Don't like the
Canon Discontinuity the writers introduced in your favorite storyline? Something stupid
never actually happened? Got a favorite element from the
Expanded Universe that you just
know in your heart is
canon? Forget the
MST3K Mantra. Don't relax.
Go on
the Internet and fight for your right to participate in determining show canon! Perpetrate interminably long tracts and holy wars on the Internet. This is Canon Wank-ing at its finest.
Compare
Continuity Snarl, which this tries to fix, and
Continuity Porn, which is the writers trying to address this.
Ascended Fanon is the Holy Grail of this activity.
Examples:
Comic Books
- Many crusades have been fought over the Transformers comics. It doesn't help that the UK comics published stories taking place in between the US issues (which came out much more slowly) without knowing what specifically would happen next. At one point there were three Megatrons running around.
Live-Action Television
- The Whoniverse is such a complete Continuity Snarl that it's only through severe Canon Wank (often in essay form) that people can begin to put things in order.
- Star Trek. Sort of. Most of ST's canon is straightforward enough other than that Abrams thing, time paradoxes excepted, which always work out in-arc. The Enterprise relaunch novels may attract this though due to avoiding Trip's death in the last TV episode.
Video Games
- The Legend of Zelda is a variation, in that it's not what's canon that's the problem, it's what order it's in.
- Mega Man X: Axl.
- Any attempt to work out how Sonic's powers work in relation to physics — albeit a distorted set of physics, due to the conceit of a universe with seven Green Rocks which become an Infinity+1 Sword when their powers are combined.
