Is "canon" meaningless?

[cobaltstarfire]

I treat Dr Who sort of like Space Dandy, something that sort of just flies by the seat of its pants and doesn't care as much about an overarching narrative that fits together, it'd rather attempt to try to tell an interesting story within a particular episode. (trying to argue canon in Dr Who sounds like the biggest headache in the universe who would want to do that. )

Space Dandy is doing it better in it's short run of 2 seasons than Dr Who has since Donna went bye bye to me.

[Devonix]

Canon is not meaningless. The problem is that people keep using it and confusing Canon with Continuity.

archie Turtles comics are Canon IDW Turtles comics are Canon. But neither of them are In Continuity with each other.

Silver Age Superman comics are Canon New 52 Superman comics are Canon. Neither are In continuity with each other.

[Closet_Skeleton]

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

Meaningless to whom?

All meaning is subjective. You have a point, but you're on the media section of a nerd forum. If you talked to a fan of Star Wars canon they would disagree.

[The Glyphstone]

As has been discussed, canon is what you make of it, and too divergent between franchises to establish any universal baseline.

Comic books are famous for retcons, reboots, and rewrites whenever the weight of their established continuity grows too dense or restrictive (a case where canon and continuity are one and the same, since all stories are part of a single extended timeline). There, anything after Date X or Mega-Event Y is the current 'canon'.

Star Wars created the Holocron and various internal Canon tiers specifically to sort out what parts of the EU were 'more canon' than others, a la Animal Farm, but generally anything short of fanfiction or specific What-If stories are 'true'. Under Disney, they've taken a Comic Book-like approach of a 'reboot' in the Legends label, preserving the movies and delegating everything to the alternate/what-if status.

Doctor Who thinks the very concept of canon is incompatible with the show's basic premise.

Star Trek is binary...movies are canon, anything else isn't.

The Ring of Fire alt-history book series is a 'collaborative/collective' effort, where fans are invited to submit fiction pieces to a central database/E-magazine, and the best submissions are published and added to official setting canon alongside the author's own published novels.


I've listed 5 different approaches to how one handles canon, from 5 different financially successful settings/properties/fandoms. Care to guess how many total settings/properties/fandoms exist in the entirety of geek/nerd culture?

[Forum Explorer]

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.

It's worth noting that most authors have pretty much full control over their work. Not all of them do, but the majority certainly.

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.

I wouldn't say meaningless and irrelevant. After all you might still have a discussion about that show. It's canon is simple however as it doesn't have any contradictions to deal with. But let's say someone was talking about the symbolism of a book, and they tried mentioning something that simply didn't happen at all. Which would be against the canon of the book.

[veti]

"Canon" has meaning. It's the body of work that two fans, arguing from different ends of the world, will agree to forming the basis of their discussion.

Introduce a third fan into the argument, and quite possibly the scope of canon will change.

When you're talking about the work of a single author, 'canon' is simply the work of that author. (Although that's not necessarily the end of the story, in cases like Tolkien where multiple, sometimes inconsistent accounts of the same events have been published. There's a reason why Tolkien discussions tend to grow very argumentative. Do Balrogs have literal wings? No, seriously, don't start. Or at least google the question before you do.)

When you're talking about the work of multiple authors, that's when the money thing kicks in. Because all of these authors (who are, incidentally, not top-notch authors themselves, else they'd be writing about their own creations, which would give them a chance of making some real money), are under the control of some eeeevil overarching intelligence, or possibly George Lucas, whose aim is quite simply to milk them like so many cattle. And that's when the reboots and reimaginings start happening too, since it's always easier to build something new than to improve on what's already there, and many of each new generation of second-rate hacks imagine they can do better than the second-rate hacks that came before them.

So a question like "what is canon?" has no canonical answer. In principle it's "whatever the holder of the intellectual property rights says it is", but in practice what really matters is "what the fans currently discussing it agree on". If they decide (and who could blame them) that only the three original Star Wars movies counted, and everything since, including the remastered versions of those same movies, were "just milking it" - then as far as that discussion is concerned, that's what canon is.

[tomandtish]

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.

You've hit one of the important points here. Even if you hold to the idea of canon, it's not an all-encompassing thing. Especially when comparing differing types of media, canon can often be a one-way street. Star Wars is an excellent example of this. The EU tends to keep the movies as canon. But even the prequel movies did not keep the EU as canon, and it's now pretty clear that the new movies won't either. So "B has to follow A's rules", but "A doesn't have to follow B's rules".

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.

I certainly agree with your point about the money. Plenty of changes and retcons can be made in the name of the almighty dollar. Having said that, technically having Boba show up later did not change canon.

