Narrow and Wide Canons and the Fannish Experience

Written for month_of_meta!

We live in a time where it seems that more and more, "canon" creative works have a lot of the same derivative/transformative roots that "fannish" works do. Whether it's Elizabeth Bennett fighting the undead in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a modern gender-bent take on Holmes and Watson in Elementary, or a riff on fairy tales in countless sources like Once Upon a Time, it seems like there are more texts than ever that have multiple "takes" on the source material. What are the strengths of "wider" texts with multiple canon takes, and what are the benefits to more "narrow" texts with a more focused, clear voice? This essay is a (tentative) exploration of the differences.

A few clarifications at the beginning: I use for examples various fandoms I only know second-hand. Fandoms I don't know well I've put in bold, just so it's extra-clear I'm not speaking with any authority there. If I'm wrong about those (or any other) please kindly point it out to me! Also, I have a nice neat 10-point spectrum below, but in reality the categories are messy and there's a lot of wiggle room for what goes where. Feel free to make a case for changing categories, or for whole categories I've left out!

( Narrow and Wide Canons: A Spectrum )