52
Popular Culture Review
not intent [sz'c] to show why the story goes against the fluff. If
you are doing it to show people are lied to, that is fine.
2. When introducing a new story make sure that its first; a
sound idea and secondly that it is 40k.3
Similarly, the Warhammer 40,000 fanon wiki lists among its rules that
contributors should, “Follow the canon”, although its owners do, on rare
occasions, allow parts of the canon to be ‘broken’;
The community may occasionally decide to have a fairly large
scale event, in which parts of the canon may be broken just for
fun’s sake. In these cases, several loop holes are exploited to
make sure that the smallest amount of canon elements possible
are broken.
This emphasis on remaining true to the canon was also shared by the
majority of the fan-authors that I interviewed, with many stating that it
invariably made a story worse if an author intentionally went against it. When
asked whether it made a story better or worse if it ‘went against the fluff,
‘Steven’ for example, replied that it made it ‘definitely worse’, adding that “I
think it’s ok to bend the rules regarding fluff but never break them”. Likewise,
‘Honsou’, the author of the previously cited rules on the astronomicon forum
who defined himself as “a strong proponent of the fluff’, argued that “a story is
without a doubt worse if it goes against the fluff. Indeed I would argue that it
has failed in the task it set out to complete”. As he put it later in the interview,
. . . the role of fanfiction is not to attempt to change the nature
and parameters of an existing universe within which it is
se t... . While exploring subject matters that have not been
touched upon previously is good, indeed to be encouraged, the
author must ensure that they remain true to the existing
background and the essence of the background, while doing
so.
Indeed, a number expressed the view that, aside from any explicit rules such as
those outlined above, there was also an implicit pressure within W40K fandom
to remain true to the canon. ‘Chris’, for example, recalled how, in his early
fanfiction, he had been “extremely concerned with staying inside the boundaries
of Warhammer 40K fluff’, adding that “the existing fluff is kind of a Bible of
sorts . . . the established fluff is law, and breaking that is to commit some
unwritten crime”.
Fo ȁѡ