Is "canon" meaningless?

[Talakeal]

So many times in modern discussions of fictional settings people through around the word "canon", usually to dismiss someone else's opinion by stating that the source is no longer "canon". But in todays world of retcons, reboots, and cross platform media it seems somewhat meaningless, especially when the decision is made purely on the business end of things rather than for any creative reason. This is especially true in the case of Star Wars, where they recently sold the company and declared everything non canon, or DC where they rebooted everything with the New 52 and now have relegated everything that came before to some sort of foggy limbo where it might or might not be canon at the writer's whim.

One particularly irksome example for me is the Warcraft RPG. The licensee fell through, and Blizzard immediately declared the RPG books were not only currently canon, but had never been canon. This is despite the fact that 90% of the setting content in World of Warcraft came directly from an RPG book that had been published several years earlier and that imo the quality of the RPG was much higher than the video games. Also, Blizzard has never had any strict rules regarding canon, frequently retconning previous games and even releasing tie in media concurrently with the game that it directly contradicts. Still, now you can't even mention the RPG in a warcraft lore discussion without being shouted down as a non canon heretic, despite the fact that no one had any problems with it during the years it was published.

Another example I noticed was the Warhammer Fantasy Battle universe. Its has atleast seven different continuities which directly contradict one another, to say nothing of the minor retcons and mistakes in each new edition of each book.

The classic 1-3 edition WHFB game.
The 4-6 edition WHFB game which culminated in Storm of Chaos.
The 7-8 edition WHFB game which is culminating in the End Times.
The hogshead RPG.
The black industries RPG.
The Time of Legends novels.
The Warhammer Online continuity.

Many of which are concurrently published and have SOME events which carry over into the other continuities but are never outright stated to be the same or not, merely have irreconcilable contradictions.


Historically Canon has been used to distinguish works by the original author or events which are purportedly true in the case of historical or religious texts. To me it seems that when dealing with a modern fictional franchise across many platforms, artists, and corporate masters it doesn't really make sense to tightly constrain everything into one little box of what is, at the moment, "canon" and dismissing everything else.

[MrConsideration]

'Canon' originates in deciding which religious judgements counted, not which Star Wars extended universe books 'count'. Everyone basically invents their own headcanon anyway, and if you enjoy a work, why does it matter?

Especially as regards pnp roleplaying games, you can pick and choose as much as you like.

[Yora]

My only Canon is headcanon.

But I agree. In a world of reboots and alternative timelines, the destinction between official material and licensed fanfiction becomes indeed quite meaningless.
When things that were once official can become unofficial and be replaced by later material, there is nothing left that all writers can include in their work and remain consistent.

[huttj509]

Canon is not meaningless. In works where current releases build off of prior events, it provides a resource/guide as to what events happened when and how. Separating "this might be something the viewer's expected to be familiar with" from "that was a spinoff story that will never have relevance to a main line title."

Specific applications of canon, however, can absolutely be meaningless. IMO, Star Wars was not. It was establishing that, in the continuity of the movies, ABC "happened" and GHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ did not. This aids in setting expectations and setting for the new movies, which frees them do do their own thing without needing to account for the EU.

Whether a story is itself canon or not has no true effect on the story, if the story was iuntended to be a self contained entity. It still has the same content, relevance, interest, and meaning that it did before, it just means that other stories won't be referencing the events.

[danzibr]

Depends.

I think canon is not meaningless, in general. For the examples you cited, like the million reboots of certain series, yeah, canon doesn't mean much anymore. This problem usually only occurs when you have utterly gigantic series.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Canon was not meaningless in the Old EU, not with how self-referential it got at the end.

[Psyren]

Of course canon matters. I could write a Star Wars story where Palpatine kills Luke, Leia and Vader, crushes the Rebellion and rules uncontested for another several decades, and it might even be an entertaining read, but when it comes to continuing the franchise my offshoot story will be about as useful a starting point as Twilight.

