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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SakuraNoMiko wrote:

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. 

There is some ongoing 'new fandom weirdness' going on in Venom fic, in which writers who come from the comics tend to fall into using language common to the comics, and people got into fandom from the movie using that language.

This can lead to some confusion, particularly around how to talk respectfully about a character who is literally a goo alien from a species that does not have gender and reproduces by budding.

Since this can have some overlap with the ongoing cultural discussion about how be respectful and kind when you want to talk to and about trans and nonbinary people, it's worth laying out why there's some differences going on, and where they come from.

• The comics address this by calling the symbiote, 'the symbiote' or 'the Venom symbiote,' and using it/its/itself language for the symbiote. In the comics, only the combo of symbiote+host = Venom, and the name Venom is applied to any host the symbiote takes. Specifically, people who know and love the symbiote use 'symbiote' and 'it/itself' language in a positive, non harmful setting, and this is largely taking place in the context of the symbiote being an alien creature with different cultural norms

• The movie took a different approach: the symbiote's name is Venom from the first discussion, and the movie uses he/him/himself. (Specifically, the symbiote makes an introduction using the name Venom to another character personally, and other characters call the symbiote alone Venom and use he/him language when they consider the symbiote sentient, but other characters who are not nice use “it”; and don't know the symbiote's name.) The line “We are Venom” is said towards the end of the movie, but it's not quite clear if what that shift means.

So, fic writers are using both of these modalities, both supported by canon, AND some people are also using different ways to talk about the symbiote that are drawn from some existing etiquette about how to talk about trans and nb people who don't have a traditional gender (like, sometimes using 'they/them/themselves’) language.

So there is a lot going on in Venom fandom about this, I so far have not seen any grossness or antitrans sentiment going around (tho, hi, it's the internet, I'm sure there's some out there), and I hope this helps explain where folks are coming from.

For myself, I got used to the conventions of the comics, but I've been reading a lot of fic about the movie, so I'm playing fast and loose.I do tend to use 'it' or 'they' with the symbiote by itself, because that's what the comics do and that's what I'm used to doing with nb characters. I basically never use the name Venom for just the symbiote unless I am comment on a fic where the author has used that convention; - it can cause too much confusion to try and insist on different language, and I'm not convinced it really adds much to push for it. “He” for the symbiote alone seems just weird and wrong to me, but it's also common in the comics for people to address Venom (when the symbiote and host are 'suited up) by the host's gender, so it's coming from nowhere. There is a basis for a lot of these choices.

It's a developing fandom and I'm not sure where the consensus is going to land, if indeed it ever does.

So the relationship of Hazmat and Mettle is kind of fascinating to me. Let's go through why.

( Ken Mack: the solid metal surfer )

( Jennifer Takeda: All-American girl one day, walking WMD the next. )

( Before they start dating... )

Why I like them:

( Why they work )

*EDIT: I edited Mettle's ethinic background to add the Person of Color note. In Avengers Academy #4, Mettle talks about his life and the illustrations show him as distinctly browner than his white Jewish mom, and with short dreads. His dad is shown in one image (off in the corner, in no detail at all) as being a brown/dark tan person with long dreaded hair. I read this as Black American, making Mettle one of many many characters of color whose race is invisible due to his superhuman powers. This is a problem, because he mostly looked like the Red Skull, who partied with Hitler and makes a point of calling some people less than human. The Black Jewish kid looks like the most prominent Nazi of the Marvel universe- FAIL or attempt at interesting character development?