People all too often assume from what we see. People assumed Boba was dead. What we actually saw was him crashing into the Sarlack where (allegedly) he'll be digested slowly for 1000 years. His showing up in the EU doesn't contradict this because nothing that we saw precludes him fixing his jet pack and getting out of there.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Canon is not meaningless. The problem is that people keep using it and confusing Canon with Continuity.

archie Turtles comics are Canon IDW Turtles comics are Canon. But neither of them are In Continuity with each other.

Silver Age Superman comics are Canon New 52 Superman comics are Canon. Neither are In continuity with each other.

Of course the fundamental problem is that canon is nominally (and sorta though not entirely IRL) a system to resolve consistency issues.And well the problem is that it can't beyond a certain point.

Continuity is fundamentally painting yourself into a corner. Since you have an ever growing list of things it is possible to contradict sooner or later if you keep telling a story one thing that gets written is going to contradict another thing written. Even if you have perfect recollection to categorize every possible detail and alert you to all possible conflicts, you still may be left with no way out.

And the "solution" of retconning doesn't solve this conflict, just creates new points that must not be contradicted while also remembering the explanations for the contradictions so its a delay tactic that increases complexity for merely delaying the problems. Worse still the more you do it the less and less your own continuity is going to mean because its increasingly subject to change, defeating the basic premise.

The only actual solution of course is to stop storytelling, to quit while you are ahead if you will.
Or of course you abandon continuity.

I tend to think that while a story needs continuity, stories should not worry about it nearly as much. The distinction depends on context of course but basically a single story needs continuity for comprehension when you reach the point where the story is over, should you keep using the characters/universe/etc it becomes less important to remain in harmony with the previous story. And the more stories you have (by more independently acting creators especially) the less and less important each individual pieces agreement becomes.

There is a (comparatively) small subset of "core" concepts of course that you don't change. Superman is from the planet Krypton and named Clark Kent, these should probably always be true. And unless you have a particular reason he should be flying, because everyone knows Superman flies, devil take that he didn't originally. Whether his hairstyle was ever the unholy love-child of a Mullet and Jeff Goldblum... doesn't matter.

And NO you don't need to explain away why the hairstyle never existed because some silly Emo boy pounded on the walls of reality or whatever, that probably makes things worse in the long run because its preserving the impression that the Brundlefly do matters at all.

You don't keep everything... because you can't keep everything.

You just keep the most durable, most liked, or most important bits if you want to keep things going. Heck you don't even have to try it should just evolve naturally.

[Cheesegear]

All meaning is subjective. You have a point, but you're on the media section of a nerd forum. If you talked to a fan of Star Wars canon they would disagree.

Canon doesn't matter, until you start talking about it. A particularly horrendous example is in Kendermore, part of the Dragonlance setting, which references Lycanthropes which do not exist on Krynn, and, one of the characters is also a Half-Orc, when Orcs do not exist on Krynn either (Krynn has Ogres and Minotaurs to make up for the lack of Orcs). What is and isn't canon, is a really good way of picking out continuity errors. Which doesn't actually matter, until they do; When you start talking about it. Kendermore is a passable story, I'm sure somebody likes it. But when somebody says "Are there Orcs on Krynn?", the response should universally be 'No.', but then somebody pipes up with "But in Kendermore..." In the confines of your own head, canon is whatever you want it to be, if you like it, then you like it. However, other people probably don't like continuity errors and call it out. If you hadn't brought it up, then the canon wouldn't matter. Fan is particularly good at it when he talks about things that Superman did once, and then never, ever, ever did again. There are exceptions to canon, but when you try and have a coherent conversation about something, you don't bring up the exceptions because they aren't something that happens 'as a rule'.

Then you come to the internet, a wretched hive of scum and villainy if there ever was one; Fanfiction. You can write whatever you want, it's your story, right? But then you post it on the internet for other people to read. Other people point out your continuity errors and the terribleness of how your story 'can't' happen because of reasons. Out of the dozens, or potentially hundreds of stories about a universe, yours is the special one, yours is the one allowed to break canon and do whatever you want. If you can break canon for a really, really, really good reason, then great. But chances are it's not. But, once you start breaking canon, what is the point? If you're not abiding by the 'rules' of the Universe that you're supposedly in, why even be in that Universe? Why not just start making things up completely, changing the names so they don't directly reference somebody else's work that you've changed, and then you wont be writing fanfiction, you'll be writing your own fiction and you're under no rules at all. As long as you don't steal plots wholesale (Eragon), you'll be okay.