Your WoW example is different though - it refers to removing the canonicity of things previously established - retconning in other words. That is a murkier area simply because whenever things like that happen the creator doing it (and the fans) tend to have certain elements from the original canon that they liked and want to keep. For example, when Mortal Kombat did its big reboot/retcon, some elements stayed the same - like the older Sub-Zero dying to become Noob, Jax getting metal arms, and Ermac being a gestalt entity comprised of souls.

Similarly, I expect when Star Wars does its "throw out the EU thing" that they are going to keep some of the names and events from the novels intact.

[Coidzor]

To the layman, basically, yes. We buy what we want to buy, read what we want to read, and keep ourselves as well informed as we can be/feel like arsing ourselves to be.

To the professional who has to work with the canon and not violate it except in pre-defined and authorized ways, it's a bit more relevant.

To someone who actually wants to create a decent story that doesn't depart from what has gone before except in ways that are completely intended it also has some relevance.

[Forum Explorer]

No it's not meaningless in general. Most stories and series are relatively self-contained and discussing what's canon there actually works.


However for the big groups that are still being written by multiple authors and intents, canon has a much shakier meaning, if any at all. Star Wars is likely the best example because it just does whatever, despite it's 'canon system'.

[jedipotter]

Yes, canon is meaningless. And it always has been. It really does not matter.


First off, canon is not some magical dream where the fiction is kept pure and good and true to the original. So get rid of the idea of a group of ''canon overlords that keep watch over the special fiction''. Canon is about: Money And the people that care about the money don't care if the X-Wing has a type 3 generator or a type 6 generator, they just care about making money.

Canon is just the way the people that own some fiction trick people into only buying their stuff. Period. And they do it as it works. When a fan is told that this story is special official canon, they are much more likely to buy it. But if a story is just a story, well it just does not have the special twinkle that says ''buy me'' to a fan. It becomes like anything else: they might want to take a chance on it or might not. But canon means lots of fans will buy something sight unseen.

See no fan wants to be caught with their pants down. If your a true fan, you must know everything. After all, if you did not know everything, you'd be a bad fan. And you sure don't want to be ''one upped '' by someone else, that might make them a bigger fan then you are, and you don't want that And companies prey off this stuff and more.

Most fans will buy a canon item before any other item. You just can't be a fan with out having all the canon. So when fan A meets fan B, chances are that they have both gotten all the canon stuff and can talk or discuss or argue about it all they want too. But the other stuff does not count, only canon counts. If you bring up that ''one (non-cannon) book, chances are some of the other fans have no read it anyway and they sure don't want to talk about things that they did not read, so they can toss out ''oh I don't care about non-canon stuff''.


It's not like canon keeps the fiction pure, the owners and money people don't care about that: they just want to make money. They don't care if a non-canon story says character A's father is B, but then they also don't care if canon A says the father was a and canon b says the father is b either. And it's not like all canon is perfect, and there is a canon czar that sorts it all out.

The owners and such will change canon on a whim....they don't care. They only care about making money.

[Hyena]

Yes, canon is meaningless. And it always has been. It really does not matter.


First off, canon is not some magical dream where the fiction is kept pure and good and true to the original. So get rid of the idea of a group of ''canon overlords that keep watch over the special fiction''. Canon is about: Money And the people that care about the money don't care if the X-Wing has a type 3 generator or a type 6 generator, they just care about making money.

Canon is just the way the people that own some fiction trick people into only buying their stuff. Period. And they do it as it works. When a fan is told that this story is special official canon, they are much more likely to buy it. But if a story is just a story, well it just does not have the special twinkle that says ''buy me'' to a fan. It becomes like anything else: they might want to take a chance on it or might not. But canon means lots of fans will buy something sight unseen.

See no fan wants to be caught with their pants down. If your a true fan, you must know everything. After all, if you did not know everything, you'd be a bad fan. And you sure don't want to be ''one upped '' by someone else, that might make them a bigger fan then you are, and you don't want that And companies prey off this stuff and more.

