Canon vs. Fanon, part 2: Oh, Danny-boy

[fignewton]

This section of the Canon vs. Fanon series will focus on a fanon affectation which can be seriously irritating to many readers and might be enough to stop some of them from reading a story entirely. I can't speak for anyone other than myself, of course; but I've seen many other fans making the same complaint, so I don't think I'm alone in my feelings.

I would like to stress that I am not trying to sneer or denigrate the writing abilities of any fanfic authors out there. The canon vs. fanon discussion is, hopefully, mostly objective analysis, even if it's through my own lens. My personal opinion, added at the very end, is obviously subjective; but as it's personal, and not an attempt at a sweeping condemnation, I hope that no one will be offended.

Brief recap: Canon is defined as anything directly shown during Stargate: The Movie or episodes of the show, with show superseding the movie when there's a contradiction. (Katherine has a photograph of Daniel aged three, or possibly four, shown with his foster parents in the movie vs. the canon from the show, which has Daniel losing his parents when he's eight.) Fanon is defined as widely-accepted concepts that appear in fanfic, but do have any real basis in canon.

Is he Daniel, or Danny?

The character is named Daniel Jackson, not Danny Jackson. (A middle name may or may not exist, but there's no widespread usage of any particular name, so it's not a fanon question.) This is canon. The idea that Jack often calls him "Danny" – whether  to indicate friendship or offer the comfort of familiarity – is fanon. And since there's so little basis for it, frequent sprinklings of "Danny" can be incredibly annoying, because (at least to me) it comes across as patronizing and belittling… and we all know how Daniel feels about that kind of attitude from Jack.

Let's catalog all the times that Jack calls Daniel something other than "Daniel":

Hathor. When Sam shoots Hathor in her symbiote sauna and the larvae catch fire, Daniel goes into shock. He screams, "No!" and stands there transfixed, ignoring the flames and the efforts to evacuate personnel from the room. Jack calls out to him to move, but Daniel just stands there, almost as catatonic as he'd been after Hathor first raped him – until Sam and Jack come and literally haul him away. As they grab his arms, Jack mutters, "Come on, Danny," in a tone that is unquestionably gentle.

ETA: mr_supermoose, in the comments below, noted another "Danny" in Hathor:  When Daniel suggested to Hammond that Hathor be allowed free reign in the base, Jack protested, "Whoa, Danny!" Can't believe I forgot that one, and much thanks for the reminder! I went back to rewatch it (such torture, I know!) and I would suggest that there's an element of the drawl here, even if it's not as prominent as it was in Prisoners. I'm not quite sure how to classify it, though, so we'll just stick with "casual" for this one.

The Serpent's Lair. "Spacemonkey… Yeah!" I don't think that needs any elaboration. :)

Prisoners. When Daniel is saved from strangulation (although, oddly, he calls it suffocation when he awakes) on Hadante and recovers in Linnea's quarters, he asks what happened. Putting on an Irish accent, Jack drawls, "Well, you actually won a fight, Danny-boy!" Others might disagree, but my personal take on this one was humorous sarcasm – the "Dannyboy" wasn't meant to be affectionate or comforting, but rather part of the put-on of the brogue.

Holiday. At the end of this excellent team episode, when Jack is momentarily in Daniel's body, he calls, "Oh, Danny-boy!" to get Daniel's attention. A bewildered "Jack" turns around to see… well, himself. (Brief timeout to gloat at how delicious this episode was, and how wonderfully the actors managed to capture the nuances of each others' characters to play them so perfectly.) Again, the nickname carries a flavor of humor more than anything else.

One False Step. Jack tells Teal'c that he's going to "work on this quarantine thing with Plant Boy here." I don't think anyone could possibly construe this as friendly; Jack and Daniel are working their way up to the "You see? See? See? See? See?" scene, and Jack's name-calling is exactly that: name-calling. More on this in a bit.

Demons. When SG-1 first enters the village and the natives flee in panic, Daniel tries to calm them down. A terrified woman slams the door in his face, leaving him to trail off, "…we're peaceful explorers." Jack says, in a sing-song voice, "They're not buying it, Danny." I actually caught this one by accident, as it's quite different in tone from any other instance; it wasn't an ep where I'd expect "Danny" to be. It's the most casual use of a nickname Jack ever uses. There is a flavor of sarcasm in his voice, but not much. This is actually the single example that might be used as a defense for the fanon "Danny" habit.

[ETA again: aurora_novarum mentioned the amazing "A little more time in Danny's world" from Reckoning. I hadn't included it, since Daniel himself is using the nickname, not someone else. But as long as we're being complete, we might as well include it. Sarcasm? Adding to the weight of the threat through flippancy? It's hard to classify, and anyway, the mind-bendingness of Reckoning deserves a long analytical post of its own. :) ]

And that's it, folks. After that point, Jack never calls Daniel anything other than "Daniel" again. (If I've missed something, please do let me know!) So we've got a sincere "Danny" once, a casual "Danny" twice, a flippant "Danny-boy" twice, and two nicknames, one affectionate and one cutting. There is no suggestion that the nicknames – even the infamous "Spacemonkey" – are every used again. Except for Demons, every one of these takes place during the first two years of the show. Yet there are many, many fanfic writers out there who seize on these six instances to make it fanon that Jack calls him "Danny," or refers to him as "Danny," on a regular basis, during all seasons. Even worse, I've seen authors use "Plant Boy" or a derivative as a friendly nickname, or even suggest that "Spacemonkey" is occasionally used by others, such as Jacob Carter (!) or Janet Frasier.

