 It's your fanon, enjoy it with your friends.  Don't demand that everyone else adhere to it, and don't try bullying them into changing their fanon to suit yours, and we'll all get along just fine.

Anyway, who knows?  Maybe the writers will change their minds again, and decide the fanon is cool enough to use.  (see Figwit …  Actually, keep looking at Figwit.  Figwit's pretty.)  Maybe they'll see the swell of fan support for this 'ship that's out of left field and throw in a mention.  Or maybe they'll get huffy about our interpreting the canon from the wrong perspective, kill off the characters in question in retribution for our not spending the proper amount of time worshipping the text and 'shipping the couples they intended us to 'ship.  It's hard to tell sometimes what's going to make producers cranky, what's going to flatter them, and what they're going to slip in just for giggles that screws up the canon for the REST OF TIME, and what the directors will have the actors do when they deliver the lines, and what the actors will do in the background while they're goofing off because they're bored or hungover or massively pregnant and hiding behind shrubbery.

Canon's canon.  Authorial intent is malleable.  Fanon is fun.  Enjoy them, work with them, accept that not everyone agrees with authors or fanon, and know that canon can be looked at with many different viewpoints.  Play nice.

Ah, fanfiction!  That light in our otherwise dreary, colorless lives.  Or maybe that's just me.  Regardless, if you clicked on this article, gentle reader, you are probably already well-versed in what fanfiction is.  If not, this essay is perhaps not for you.

So you have just read the most wonderful, heart-pounding, well-crafted piece of fanfiction it has ever been your pleasure to open, and you'd like to leave a review.  But where do you start?  Is a simple "I loved this, please write more" sufficient?  What if you didn't find the story perfect, and you'd like to say so?  And what if you are the fanfiction writer, opening a new review and wondering how to respond?

Dr. Merlin can help.  Dr. Merlin has been there. Read on.


Dr. Merlin recently conducted an informal poll regarding the top reasons readers do not leave reviews on stories.  Dr. Merlin, being an incurable egomaniac who rather likes referring to herself in the third person, wondered why her gentle readers, who just spent over an hour reading her latest work, would then not take a moment or two to respond.  

Aside from enabling her to receive a few extra reviews on the story in question, the poll also yielded some interesting responses.  A popular reply was that her readers felt they had nothing further to add, and had no critiques to make; leaving any comment along the lines of "I liked this" would seem trite. 