Most fans will buy a canon item before any other item. You just can't be a fan with out having all the canon. So when fan A meets fan B, chances are that they have both gotten all the canon stuff and can talk or discuss or argue about it all they want too. But the other stuff does not count, only canon counts. If you bring up that ''one (non-cannon) book, chances are some of the other fans have no read it anyway and they sure don't want to talk about things that they did not read, so they can toss out ''oh I don't care about non-canon stuff''.


It's not like canon keeps the fiction pure, the owners and money people don't care about that: they just want to make money. They don't care if a non-canon story says character A's father is B, but then they also don't care if canon A says the father was a and canon b says the father is b either. And it's not like all canon is perfect, and there is a canon czar that sorts it all out.

The owners and such will change canon on a whim....they don't care. They only care about making money.

I've read the entire post two times and still have absolutely no idea what you've just said, what's your point and whether or not you understand what the word "canon" means.

[Talakeal]

I've read the entire post two times and still absolutely no idea what you've just said, what's your point and whether or not you understand what the word "canon" means.

It makes some sense, although it seems a bit cynical.

The Warcraft example I used sort of falls into this category. They had no problems with the RPG books being canon until they were no longer being paid for the license, at which point they immediately declared them non canon as they didn't want to help someone else's sales on a product they were no longer getting paid for.

[Math_Mage]

I don't think it's coherent to say canon is meaningless just because many people who define specific canons have impure motives.

[Hyena]

Warcraft is a difficult case. Blizzard doesn't care about canon at all, because they don't actually care about the story. All they care about is awesome-looking bosses, awesome-looking faction leaders and generally flashy stuff. It's incredibly obvious from numerous things, but the most glaring example is the latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, can be essentially describes as this

"Hey, I have a midlife crysis. You remember Warcraft 2 with orcs and humans with oily muscles, who killed each other?"
"Yeah."
"Let's bring it back! People will think it's so cool to meet all the orcs they've read about."
"But... Aren't they dead?"
"Uh, well, we'll make something up. Maybe they used time travel or something."

[CarpeGuitarrem]

No it's not meaningless in general. Most stories and series are relatively self-contained and discussing what's canon there actually works.


However for the big groups that are still being written by multiple authors and intents, canon has a much shakier meaning, if any at all. Star Wars is likely the best example because it just does whatever, despite it's 'canon system'.

This is where I stand. The bigger (and more author-filled) a body of fiction is, the more meaningless its canon becomes. As a work gets longer, you start to have to retcon stuff, or you forget stuff, etc., etc.

So things like Dresden Files, Fullmetal Alchemist, Lord of the Rings: definitely meaningful canon.

Things like Doctor Who, mainstream comics: much less meaningful canon. In that case, it's more of a wibbley-wobbley canony-wanony ball of fiction. The better works are the ones that don't care.

Interesting to note: American TV tends to come out with a very strong internal canon, despite being long-running and involving multiple authors.

[cobaltstarfire]

I think it really depends on the story in question and stuff. And also the individual consuming the media of course.

For me canon is pretty important most of the time, I'm more interested in the vision of the creator than I am in fan works, or endeavors that companies engaged in using the characters without the creators input. This is mostly because in many cases when the creators vision gets left behind/ignored the quality of the media tends to drop for me, even if I'm not aware at the time why the quality is dipping. (normally I find out later and it's like...oh ok that makes sense now).


I don't think it's important in the big scheme of things, but I generally prefer for there to be some stability when a story is being told. But it's not needed.

Space Dandy for example doesn't have much in the way of an established canon beyond the behavior of the characters, and I suppose the really strongly multi-dimensional implications from certain episodes. It's fine that way, and quite fun to watch despite its lack of coherency. (I tend to view Space Dandy as more like a series of character sketches, just seeing where things can go without worrying about canon from one episode to the next)

[Eldan]

Things like Doctor Who, mainstream comics: much less meaningful canon. In that case, it's more of a wibbley-wobbley canony-wanony ball of fiction. The better works are the ones that don't care.

Definitely for Doctor Who. Especially since I've read some Fanfics which provide more interesting, beautiful, sad or coherent explanations for a lot of events than the actual show.

