When canon kills fanon · 6:10pm Dec 7th, 2012
With season three in full swing, we have the familiar sight of fanfic writers all over staring at the television listings half in anticipation, half in dread, worried that their favourite show will contradict their own pet theories. Will Scootaloo learn to fly? Are Applejack’s parents dead? Is Rainbow Dash destined to never join the Wonderbolts?
There are a million stories all about these questions. The show sets up a myriad of ideas and holes, and the fandom rushes in to fill them. Then, once these questions are ‘officially’ answers, the stories suddenly dry up as the infinite possible answers collapse into one single definite one.
Some absolutely hilarious season three rumours are currently floating about the net which would torpedo one of my own stories, for instance (actually it probably wouldn’t, but that’s for me to know and you to find out). Could these rumours be true or not? Who knows, it’s impossible to tell. Part of me thinks there’s just too many fan in-jokes and references in the ‘revealed’ dialogue to be real, given that the show doesn’t do that really, and the other part of me thinks it feels right, and well, if you’re going to make something up, you’re not going to make that up, are you!?
I say bring it on. It’s odd; I’ve never really been in the situation before where I’ve felt so attached to various head-canons (Scootaloo should never fly! Dash should never join the Wonderbolts because that’s not how life works! Twilight should marry Trixie!). When the show started, I remember someone mentioning to me half as a joke that due to all the repeated characters in the background and really odd, random facts thrown at us, that the show was unwikiable. I liked that idea. I like the idea of a massive, sprawling world which is impossible to fully understand. Questions are far more interesting than answers. There’s a million interesting solutions to various questions and throwaway lines, but once an ‘official’ answer is given, there’s only one.
It works the other way around too, you know. Sometimes a fanon becomes so pervasive that it becomes canon, even replacing the existing canon in places. Derpy, for instance. Or a frankly terrible Transformers fancomic that I did which was explicitly canonised by Hasbro, character-assassinating a (slightly) popular character in the process. But that’s a story for another day.
God is in the gaps, after all. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the most popular non-mane 6 characters are the ones we barely know anything about. Lyra has billions of words written about her based on a few amusing background poses. No-one cares about Hoity Toity who was a supporting character for an entire episode. Luna was hot stuff during season 1 where there were thousands of unanswered questions about her, then she got an entire episode to herself in season 2 and suddenly the stories just dried up.
Personally, I don’t want solid continuity. I don’t want episodes that are dedicated to exploring past ideas or fleshing out existing gaps. I want new stuff. I don’t want to see Gilda again or an episode which explains about Pinkie’s rock farm once and for all. I want giant penguin emperors and time-travelling tortoises. When you start to quantify the world it just gets a little less magical. (The exception to this is of course the Trixie episode, which was absolutely fantastic. But then it didn’t attempt to ‘resolve’ or ‘explain’ Trixie, it just gave us more of the same really, though with a bit more shipping bait at the end!).
Once shows fall in love with their own mythology, then they become about trying to explain themselves rather than tell good stories. The closest MLP has got to this is the Zap-Apple episode which was a rather odd Frankenstein story that tried to combine mythology building (a rather boring ‘Ponyville was founded because it was uh… founded’), the zap apple harvest which was just plain odd, and a story about Apple Bloom not loving her Grandma and then realising she likes her because she did something interesting when she was young. The moral being that if you didn’t do anything interesting you deserve the contempt of your grandchildren? Isn’t the fact she loves Apple Bloom enough? Goodness knows.
Not my favourite episode anyway, but then the ‘history’ section didn’t add anything to it. It felt oddly tacked on, but at the same time felt that this was what the episode was built around. At the end of the day, it was just a boring explanation which is why it all felt a bit flat. I don’t mind stuff like that if it feels interesting which nine times out of ten the team manage. Just not that time.
