Xenahel

I was originally going to write this in response to a specific fandom discussion, but then the same issue came up in more than one conversation in more than one fandom, so I’m making a more general post (though my specific canon examples here will be drawn from TVD, since I already elaborated on Reign in this post.) The issue I want to talk about is when a character on a TV show misrepresents prior canon in their dialogue, and fandom responds with, “The show wants us to forget what happened.” “The show’s rewriting/erasing history.” “The show’s forgotten its own canon.” And concludes that some part of canon now “counts” less than it did before–either the prior events that were described inaccurately, or current events/dialogue, or something else related to the two. This approach towards TV narratives is so ubiquitous and unquestioned that I used to unthinkingly accept and adopt it as my own response to stories, too. But then, somewhere along the way, I started to question it and I realized just how much of an assumption it is, based on input we bring to the table and choices we make as viewers. So I want to explain my POV on the whole issue.

Because the way I see it, if something happened in canon, then it happened and there’s literally no way to erase that. No character’s words or actions have the power to erase something that already happened onscreen. In general, I see fandom saying that a show is trying to “rewrite history” if subsequent events or dialogue don’t validate prior canon in a very specific way, if fandom feels that there’s some kind of conflict between current and prior canon. But I literally cannot think of a single example, on any show I watch, where the ostensible conflict is genuinely irreconcilable; where a character misrepresented prior canon in a way that couldn’t be easily accommodated by the story without throwing away or discounting ANY part of it. Usually there’s a very natural and human reaction for the apparent “conflict,” and it tells you something about the characters as people, and their relationships with each other.

If a particular viewer takes a piece of dialogue spoken by a character that contradicts the factual events of prior canon, and declares that this contradiction somehow rewrites the show’s history or makes some part of canon “count less,” then they are CHOOSING to hand that power to that character, CHOOSING to allow that character’s words to reshape the actual events of the narrative. It’s a CHOICE–probably an unthinking and automatic choice, but a choice nevertheless, because there is nothing in the text itself that dictates that this must be so; that dictates that we cannot simply interpret the story in and of itself, taking into account the characters’s biases, personalities, histories, and the evolution of their perceptions over time (always keeping in mind that putting characters in new situations and seeing them react to those situations can give us more information about them than we had before, so that we might have to change our minds about our earlier assessment of them as people.)

Generalizations suck, we know this, but I think we as Sterek fans need to take a breath. And then a few more.

REKIA BOND DESERVED NONE OF THIS!

and i keep coming back to the fact that this da is a non-black poc. the idea that poc that are in positions of power in the political system will work on behalf of other poc is and has always been bullshit. this latina took a dive on a case where a cop shot and killed a black woman but went for blood when she had a chance to put a minority in jail. keep that in mind.