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edenfallingIt interests me that while I am very sensitive to Christianity when writing Narnia fanfiction -- I try to respect the source text and not be deliberately offensive, while still being true to my own religious views -- I have no similar compunctions when writing Angel Sanctuary fanfic, though that series is even more explicitly grounded in Christian theology and spiritual cosmology.
This is, almost certainly, because Angel Sanctuary itself tramples all over orthodox Christianity (it is, depending on your viewpoint, a sneaky illustration of Gnosticism, flat-out blasphemy, or just Kaori Yuki messing around with the trappings of Christianity because she finds them interesting and pretty), whereas Narnia plays Christianity relatively straight (despite the canonical validation of polytheism in various forms -- e.g. Bacchus, Silenus, and the river god in Prince Caspian, or Tash in The Last Battle... though I grant you, Tash may have been meant more as an analogue of Satan than a more neutral pagan god).
Um. Where was I? Right, so the difference in my attitude toward religion in those two series is based on the way religion is treated in their respective canons. This is because I think that fanfiction ought to, generally speaking, respect the guidelines laid out by canon, whether explicit (names and dates, rules of magic, the events chronicled on the page) or implicit (things like, oh... Uzumaki Naruto is a catalyst who makes people want to be better than they are; or Harry Potter is not going to learn martial arts and go assassinate Voldemort with a machine gun; or a post-manga story in which Setsuna and Sara are separated and punished because of the incestuous nature of their relationship is counter to the intent of Angel Sanctuary, which is to give them a happy ending).
All AU fanfiction (...actually, in some senses, any fanfiction) denies one or more aspects of canon. I find that I can deal much more easily with stories that deny or change explicit canon while keeping most implicit canon the same -- say, a story in which Cedric didn't die at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, or a story in which Naruto succeeded in bringing Sasuke back from the Valley of the End -- than with stories that deny or change implicit canon while keeping most explicit canon the same -- say, a story in which Naruto condemns and gives up on Sasuke instead of trying to redeem him, or a story about how Setsuna ought to give Sara up and love Kurai or Kira instead because incest is an unforgivable sin. I think this is because I view explicit canon as a product of implicit canon: character traits and the moral underpinnings of the world drive the plot, not vice versa. So for me, beyond certain basics like character names, I find implicit canon more important than explicit canon, and I try my best to be faithful to a series's implicit rules even if (or maybe especially if) I throw aside some of the explicit canon.
But. What happens if you find certain elements of implicit canon morally awkward or even reprehensible? Say, for example, that I find the marginalization and demonization of Slytherin extremely awkward when set against J. K. Rowling's general theme that prejudice is wrong? It's clearly the implicit intent (conscious or not) of canon to say that Slytherins are cowardly, unpleasant, and almost without exception irredeemable. Also, the wizarding world has a broken justice system, where guilt and innocence are determined by popularity and influence rather than the rule of law. And the narrative valorizes or denounces behavior based not on its objective impact and moral value, but on which 'side' the character belongs to. For example, Ginny can get away with hexing people at Quidditch matches; Draco could not. Harry can get away with using the Cruciatus curse over a petty insult to Professor McGonagall; if a Slytherin did something similar, I bet you anything he or she would end up in Azkaban.
Or say that I think Masashi Kishimoto is finking out of showing the full implications of the ninja society he's created in Naruto -- he has children who start learning to kill at age six or seven, and who become active ninjas at age twelve. They are hired to guard people, or assassinate people, or retrieve objects, without much regard for the morality of their actions, so long as their employers' money is good. Kishimoto has avoided dealing with the ethical implications by having his 'good' ninjas spend most of their time fighting various groups of 'evil' ninjas whose goals are unquestionably evil... but I think this is cheating.
Or, to come back to my starting point, say that I find Aslan's actions in The Last Battle absolutely reprehensible and unjustifiable under any terms. In all the previous books, when calamity has come to Narnia, he has stepped in as a literal deus ex machina to help the protagonists save the day. Now he refuses to step in at all -- compare his near total absence from Tirian's struggle to his ubiquity in, say The Horse and His Boy or The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where he appeared to help the protagonists through even minor troubles they could have solved on their own. And when he finally does deign to appear, he says, in effect, "Game over; I'm tired of Narnia, so I'm taking my favorite pets and going home. Sucks to be you!"
The Last Battle is not a novel. It is a treatise on the powerlessness of humanity before God, and an attempt to portray a glimpse of a physical, Christian heaven. It works very well on those two levels. But it feels like a betrayal of the beautiful, living world C. S. Lewis created in his six previous books, and its theology is utterly alien to my understanding of the universe.
