I agree that implicit or thematic canon is in some ways more important than explicit canon -- in other words, there's a difference between a story that portrays Aslan as manipulative and evil and a story that asks what might have happened if Edmund, not Lucy, had entered Narnia first and met Mr. Tumnus. The first would bother me a lot, though I could probably tamp down my discomfort while reading if it were well enough written otherwise. The second could be either fascinating or awful, depending on how it was written, but it wouldn't induce an automatic 'but that's wrong!' reaction the way the first story would.
Agreed, thematic canon is more important than explicit. All fanfiction messes with explicit canon by its very nature. I'll even allow for dark canon, where a character is inverted in order to explore responses (I wrote a fic once where Peter hates Edmund, based off of his rather stiff and flat character in the LWW book. I was playing with the inversion of a character, but stated it upfront and that I didn't agree with the characterization at all. It was still one of my least liked fics.). I would have a harder time with an inversion of Aslan's character, because I don't see room for an inversion. The flatness of Peter's character allowed me to speculate, but Aslan was more fleshed out and very much shown as a loving, good character.
So I choose to think of Aslan as a deity of love and justice who is completely independent of Jesus and the Trinity... and to either ignore or very heavily handwave most of TLB...I think I can, actually, manage to make most of the events of TLB palatable enough for me to swallow, but I'd have to do a lot of delicate tap-dancing over Lewis's phrasing of certain sentences and mentally embroider the edges of the story with various justifications Lewis does not bother to provide.
I think that's perfectly valid. Though I would be hesitant about something that ignored TLB if it took place during or after. Tweaking it a bit, like you suggest, would be fine, but ignoring it would be unwise, I think, as long as it fits in with the other six books.
it's often easier for me to think in stories than in essays. Agreed a thousand times! I can't tell you the number of fics I've written either to explain a thought I had, or that ended up unconsciously explaining something that I hadn't thought about before writing it! And I think writing fanfiction helps us understand and think about the source material more than just writing an essay about it, because you have to think closely about the characters, in particular.
Re: on theology, ethics, and authorial intent, part 4
Agreed, thematic canon is more important than explicit. All fanfiction messes with explicit canon by its very nature. I'll even allow for dark canon, where a character is inverted in order to explore responses (I wrote a fic once where Peter hates Edmund, based off of his rather stiff and flat character in the LWW book. I was playing with the inversion of a character, but stated it upfront and that I didn't agree with the characterization at all. It was still one of my least liked fics.). I would have a harder time with an inversion of Aslan's character, because I don't see room for an inversion. The flatness of Peter's character allowed me to speculate, but Aslan was more fleshed out and very much shown as a loving, good character.
So I choose to think of Aslan as a deity of love and justice who is completely independent of Jesus and the Trinity... and to either ignore or very heavily handwave most of TLB...I think I can, actually, manage to make most of the events of TLB palatable enough for me to swallow, but I'd have to do a lot of delicate tap-dancing over Lewis's phrasing of certain sentences and mentally embroider the edges of the story with various justifications Lewis does not bother to provide.
I think that's perfectly valid. Though I would be hesitant about something that ignored TLB if it took place during or after. Tweaking it a bit, like you suggest, would be fine, but ignoring it would be unwise, I think, as long as it fits in with the other six books.
it's often easier for me to think in stories than in essays.
Agreed a thousand times! I can't tell you the number of fics I've written either to explain a thought I had, or that ended up unconsciously explaining something that I hadn't thought about before writing it! And I think writing fanfiction helps us understand and think about the source material more than just writing an essay about it, because you have to think closely about the characters, in particular.