So, over on Pillowfort, SakuraNoMiko had a great post about reading fic without being involved in the canon that I responded to, and I'm posting my response over here because I really enjoyed the process of thinking about it and would love more of people's thoughts!

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Quick note: I have no idea how to format html beyond the basics, so there are parts of this that are formatting in keeping with the post on Pillowfort and I am leaving them for now. Let me know if it's showing up wonky for you!
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That said--has anyone gotten really into a fic without knowing the canon? Read fic before seeing the actual show? I'm curious if it influenced your opinion of the show when you finally saw it.

I have actually read a lot of fic without knowing the canon!

So, I can actually date nearly precisely when I decided that, not only could I read fic beyond the part of the canon I already knew, I could read fic with no intention of ever learning the canon! I lay the credit on this post  from 2006. - https://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/63288.html

Allow me to steal a quote from that post by theFourthVine: 

"[Me and TV] is never going to be a pairing of legend, unless the legend involves a lot of headaches, stupid questions, avoidance, and humiliating misunderstandings.

But I was learning that most major fandoms were TV shows. I felt - well, hampered. But in November 2003, I clicked on Out of Whack. Some careful reading later, I learned a great truth: fan fiction can be canon-optional. Later, I learned that I am actually much more likely to enjoy reading the fan fiction if I don't know the canon when I start, and TV fandoms became my happy home. "

See, this seems really obvious to me now, but the reality of the situation was, I really did need someone to give me permission to treat fandom as a worthy effort in and of itself, without having to have a relationship with the canon beforehand. 

Which I was really happy to find out! Because I had a lot of fic writers that I loved who were writing in fandoms that I didn't have access to because they were TV series from before the era of automatic DVD releases - The Sentinel, Due South, etc. And while I've seen a few episodes each from each of these shows, and I can see some of the appeal of the original canon, it's just been so long and I'm so divorced from the standards of normal at the time, that I'm fine with just giving up on the canon and enjoying the fic for what it is. 

SakuraNoMiko wrote:

A possibly secondary question: of course, fanfiction wouldn't exist without some sort of canon source, but do you think it's necessary to know the canon to fully enjoy a fic? Like, do you think a fic should be able to stand on it's own, or is that kind of  stupid idea, given that fic is made to be alongside canon? What about AUs that have very little to do with canon? Fics where people are acting out-of-character?

Somewhat obviously, I'm going to land on "Nope, you don't need the canon to love the fandom!" Good writing is worth it, even if you are going to miss some of the context or you have to check in with a fandom primer to get. Good writing is an experience worth having, even if you end up not knowing the exact lines between canon and fanon.  And like you mentioned, you can pick up a lot of canon just from being in the community. 

In some ways, reading without canon does mean that you are more vulnerable to getting confused about the facts of the canon - like you mentioned in watching Supernatural, you'd picked up that demons were really common, well before that became true in canon.  I've definitely picked up some elements of Transformers fic and assumed it was canon, only to read stuff that made it clear, whoops, that's just one author's headcanon! Or a common fanon that not everyone agrees with! 

One tactic I have used for getting familiarity with fandoms I know I am never going to connect with canon - I read a lot of meta! Episode summaries, or primers, or Youtube videos talking about the show - they are all usually very explicit about what's canon, and you can pick up the main facts about things. On tumblr, meta posts took a lot of that role!

To be fair, when I think about the fandoms I read in without knowing the canon fully, I usually have a barrier to the canon that prevents me from engaging with it. For The Eagle fandom, I have seen the film, but I can't get my hands on the original books by Rosemary Sutcliffe, so I rely on fandom to flesh out the details from the books. For DueSouth, The Sentinel,  and X-Files, those are all TV shows that are pretty time intensive, and for a while they were difficult to get access to (unless you invested in your own copies of the DVD's) - since the time and money involved were a high barrier, I formed an attachment that was mostly free of canon. Transformers and some other continuing comics series - I like comics but I find continuing series hard to follow outside of collections, and often difficult to find without buying for myself. 

And then there are the fandoms where I was engaged with the canon, and then, welp, to quote Nick Fury: I recognize the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid-ass decision, I’ve elected to ignore it.  Some fandoms, I will read the fic, and I will love them from afar, but holy shit I am not doing that to myself again.  So, Once Upon A Time,  I'll read some of the fic about the characters I love, but I am never ever going to watch another episode. 

yalumesse

Why I Love It: Neville Longbottom/Draco Malfoy  I repeat, Neville Longbottom/Draco Malfoy,  how is this a thing? How? how is it an amazing thing? How does it take the backwards attitudes of the wizarding world and run with them towards their ideas about sexual mores and the legal system? It's full of pining and people misunderstanding each other for legitimate reasons regarding culture and fear and shame and actually carefully addresses it and deal with the aftermath!  The premise is that, in pureblood circles, virginity is a Big Deal, so when Draco happily loses his to Neville in his last year at Hogwarts, and Lucius finds out, Lucius launches a lawsuit against Neville for damages. AND MARRYING DRACO IS PART OF THE SETTLEMENT, which Draco accepts in order to get out of his father's horrible clutches.  We see a fairly OOC Draco trying to figure out who he is and what his value is, and finding it again, and Neville quietly struggling with the idea that he's done something awful without meaning to to someone he cares deeply about, and both of them SEETHING WITH FEELINGS. It's great. You'll need to take occasional breaks. 

2.Title: Blake's Corollary by pagination
Fandom: Batman, Nolanverse, Dark Knight Rises 
Author Summary: If there are any two men less likely to share their toys than Bane and Bruce, John doesn't want to meet them. Also? John is not a toy, goddammit.

Why I Love It: I'm just going to include some of the tags here: nuns can be badass too, orphans are terrifying, John Blake is kind of a troll, Bruce has the emotional maturity of hand soap, when Bane is the sane one you know things are really bad, Barsad hates everything, Babs rules. This fic is awesome, because it takes the pretensions of the Nolanverse Batman and Bane relationship, and injects the impatient snark of John Robin Blake, who is simply trying to save Gotham, Bruce, you sack of crap, and watches the fireworks. It gives Blake's world a fully fleshed life - the orphans, the scary and hilarious nun who raised him, the costs of training with two of the most dangerous fighters alive, and the emotional costs of living in a city like Gotham. Gotham eats its children, and deciding to care about that in the face of the inevitable pain is where the absolute purity of Blake's spirit shines through - he will not permit himself to ignore it. He will not look away. He's magnificent, and a magnificent shit, and this fic manages to be plotty and pornful and full of wonderful asides to a broader world beyond the Batcave. Read it immediately. 

3. Title: Thomas and the Society of Sentinels by Alex51324
Fandom: Downton Abbey, (and a fusion with some worldbuilding of The Sentinel, a tv series from 1996)
Author Summary: After being arrested for gross indecency with another male person, Thomas Barrow learns that he has a natural gift which will plunge him into a startlingly different society which exists in parallel with the one in which he has lived his life until now. He’s not entirely sure whether or not that’s a good thing…. Downton Abbey/Sentinel fusion. (If you are not familiar with the Sentinel, fear not: the note at the beginning of chapter 1 will fill you in on everything you need to know.) This story occurs in the same universe as my other Sentinel/Guide stories, but is intended to work as a standalone. Diverges from Downton Abbey cannon in series 3 (3x07 UK or 3x06 US)

Why I Love It: Thomas Barrow, in canon, is a weaselly little shit of a servant who works in a large household, who has a very dim view of humanity and a willingness to screw other people over to benefit himself. He truly believes that everyone is out to screw everyone else over, and the only difference is how well you can get away with it. He's also gay, and his relationships with men throughout the series generally reinforce his awful worldview that people, even people who are close to you and at risk of exposure themselves, will screw you over for their own sake. So, what happens when he's, by act of fate, plopped in amongst a bunch of people who are totally fine with his sexuality, are all kind and well adjusted and go out of their way to ensure the happiness of everyone who comes in contact with them? Who legitimately will bend over backwards to ensure that he's happy and will assume the best of him?  He absolutely does not buy it one little bit and screws himself over in the process of trying to protect himself. This fic. THIS FIC!  Is all about the process of beginning to trust, and how your past experiences mean you will view something totally differently than someone with different experiences, and also how utterly not obvious that is to the other person. If there ever was a fic about maladaptive coping mechanisms coming to bite you in the ass, and how to fix it, and where it can't be fixed, ever, not even a little, except for maybe when it can? this is that fic. 

4. Title: Muckraker! by ORPHAN (not an orphan account, that's the author's name)
Fandom: Venom (film)
Author's Summary: After the probe crash, Eddie's getting his life back together. Sort of. So what if his new beat writing PR puff pieces for Silicon Valley startups isn't exactly glamorous? And so what if every time he closes his eyes, he dreams of the distant stars, and the bottom of a smooth black hole, one that used to be filled with teeth?

Why I Love It: Venom fandom is exploding, and I love it. I was in it for the comics, but this uses mostly movie canon and maybe a little bit of comics to flesh it out, and it's wonderful. It's from the sub-genre of "Eddie and Venom get together after the crash," and it gives a lot of good and loving space to Eddie pining for his lost symbiote and being a resolutely badass ruthlessly compassionate anticapitalist investigator while trying to put himself back together. He has support systems, a new job, and a relentless drive to show exactly how the rich and powerful are shutting their eyes to the harm they are doing to the vulnerable people of San Francisco.

This fic utterly NAILS the way Eddie was so focused on compassion and listening to marginalized people that he sometimes literally cannot relate to the average human, who's willing to ignore a little bit of suffering, just here and there, just because what can you do about it?  But Eddie Brock would walk up to the Garden of Eden and punch God in the face for kicking two children out of their home. Also, the Venom symbiote is really, truly alien here, and there's some lovely focus on its recovery and their relationship and love and it is a fucking gift and you should read it immediately. 

Edit - I feel like I should mention that the warnings on this fic are a little vague - the violence levels are pretty normal for the comics, which are slightly more detailed from the movie. If the movie was PG 13, this fic leans towards R.  It's not dwelling on the suffering and pain, but there is one scene of deliberate torture, some passing animal harm, and some gleeful violence against white supremacist shitbags. And, ya know, people get eaten. 

5. Title: King and Lionheart by thehoyden - FYI, this fic is AO3 locked and you need an account to read it. comment if you need an invite, I'm happy to share. 
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Author's Summary: Sidney’s wedding day doesn’t go quite as he’d planned. When he’d bothered to imagine it at all, he’d thought of a nice June wedding in Nova Scotia, outdoors with the sun streaming down. He hadn’t imagined this hurried affair on the tarmac on a rainy and unseasonably cool day in early September, a month after his twenty-fifth birthday.

Why I Love It: They get married in the first scene. They get married in the first scene for immigration and hockey reasons and it's still a GLACIALLY SLOW SLOWBURN FIC. Oh, GOD, they are MARRIED and they don't speak the same LANGUAGE - stick a fork in me, I am D O N E. (this kink is bulletproof for me) Ugh, I love this fic so much. This is all about Sid, the boy who would do anything for hockey, and finding Geno, who feels the same way, and they don't know each other and can't speak the same language but they both have hockey in their hearts and it's beautiful and slow and there are no stupid misunderstandings at all, just the slow creation of a real relationship out of a fake marriage and I LOVE IT.