(If you are wondering, I do not believe in any spiritual realm or spiritual beings. I do not believe in souls in the technical sense, though I use the word metaphorically to mean a person's best or essential self. I believe that we are all in this world together and this life is the only life we get, so we had damn well better love each other and respect each other and take care of this world and treat the universe with reverence because it's awesome, in both the old and new senses of the word. I believe that our bodies return to the world from which they were created, just as our world will one day return to dust and ashes, and maybe, billions of years from now, become part of a new star. I believe that good is anything that helps another person and evil is anything that harms another person, and that we ought to ask people whether they feel hurt instead of deciding for them. And I believe that if you take responsibility for something, you can't just decide, unilaterally, to quit without at least listening to everyone your decision will affect.)
I love Narnia. It taught me about honor and trust, humility and responsibility, love and longing. It taught me that one can attempt to live up to a shining ideal -- such as, say, liberty and justice for all -- even if that ideal may not be true in practice and may be impossible to make true in practice.
But I cannot make the Narnia I love square with The Last Battle, in which Aslan turns his back on his responsibility to the land he created, in which he condemns so many to eternal death or torment (the ones who swerved aside into his shadow rather than come in through the stable door), in which dying young is somehow considered a better fate than living and loving and doing good in this world, which is the only world we know for certain that we will get.
In The Horse and His Boy, Aravis paraphrases Hwin to this effect: "If you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike." I would like to add that while you live, you always have the chance to do good, but once you're dead, you're useless.
...
So if you want to write fanfiction for a series, but you cannot accept its implicit rules, what do you do? When are you allowed to turn and, in effect, say to the author whose work you are using, "I'm sorry, but you did this wrong. This is how it should be"? That feels, to me, extremely arrogant -- it's one thing to criticise a work of art, but another entirely to take it and create something that relies utterly on that first work for its existence and context, yet which denies the basic premise of that first work. It's one thing to read a book that flubs its treatment of prejudice and justice and decide to write a book that doesn't flub them; it's a different thing to essentially rewrite the first book with different themes.
And yet, I am writing Harry Potter fanfiction that creates Slytherin characters whom I hope are understandable and sometimes even sympathetic, and who, if they lived to the climax of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would not have stood by and done nothing. I am writing Naruto fanfiction that attempts to unpick and criticize the ethics of the shinobi system.
I have a terrible feeling I am going to end up writing Narnia fanfiction that attempts to redo The Last Battle with a theology of life instead of a theology of death.
...
*headdesk*
This is, almost certainly, because Angel Sanctuary itself tramples all over orthodox Christianity (it is, depending on your viewpoint, a sneaky illustration of Gnosticism, flat-out blasphemy, or just Kaori Yuki messing around with the trappings of Christianity because she finds them interesting and pretty), whereas Narnia plays Christianity relatively straight (despite the canonical validation of polytheism in various forms -- e.g. Bacchus, Silenus, and the river god in Prince Caspian, or Tash in The Last Battle... though I grant you, Tash may have been meant more as an analogue of Satan than a more neutral pagan god).
Um. Where was I? Right, so the difference in my attitude toward religion in those two series is based on the way religion is treated in their respective canons. This is because I think that fanfiction ought to, generally speaking, respect the guidelines laid out by canon, whether explicit (names and dates, rules of magic, the events chronicled on the page) or implicit (things like, oh... Uzumaki Naruto is a catalyst who makes people want to be better than they are; or Harry Potter is not going to learn martial arts and go assassinate Voldemort with a machine gun; or a post-manga story in which Setsuna and Sara are separated and punished because of the incestuous nature of their relationship is counter to the intent of Angel Sanctuary, which is to give them a happy ending).
All AU fanfiction (...actually, in some senses, any fanfiction) denies one or more aspects of canon. I find that I can deal much more easily with stories that deny or change explicit canon while keeping most implicit canon the same -- say, a story in which Cedric didn't die at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, or a story in which Naruto succeeded in bringing Sasuke back from the Valley of the End -- than with stories that deny or change implicit canon while keeping most explicit canon the same -- say, a story in which Naruto condemns and gives up on Sasuke instead of trying to redeem him, or a story about how Setsuna ought to give Sara up and love Kurai or Kira instead because incest is an unforgivable sin. I think this is because I view explicit canon as a product of implicit canon: character traits and the moral underpinnings of the world drive the plot, not vice versa. So for me, beyond certain basics like character names, I find implicit canon more important than explicit canon, and I try my best to be faithful to a series's implicit rules even if (or maybe especially if) I throw aside some of the explicit canon.
