Canon vs. Fanon, part 1: Daniel and Coffee

[fignewton]

I've been considering doing this for quite a while, and the hiatus in episodes seems like a decent enough time for it. So here we go: canon vs. fanon. Canon is defined as anything directly shown during Stargate: The Movie or episodes of the show; show supersedes movie when there's a contradiction. Fanon is defined as widely-accepted concepts that appear in fanfic, but do not have any real basis in canon. Most of these discussions will be Daniel-centered, but I'll touch upon other subjects on occasion.

Interpretation of a character is obviously in the eyes of the beholder. I fell in love with Daniel just by reading the transcripts at Gatenoise, sometime shortly after the eighth season finale aired. I started watching eps when I couldn't resist any longer, and then I fell in love with the rest of the team. Then I started reading fanfic, and I met lots and lots and lots of other Daniels and Sams and Jacks and Teal'cs – some easily recognizable, a few remarkably like the ones that I saw on the screen and that lived in my head, and many that I didn't know at all.

I'm not going to insist, or even suggest, that every fanfic author out there write their characters to fit my specifications (even if the thought of several thousand new gen teamy goodness stories is immensely attractive). I don't think even the Goa'uld are quite that arrogant! On the other hand, fanfic writers would be doing themselves a great service by making sure that the characters they write about are actually the characters that their readers want to read about – if nothing else, they'll have a lot more readers that way. 

There's nothing wrong with fanon, as a concept. For the most part, most common fanon assumptions about Daniel are based on canon, or extrapolated from canon, or at least don't contradict canon. Others… aren't. And if the writer airily asserts, "Well, this is an AU/my personal universe/not really important to the story, so just go with the flow, okay?" – then I will wish the writer well, and go find an author who is actually writing about the Daniel Jackson I know and love.

Some fanon amuses me; some confuses me; and some really, really gets on my nerves. I'll tackle one per post, or possibly a few related ones at once, starting with a real fan-favorite. 

Daniel and Coffee

 "Coffee" can be subdivided into two common fanon assertions:

 Daniel is addicted to coffee and Daniel is a coffee snob.

The first assertion might be exaggerated from canon, but if so, not by much. The movie shows Daniel plodding out of his office to refill his coffee cup right before the symbols-as-constellations inspiration hits; when he's about to present his findings to General West and others, he's juggling several rolled-up papers and a coffee mug, from which he takes a final gulp before casually leaving it on a ledge in the hallway. On the show, we often see Daniel with coffee mug in hand. In Season One alone, Daniel has a paper coffee cup with him during the meeting when he talks Hammond into letting him join SG-1 in CotG; drinks coffee to try and avoid sleep in The Enemy Within, and has a cup next to him while he watches Kawalsky's operation; parks a coffee cup on a coffee maker, or possibly some computer peripheral, before Jack attacks him in The Broca Divide; has a coffee cup with him when he's observing Sam and Janet experimenting on Pelops' nanocytes in Brief Candle; is drinking coffee when he meets Sam in the gateroom with the UAV, her "new toy," has another coffee when the UAV goes out of the Gate, and has a third coffee during the briefing with Hammond in Enigma (apparently Tollans make him thirsty); drinks coffee to keep awake while they're trying to find Jack and Sam in Solitudes; and has a coffee cup with him while he's observing the attempt to operate on Cassandra in Singularity (Daniel seems convinced that those ledges by the observation windows were specifically designed for coffee).

That's seven out of twenty-one episodes. Of the remainder, six are spent entirely off-world; four have little or no time on-world, mostly spent in formal briefings where coffee doesn't seem to be appropriate or available; one features the poor boy when he isn't human, so presumably can't drink coffee; and one involves Daniel spending the entire episode in a drugged pink stupor. That leaves two of twenty-one episodes – Cold Lazarus and Torment of Tantalus – when we could have reasonably expected Daniel to drink coffee and he didn't. (Besides, Katherine insisted on pouring him tea.) 

Yeah. I'd call that an addiction, or something close to it. 

As an aside, I will cheerfully confess that I skimmed bits and pieces of the entire first season to make sure I got all that right, which was not exactly a hardship. I almost forgot the whole essay thing to simply watch and enjoy. Happy sigh. Love, love, love the early seasons.

So our first bit of fanon is actually canon: Yes, Daniel Jackson really does constantly drink coffee. The common fanfic bit about Jack/Sam/Teal'c/Janet/some secret admirer bringing him coffee doesn't have any canon basis, but it's hardly an unreasonable extrapolation (although bringing Daniel food and drink is another bit of fanon I will discuss in a future post). On the other hand, there's not much canon proof for the other fanon assertion on the subject of caffeine: that Daniel is a coffee snob.