It’s important to not get too wrapped up in your own canon. There are a worryingly large amount of books published that try to explain away all of Doctor Who’s continuity issues (this is literally impossible). People obsess and get frantic over the smallest little issue (the answer being, of course, that it’s a television show). That’s certainly not the way I want to see MLP go, or the fandom as a whole. I prefer a more chilled out continuity.
Something my sister said to me when she was little sticks with me to this day. “Do science fiction writers think that’s what the world will be like?” It was in response to my love of science fiction, and of course the answer is no. For the most part, people don’t write science fiction novels to attempt to accurately predict the future. It’s the same with television and films. George Lucas doesn’t literally think Star Wars is a 100% accurate representation of the future (or past, if you want to be boring and get technical). Of course not. That’s an absurd thing to think. People write science fiction to be able to tell stories, and frame them in ways that they wouldn’t be able to if they weren’t writing science fiction.
You can extend this analogy further though. No-one writes fanfiction to predict canon. Or at least, most people don’t. Fanfiction exists to tell a story using pre-existing characters. Just because it turns out that Luna isn’t a shy little thing, or Twilight isn’t Celestia’s magical clay golem child doesn’t invalidate the story that’s been told. The story is the important thing, the plot, the writing, the characters. If Fluttershy marries Big Mac on the show it doesn’t suddenly mean that all the Flutterdash ships are null and void.
There’s also the magical retcon. Comic fans will know and hate this word. Short for ‘retroactive continuity’ this is when a writer decides that past continuity needs changing for the better, and so suddenly Wolverine’s mutant power is that he has claws made of bone, or Magneto didn’t really get his head cut off in full view of everyone. No-sir! Then you get the retcon retcons where a new writer comes along and decides he liked the original idea better so changes it back again. Stories like this tend to be terrible, because they concerned mostly with internal house-cleaning rather than, you know, telling an actual story.
(Did you know that the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie revealed that the Doctor was half-human, solely because that was the producer’s head-canon and it somehow made its way into every version of the script. Thankfully that was hand waved away in the new series by the literally technique of ‘never mentioning it and pretending it never happened’. Everyone was happy with that)
A bit of clever retconning is fine, as long as you don’t dwell on it. Do you want to tell a story where Twilight is Celestia’s clay golem daughter but can’t because of those pesky parents? Simply hand wave it away with a clever explanation (“Twilight Velvet, take this clay golem child and raise it as your own, but I will come back for it one day!”). Just don’t spend half the story on torturous continuity explanations.
Does canon even matter anymore? Certainly back in the 80s and beyond, franchises were very much centred around ‘primary texts’. Things were either ‘real’ or they weren’t. If it didn’t happen in the cartoon, it didn’t happen at all. (The exception to this is Transformers, which had two very clear primary texts which often contradicted: the comic and the cartoon. This was mostly due to the odd situation where the comic was written by the guy who created pretty much everything about Transformers, Bob Budiansky, but the cartoon had far more impact culturally (though the opposite was true in the UK where the weekly Transformer comic sold in the hundreds of thousands and hardly anyone had seen the cartoon)).
Nowadays though, in the land of reboots and reimaginings and the internet which gives us greater access to even the most obscure spinoff, there’s much less concentration on a primary ‘real’ text. Take Transformers Generation 1 for instance. You have the original cartoon, the original comic, the Japanese cartoons, the Dreamwave comics, the War for Cybertron franchise, the various IDW comics now in their fourth iteration of what ‘Generation 1’ is, the relaunched 80’s comic, hell even the tech specs which are their own continuity. Then you have stuff like the Ladybird books, the Blackthorn 3D comics, the Japanese mangas… Which is the ‘real’ continuity?
The answer is that none of them are. And at the same time, all of them are. Transformers has made the leap from being a primary text focussed franchise to one that revolves around telling tales based on a mythology. Similar characters are in each iteration, with similar personality traits and similar events, but they’re all very different. It has become like the Arthurian legends, which are all wildly different tales based on a central, strong concept. In the same spirit, it was very easy to be a fan of Doctor Who in the 90s without ever having watched the show, as Virgin books were going strong (and they were very different to the television show!).
