"We might as well try to count Castlevania III as the second in the series and leave this awful piece of horse-shit alone." -- The Angry Video Game Nerd
"Lego Indiana Jones is
exactly what it says on the tin: It's a heavily summarized re-tread of the first three Indiana Jones movies, or should I say the only three Indiana Jones movies, and if anyone tries to correct me you are wrong, and should be punched..." -- Yahtzee,
Zero Punctuation
Amongst fans,
Discontinuity (or "personal canon") is the act of mentally writing out certain events in a show's continuity which don't sit well, no matter if it's a single episode,
a season-length arc, or even an entire series. If a plot rubs one the wrong way severely enough, one can just decide that the offending events never happened. On the series level, events may fall under Discontinuity because the show is perceived to
suck at that point. Events also get "discontinued" for particularly screwing up the characters or setting, and a show that starts to suck will end up screwing things up eventually anyway.
In effect, the opposite of
fanon. (And not unrelated, either -- much Discontinuity has resulted from violations of fanon.) While extremely negative audience reactions may lead to an offending storyline being
officially removed from canon in response, Discontinuity specifically refers to when
fans disregard a storyline which is still officially part of
The Verse's history, and occurs whether the writers know and agree with it or not.
This is an
entirely personal matter; what has a high
squick factor for one fan might be perfectly acceptable to another. Whatever you choose to ignore is perfectly respectable --
as long as you don't try to force other people into ignoring it as well. And remember that, whenever Discontinuity is being discussed, the phrase "most fans" should be taken with an even
more colossal grain of salt than usual.
For questionable elements ignored or written out of canon by the
creators themselves, see
Canon Discontinuity, or at the very least, a
Discontinuity Nod. If, on the other hand, the controversial element is somehow reworked into being tolerable or even popular, it's been
Rescued From The Scrappy Heap.
If you do not give a reason the entry will be deleted for being worthless since no one knows what you are talking about. If you post an entire series (unless its a continuation of a previous series like
Gundam ZZ) it will be deleted because that's bitching about a show you don't like. There is nothing personal canon about claiming an entire universe does not exist.
It should be noted that this can be justified in cases of
Running The Asylum, as it's clear the people in charge are largely trying to impose their own Discontinuity.
(By the way, neither this article nor any of the articles listed below exist, and if the articles listed below existed, they would certainly not contain gratuitous usage of the words "there is no" and "doesn't exist". If all this were the case, I would certainly not advise you to continue at your own risk if that sort of thing annoyed you. Which it doesn't.)
Here are lists of things written out of "personal canon", arranged by medium:
