(The following contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Supernatural, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures, as well as the full series of Harry Potter novels. Also mentions sexual assault.)

So have you stepped foot in Supernatural fandom this week?

Doctor Merlin is not an SPN fan, but is a fan of watching the SPN fen, always with fondness, often with popcorn. (To be fair, she watches most other fans with popcorn ready. Sometimes also aspirin.) This week, SPN canon did a Bad, Bad Thing, and as happens when any show does a Bad, Bad Thing, fans are up at arms on opposite ends of the argument as to whether it was indeed a Bad, Bad Thing, or an understandable thing taken from a certain context, or just more fodder for "those whiners" to chew. This particular Bad, Bad Thing is something large groups of the fandom have been complaining about in the canon for a few seasons now, and as every time something Bad happens in the canon, large groups of the fandom who don't see it as a problem are asking those who do why they don't go find another fandom.

This happens a lot.

Be it something major that changes the canon (see this past summer's flailing over Torchwood) or something that emerges over time as an unsavory theme permeating an otherwise enjoyable series (see RaceFail: Stargate Edition), rare indeed is the canon that doesn't do something to piss off someone somewhere. Doctor Merlin blames Joss Whedon. A lot. Loudly. Joss said that he didn't give the fans what they wanted, he gave them what they needed, and every hack wannabe who read the quote has used it to justify any and every idiotic writing decision made ever since, or at least the ones where they had to run into fans with pitchforks, emails and long, detailed letters to the production company folded up in neat little origami forms that spelled "WTF?" Showrunners who might have spent ten more minutes considering that killing off popular characters, having female characters sexually assaulted, and breaking up the canon couples on the series might possibly be bad ideas in the overall scheme of not pissing off their fanbases, they latch onto the broken logic. "You needed this story." (Really? Maybe I was recovering from an illness and just needed a little brain candy while I was on bedrest. Maybe I watched a cartoon specifically because I was bone-weary of watching people and characters I loved get raped and/or killed. Thanks for knowing that I "needed" to see it in the places I went to hide away from that reality for an hour or two. The horse you rode in on is equally unwelcome.) This is not to say showrunners failed to do those things before, repeatedly and with just as little foresight into the effect it would have on their popularity, just that now they have an excuse card to toss up when the inevitable happens.

Note that word "inevitable," and do not mistake my meaning. It is not in fact a certainty that your canon or mine will fall down on race, gender, or even intelligence issues. Some canons don't. Sarah Connor did well, and to a lesser extent, so did Farscape. Doctor Merlin still adores Gargoyles because it managed so well. No, the inevitable thing is that, should the canon screw up, the fans will complain. We're fans. That's what we do. We're good at it.

The question for us is, what do we do after? We complain, on our blogs and our soapboxes and over the phone to our sympathetic friends and on the shoulders of our SOs, and we take apart the canon piece by piece to see what went wrong where, and we perform analyses of long-term trends by the writers and short-term effects on the ratings. And then we're left with a problem. If canon sucks, how do we stay part of it? The naysayers who meet every criticism with "Why don't you just get out?" have one point: if canon hurts us this badly when we watch, why do we stay?

This gets complicated. Bear with me.

Every show canon is different. (Which is good, because otherwise we'd always be stuck in copyright violation hell.) This means every situation is different. And of course, every fan watching is bringing something different to the party. A woman of color who is also a rape survivor is going to react differently than a Caucasian man who has not been assaulted when the series shows the male lead mimicking sexual violence as he kills a Black female guest star. (Or maybe not. Everyone responds their own way, and generalizations are exactly as useful as the sweeping way in which they're made.) Shorter, what pisses you off might not strike me as particularly bothersome, and vice-versa. More likely, what pisses you off might strike me as problematic but something that can be addressed, fixed, or forgiven in the wider scheme of the canon. Which is to say, my love for the source may outweigh my outrage at the stupid thing it's done this time.

Sometimes that works. Sometimes we can set aside our annoyance, and calm down our anger, and remind ourselves that just because every Black male character on the show has been killed violently does not mean the writing staff are racist pricks. It could mean that they are attempting to make a metatextual statement about the racist overtones of the genre, and by doing it so prominently, attempting to draw attention to the matter to foster debate, discussion, and ultimate change. It more likely means they're clueless, didn't notice what they were doing, and will respond to feedback on same with flabbergasted horror (which will then be followed up by either "I'm so sorry and didn't realize and I'll try harder next time," or far more likely "I'm not a racist, how dare you say that I am, some of my best friends … " and continue to miss the point). Sometimes we decide that the things we love about the canon --- be it the characters, the ideas, the relationships, the history --- are important enough to us to hold onto the rest, and hope for change.

Sometimes change happens.

The Whoniverse has been a central location for Racefail in years past, and for good reason. (I could go into a long list right now. Suffice it to say, they screwed up a lot.) However, to the surprise and delight of people who are me, the canon seems to be righting itself. This year, only The Sarah Jane Adventures is getting a full complement of episodes, but in this season/series (pick your Pond side), the character of Clyde has been put into the forefront instead of kept as the oft-maligned comic relief (the comic role is now filled by Rani's parents, but sympathetically, and with bonus "not an obnoxious mother figure for once, holyshit," added in). It's been a welcome change in tone. Sure, the show might crash and burn next year, and it doesn't mean the other two shows won't captain the failboat all the way into the iceberg, but it's a start.

Faith can pay off. And sometimes, faith just means getting slapped down again.

See: most of our shows. See: most of our showrunners. See: why those of us who latch onto strong female characters spend a lot of time being pissed off. See: why people GAFIATE and get their cable shut off. See: Potterdammerung.

(continued)