Schrodinger's Canon?

So, came up with this with a friend of mine while taking about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. What with the filmmakers having decided to shuffle all previously-published Star Wars Expanded Universe material into it's own (Legends) continuity, we have an interesting case where things from the Legends continuity may or may not be canon until such time as new material in the "new" canon confirms it, or outright contradicts it. It's Schrodinger's Canon! Simultaneously true and not true until its actual state is observed.

My question is, is this example unique enough to not be a trope, or is it common enough (what with the plethora of Expanded Universes out there) that it can apply to enough works to be considered a trope in its own right?

Your interpretation is incorrect. The Legends material is not in a state of "might be cannon, might not be" - it explicitly isn't until such a time as it is decided to adapt that aspect into cannon. So, you don't even have one example to start with.

Officially it's in the state of non-canon. Among fans, debate rages over what will/won't/might be eventually made canon. Obviously, the creators of whatever work is in question have their ideas on what is/isn't/should/shouldn't be canon, but when dealing with massive multimedia franchises, there's always the question of expanded universe materials and how/if they fit into the mainstream continuity. I figure that's where this trope fits in. Not things that the creators have said may or may not be true (that's Shrug of God or Lying Creator, depending), but things that the franchise have established in expanded materials that may or may not be true until the "official" material confirms or denies it.

Another example: Star Trek expanded universe novels established that Lieutenant Kirk earned his promotion to Captain and command of the Enterprise after a particularly disastrous mission in which is quick thinking saved the ship. Come the 2009 reboot, we learn this is not true, thus the Schrodinger's Canon has been observed to be in the false state. However, the 2009 reboot involves use of time travel to alter the past into an unrecognizable state, so the Schrodingers Canon remains in the unobserved state, simultaneously true and false, within the "main" timeline, where nothing has been observed that confirms or denies it.

RE:Star Trek... Given that the 2009 reboot is explicitly an alternate timeline and.the novel in question is in the original, the movie doesn't invalidate the novel. New timeline, different events. No support for your position.

As for Star Wars, no matter how much fans wish to speculate it doesn't change the underlying fact that Legends isn't cannon (not a position that I particularly like but fully understand). Saying "officially canon" is redundant. Unofficial canon is Fanon. Sure, some of it may end up back in and many things that don't will have equivalents due to the nature of storytelling (see the parallels between Kylo and Jacen). But none of that puts it into any state other than non-canon.

I think you're still kind of missing my point. For the record, I agree with what you said about the Star Wars Legends. There's a lot of things from that continuity I like (and a lot of things I don't), but I completely understand why the filmmakers feel the new films need to stand apart from it.

I'm also not talking about Fanon, which is specifically bits made up by the fans that they think are canon, but are not. I'm talking about officially licensed Expanded Universe material who's status in the "main" universe is canonically unclear. Novels set in the same universe as a TV show, where the novels may or may not be canon until/unless the TV series states one way or another, or makes it impossible for those events to have occurred. Novels set in a comic book universe where it's unclear if the events of those novels "actually" happened. Comic-book tie-ins for movies that are later ignored out outright contradicted by future films.

Take, for example, a Spider-Man novel where Venom breaks out of prison and Spider-Man has to fight him yet again. Then a later comic book brings Venom back, and has him break out of prison and Spider-Man has to fight him again. The novel's status as "true" canon is still unobserved, unless the comic book includes a line like "Venom's been in prison with no incidents for X amount of time/since Y event," and the novel is established to have taken place during X time/after Y event. The comic has now stated that the events in that novel could not have happened, therefore its status is observed to be "not canon." Basically, any series (of anything) could run into this with their expanded universe works, unless great care is taken to keep all materials within that license strictly canon, and everyone working in it on any level has to be aware of and respect how all their disparate stories fit together.

Here, perhaps, is are some better examples. Diane Duane wrote several (excellent, in my opinion) novels revolving around the Romulans in Star Trek, focusing heavily on their culture and character, including their rather bizarre concept of honor. She was writing based on the two TOS episodes they appeared in, where, indeed, the Romulans did exhibit a bizarre and draconian concept of honor. Come Next Gen, and the Romulans are largely depicted as one-dimensional treachery monkeys, though there are a few episodes that seem to hearken back to their slightly more noble TOS interpretation. Doesn't necessarily invalidate Diane Duane's books, since one of the core conflicts within Romulan society is the rise of new Romulans who care less about honor and more about winning at all costs. Then Star Trek: Nemesis comes out, which shows Remus as a tidally-locked planet orbiting Romulus, and introduces the Remans, who may or may not be actual natives of Remus or may or may not be a very mutated offshot of the Vulcan/Romulan species. Since Diane Duane had established Remus as just as viable, if slightly less desirable, a planet than Romulus, that piece of her Schrodinger's Canon is now observed to be false, along with several other details. Her overall concept of the Romulans, however, still survives in the state of "undetermined," as their portrayal in various Star Trek series and movies does not outright contradict what she established in her books.

