“Canon” and “fanon” in the danny phantom/detective comics (DC) comics crossover fandom: Expanding authorship and authority in transformative fan works

Abstract

In 2020, a new crossover fandom emerged, that of Danny Phantom x DC Comics (DPxDC), prompting thousands of fanfictions and participants. As neither media connected in their canons, how did this crossover fandom come to be? The content tags on these crossover fanfictions and on Tumblr posts collected Jan–April 2024 were collected and analyzed in a mixed-methods discourse analysis approach with inductive coding for key words “canon” and “fanon”. This research adds the consideration of a crossover fandom to the field of writing studies, and it is one of the first articles to explore fanfiction within writing studies, especially in a mixed methods study. Underpinning this research are grassroots activism, critical theory, and agential theories of resistance practices. I found that DPxDC fans consciously resist canon material and the canon author(s), enacting agency through distributed and communal writing practices and claiming a kind of personal and communal authorship and authority over works, offering a new way of understanding agency and distributed authorship in writing studies.