[Lheticus]

Yes, canon is meaningless. And it always has been. It really does not matter.


First off, canon is not some magical dream where the fiction is kept pure and good and true to the original. So get rid of the idea of a group of ''canon overlords that keep watch over the special fiction''. Canon is about: Money And the people that care about the money don't care if the X-Wing has a type 3 generator or a type 6 generator, they just care about making money.

Your post is one that I feel really needs to be addressed in segments, and I'm only prepared to address this one as of now. First, canon CAN be "pure and good and true to the original/the source material/itself." It requires at least 2 specific conditions that are inestimably difficult to achieve with a massive money-making series, though (which is why so many of these have canons that are indeed meaningless: )

1. The author(s) of the work make the effort to maintain perfect internal canon consistency.
2. The author(s) of the work maintain sufficient control over that work to negate the potential for Executive Meddling.

The second thing I'd like to say is there's "canon" and then there's "minutia." Boba Fett dying in the Sarlacc pit was canon until it wasn't, and an X-Wing having a type 3 or type 6 generator is minutia. Usually, there can be a few inconsistencies in the minutia without truly affecting canon.

[Mando Knight]

Similarly, I expect when Star Wars does its "throw out the EU thing" that they are going to keep some of the names and events from the novels intact.

The people who are at the head of writing the "new canon" is a story team that includes Star Wars canon veteran Leland Chee (aka the "Keeper of the Holocron," he was the guy in charge of straightening out contradictions and other messes within the old canon), so there will definitely be references to the old stuff (the more popular or easier to work into the new story it is, the more likely it'll return to canon, most likely).

The difference in the Star Wars canon in particular will be important: Episode VII will be by necessity some 30 years after Return of the Jedi... and will have Chewie, who died in 25 ABY according to the old canon. In fact, the entire Yuuzhan Vong invasion will likely be skipped (it ended ~29 ABY), and probably for the better. Any new fans coming into the EU after Episode VII is released will almost definitely look at the NJO series, the Dark Nest Crisis, and other post-Empire books and wonder why the Galaxy is so different from what they saw in the movie, and that's what the Legends label is for, to signify that it's an old canon work that doesn't necessarily fit with the new stories.

[Reverent-One]

This is where I stand. The bigger (and more author-filled) a body of fiction is, the more meaningless its canon becomes. As a work gets longer, you start to have to retcon stuff, or you forget stuff, etc., etc.

So things like Dresden Files, Fullmetal Alchemist, Lord of the Rings: definitely meaningful canon.

Things like Doctor Who, mainstream comics: much less meaningful canon. In that case, it's more of a wibbley-wobbley canony-wanony ball of fiction. The better works are the ones that don't care.

Interesting to note: American TV tends to come out with a very strong internal canon, despite being long-running and involving multiple authors.

I'd say it's the reverse. The smaller the body of fiction, the fewer the authors, the less the idea of canon matters, since it's going to be basically everything within the body and there's less information to be concerned about checking for consistency simply because there's less material. With larger works and more authors, without some consideration put towards canon and attempting to keep things in line, everything can easily fall apart and start confusing the readers.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I'd say it's the reverse. The smaller the body of fiction, the fewer the authors, the less the idea of canon matters, since it's going to be basically everything within the body and there's less information to be concerned about checking for consistency simply because there's less material. With larger works and more authors, without some consideration put towards canon and attempting to keep things in line, everything can easily fall apart and start confusing the readers.

But according to that logic, a short story by a single author should usually be an incoherent mess.

Shorter works have more meaningful canon because there's less going on to muck up canon. The more material there is in a corpus of fiction, the more potential there is for canon to get screwed-up, and the more work it requires to keep consistent. Ditto for multiple authors. Especially if said authors aren't writing sequentially (for instance, if two authors are working on sequential entries in the series at the same time).