I’m sure that there are fans of MLP who have never seen the show or even can’t stand it. People who are fans because they love to read the fanfic, or gobble up all the comic, or even look at the stories told on the tumblrs, but who couldn’t care less about the cartoon. No, don’t laugh, it’s very possible. Heck, just before season 3 started I realised I hadn’t seen an episode since season 2 finished broadcasting, because a large chunk of my fandom was based on fan-produced material.
Currently MLP is based on a ‘primary text’, ie the cartoon, but the sheer amount of stories that completely ignore the show and use their own riffs on the characters and settings makes me feel that it is moving towards a more mythological-style treating of the ‘facts’ behind it. It may not matter that in one episode of the cartoon, Twilight marries Braeburn, because in five thousand other stories, she marries Trixie. The important thing is the story. Whether it’s ‘real’ or not is neither here nor there because it’s inherently a ridiculous question.
As Alan Moore famously said in his précis for ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow’:
This is an imaginary story...
Aren’t they all?
Makes sense.
There are, in fact, entire fandoms that have almost no relation to their supposed primary source. Go look at the Ranma section of fanfiction.net and you'll see page after page of ranma fanfics that are based purely on other ranma fanfics, which in turn are based on other anma fanfics, and so on for several generations. The writers have never even seen Ranma.
Er. I don't watch or write Ranma. It's just an example. I'm not crazy!
This was a wall of text, but I feel somewhat rewarded and fulfilled for having scaled it.
Kudos.
Yes. i agree with this.
I agree with that cartoons really should focus themself on telling a story, filling in the gaps over and over again, that's the thing for the fandom, don't take it away from us.
Of course there are secrets left who we all just crave to be untold. (like the black book from the season 3 kickoff) but things as the background ponies and these small little things about the main characters should be left for the fandom. Of course i'm not being completely radical and strict about this, its fun to see a gap filled in once a while but so is imagining your own theory.
Woh thanks for that incredible rumor
that's a really fun way to look at Discord! If it's true it'll blow my mind 
Very nice write-up and something to chew over.
I've been very relaxed when it comes to the source material in regards to my own works. Like you said, I want to tell a story and if certain facts need to be rearranged to make it happen, I feel it's a acceptable change. Being married to the canon only makes your head spin and create endless debate threads that do nothing but suck the life out of you. I have enough on my plate than to waste my time on why Twilight said Ponyville was founded hundreds of years ago while Granny Smith says it's only been a few decades.
So I agree! Get out there and produce the kobold revolution against the princess oppressors and don't worry if kobolds show up or not!
* applauds*
Buck the canon, I do what I want! I'm writing my own story, I'm just shamelessly exporting the characters and world from Friendship is Magic!
The message of Family Appreciation Day is that you can't judge who someone is without knowing the path they took through life to get there.
Apple Bloom loved her Grandma, she just was embarrassed by her because she only saw who she was now (the old lady who says embarrassing things and had archaic notions and weird traditions), but then she learned to respect and admire her for all she had experienced and accomplished in life, and by understanding the truths and events that made her who she is.
As for the canon vs fanon argument, I do not mind a story that displaces the characters from the events and continuity in the show. Everyone has their own tolerance on how far from canon is acceptable for them.
I happen to enjoy fics which ignore or actively rewrite the canon far more than those which attempt to 'fill in' gaps in our knowledge of it. Maybe it's just coincidence, but I'd like to think that it's because the authors aren't having to limit the scale of what they want to write in order for it to be able to be wedged in with the canon (& even the fanon) of the show.
Readers really do not place canon on a pedestal to the same degree that certain others - often writers - do. Rarely do you get called out on allowances you make.
That said, to me, canon is still the single most important thing, because the show is what I initially fell in love with, and I still love it above all; I freely put my own spin on canon - I'll explain the whys of X and Y - but without launching into a huge rant here, the further something strays from canon, the less interesting is to me. The goal of fanfics (from my perspective!) is to write something that could have been canon.