Like many other fanfic readers apparently do, I find this incredibly annoying. There are two reasons for this – one personal, and one based on canon. Leaving the personal reason aside for the end, I will suggest that there is strong evidence to support the assertion that, based on canon, Daniel wouldn't like it.

In my experience, most people prefer to be called by the name that they give for themselves. Daniel inevitably introduces himself as "Daniel," not "Danny." Even when taken completely out of the canon vs. fanon context, I believe that it is common courtesy to address someone by the name they prefer to be used. Keeping that common courtesy in mind, the canon context seems to show quite strongly that Daniel wouldn't like "Danny" at all.

Let's look at Gamekeeper first. The second time Daniel and Sam witness his parents' deaths, Daniel tries to talk to Mel and Claire and convince them to get out from underneath the coverstone. His father tells him brusquely, "Danny, go back outside."

Daniel repeats, "Danny?" in a tone of incredulity. Later, after the coverstone has fallen and Sam is trying to help him deal with the aftermath, he tells her, "He called me Danny, like I'm still… like I'm still a little kid."

So here, we clearly see that Daniel equates the nickname "Danny" with his childhood: with being dismissed as too young, as inconsequential, "a little kid." 

Later, in One False Step, when Jack and Daniel are arguing on the planet and Jack accuses him of being "a little flaky," Daniel's reply is delivered in a very deliberate tone: "And on a good day you can be a little ignorant and condescending!"

While the acrimony the two showed in this scene was exacerbated by the conditions on the planet, the underlying attitudes were surely real. We get a similar reaction in Need, when a sarcaphagus'd Daniel shouts at Jack, "You never show me any respect!" Again, this is a Daniel with a warped emotional response; but while Daniel might not have actually said that under ordinary circumstances, the underlying attitude has to exist for it to come out in such a fashion.

So we seem to have clear proof that Daniel dislikes being patronized, particularly by Jack. (Proof that Daniel dislikes being patronized by anybody is liberally sprinkled throughout the entire show.) I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that when we put these two things together – Daniel's equating of "Danny" as being dismissed as a child and his annoyance at being marginalized by Jack – we get a strong suggestion that "Danny" would irritate Daniel a lot more than it might give him warm, fuzzy feelings of comfort and friendship.

If there's anyone out there who would like to suggest that Daniel is used to being called "Danny" by people other than Jack, and that it is therefore reasonable to use it regularly in fanfiction, I will concede that there are two instances on the show. Neither of these, however, seems to serve as a basis for "Danny" as an acceptable nickname.

Summit/Last Stand. For some odd reason, Jacob Carter calls him "Danny" several times during this two-parter: when they're discussing the potential mission on Revanna, on Jacob's ship before Daniel slips into the role of Yu's lotar, and when the ship is about to crash on Revanna after the escape from the summit. Daniel seems to take it in stride.

However, this is Jacob we're talking about, the same guy who often calls his own daughter "Sammie." Now, I don't read Sam/Jack ship fic, but I really, really doubt that there are fanfic authors out there who have Jack calling her "Sammie" just because her father uses the nickname. I've certainly never seen it in any gen fic. It simply seems to be a habit of Jacob's: he tends to give people diminutive nicknames. Perhaps we should be grateful that Jack wasn't turned into "Jackie"?

ETA: jenniferjf points out that no, Jacob does not call his daughter "Sammie" on a regular basis. In fact, he never does it at all. He calls her "Samantha" once, in Secrets; he calls her "kid" on several occasions. But the only one who ever calls her "Sammie" is actually Urgo. Another case of fanon run rampant!

Threads. Jim/Anubis calls him "Dannyboy" in the Waffle House at the End of the Universe. I challenge anyone to suggest that this is something Daniel likes, especially under the circumstances.

Conclusion: The usage of "Danny" as a regular nickname for Daniel is not canon. 

My personal fanon opinion? My own reason for disliking "Danny" is my regular problem with overemphasized fanon in the first place: fanon, with its tendency to exaggerate aspects of the characters that are either marginalized or nonexistent on the show, results in writing characters that often have little to do with the actual characters I recognize from SG-1. So when I read about Jack and "Danny," I often feel like I'm reading about two characters that have nothing to do with Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson at all. And I think, in the final analysis, that the condescension in the name "Danny" is the aspect that annoys readers the most. Too many writers emphasize Daniel's "innocence," his civilian status, his comparatively poorer weapons training, and his greater need to be defended against enemies; add the younger-sounding "Danny" to this mix, and the implication is made – even if it isn't intended – that Daniel is of lesser status than the rest of SG-1, or at the very least has an uneven father/son relationship with Jack.

I have much less of a problem with Jack thinking of Daniel as "Danny" or "Danny-boy." I've read superb fics written in Jack's POV where this is often the case. But in actual dialogue? I'll let one "Danny" slip past, possibly even two in really dire circumstances (he's partly or mostly dead, for example). After that – well, I'm sure there are plenty of writers who won't consider it a great loss if I don't read their story. And I wish them well, and I'll go read fics about Dr. Daniel Jackson instead.

I know it can be tempting. I have a crossover fic that almost demands the use of "Spacemonkey" as an actual plot point. But I can't bring myself to use it, because it would be wrong. 

"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"