[The New Bruceski]

I think it helps to see canon as something that holds certain works together rather than some hard law. When dealing with long storylines some things don't work out, and comic book reboots are a way to change your approach without being bound to things like "Green Lantern can't affect wood." If used well it allows people to keep things fresh without being hamstrung by some guy who got in charge long enough to torpedo a character they hated. If used badly it means they keep selling the same origin story over and over and over again (we get it Spiderman movies, you're doing it to hang onto the license, but come ON!)

WoW removing the RPG from canon when the license dissolved was saying "we're no longer working with them. As part of that we're making it official that we are not bound by things they put in the RPG, and they are not bound by things we add to the game." It's one of those i's that needs to be dotted for various reasons.

Star Wars has always held the EU in a separate "canon unless we decide otherwise when making movies, knock yourselves out" tier. Now that the movies are moving into a place where the EU already resides, they decided to make explicit that they aren't going to be looking to the EU for ideas. Makes sense, since the EU is a huge clusterfluffle of books that each take different things as canon while contradicting each other where they please, rape bugs (Kiliks), rape pheremones (Xizor), dead main characters, angsty children destroying planets, invading alien forces from beyond the universe (did they do this or am I getting it mixed up with the later Dune books?), et cetera. Not even the biggest Star Wars fan can expect moviewriters/moviegoers to get up to date on that.

[hamishspence]

invading alien forces from beyond the universe (did they do this or am I getting it mixed up with the later Dune books?), et cetera.

Beyond the galaxy rather than the universe - but yes, they did that, more than once. Marvel SW had the Nagai and Tof invasions (the heroes ended up teaming up with their invaders (Nagai) against worse invaders (Tofs) and winning) - and then there was the Vong (New Jedi Order series).

[jedipotter]

1. The author(s) of the work make the effort to maintain perfect internal canon consistency.

Keep in mind that the author is not in control. They just write a story. There are people behind the author, the ones that own/control/make money off the maltreat, they are the ones that make the say and have the final word.

So sure it's ''nice'' if an author works with the canon, but it does not mean much in the end, as they don't get to decide what is canon anyway.

2. The author(s) of the work maintain sufficient control over that work to negate the potential for ]Executive Meddling.

This only works for somethings.....once the big company/shady somebody owns it....then it is their call forever.

For example, there is someone at Disney, pretty high up, who can make the call on what is canon or not for Star Wars....but he is not a writer or creator or (maybe) even a fan....he is just a business guy.

The second thing I'd like to say is there's "canon" and then there's "minutia." Boba Fett dying in the Sarlacc pit was canon until it wasn't, and an X-Wing having a type 3 or type 6 generator is minutia. Usually, there can be a few inconsistencies in the minutia without truly affecting canon.

I come back to the point that it does not matter, it is all meaningless.

Take poor Boba. He ''dies'' in VI. Oh, but wait he is popular...and they can make money selling things about Boba. So ''suddenly'' Boba is alive to make them money. And they just toss in the ''canon'' as a gimmick...a trick to make fans buy it. And it works! Fans buy up ''official canon stuff '' like hot cakes! And lots of Star Wars fans are fans of Boba....and as true fans they must have the true and official real story about Boba.

Though it does not matter. It is just a story. Someone somewhere said it was canon, for the explicit reason of making money. At least for now, and for as long as they get their money. But a week from now, that someone can say ''that was not the real story...that is not canon, but bring out a new story written by a person and say ''But this is the real story and it's canon'' all to just make money.

[Reverent-One]

But according to that logic, a short story by a single author should usually be an incoherent mess.

Shorter works have more meaningful canon because there's less going on to muck up canon. The more material there is in a corpus of fiction, the more potential there is for canon to get screwed-up, and the more work it requires to keep consistent. Ditto for multiple authors. Especially if said authors aren't writing sequentially (for instance, if two authors are working on sequential entries in the series at the same time).

