You know I have always wondered. Why do we care so much about canon?.

If the Death of the Author is true, if anyone can have whatever headcanon they want and a lot of fans create stories base on canon.

If all those stories are fictional and technically everything including canon is fictional. After all a fanfic isn't less true than the official one( both are fictional).

Is a fanfic really less "valid" than the official story?.

Why is such praise for fans to only consider the story of the author as "the real one"? To te point canon tiers are made and entery fights of "what really happened" are so constant?.

Note this is a genuine question, not an argument.

edited 25th Oct '12 10:21:01 PM by FallenLegend

Well, there's the obvious issue of copyright law...

That aside, imagine trying to discuss a story when nobody agrees on what happens. If I say that Harry killed Voldemort, you say Voldemort killed Harry, and a third person says that they became best friends and lived happily ever after, then we're really talking about three completely contradictory stories about similarly named characters. If people don't accept the canon of a story, then it just gets confusing.

You didn't post this post. This discussion is not happening.

(Get it yet?)

Also what exactly does Death of the Author have to do with the existence of canon?

edited 25th Oct '12 2:34:46 PM by Night

Or to elaborate, Death of the Author is totally irrelevant to canon, because it deals with interpretation. Canon is events, things that happened. Particular gun fired at target does X. Y said "But what about Z?" Z reacted to being rejected by A in a particular fashion that we saw.

It is from these events, used as evidence, that one can assemble interpretations. Without the events, no interpretation or indeed, no story.

edited 25th Oct '12 2:53:53 PM by Night

You can holler for a mod to change the title.

On topic, while I agree with the previous posters, I don't think they're really answering the question. Very, very few people would agree that there should be no such thing as "canon". But should people really obsess as much over it as they do sometimes? I think that's a different story.

Thank you the title is fixed now!

I do wonder about people's obsession with canon tough

and thank your for your replies.

edited 25th Oct '12 10:20:17 PM by FallenLegend

I personally don't value canon very much. Death of the Author is a view I value very highly, because my own reaction to events, and my interpretation of them, are just as valuable as the events of the story. The emotional ups and downs that occur while you watch the story are always good, but ultimately I spend plenty of time just thinking about the plot and its meaning.

I think canon is important because it contributes to plot, and because it informs our interpretations of a story (this is most evident when an ending or such leaves the audience wanting or feeling cheated). The term "headcanon" wouldn't exist, however, if canon could stand alone, and if a piece of fiction managed to work without any mental input or effort from its audience it would be a very bland, unexciting piece.

Obviously I'm biased, but Canon is neither useless nor the last word in anything.

See also; Fiction Identity Postulate

edited 26th Oct '12 1:32:15 AM by CleverPun

The fact that the title was fixed was probably enough to make this clear, but I'm posting anyway just to be sure: yes, Hollering is the correct way to get a thread's title changed. In general, if you've got a question or complaint about a post or a thread, Hollering is the easiest and most effective way to get Mods on the scene. And if you're not sure whether to Holler, just do it anyway. If it turns out we don't need to do anything about it after all, you'll have wasted maybe a minute of our time. Seriously, it's not a big deal. Just Holler away.

There are of course other ways to contact Mods - such as the PM system, which you can easily access through the Know The Staff page - but Hollering is quicker and in my opinion easier.

edited 26th Oct '12 8:58:43 AM by BestOf

Come ooon people! Canon is CANON.

Canon is, essentially, the friggin' Rulebook to each and every work of fiction. When you're writing Fan-Fic about, say, Inglourious Basterds, the film is your Canon, your Player's Handbook if you will. And since it depicts a universe parallel to ours, and is set in WWII times, you can't have the Nazis riding on fire-breathing dragons! Nor, can you have the Millennium Falcon landing on Perrier La Padite's cottage! Why, you ask? Because the rules have been set by the works' author! Quentin Tarantino's Basterds weren't vacationing in the Forgotten Realms, and, I'm pretty sure, George Lucas would never have Han Solo roaming around the French cow country.

That being said, the only way to go about it, is by ADDING stuff to your favorite work of fiction, but only according to the rules that apply to its universe, set by the original author, in other words: CANON.

Respect Canon people, otherwise you might end up with Jason Voorhees having coffee with Claire Standish in the Acme Looniversity break room, and seriously, who wants to read that?