Canon is like public decency laws;
In the privacy of your own home, canon is whatever you want.
On the internet (a.k.a. in public), canon is whatever the general consensus is.

[Mando Knight]

Star Wars created the Holocron and various internal Canon tiers specifically to sort out what parts of the EU were 'more canon' than others, a la Animal Farm, but generally anything short of fanfiction or specific What-If stories are 'true'. Under Disney, they've taken a Comic Book-like approach of a 'reboot' in the Legends label, preserving the movies and delegating everything to the alternate/what-if status.

Honestly, it was basically the only direction they could've gone, unless they wanted to do movies about the Dark Nest Crisis, which is nowhere near being iconic Star Wars. It's space bugs that have hive minds that use the Force and therefore do weird stuff with Jedi.

[The Glyphstone]

Honestly, it was basically the only direction they could've gone, unless they wanted to do movies about the Dark Nest Crisis, which is nowhere near being iconic Star Wars. It's space bugs that have hive minds that use the Force and therefore do weird stuff with Jedi.

I don't disagree, but that hasn't stopped people from complaining about it.

[Anteros]

I think the answer to this is just that it varies from person to person. To some people it's important what is official canon and what isn't, while others simply don't care.

Let's be honest, what difference does it really make if someone else chooses to believe something different about a piece of fiction than you do?

[jedipotter]

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

Um...well, it does not. The death of a fictional character is meaningless. Remember, for example, when Superman died? It was all over the news, it was a really, really, really big deal. Superman died...for real..forever...from that date forward. So from that day, years ago, there was to never, ever be another Superman story...he was dead and gone forever. Except....of course...he was NOT Can I go to Wal Mart right now and buy a Superman comic? Wow...well, I can! Go figure....

Meaningless to whom?
All meaning is subjective. You have a point, but you're on the media section of a nerd forum. If you talked to a fan of Star Wars canon they would disagree.

Everyone? Just think what it means. Fan C can stand up on his high horse and say ''thing C'' is real and true canon because Some Guy says so. It's so bad to say ''I jump when Some Guy says so''. And worse as fan C can get out the touches and pitchforks and drive fan a out of the village as they like ''thing A'', but Some Guy says ''thing A'' is not canon.

And it's all made worse as while the fans get all worked up thinking canon is some great and wonderful thing.....it is just a way for some people to make money.

It's worth noting that most authors have pretty much full control over their work. Not all of them do, but the majority certainly.

Well, it gets complicated. Sure some authors have full control...but not all. And the control gets bought and sold all the time....to say the least.

Of course the fundamental problem is that canon is nominally (and sorta though not entirely IRL) a system to resolve consistency issues.And well the problem is that it can't beyond a certain point.

This is a good example of what canon is not about. It's not an author/creator keeping his works pure, because all they need to do is not give up control. When Bob Smith makes Star Duck and keeps control over it, there is not even a need for ''canon'' as the only Star Duck things made will be made by Bob Smith.

But then enter companies and businesses and lawyers and laws and such. Or even just an author/creator that wants to make money. And all companies want to make money. So they have no problem selling the use of their work and letting others make use of the work to make them money. And then after ten or twenty or thirty years or more you sure add up a lot of stuff about the original work. But you the company, person or whatever only own or more importantly get money from some of that stuff. There is all kinda of legal stuff in the way and you can't really just burn anything that does not make you money So...how do you trick people into buying just the stuff that makes you money? Ah....canon! You come up with a way to say your stuff is ''real'' and ''official'' and the other stuff is just fluff. And...presto....you have found a way to make yourself money!

[Eldan]

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.

What I take away from that article is this.
We need to fly all the still-living writers of Doctor Who to North Africa somewhere to hold a Synod. Then we need to split ourselves into Orthodox Whovians and Catholic Whovians and start beheading the heretics who believe there is any truth in the comics. After that, I propose a crusade (we need to rename that. Screwdriverade?) to take back the BBC quarries. In about 50 years, someone will reboot the show without official sanction from the BBC, thereby starting the Protestant Whovians.

[Reverent-One]

Um...well, it does not. The death of a fictional character is meaningless. Remember, for example, when Superman died? It was all over the news, it was a really, really, really big deal. Superman died...for real..forever...from that date forward. So from that day, years ago, there was to never, ever be another Superman story...he was dead and gone forever. Except....of course...he was NOT Can I go to Wal Mart right now and buy a Superman comic? Wow...well, I can! Go figure....

You're talking about inconsistency and retcons/reboots now, not canon.

