Fanon/Literature

Examples of Fanon about Literature include:

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Harry Potter

The Lord of the Rings

Apparently, Thranduil is an alcoholic who regularly beats Legolas senseless and Aragorn was orphaned at two. The former is highly unlikely, based on what we know of elves in general (elves have great difficulty even getting drunk, let alone addicted) and Legolas in particular, while the latter is downright contradicted by the Appendices (Aragorn's father died when he was two, but his mother lived until he was in his seventies).
- And all the Rivendell Elves have defined personalities: Erestor is the grim headmaster type, Glorfindel is the resident babysitter and Deadpan Snarker, and Elladan and Elrohir are troublemakers (as well as Elrohir being the more sensitive of the two and Elladan having more of a temper). None of that is in the books.
This site exists to tell canon apart from fanon, a fairly tricky task since the canon for that particular fandom is notoriously shifty -- what with J.R.R Tolkien constantly revising his ideas -- and The Film of the Book can't help either.
The Russian Tolkien fandom has a set of very specific Fanon, mostly First Age-related, most of which was established by published big fanfics (Yes, there is a bootleg Expanded Universe version of Arda in Russia, illegal in most of the world but legal in Motherland itself).
- The (common to most Tolkien fandoms) notion of Celegorm the blond
- The notion that the Feanorians and their warriors wore a uniform of red, black and silver
- The notion that there were human black knights in Angband (popularized by The Black Book Of Arda)
- The names and personalities of Finrod's ten faithful elves (from Beyond the Dawn) and of the Nazgul (from The Great Game, and no, they are different from the ICE version known to the West)

Sherlock Holmes

A very popular bit of fanon in the Sherlock Holmes fandom is that Dr. Watson's middle name is Hamish; this theory was first devised by Dorothy L. Sayers in order to explain why Watson's wife calls him James in one story although his first name was previously stated to be John (Hamish is the Scottish form of James).
This happens quite a bit in Sherlock Holmes. Among other things, it's fairly established fanon that Holmes' parents were called Violet and Sanger, he at some point was part of a Shakespearean acting troupe that toured America, his older brother Mycroft is head of the proto British secret service, and the eldest of the Holmes brothers is called Sherringford (the name Arthur Conan Doyle gave to Sherlock in early drafts), a country squire.
More Sherlock Holmes fanon; Watson had three wives, Holmes and Irene Adler met in Montenegro while he was faking his death between The Final Problem and The Empty House and fathered a child who would grow up to be Nero Wolfe, that the King of Bohemia was Edward VII, that Holmes worked on the Jack the Ripper case, that Holmes's retirement to bee-keeping was in the hope of creating "royal jelly" (believed then to be a sort of Fountain of Youth) and that Holmes spent the last decade of his life fighting Nazis before dying at the ripe old age of 90. All of this is present in W.S. Baring-Gould's tongue-in-cheek "biography", Sherlock Holmes on Baker Street.
A mostly irrelevant Epileptic Tree refers to Watson's bulldog, which is mentioned in A Study in Scarlet when Holmes and Watson first meet and move in together and then completely disappears. The theory varies, saying that Holmes either used the dog for an experiment that resulted in its death, or, the more PETA-friendly version, where he simply had Watson get rid of it.
The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, written by Arthur Conan Doyle's son, Adrian, and his editor, John Dickson Carr, is in an awkward place where half the fandom considers it fanon, and the other half considers it Fanon Discontinuity.
For some reason there's a train of thought in parts of the fandom that either Sherlock or Watson (most commonly the former) are Female-to-Male Transsexualism's.
Many adaptions talking about Sherlocks family-life (Young Sherlock Holmes, The Seven Percent Solution, Sherlock seems to be oddly agreed on the fact that a young Sherlock Holmes deduced that his father was having an affair, told his mother and ened up ruining the family.
For some reason, Holmes/Watson is so widespread, it's often mistaken for actual Canon by fandom newbies. Adaptations don't help. Is considered Serious Business by some fans to the point essays are written about the "subtext". (In series where "ejaculation" means "sudden exclamation" and nothing else, at that.)
Watson's appearance is never described beyond being "brown as a nut and thin as a lath" in A Study in Scarlet, and that after having just returned from severe illness abroad. Nowadays, though, it's generally accepted that he was blond - helped along, perhaps, by David Burke of the Granada series and Vitaly Solomin of the Russian series, not to mention Jude Law and Martin Freeman.
Another piece of fanon that's spreading is the given name "Geoffrey" for Inspector G. Lestrade. This originated with Marcia Wilson and has been picked up by an unknown number of fans, including Aleine Skyfire and Riandra.