Anyway, sorry if I come off as a douche, might have to check if that's just a stick up my butt or the whole tree, but to me, Canon is pretty Serious Business.

Fanfic doesn't have to adhere to canon. It can, if the author wants it to, but the Alternate Universe fic exists for a reason.

My OCD is doing backflips.

I dunno, that sounds like it might be fun.

While I personally agree with Basterd's philosophy (it's part of why I greatly dislike crossovers), I don't see anything wrong with people who don't.

The concept of the rules you posit falls apart on contact with Death of the Author, but it also falls apart in the fact that you're proposing rules without evidence they exist. Show me in the canon where Star Wars is explicitly ruled out by Inglorious Basterds. (I'll give you a hint, it's not; it was completely unnecessary to do so for the purpose of either story, so it was not done. They make no contact on the screen, that was enough, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.)

Then there is the other problem.

This idea that events may not be reinterpreted nor premises reexamined is a creative heresy far, far worse than anyone out there having tossed away the canon to write their highschool AU, because it eliminates vast tracts of fiction by failing to understand how fiction interacts with other fiction. Tolkien's elves, who were a rework of the Norse, do not exist. Without Tolkien, forget modern fantasy (high, low, urban, even a lot of science fiction; E.E. Smith and Star Wars never happened; Screw You Elves never existed; The Witcher novels' more cynical take on what happens when the Elves with their relatively slow progress spend a few generations in contact with humans didn't happen; Dragon Age never existed to crib The Witcher's ideas.).

AU works take a more direct view of the reinterpretation of events and concepts than normal, but arguing they are necessarily invalid while The Witcher's take on what happens to classic Tolkien elves on exposure to humans are necessarily valid makes very little sense. The direct nature of the relation is requiring of more thought, yes. There comes a point where things have diverged enough that it's no longer worthwhile pretending it belongs to the parent work, yes. But that point can be surprisingly far away depending on how much effort the author is willing to expend. (c.f. Chosen from this site's Eva recs.)

edited 27th Oct '12 6:15:06 PM by Night

Why not, exactly? The Witcher does not claim to be directly connected to The Lord of the Rings, so why its existence mean that we should accept the claim of a "fanfiction" which bears no resemblance to its parent work to be directly connected to that parent?

(And yes, I'm aware that this is something of an extreme case - I'm more curious about the ideas here then in actually making a point).

edited 27th Oct '12 6:23:05 PM by nrjxll

Actually, "Low Fantasy" would exist just fine. Robert E.Howard's Conan predates Lord of the Rings, as does Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser. Modern epic high-fantasy is definately derived from Tolkien, but while he looms exceptionally large, he isn't the end-all and be-all of the whole genre.

Yeah so who was it who made fantasy a respectable genre again? Who do people think of again? Raise your hand and swear to me that low fantasy has entirely escaped the influence of the Lord of the Rings, considering it is in itself arguably such a work given its very weak emphasis on magic. (Actually as weak as Conan, or even more weak depending on where you look.)

Since that was explicitly not what I argued, I have no idea what you're talking about. (Seriously read the rest of the paragraph.)

edited 27th Oct '12 7:03:48 PM by Night

All of the examples you cited may have reexamined the events or premises of an earlier work, but they did not claim a direct connection to that work. So how is it that you put them in the same category as fanfiction that may make just as many changes to its source material, but does still claim to be connected to it? I'm aware that you say there's a point where fanfic diverges too much to count as connected, but just where is that line supposed to be drawn?

edited 27th Oct '12 6:57:58 PM by nrjxll

As with so many things in literature, that's an individual question rather than one that can be effectively answered collectively.

That said, my main point is that to dismiss the entire reinterpretation thing out of hand is ridiculous, because either you hate all kinds of fiction beyond cave paintings or you don't, and if you don't we've progressed to matters of degree rather than substantial ones. No particular level of degree or remove is any more defensible than another. It's a fundamentally subjective question now. Killing five people is not necessarily murder any more than killing one person is, though most of us would probably find it more shocking. Adding that it was an order passed down through a chain of people doesn't make it necessarily a mob hit. Determinations of murder are about the manner and circumstance of the deaths.

edited 27th Oct '12 7:17:46 PM by Night

I don't say Low Fantasy has escaped Tolkien's influence, only that it would likely exist without him.

Canon is important because authorial intent is important.