Also, Superman's death and return both affected the later stories. Without his death, we wouldn't have the Reign of the Supermen story arc (as well as the Steel and Superboy characters that were introduced in that storyline and have continued well past it). And then his return resulted in, obviously, the later main DC universe stories involving him.

[Asta Kask]

'Canon' originates in deciding which religious judgements counted, not which Star Wars extended universe books 'count'.

I'll think you'll find that the ordinary geek is as zealous in defending 'canon' as is any religious zealot.

[JoshL]

But then enter companies and businesses and lawyers and laws and such. Or even just an author/creator that wants to make money. And all companies want to make money. So they have no problem selling the use of their work and letting others make use of the work to make them money. And then after ten or twenty or thirty years or more you sure add up a lot of stuff about the original work. But you the company, person or whatever only own or more importantly get money from some of that stuff. There is all kinda of legal stuff in the way and you can't really just burn anything that does not make you money So...how do you trick people into buying just the stuff that makes you money? Ah....canon! You come up with a way to say your stuff is ''real'' and ''official'' and the other stuff is just fluff. And...presto....you have found a way to make yourself money!

Well, this isn't exactly right. If a company licenses a property, they're still making money off of it. For example, take Buffy. For years there were licensed comics (and I think some tie-in novels). They weren't canon, but money still was passed to the IP owners (Fox, Whedon, etc), depending upon the licensing contract.

Years later, the show is long over, and they decide to run a series of comics that ARE canon. Of course it contradicts the others (for that matter, the tv show often did), and since many of the original folks were involved in writing, I'm sure they got a bigger slice of the pie, but they're doing new work, so they should. But that doesn't mean that there was no pie before, and getting pie is not the only reason to declare one work canon while another is not.

I believe canon is not about making more money, but about telling a story with intent beyond a single work. It can be handled well, and it can be handled poorly (or hell, not at all, with the Doctor Who example), but it can be important, depending on what you're trying to do with an idea/universe/etc. I dislike the concept of headcanon too, but that's a rant for another day!

If it was purely greed driven, why not take a slice of the licensing, do zero work, and let the cash trickle in, not caring if it's canon or not. Money for nothing (well, for previous work, but still, overhead at that point is effectively 0)! The only way you would NOT make money is if the work was in the public domain, which is more or a free-for-all as far as the narrative is concerned. In that case it makes sense to contain your canon a little bit. Say you and I are writing Alice in Wonderland stories. I want the Mad Hatter to be a bus driver, and you want to kill him off. Your third story would be so far removed from my third story, so the audience would need to know what history the current events reflect.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Asta_Kask: "Fan" is just the shortened form of "fanatic", after all.

[Yora]

That's why I call myself a Star Wars connoisseur.

[Lurkmoar]

That's why I call myself a Star Wars connoisseur.

Watch out for the Star Wars Trek! Or maybe I'm thinking about the Star Trek Wars...

Used Futurama joke has been reused

Outside of religious purposes, I use canon myself establish a frame of reference for a series of works. If the series of works deals with alternate realities and/or time travel, I consider canon to be a 'quaint' notion at best.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

In about 50 years, someone will reboot the show without official sanction from the BBC, thereby starting the Protestant Whovians.

I think you mean Inspector Spacetime.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Does anyone else find something wrong when a bunch of geeks on a forum talk about 'fans' as though they were some other group they're looking down upon?

it is just a way for some people to make money.

Just because you're technically correct from one point of view doesn't mean you can just throw all other points of view under the rug.

Canon is not 'just one thing'. Book publishers and license owners can understand things differently to consumers.

[jedipotter]

Does anyone else find something wrong when a bunch of geeks on a forum talk about 'fans' as though they were some other group they're looking down upon?

Well it depends:

Take geek C. They are obsessed with canon and think it is real and that it matters. They stand up just a little taller knowing that ''Some Guy'' says what they like is 100% official and right. They love to throw in peoples faces that ''X is Y or Z'' as ''Book Seven'' says so and ''Some Guy'' says that is canon.

Take geek Z. They think canon is some great storytelling thing of beauty. They think there is a canon czar who carefully looks over all the works and decides what is real and official and canon. And that the canon czar is motivated by the pure love of the work and the beauty of it all. They love to say to others ''it is canon, so it is good, and Ye has the czar spoken the word''.

Take geek Q They don't care one tiny bit about canon. It is just made up carp. They can care less if fifteen stories all contradict themselves. They like a story, they don't like a story...it does not matter. They can even like three stories about the exact same thing that are just a little different....and not care about it.

So....

[Math_Mage]

What about Geek A who likes having some idea of which works inform a given continuity on which future official media will be based? Obviously this doesn't apply to all uses of the word "canon", but isn't that basically what people have been offering as a genuine reason for canon, and what you have been ignoring for rather a while?