In short, the simple answer for me as a person is that yes, canon definitively matters. After each fic, re-calibrate, emphasize compatibility with canon.
583913
That makes sense, but the issue is that Granny Smith turns out to have been super exceptional. It's not a great moral, because it's not something that can be related to real life, and in fact could have the opposite effect.
Now, if it had just stuck with the zap apple stuff and not the founding of Ponyville, that would have been far stronger and more cohesive.
583934
Yes because her granddaughter at the same age hasn't done anything exceptional with her life...
AJ was considered exceptional even before becoming an EoH. She comes from good stock.
Alright, Schrödinger. Seriously though, I agree with this.
No. SciFi writers (much like Fic writers) write what the world might be like if it were more interesting.
Lifters : What if people could fly? (yes, its an obscure reference)
Ringworld : What if there actually was a world shaped in a ring around its sun?
John Ringo : What if aliens really did contact earth (Posleen/Troy Rising)
May I perhaps be given the right to bear your children?
583981
It's like Alien all over again
The odd thing is, I've been exceedingly lucky with canon and my fanon. Even these rumours not only gel with my "interpretation" of the world, but I could flat-out use the idea to back it up.
I can, however, totally understand having the foundation of one (or more) of your fics being ripped out from under you. I don't know if it would stop me, but I will say it might.
This was refreshing to read -- you cleverly put to words what I've intuitively felt for a long time. I often feel like I'm a fan of MLP and a fan of MLP fan material as two completely separate interests. While one may have inspired the other, they are very different and inspire very different sorts of enjoyment.
And so, once again the wisest man on fimfiction has spoken!
Interesting! Hmm... But, when I'm writing, I don't think I'll ever be able to just "let it go" and just treat it as a mythology, at least not for now. I'm pretty sure that the comics are going to be pseudo-canon, which is to say that they aren't intended to break with any of the current canon of the show but won't be treated by the show as events that occurred. With that in mind, I'll still see the show as the only "real" source of canon.
And yet, I'm also aware that the show isn't perfectly internally consistent, and while I notice these things it doesn't actually BOTHER me. I recognize that it's just a TV show and that mistakes are going to happen, and that Granny Smith isn't hundreds of years old and this doesn't suddenly mean that ponies live hundreds of years and OMIGOSH THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.
No.
Sorry to everyone with headcanon they don't want to part with, sorry to everyone who has written stories about the history of Equestria that would be invalidated, sorry to all those who want the details left un-fleshed-out so they can imagine anything they want... but I'd LOVE more history. Give me an episode about Celestia and Luna 1001 years ago! Give me an episode about Discord's first attack on Equestria! There's always more stuff to write fanfiction about... I'd rather not have the creators of the show pussyfoot around issues when they could lay them all out on the table. And every episode introduces something new to write about, anyway: the Crystal Empire, the Mirror Pool and other yet-undiscovered magical places, Babs Seed and her unseen sister in Manehattan, Trixie vs. Tom: Nuggets of Love...
Plus, heck, the kinds of history episodes I described would surely have so much imaginative stuff in them that not only would fanfic writers still be able to write stories set in the past, they'd have a loose framework around which to write! It could give us a whole new focal point around which to share stories that any fan of the canon can enjoy without spending 10 pages of fanon worldbuilding! I know it's not quite the same... heck, I wrote a fanon Luna story that was "ruined" by canon, and I still prefer "my Luna" over the real one. Even so, I still want more history episodes. Sorry!
Now I'm curious.
Anyway, my general policy is to say 'screw canon!' when it suits me, and just slap on an AU tag. Lazy, maybe, but it's better, in my opinion, than bending over backwards or breaking a perfectly good story to make sure it's "official," which a lot of fanfic writers fail to realize isn't exactly a concern, as it's, ya know, fanfiction.