The first real canon suggestion that Daniel is picky about coffee doesn't show up until Season Nine, when Mitchell, the ultimate fanboy, interviews one of the Daniels in Ripple Effect and gives him "Sumatra Mandheling, one cream, two sugars," as his regular preference. The problem with accepting this as proof is two-fold. First, one might theorize that the writers have picked up on the "Daniel as coffee snob" thing from the fans and incorporated it, since it shows up so late in the show's history; and second, while I'm not a real coffee drinker myself, I always thought coffee snobs drank their coffee black and considered milk and sugar to be sacrilege. I also understand that flavored coffees are considered to be anathema by coffee snobs; but an Urgo-influenced Daniel is very appreciative of cinnamon, or possibly chicory, flavored coffee. If I'm wrong about either of those assumptions, please let me know.

(Daniel moodily pours a steady stream of sugar into his coffee when he's in the Waffle House at the End of the Universe in Threads, but I wouldn't use that as proof either way, as it's pretty obvious that he has no actual intention of drinking it.) 

We can add to the "not a coffee snob" side of the argument when we note that in the movie, Daniel was using water from a regular water fountain to fill his coffee pot, which means that he didn't much care if the water tasted metallic. Also, if we consider what we know about Daniel as a whole, he probably didn't have the chance to become a coffee snob until the actual Stargate years. The fellow we met in the movie, who lugs around his entire life in two battered suitcases, is hardly likely to be able to splurge on specialty coffee, is he? Nor is it likely that the coffee he drank on digs was brewed in anything other than a small metal pot, rather than a proper coffee-maker. I very much doubt he was drinking specialty coffee when he was working on his degrees, either, and for the same reasons: too expensive, and too impractical, to manage on a student's budget.

Conclusion: Daniel-the-caffeine-addict is canon, but Daniel-the-coffee-snob is fanon with little basis in canon.

ETA: put it under a cut because it's a lot longer than I realized. Sorry 'bout that.

My personal fanon opinion? Daniel loves coffee and drinks it whenever he can; he certainly enjoys specialty coffees, but he's perfectly capable of getting along with Air Force-issue sludge if that's the only thing available.

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

Comments

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Well, there's caffeine in tea too. And he'd been offworld for a while, so maybe he'd run out. Or, as Redbyrd suggests below, he actually kept ~gasp~ some instant around for, y'know, emergencies.

Regarding AU characterization:

If it's supposed to fit within the story for a plot or character point and the writer does the setting right or sets up the basis for the AU, I can go with the flow

Except that I think that if an author is writing an AU, they have a sort of obligation to make sure that characterization is even closer to canon. Otherwise, it's not fanfic any more; it's original fiction, with characters who happen to have the same names as the characters from SG-1.

As a random example, let's say that someone posts an AU in which... oh, Jack is a famous hockey player and Daniel is hired to act as tutor for Charlie, who wants to follow in his father's footsteps but will lose his scholarship if he doesn't improve his grades in history. And his teacher, Ms. Samantha Carter, has warned Principal Hammond that Jack's old war buddy Teal'c is suspected of peddling the new drug tretonin to kids in the neighborhood, so they're calling in this crack investigator, Janet Frasier, to go undercover and...

Er. If there is an AU like that out there, I don't think I want to know. :)

But the point is that without the proper setting and character notes, who are these people, and why should I care about them? So if you're taking the Stargate away, you'd better make sure that your characters are still the people the readers want to read about, or they're not going to bother.

Or, to turn the topic on its head, it doesn't matter if the author includes everthing on the checklist: there's a "kawoosh," there's a mention of trees and The Wizard of Oz, there's Jaffa and Hammond and the MALP and a ribbon device... All that won't matter if Jack and Daniel and Sam and Teal'c aren't the people I know. No matter how Stargate-y the setting might be, I can't take a weepy Sam, or a truly stupid Jack, or a Teal'c that says "gonna" and uses street slang, or a Daniel that fumbles his gun because he can't remember how to release the safety catch. Because none of those are the people I know.

I think you need good characterization in the normal setting, and stellar characterization in an abnormal setting, or you're no longer writing fanfic. You're writing your own original fiction.

Even if your Daniel loves coffee. :)

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

As a random example, let's say that someone posts an AU in which... oh, Jack is a famous hockey player and Daniel is hired to act as tutor for Charlie...

Ah, that's not the kind of AU I was talking about. It's more the bend in the road kind. Like, suppose Kawalsky wasn't killed, or Jolinar wasn't found out when she was, or the Stargate program became public, etc.