[SiuiS]

Well it depends:

Take geek C. They are obsessed with canon and think it is real and that it matters. They stand up just a little taller knowing that ''Some Guy'' says what they like is 100% official and right. They love to throw in peoples faces that ''X is Y or Z'' as ''Book Seven'' says so and ''Some Guy'' says that is canon.

Take geek Z. They think canon is some great storytelling thing of beauty. They think there is a canon czar who carefully looks over all the works and decides what is real and official and canon. And that the canon czar is motivated by the pure love of the work and the beauty of it all. They love to say to others ''it is canon, so it is good, and Ye has the czar spoken the word''.

Take geek Q They don't care one tiny bit about canon. It is just made up carp. They can care less if fifteen stories all contradict themselves. They like a story, they don't like a story...it does not matter. They can even like three stories about the exact same thing that are just a little different....and not care about it.

So....

One glaring problem with your synopsis.

Both geeks C and Z can also be geek Q. They are not mutually exclusive.

[Reddish Mage]

The notion of a "canon" plays a role in understanding how to make sense of a work of fiction, and its plot-line. As much as people poo-poo plot, if stories do not tie into a plot, a work will lose its focus and the audience will lose attention.

However, what's important is the notion, not authorial intent or official pronouncements by the owners of the franchise.

Sometimes the official "canon" books contradict themselves, obviously retcon stuff or try to cobble together a storyline out of independent plot lines that don't really belong together (the examples are so numerous its hard to pick out something). Sometimes, "unofficial" or "noncanon" sources tie together perfectly (Star Wars expanded universe supposedly does this), occasionally something declared unofficial or even denied as false can even be critical to understanding the major story itself. What is important is that we can form enough of a coherent picture to be able to enjoy several works of fiction as a overall narrative and not just as works that have nothing to do with each other.

[Wardog]

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.

I think the thing here is, there are really two completely different concepts of canon, that serve different purposes.

There is the concept of "Is this one of the works of the original author?" It has little bearing on continuity (and when you have a small series by one author, continuity isn't usually a problem). What it is important for is, as Cobaltstarfire mentioned, when you are interested in the original vision of the original author (as opposed to what fans, pirates, or movie studios came up with).

This is completely different from canon in the sense of the official setting records of what is currently supposed to be treated as "true" in a series with multiple authors working on it (and which has probably seen multiple reboots and retcons). Personally, I think this form of canon is important for the writers working on the latest episode (to ensure it is consistent with what has gone before), but shouldn't be taken too seriously by the readers/watchers, because its usually only temporary, and I don't see why I should be expected to ignore or forget about a previous story (or treat as "not real" - as if current continuity actually is "real"), just because the producers of the current series have decided that in their version of setting, Captain Superguy has different powers or personality.

[Reddish Mage]

This is completely different from canon in the sense of the official setting records of what is currently supposed to be treated as "true" in a series with multiple authors working on it (and which has probably seen multiple reboots and retcons). Personally, I think this form of canon is important for the writers working on the latest episode (to ensure it is consistent with what has gone before), but shouldn't be taken too seriously by the readers/watchers, because its usually only temporary, and I don't see why I should be expected to ignore or forget about a previous story (or treat as "not real" - as if current continuity actually is "real"), just because the producers of the current series have decided that in their version of setting, Captain Superguy has different powers or personality.

Every TV show has multiple authors working on it, yet, within a single TV series, it is usually unchallenged that there is a "canon" in play.

The fact that you talk of the situation in which you, the viewer, has to deal with producers making a purposeful change in the characteristics of Superguy, suggests that there was already established characteristics of Superguy. That's what we are talking about when we talk about canon.

[jedipotter]

One glaring problem with your synopsis.

Both geeks C and Z can also be geek Q. They are not mutually exclusive.

That is hard to see. Geek Q does not care, geek C and Z care too much....you can't be both.

See Geek Q does not even care that Boba Nobody died...he was a minor, boring character that did nothing. Geek C will run around and say Boba is alive and say ''because Book C and Some Guy '' say so. And Geek Z is drinking the Cool Aid while looking over the beautiful canon laid out before them.

[Eldan]

I like continuity. And I hate when some shows (Star Trek, cough cough) bring up plots that could very easily be solved by something that was introduced just two episodes ago. Plot stagnation, you might say. It makes the story feel inconsequential, after a while, which, especially for drama, is just bad. If, no matter if the planet/galaxy/city/family/reputation is saved or not, next season/episode/book everything will be the same anyway, what's the point?