EDIT: More or less what you said. And yeah, I like that idea of a more Arthurian approach to 'canon'
584136
I'll post about that some time, it's quite interesting.
584166 Sounds like it!
584106
Well, from my POV, it's that the more you start to quantify Equestria, the less interesting it becomes, because there's not all these mysterious swaths of stuff that happened, but cold hard fact. Questions are often far more interesting than answers (but again, sometimes answers can be cool too).
584180 In some ways I agree, and in others I don't! As I inferred, I prefer fanon Luna over Season 2/3 Luna. But, if I had read a story with Cerberus and Tartarus in it before that was seen on-screen I would have probably snorted and rolled my eyes at it unless it was done really, really well... NOW it feels like fanfic writers could sneak in lots of Greek mythology into their stories and not have to feel like they have to fight canon to fit it in for the people who are sticklers!
I dunno. I understand what you mean, but I still feel like cementing things may screw over wide swaths of things to imagine while introducing endless new things that could be done while providing a new common ground for all stories set in that context to start from... I empathize, but am not swayed.
584196
Well yes, but I'd file stuff like 'Cerberus and Tartarus' under "adding more crazy stuff" rather than "reducing everything to a cohesive universe."
584226 Ha, fair enough!
Right here.
The show itself, for me, has a crazy hit and miss rate with way more misses than hits. I wasn't really looking forward to Season 3, either, and the only episodes I've watched from it are the opening and the Trixie episode (for obvious reasons
).
It's nice to see someone finally consider the idea that a person may enjoy the fan content but not the show itself, because most other times I've admitted to not liking the show that much I've been forced to undergo a crazy interrogation process, at the end of which I am deemed a "troll" or "hater" or whatever.
584180 But every answer brings two or more new questions with it, in my experience. Sure, Family Appreciation Day puts the kibosh on fanfics set in Ponyville back during the rise of Nightmare Moon, for example. But it introdces Zap Apples, Timberwolves, and the fact that Celestia personally gave dispensation for the Apples to found Ponyville where they did.
Of course one could have made a fanfic about these sorts of things just as easily before the episode aired - one of my old favorites from back in season 1 was based on the notion that Celestia specifically made Ponyville happen as part of her plan to redeem Nightmare Moon - but that could be said about everything. The show didn't need to exist to inspire these stories but it certainly helped.
IMO, I like that the series continues to both add in new elements (Crystal Empire, Shining Armor, etc) as well as explain older ones (Hearth's Warming, Family Appreciation). The richer the background, the more fertile the foundations for future work.
584511
Well yes., but two of those things (zap apples and Timberwolves) don't specifically come from Granny Smith founding Ponyville, they were just additional aspects in the story. They could have been in any story. The other point, Celestia giving the Apple family dispensation to found Ponyville is... well, a bit boring. I've never seen anyone do anything with it. Now, if the founding of Ponyville was some sort of ridiculously awesome event, I might agree with you! As it is, the trade-off is just a bit... dull.
I like it when shows explain things, giving me a complete picture. I recently saw "Prometheus", which annoyed me, by leaving much unexplained.
d22zlbw5ff7yk5.cloudfront.net/images/cm-28644-0508df016b3003.gif
Well said, Mr. Shift. Well said.
Someone should show this to Equestria Daily, and send along a chill pill with it, because too many awesome fanfics get rejected simply because they don't feel a character was portrayed correctly, or something conflicts with what they believe is canon (even when dealing with something the show only mentions in passing).
tl;skimmed
But yeah. I don't want solid continuity. It just seems that everytime I do get an idea, canon torpedos it accidentally. Did you know List had a substantial rewriting because of Dragon Quest of all things? I had originally planned the long range teleport thing to be a continuation of that first check item on her list she's so proud of. And had to completely redo my headcanon for the story due to her conveniently transporting everyone at the end.