Tales of the Frog Princess

Tales of the Frog Princess has loads where Garrid and his past is concerned. This is what happens when an author leaves so much of an awesome character's life up for interpretation. We have all agreed that:
- Garrid had an emotionally abusive father (names tend to vary), but his mother (who is always named Lucia) loved him very much.
- Furthering that, Lucia was not in love with Garrid's father. The most popular reasons for marriage are that it was arranged, or that Garrid's father was a Stalker with a Crush, and forced her to marry him.
  - Also, Garrid's mother was born a human, but his father turned her into a vampire when they argued. Bit of a nasty shock for her...
  - Also, she died young, when Garrid was a teen.
- Garrid's best friends are Andrea "Andy" Blackskull and Benjamin "Ben" Toumbclaw. Ben and Andy have a thing for each other.
- Garrid had a love for mischief and is also a Deadpan Snarker. Especially where Eadric is concerned.
  - ...but he's totally sweet to Li'l. This isn't that far from Canon, really...
- He met Li'l at the age of 19.
- He ran away from home, due to his father not wanting him to marry Li'l.
- His surname is Finnegan.

Other Examples

Many Discworld fans complained when later books established that Vetinari went to the Assassins Guild school, when previous books had established he'd invented the modern, legal Assassins Guild. They hadn't, although they did establish he'd legalized the Thieves Guild. A continuity problem is that the first Guild master introduced in the series, in fact in the very first book, is the distinctly shabby, low-life and down-at-heel Zlorf Flanellfoot, who leads a band of equally gutter-level killers. This character is totally against the evolving perception of the Assassins' Guild being a college for gentlemen of good family, which reaches its most detailed description in Pyramids. And the events of Night Watch occurring thirty years before the Discworld "present" clash badly with the Flanellfoot-era Guild (which must be in the same timeband): here we see the college for gentlemen killers with an entirely different President, the urbane and well-bred Dr Follett. So... which of two entirely different perceptions of the Guild is "right"?
Phantom, Susan Kay's retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, has achieved this in some parts of the fandom, especially regarding the names of characters who went nameless in the original Gaston Leroux novel (eg. Nadir for the Persian).
Many fans of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials assumed that having a dæmon of the same sex indicated homosexuality. This is often considered truth nowadays by most fans, and when asked about the matter Pullman said that he'd never thought about it, but that he liked the idea. One wonders what a bisexual would have. A hermaphrodite dæmon ?
Animorphs: Marco is gay. Notable because (since the characters themselves take turns narrating) the numerous instances of the canon explicitly stating the opposite can be completely disregarded by accounting them to self-denial.
- Neatly allows all the Animorphs to be paired up by putting Marco and Ax together instead of having two odd men out from the established Jake/Cassie and Rachel/Tobias couples. Marco and Ax are also each other's best friends after Jake and Tobias and briefly live together near the end of the series.
Good Omens: That Gadre'el is Crowley's True Name.
- This actually comes from the passage 1 Enoch 69:6,

And the third was named Gadreel: he it is who showed the children of men all the blows of death, and he led astray Eve, and showed [the weapons of death to the sons of men] the shield and the coat of mail, and the sword for battle, and all the weapons of death to the children of men. And from his hand they have proceeded against those who dwell on the earth from that day and for evermore.

- Pretty much every Good Omens fanfic describes Crowley as tall and lean and Aziraphale as plump and blonde, even though the most we get in the book as far as I remember is that Crowley has dark hair, good cheekbones and Cool Shades, and Aziraphale gets manicures.
  - The casting of the 2019 Amazon Prime miniseries has pretty much cemented those descriptions now.
A Song of Ice and Fire is rife with fanon theories, helped by the author's tendency to leave a lot of foreshadowing and subtle clues throughout the novels. One of the most widely supported theories in the fandom is that Jon Snow's parents were Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, instead of Ned and an unknown woman. For a good example of the arguments made on behalf of it, there's this essay.
A lot of The Chronicles of Narnia fandom seems to firmly believe that the Pevensies got married and had kids while they were in Narnia. There is one segment of the plot involving romance for any of them in the entire series, and it never comes up again. That would be the part of The Horse And his Boy where Rabadash wants to force a marriage on Susan.
The Hatter's famous riddle from Alice in Wonderland - "How is a raven like a writing desk?" - was intended, according to Word of God, to have no answer. Even so, the fanonical answer is almost as well-known as the riddle itself: "Poe wrote on both."
- The Annotated Alice gives other speculative answers, including "Because they should be shut up" and "The notes they are noted for are not musical."
- Silverlock implies another tack by having the Hatter ask "Why is an angleworm like a parallelogram?" and when challenged respond "I don't know as they're alike."
Percy Jackson and The Olympians has several character facts that are fanon, the most prominent being that Annabeth can't swim. It does make sense within the canon considering she's a daughter of Athena, an therefore naturally born a rival of Poseidon meaning that her and water do not mix.
The 39 Clues has some prominent fanon.
- Most fans believe that Kurt, who appeared in all of one book and was never mentioned thereafter, was an undercover Vesper, despite there being no canon evidence supporting this.
- It's generally taken for granted that Isabel Kabra nee Vesper-Hollingsworth and Arthur Trent (revealed to be a Vesper) interacted with each other in their youth, with many fans going so far as to believe they were in a relationship prior to Arthur meeting Hope.
- Quite a few fans are absolutely convinced that Amy's full name is Amy Hope Cahill.

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