Changing Canon
In alternative universe stories, characters' known motivations may vary considerably from their decisions in the canonical universe. The author of an alternative universe story thus can use the same characters, but send them down different paths for a different plot.
On occasions, a fan fiction writer will create a character that is supposed to be there from the beginning and does not exist in the actual story that inspired it. Gertrude 'Danger' Granger in Anne Walsh's Harry Potter AU series, the "Dangerverse," is an example of this. It is also not uncommon for fan fiction to deliberately explore what could have happened in the original fictional universe had certain events played out differently. Changing canon can also mean taking a canon couple that was hinted at, but didn't actually happen, and expanding on it.
Read more about this topic: Alternative Universe (fan Fiction)
Famous quotes containing the words changing and/or canon:
“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on’t! O fie! ‘tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed;”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)