TMPP killed Pinkie Clones fic. Wonderbolt Academy is almost certainly going to torpedo my current Spitfire, Soarin, Dash and Pinkie fic. Ah well. The show is better than my idea was anyway.
Also, Classic Dr Who is on Netflix now as more than "movies". So I'll be pestering you for recommendations.
No, see, you got that all backwards.
I's the inventors who think science fiction stories can be made possible, so they implement all those crazy stuff from books. It's madness, I tell you. 
I know this is where I'm supposed to write something deep about the rest of the text, but I'm somewhat fixated on that first possibility. All I can think is... WHOA...
I agree with most of the points you raised in your post.
I'd say it depends on how the show (movie, book) is presenting itself and its world initially. Some of them are obsessed with explaning and defining everything in strict canon megastructures, others offer very vague descriptions, leaving much to the imagination.
I personally prefer type 1, though I can see appeal of both.
MLP is without a doubt a type 2 show. The problem with long-running type 2 franchises is that their authors eventually try and turn parts of them into type 1, which almost never works. As you said, some people may feel insecure when their personal canon is threatened with official one.
I completely agree with the idea of equality of all shades of canon and fanon. For me, a multi-billion dollar series and a fanfic with a single digit number of reader are on absolutely equal footing if they are internally consistent and enjoyable to read. There's no such thing as canon Equestria, only endless and eternal Equestrian Multiverse.
This is a bit extreme, but I'm pretty close to this description. I discovered ponies through Youtube music videos and Fallout Equestria, read the latter until chapter 20 without ever bothering to watch the show, which I did mostly to understand the references going over my head. You can't even compare tens of hours spent reading fanfics every week with 20 minute episode.
Also, maybe it's just me, but I find it very hard to watch episodes after reading some of the more epic or emotionally intensive fics here. Episodes are more like fanfic templates and starts points for exercises in speculation, than primary sources of fun. Deliberately simplifying things and ignoring morally inconvenient issues doesn't help too.
... Though I wouldn't mind if Twilight married Trixie on screen.
583922
I was going to post a thing, but I think Cloudy said it more clearly than I could have.
What it comes down to is simply the idea that we're writing, and reading, fanfic. I'm sure there's a lot of quite lovely fiction around here that does really interesting things with new settings and characters... but it isn't very good fanfiction, because it does so at the expense of playing on the elements of the source material that make it compelling.
To use one of the worst offenders as an example, when I open up a fic, I expect that a character named 'Pinkie Pie' is a bouncy, friendly bakerpony with a pet alligator and a quirky sense of humor. Not a mass murdering rapist with torture and cannibalism fetishes,
Yeah, this is a really good point to make. Some of the best fics have been rendered semi or even non-canonical by even a passing reference in an episode, but that doesn't make all the difference. Take Simply Rarity: Sisterhooves Social rendered it's canon-ness null and void by having Rarity's parents still alive, but that doesn't detract from the fact it still hit the emotions just right, and isn't too far off canon with a little thought.
Personally, I don't think the show is ever really going to do too much to change the status quo; for example, I doubt Wonderbolt Academy is going to definitely put Dash in the Wonderbolts or rule her out of the running forever, because either would be a really rather stupid move. She obviously isn't ready for the 'Bolts, but it seems silly that she would give up on her life's dream in the space of a 20-minute episode. I imagine it'll turn out as "I'll be ready someday, but not today", same for Scootaloo flying, the CMC getting their cutie marks, etc, etc...
Which is perfect! In a way, you've hit the nail on the head; the more a character is shaped by the show, the less people will be willing to expand upon them. I'd hate to see, say, a flashback episode with Celestia and Luna (and Discord as well, perhaps), because as ancient beings, it makes sense to have an air of mystery about them. There's some fantastic origin stories for these three characters out there that simply wouldn't exist if there was One True Explanation for where all these immortal, incredibly powerful beings come from.
So yes, let the episodes give us simple fun: the fandom can produce a multitude of rich backstories that can be far greater than an 'official' canon.