No, I'm saying that for a short story by a single author, the idea of canon is pretty much meaningless and irrelevant (If everything's canon, nothing is. [/Syndrome]). You're right that a larger work has more room for inconsistencies, but that's exactly why canon is more important, because it deals with ironing those out so that stories can make sense without confusing the readers. There's no reason to be concerned about what's canon in "The Fault in our Stars", it's a self-contained work, it's not going to referenced in anything else, nor are there any other works it's dependent on. There is a reason to be concerned with the canon of Fullmetal Alchemist because of the original anime and manga/Brotherhood differences, so for example, someone watching either of the movies should know which one they're dealing with.

Star Wars has always held the EU in a separate "canon unless we decide otherwise when making movies, knock yourselves out" tier. Now that the movies are moving into a place where the EU already resides, they decided to make explicit that they aren't going to be looking to the EU for ideas. Makes sense, since the EU is a huge clusterfluffle of books that each take different things as canon while contradicting each other where they please, rape bugs (Kiliks), rape pheremones (Xizor), dead main characters, angsty children destroying planets, invading alien forces from beyond the universe (did they do this or am I getting it mixed up with the later Dune books?), et cetera. Not even the biggest Star Wars fan can expect moviewriters/moviegoers to get up to date on that.

Keeping the rest of the EU as canon wouldn't require everyone watching the new movies to be aware of everything that took place in the EU. Regardless of whether or not the EU is kept, stuff happened in the intervening years between Return of the Jedi and Episode VII, and regardless of whether or not that stuff is the stuff described in the EU, it's not going to be mentioned unless it's relevant to the plot of the movie.

I come back to the point that it does not matter, it is all meaningless.

Take poor Boba. He ''dies'' in VI. Oh, but wait he is popular...and they can make money selling things about Boba. So ''suddenly'' Boba is alive to make them money. And they just toss in the ''canon'' as a gimmick...a trick to make fans buy it. And it works! Fans buy up ''official canon stuff '' like hot cakes! And lots of Star Wars fans are fans of Boba....and as true fans they must have the true and official real story about Boba.

Though it does not matter. It is just a story. Someone somewhere said it was canon, for the explicit reason of making money. At least for now, and for as long as they get their money. But a week from now, that someone can say ''that was not the real story...that is not canon, but bring out a new story written by a person and say ''But this is the real story and it's canon'' all to just make money.

Stuff like a character being alive or dead is certainly not meaningless because it affects the stories told in the future.

[Psyren]

I come back to the point that it does not matter, it is all meaningless.

Take poor Boba. He ''dies'' in VI. Oh, but wait he is popular...and they can make money selling things about Boba. So ''suddenly'' Boba is alive to make them money. And they just toss in the ''canon'' as a gimmick...a trick to make fans buy it. And it works! Fans buy up ''official canon stuff '' like hot cakes! And lots of Star Wars fans are fans of Boba....and as true fans they must have the true and official real story about Boba.

Though it does not matter. It is just a story. Someone somewhere said it was canon, for the explicit reason of making money. At least for now, and for as long as they get their money. But a week from now, that someone can say ''that was not the real story...that is not canon, but bring out a new story written by a person and say ''But this is the real story and it's canon'' all to just make money.

For the record, I get what you're saying and even agree (it's one of the reasons I can't get into long-running serial stories like comics.) But not all creative works are like this by a longshot.

[Mando Knight]

For example, there is someone at Disney, pretty high up, who can make the call on what is canon or not for Star Wars....but he is not a writer or creator or (maybe) even a fan....he is just a business guy.

He's Leland Chee. He's been at Lucasfilm since '97, and loves to tweet about Star Wars. Also on the Story Group that's handling the new canon is Pablo Hidalgo, who wrote for the WEG Star Wars RPG (which early on was a major source of EU stuff... Zahn was given some of the books as reference material when he wrote the Thrawn Trilogy) and other galaxy-building articles later on, after WEG lost the license.

[Androgeus]

Things like Doctor Who, mainstream comics: much less meaningful canon. In that case, it's more of a wibbley-wobbley canony-wanony ball of fiction. The better works are the ones that don't care.

