I think that using the term "old canon" is very interesting: after all, it's not like OotP or HBP negated previous books, did they? PS-GoF are still canon; they haven't changed. I wouldn't necessarily call HP canon after these books "new," but "enlarged."
So if someone decides to use a point in an earlier book as the jumping-off point of a fic, well, that's AU. Just like writing a fic where Peter didn't escape, or Harry's name didn't come out of the Goblet, or Quirrell was not evil and actually stayed on to teach DADA forever, is an AU. And therefore, I hold the fic to the same standards an AU: that it's still recognizably the Potter universe and Potter characters, and the divergence serves some purpose in the story.
I think it can be very, very dangerous to worry about authorial intent, unless there is a big glaring A/N that says "I HATE YOU JKR AND WISH YOU WOULD CHOKE ON YOUR OWN SPIT!!!!" When the situation is represented as "ignoring new canon," of course, that implies the author finds the new canon objectionable in some way, compared to when the story is simply presented as "AU." It's a loaded phrase.
That said...I think that, if you were to write today and AU/ignoring canon fic, you would have to mark it as such somehow, whereas older fic can simply be marked "pre-[Book]". Why? Because you're writing from a different canon, even if you're, um, not. Let me see if I can explain this properly. When I was in the middle of writing one of my long fics, OotP came out. When I had started it, it was canon-compliant as far as I could make it. After the new novel, my entire plot, characterization and scenario was borked, with the story only 2/3 done. I carried on writing as if the new book had never happened, because retcon was simply not possible...but my story changed. I incorperated elements of OotP canon without even realizing I'd done it until after the new chapters were posted. It wasn't that I was writing the story in ignorance of what would come in book 5 anymore, I was consciously contravening that canon, and I think it's visible in the end result. If I'd been writing the whole story after reading OotP and simply using GoF as my jumping-off point*, then it would've been a very different story from the start.
(*Okay, that technically would work since it was set in sixth year, but this is all hypothetical anyway.)
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that, in my mind, anything that deliberately contravenes the novels published by JKR is an AU and should be held to the standards of such. I've read some really kickass ones, in particular mad_martha's, so my standards are kinda high. Stories written before the release of a novel are a different beast, because they're not deliberately contravening known canon--they're speculation into what used to be the shapeless void.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 12:54 am (UTC)So if someone decides to use a point in an earlier book as the jumping-off point of a fic, well, that's AU. Just like writing a fic where Peter didn't escape, or Harry's name didn't come out of the Goblet, or Quirrell was not evil and actually stayed on to teach DADA forever, is an AU. And therefore, I hold the fic to the same standards an AU: that it's still recognizably the Potter universe and Potter characters, and the divergence serves some purpose in the story.
I think it can be very, very dangerous to worry about authorial intent, unless there is a big glaring A/N that says "I HATE YOU JKR AND WISH YOU WOULD CHOKE ON YOUR OWN SPIT!!!!" When the situation is represented as "ignoring new canon," of course, that implies the author finds the new canon objectionable in some way, compared to when the story is simply presented as "AU." It's a loaded phrase.
That said...I think that, if you were to write today and AU/ignoring canon fic, you would have to mark it as such somehow, whereas older fic can simply be marked "pre-[Book]". Why? Because you're writing from a different canon, even if you're, um, not. Let me see if I can explain this properly. When I was in the middle of writing one of my long fics, OotP came out. When I had started it, it was canon-compliant as far as I could make it. After the new novel, my entire plot, characterization and scenario was borked, with the story only 2/3 done. I carried on writing as if the new book had never happened, because retcon was simply not possible...but my story changed. I incorperated elements of OotP canon without even realizing I'd done it until after the new chapters were posted. It wasn't that I was writing the story in ignorance of what would come in book 5 anymore, I was consciously contravening that canon, and I think it's visible in the end result. If I'd been writing the whole story after reading OotP and simply using GoF as my jumping-off point*, then it would've been a very different story from the start.
(*Okay, that technically would work since it was set in sixth year, but this is all hypothetical anyway.)
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that, in my mind, anything that deliberately contravenes the novels published by JKR is an AU and should be held to the standards of such. I've read some really kickass ones, in particular