OK, that's true. I was probably just basing it on his performance too. And I mean, I don't think I've ever stood on sand that was THAT hot. There's been sand where I immediately went and got some shoes, so I never found out if it was going to leave blisters, lol.

But back to desire paths, yes, I think something has niggled at me about a lot of fanon over the years and this is kind of it, the bits that are non-canon but really seem to be that way by accident. If you analyze canon and the fanwork as the only variables, as if they exist in complete isolation, then every instance of people not seeming to notice that they contradicted it requires explanation and they're all rather surprising - which they would be in isolation. But when you look at them in the context of the fandom, the social explanation fills in the blanks. It's probably quite easy for fanon that you're accustomed to reading to replace a piece of canon that it contradicted in your memory without you noticing, particularly since there are so many more individual texts in fanon than there are in canon.

[phosfate]

The only UK beach I've been to was around 50F in August (plus high winds) and made of ankle-twisting rocks.

[cimorene]

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that's not where Crowley was talking about. His UK readers will need to rely on holidays in France or Spain, perhaps...