Ever better, Doctor Who doesn't really have an official canon. The BBC have never made a comment, and Moffat believes that a show that involves a time traveller can't have a canon. The show sinks three different Atlantis for goodness sake. Here's an article about canon by Paul Cornell, who has written Doctor Who novels, comics, audio plays and a couple of episodes.

[Lheticus]

Keep in mind that the author is not in control. They just write a story. There are people behind the author, the ones that own/control/make money off the maltreat, they are the ones that make the say and have the final word.

So sure it's ''nice'' if an author works with the canon, but it does not mean much in the end, as they don't get to decide what is canon anyway.

This only works for somethings.....once the big company/shady somebody owns it....then it is their call forever.

For example, there is someone at Disney, pretty high up, who can make the call on what is canon or not for Star Wars....but he is not a writer or creator or (maybe) even a fan....he is just a business guy.

I come back to the point that it does not matter, it is all meaningless.

Take poor Boba. He ''dies'' in VI. Oh, but wait he is popular...and they can make money selling things about Boba. So ''suddenly'' Boba is alive to make them money. And they just toss in the ''canon'' as a gimmick...a trick to make fans buy it. And it works! Fans buy up ''official canon stuff '' like hot cakes! And lots of Star Wars fans are fans of Boba....and as true fans they must have the true and official real story about Boba.

Though it does not matter. It is just a story. Someone somewhere said it was canon, for the explicit reason of making money. At least for now, and for as long as they get their money. But a week from now, that someone can say ''that was not the real story...that is not canon, but bring out a new story written by a person and say ''But this is the real story and it's canon'' all to just make money.

You've said nothing that is in opposition to anything I said in my previous post. In such instances where there are more people than just the creator or creators of a work involved, canon is indeed not a concern whatsoever and thus in potential and many times actually a royal mess and not even worth paying attention to. However, in works outside the "big business" aspect, canon is at the very least easier to keep consistent even if there is not more incentive to do so. The underlying motivations of how canon is treated ARE meaningless--the meaning is derived from how accurate or not it is, how many blatant reversals there are or not. It is what it is, and just because there is little incentive to make supreme effort to preserve canon consistency doesn't mean that such consistency is NEVER high.

[Aedilred]

I don't think "canon" is a useless concept in principle, but in practice I think it basically is. I largely agree with jedipotter on the way things tend to work now from a top-down perspective. The other problem with it is that in fan circles it tends to be used as a way to shut discussions down rather than open them up. Rather than discuss implications and interpretations, and other things which are actually interesting, I see too many discussions getting bogged down on the question of whether a given source is "canon" or not, which is just incrediboring.

It's lent a particular silliness when such discussions about canon disagree with the official IP-holder's stance on the subject. To take the OP's original example of Warhammer Fantasy, there are several separate continuities (albeit some of those listed do overlap, but there's at least one other not mentioned) but the line from the Studio has always been that everything produced by GW and their subsidiaries is canonical, even where contradictory. Yet you'll still find fans trying to dismiss something that happened in one of the novels as "well it's a novel, so it's not canon".

I also think "continuity" and "canon" should probably be treated as separate concepts. It's possible for something to remain part of the canon of a given universe even if it's been written out of the "present" continuity. Whether that's alternate realities, in-universe legends or stories, or however you want to explain it away, it at least allows for a difference of opinion about whether a given story/bit of background/whatever was any good without one side being "wrong" because it's no longer canonical.

I think Who has taken a sensible approach on the subject: everything is canonical. If taken at face value given some of the stuff mentioned in the show (which is all uncontroversially "canonical") then the Who canon actually includes all fiction written everywhere by everyone except for Enid Blyton's Noddy. That policy leaves the writers free to pick up on points they think would be cool to base a story around while ignoring those they don't like. But that universe can get away with discrepancies because of time travel and its pathologically dishonest narrator/central character, so where major contradictions arise, on at least one occasion he was just lying. A series that takes itself more seriously and doesn't have those in-character fudges available might struggle to maintain that policy, but it's a decent starting-point I think.

Of course, that still doesn't stop Who fans arguing over what is and isn't canonical, but it makes them easier to ignore.