But. What happens if you find certain elements of implicit canon morally awkward or even reprehensible? Say, for example, that I find the marginalization and demonization of Slytherin extremely awkward when set against J. K. Rowling's general theme that prejudice is wrong? It's clearly the implicit intent (conscious or not) of canon to say that Slytherins are cowardly, unpleasant, and almost without exception irredeemable. Also, the wizarding world has a broken justice system, where guilt and innocence are determined by popularity and influence rather than the rule of law. And the narrative valorizes or denounces behavior based not on its objective impact and moral value, but on which 'side' the character belongs to. For example, Ginny can get away with hexing people at Quidditch matches; Draco could not. Harry can get away with using the Cruciatus curse over a petty insult to Professor McGonagall; if a Slytherin did something similar, I bet you anything he or she would end up in Azkaban.
Or say that I think Masashi Kishimoto is finking out of showing the full implications of the ninja society he's created in Naruto -- he has children who start learning to kill at age six or seven, and who become active ninjas at age twelve. They are hired to guard people, or assassinate people, or retrieve objects, without much regard for the morality of their actions, so long as their employers' money is good. Kishimoto has avoided dealing with the ethical implications by having his 'good' ninjas spend most of their time fighting various groups of 'evil' ninjas whose goals are unquestionably evil... but I think this is cheating.
Or, to come back to my starting point, say that I find Aslan's actions in The Last Battle absolutely reprehensible and unjustifiable under any terms. In all the previous books, when calamity has come to Narnia, he has stepped in as a literal deus ex machina to help the protagonists save the day. Now he refuses to step in at all -- compare his near total absence from Tirian's struggle to his ubiquity in, say The Horse and His Boy or The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where he appeared to help the protagonists through even minor troubles they could have solved on their own. And when he finally does deign to appear, he says, in effect, "Game over; I'm tired of Narnia, so I'm taking my favorite pets and going home. Sucks to be you!"
The Last Battle is not a novel. It is a treatise on the powerlessness of humanity before God, and an attempt to portray a glimpse of a physical, Christian heaven. It works very well on those two levels. But it feels like a betrayal of the beautiful, living world C. S. Lewis created in his six previous books, and its theology is utterly alien to my understanding of the universe.
(If you are wondering, I do not believe in any spiritual realm or spiritual beings. I do not believe in souls in the technical sense, though I use the word metaphorically to mean a person's best or essential self. I believe that we are all in this world together and this life is the only life we get, so we had damn well better love each other and respect each other and take care of this world and treat the universe with reverence because it's awesome, in both the old and new senses of the word. I believe that our bodies return to the world from which they were created, just as our world will one day return to dust and ashes, and maybe, billions of years from now, become part of a new star. I believe that good is anything that helps another person and evil is anything that harms another person, and that we ought to ask people whether they feel hurt instead of deciding for them. And I believe that if you take responsibility for something, you can't just decide, unilaterally, to quit without at least listening to everyone your decision will affect.)
I love Narnia. It taught me about honor and trust, humility and responsibility, love and longing. It taught me that one can attempt to live up to a shining ideal -- such as, say, liberty and justice for all -- even if that ideal may not be true in practice and may be impossible to make true in practice.
But I cannot make the Narnia I love square with The Last Battle, in which Aslan turns his back on his responsibility to the land he created, in which he condemns so many to eternal death or torment (the ones who swerved aside into his shadow rather than come in through the stable door), in which dying young is somehow considered a better fate than living and loving and doing good in this world, which is the only world we know for certain that we will get.
In The Horse and His Boy, Aravis paraphrases Hwin to this effect: "If you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike." I would like to add that while you live, you always have the chance to do good, but once you're dead, you're useless.
...
So if you want to write fanfiction for a series, but you cannot accept its implicit rules, what do you do? When are you allowed to turn and, in effect, say to the author whose work you are using, "I'm sorry, but you did this wrong. This is how it should be"? That feels, to me, extremely arrogant -- it's one thing to criticise a work of art, but another entirely to take it and create something that relies utterly on that first work for its existence and context, yet which denies the basic premise of that first work. It's one thing to read a book that flubs its treatment of prejudice and justice and decide to write a book that doesn't flub them; it's a different thing to essentially rewrite the first book with different themes.
And yet, I am writing Harry Potter fanfiction that creates Slytherin characters whom I hope are understandable and sometimes even sympathetic, and who, if they lived to the climax of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would not have stood by and done nothing. I am writing Naruto fanfiction that attempts to unpick and criticize the ethics of the shinobi system.
I have a terrible feeling I am going to end up writing Narnia fanfiction that attempts to redo The Last Battle with a theology of life instead of a theology of death.
...
*headdesk*