It's also important because when people start confusing it and 'personal canon' or 'headcanon' or whatever name we've come up with for things that aren't in the original work, it can muddy the point of the story; when people start expounding on their headcanon it can confuse people who are new to the original work, or worse.

I mean the above in a fairly benign way. I have in mind a fan theory about The Elder Scrolls games that had a long write up and got popular enough that people have gotten it confused with actual canon, and then people were using the fan theory as an example of why the canon was dumb, as if the fan theory was completely canonical.

I'd say we care about canon for the same reason we go out and read the stories in the first place.

Consider this; Have you ever complained about a writer creating non-canon side stories about his own verse?

Personally I think the idea is a little absurd. The only case I can imagine it happening is if you get a case like George R.R. Martin who everyone is afraid will bite it before he finishes the main story.

Otherwise, you might get fans who are a little annoyed the sidestory isn't in the mainstory but they'll usually try to work it in or else see it as their own canon.

From this, it follows rather simply, that we want to hear someone tell us a story. What conclusions we get from the story and the story itself are very different. Hell, I could go into a story, enjoy it and still take something completely different out of it than the intent of the author [See the Ferris Bueller Fight Club Theory]. But I don't take any inherent value from having this headcanon where as I do take value in hearing the story.

For example, I have a headcanon for Citizen Kane even though I've never seen it. I have an idea of what happens in it and how I have heard it resulted. This seems to be analogous to those whose idea of Harry Potter also invovles Harry and Hermoine married at the end, in that it is an account of the story that exists in our own heads related to but not precisely as it unfolds in the story.

My idea of what happens in Citizen Kane is by no means a substitute for actually watching the film.

The reason I use Citizen Kane is that there's a general esteem for the skill of the story teller[s] that makes us want to actually go and hear what they have to convey to us and how. Similarly a story is important because of Authorial intent, and not just in the sense of what moral the Author hoped to convey but also how the Author believes he can best convey the story as a whole with their unique techniques and style.

Another author changes that, possibly drastically and because of that, canon is important and people fear the death of the author; that person has a unique style that attracted people to the story, no one else is quite like him, which is why we bought a book by him as opposed to just asking Uncle Jim to tell us a story about a British Wizard.

Now tiers and the like are more complicated and evovle because of a more complicated universe with multiple creators, because story techniques will vary between them. There's a huge number of particulars that can fall in here. Either a single work is listed a premise and is drawn on by multiple different creators or the original creator dies and someone is chosen by his estate to follow after him. Usually the validity of this is chosen by how well and closely the author follows the style and intent of the original creator. It really helps if that person had the support of that creator or at least his personal notes.

Now, that's not to say all Fanfiction is tripe but the initial story teller has changed and there is no reason why we should like it simply because it imports ideas from the original. Instead, it's generally thought of as splitting off to form its own canon which may be judged on its own merit but cannot simply because it shares names with the original series be considered to hold equal value.

edited 27th Oct '12 10:59:27 PM by Fauxlosophe

I have frequently found a lot of non-canon works to be pretty self-indulgent on the part of the author. I recall, for example, reading a collection of Philip Marlowe stories written by various mystery writers. One writer, Max Allen Collins, had Marlowe interacting with Thelma Todd, a real-life film actress of the '30's; such a thing is fairly common in Collins' own work, but never, ever happened in any of the original Marlowe stories as written by Raymond Chandler, his creator. Collins subverted the character to his own ends, to suit his own tastes.

But this is a unique type of instance. I think we generally care about canon because we like our fictional universes to behave with a certain degree of order. That order is generally set by the author, so if someone else comes along and starts subverting things, in a lot of cases it offends our sense of order.

@Night:

Dude, relax. In my first post I was just trying to point out why Canon is important, and should therefore be respected, by juxtapositioning the sheer level of absurdity that certain pieces of Fan-Fic share. Then you went on talking about how Tolkien invented the interwebz and how he was the first man to ever set foot on the Moon and something about high fantasy with low carbs or whatever...

The thing is, you are, oh so very, WRONG! You know, regarding your views on the rules and Canon. Because really, If you are so desperate to mess around with the rules and shove Canons' head up its ass and reinvent the wheel and give the genre an amphetamine shot, you know what you should do?

WRITE SOME ORIGINAL FICTION.

You be the original author for once, and then we can all go write some stupid Fan-Fic about it.

...Okay, I take back what I said. Have at him.