I subscribe to the multiple timeline theory in all my imaginary canons. Each story I read is placed in the main universe until it is contradicted, and then it's simply and summarily shuffled over into a parallel universe when new main canon is built, which then has its own continuity. For example, my story Flutterberry is before Season 1, Lament of a Spoon takes place at some point during Season 2 after Family Appreciation Day, Crashing Equestria hits after Season 2 ends, and The Game of Shadows, Derpy's Gambit, and Applejacked take off on their own storyline after an alternate, as-yet-undefined Season 3... which will, as of now, include Sweetie Bot X and select canon S3 episodes I decide to incorporate. From there, I will be building my own story of the future of Equestria regardless of what Seasons 3, 4, etc. entail.
583884
I wanted to leave this 2-3 times, but I'm glad I didn't. There's something nice about reading that I get out of nothing else.
blueshift what am I reading
did you really seriously devote this huge wall of text to "canon"?
Stories still need to be internally consistent, but yeah, I absolutely adore this method of thinking. It's quite disappointing when I see creativity stemmed due to the fact that it doesn't fit canon, especially on the writer's part. On the other side of the coin, it's also kind of annoying to see people try to make complicated arguments to try and bend things to fit in their own headcanon. They don't actually have to line up perfectly, and I guess I can't feel much more than pity for those who obsessed with that in either direction. I mean, cognitive dissonance is the basis of enjoying any fiction. It all starts with "This isn't real, but pretend for a moment it is." After that, anything else you want to stick in your premise is small time.
Oh! That's the problem with the Random tag. You only get to play that card in your premise. Mediocre authors sometimes get it in their head that because they've already established utterly outrageous thing #1, slightly out there thing #2 is fair game, when the only reason the reader can suspend their disbelief around the first is because they heard about it upfront.
Should that rumor come to pass (holy shit I didn't read the whole thing; it's so unbelievably amazing that it can't possibly be real), I do think there are easy ways for both you and I to counteract it.
That's the other fun part of canon: working around it. Explaining things away while still having them make sense in the context of the show. Oh sure, you can ignore canon and toss in an AU tag, but where's the fun in that?
I still want to see Twilight marry Trixie, though. Because goddammit.
Also yes, "show, don't tell." The writers may have something in mind about the world, but instead of sitting us down and TELLING us about it, they should just write the consequences of it, and let us infer it, rather than dump exposition on us.
I'm fascinated with worldbuilding so when they dumped Ponyville's history I was glued to my seat. But I can understand how that could be considered poorly executed. But I think the moral of that was SUPPOSED to be not to dismiss someone just because you don't know them--everypony is their own person and special in their own way. (and lord knows that happens in this fandom far, far too often...)
But yeah. Fanfiction is just that. And the degree to which you want to adhere to the details of the show is entirely variable. I personally think this is established in the 'author to reader contract' established at the beginning of the story. Being consistent on how you treat canon is important, whether that's 'as close as possible' or 'not at all.' Really, it's more important to stay true to your OWN designs.
People go into a fanfic because they like the premise/idea, basically. I think that's why you occasionally get the rare person who likes a particular story but doesn't like the show (but that's a digression.) So, fanfic. Does it have an interesting idea? Does it execute that idea well? Does it fulfill its own premise? Those are really the three things I look for, and strive for. Everything else is variable, and as such, so will be the audience.
This reminds me of a discussion i had with Pen Stroke and Batty Gloom on a chapter of Past Sins about Twilight being able to "fly" using telekinesis, as we have seen one of the baby Cakes' do, or just do a series of teleport "jumps" to get to a specific target. Basically what it boiled down to was if it could be considered "canon" in the story's universe that she could do it or not.
>God
*Luna //dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Luna_lolface.png
585526
Friday: Blueshift is trapped on a train for three hours having only had two hours sleep the night before.
STRANGE THINGS HAPPENED.
584795
Pester me! Pester me!