Yeah, when the AUs are essentially the character names in completely different scenarios, I don't find that's really Stargate fic anymore. Some of it's good, but it's way too AU for me...unless someone writes Teal'c P.I. That would be awesome...probably cracky, but awesome! But if so, you're right, you've got to work extra hard that the character development is top notch.

Or, to turn the topic on its head, it doesn't matter if the author includes everthing on the checklist:
That's the trick of really good fanfic. It's not a matter of having them "talk" the Stargate talk. It's not that Jack makes a random Wizard of Oz comment, it's how, when, and why he makes the comment. Otherwise you've got caricatures of the Stargate team, and not the characters.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Like, suppose Kawalsky wasn't killed, or Jolinar wasn't found out when she was, or the Stargate program became public, etc.

Ah, okay. Except why should I accept characterization as different in those "fork in the road" stories, unless there's a good reason for it? I don't have trouble with stories that include author's notes like, "In my universe, Meridian never happened and Janet Fraiser wasn't allowed offworld in Heroes." I have trouble with authors who assert that since their Stargate universe is different, they needn't bother making the characters recognizable in anything other than sharing names.

Frex, there's an quantum mirror fic out there where they stumble on a Daniel who never got SG-1 back after the S3 finale, because Solitudes didn't happen in his universe. Now, I would have expected that Daniel to be closed down and depressed - not only is he missing his closest friends, and he doesn't know if they've survived, but he's not with them because his stupid appendix blew and he has no hope of ever going offworld ever again, since there isn't a Stargate to go through. And if the author had chosen to take that route, that would have been a fascinating AU Daniel, with different characterization that I would have wholeheartedly embraced... because it would have fit the character.

(The author didn't take that route, sad to say. Maybe someone will write that fic sometime, because I think I'd truly enjoy it. As long as there was a happy ending, natch.)

I didn't rec a month's worth of AUs because I don't like 'em. :) I love episode fixes, or even episode "unfixes" where the story twists for the worse because a single thing didn't happen. (What if Sam hadn't visited Cassie, to use your example?) But as you say, it's not a matter of having them talk the talk; it's a matter of making them the real people we love (they are real, right?!) instead of mere caricatures.

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

I think you need good characterization in the normal setting, and stellar characterization in an abnormal setting, or you're no longer writing fanfic. You're writing your own original fiction.

Here, here! I love alternate histories based on what-ifs or time travel, but I don't really see the point of taking the characters and making their lives mundane. I'm first and foremost a scifi fan. If these guys were just living ordinary lives, I really wouldn't be interested.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

If these guys were just living ordinary lives, I really wouldn't be interested.

Oh, I don't know. Some of my favorite fluffy fics don't involve anything other than the gang on Earth being themselves, and they're delightful. Still, they're themselves, which likely makes all the difference.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, but these are our characters, and they don't have ordinary lives. So even when you see them hanging out having a picnic, it's knowing that the gate is still out there- it's made more dramatic by the contrast to their working lives. That tension between the secret life-and-death drama and the public normality is one of the things that really fascinates me about Stargate. If they were accountants out having a picnic, it wouldn't be the same.

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Thanks to never_at_home who also remembered that con report and that it was here: June 2003 Con Report (http://www.stargate-sg1-solutions.com/interviews/ms/0306fanodysseycon.shtml)

Here's the specific quote about Daniel and coffee as interepreted by his actor, Mr. Shanks:

Q-Is Daniel a coffee snob or caffeine addict?

MS: [Note-MS is absolutely adorable during this entire response.] "He is a caffeine addict! That started because I am. (He grins, crinkling his nose up.) And you don't see it a lot this year because I've finally given into the fact that caffeine no longer has an effect on me. (From the audience a groan of "Oh, no!") "I know! It sucks! Really it does. It's gotten to the point where it just doesn't do anything for me any more. I switched to Coke at, you know, six o'clock in the morning and stuff like that (he rocks back and forth in his chair like a little boy at this point) and it just wasn't happening any more. So I have to find a new drug. Anyone? Anyone?" (Looks around to the audience for suggestions)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to re-read more of this report, LOL.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Heh. Not to suggest that anyone has a better grasp on the character than the actor that plays him... but Michael Shanks' interpretations can be a bit, hm, facetious. As proof, I offer the "Daniel Jackson is secretly a night-time ninja" thing. :)

OTOH, I was quite pleased that MS confirmed that yes, it was Hathor, or her minions, who cut Daniel's hair. So I really have no excuse, do I?

Still. Canon, to me, is the show and the movie, not actor interviews. See last line of original post for disclaimer. ;)