Babylon 5 had a few tie-in novels written, with various levels of involvement from the official production staff and J. Michael Stracyzkinski himself. JMS has since stated that some of those novels are completely canon, exactly events as he would have described them himself, others are non-canon, and others are "semi-canon," the overall story is good, but the details don't quite fit in. In this case, Word of God has "observed" which parts of which novels are in which state.

One area where this potential trope would not apply is to the MCU, or other similar adaptations. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is based on the characters and events from the entire run of Marvel Comics, so nothing from the comics themselves is canon in the MCU. The MCU is building its own canon as it goes along. For purposes of this trope, nothing from the Marvel Comics canon is "Schrodinger's Canon" for the MCU, because even if the developers of the MCU choose to include canon elements, they will be adapted to contribute to the overall canon vision of the MCU. For instance, the character of Venom/Eddie Brock, in any of their various incarnations, does not "simultaneously exist and not exist within the MCU until it is observed whether or not he/they do." The character simply doesn't exist until an MCU production features him, and decides which version of the character they want to use. Black Widow is not simultaneously both a recipient of a Soviet-knockoff Super Soldier Serum and not, that's a bit of comic book canon which the MCU developers may or may not choose to use at some point, but for now there's no data saying she's anything but a Badass Normal. Where this trope would apply is to MCU tie-in materials, for instance the comic "Nick Fury's Big Week," which establishes that everything starting with the bulk of The Incredible Hulk and ending with the modern parts of Captain America all take place during the same week. Nothing in the films has stated this is not true, but nothing has stated it is, either. It is still in the unobserved state of being both true and not true (discounting any Words of God I'm unaware of that state one way or the other.)

The point here is to highly the divide between what is "truly official" canon (what's in the actual work) and what "may or may not be canon" (the Expanded Universe materials that have neither been confirmed or denied), highlighting it with examples where a piece of former Schrodinger's Canon has been "observed" to be in either the true or false state. That's distinct from Ascended Fanon, because the expanded universe works in question have been officially licensed by the copyright holders of the main work, but the people actually creating the work may not care (or even be aware of) what the expanded universe people are doing.

Heck, before the Star Wars Legends thing happened, before the Prequels were released, the entire Star Wars EU was essentially Schrodinger's Canon. One of the liasons for Lucasfilm (I believe) told the writers in the EU that "You're playing in George's drive way, with his toys, and you're adding some of your toys to the pile. But when he backs up the truck that is that first movie, he's going to run over a lot of your toys." Some things George Lucas took from the Expanded Universe, like Coruscant as the name for the Capitol of the Republic (and later Empire), and the double-bladed lightsaber. But he also invalidated some other bits of canon (Leia stating, in Dark Force Rising, that the Clone Wars happened forty-four years earlier, with DFR being set about five years after Return of the Jedi).

That's why I think this might be acceptable as an additional trope.

Schrödinger's Canon the way you describe it is still just applying what isn't there to what could potentially be there. A.k.a. Fanon.

Canon has three states: true, false, and not explored. One of those is part of canon, and the other two aren't. "Could potentially be" falls under the last one. Not canon.

edited 25th Feb '16 9:04:47 AM by AnotherDuck

Check out my fanfiction!

Canon really only exists in your head. Trying to figure it out is only going to cause fights.

Which Sherlock Holmes stories are canon? Because a contemporary of his had to change Arsène Lupin vs. Sherlock Holmes into ''Arsène Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes'' because of the copyright violation. But Leblanc is still convinced his gentleman thief is smarter than Holmes, even if he didn't have the rights to write him in a story.

In contrast, Sherlock Holmes and Series/Sherlock are both "canon" works with copyright and do not share canon. Encountering a killer dinosaur is "Schrodinger's Canon" for either of those works (it might or might not be canon until it happens).

---

To return to the Star Wars example, not all of the EU books were canon-compliant to the original Trilogy. Splinter of the Mind's Eye is a classic example because in this novel, Luke and Leia are not siblings. It was written with their explicit lack of shared parentage, and only by drawing it into the Empire Strike Back canon does the book change tone.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Canon is, tautologically, what the author/copyright owner of a work says it is. If Disney says that the current official Star Wars universe includes content from works X, Y, and Z, but not A, B, and C, then that's canon by definition.

Fans may make up whatever they want to, but that doesn't change the basic facts of the situation. Now, some creators don't really maintain a sense of what is and is not canonical: they could explicitly deny canon, they could flip-flop on what is and is not canon, they can establish multiple levels of canon, and/or they can declare blatantly contradictory things to be canonical. That's on them.

Unless you get to write for the SWEU and have your writing certified by Disney, your pet ideas are not canonical. There is nothing ambiguous about this.

Back to the tropology of it all, fanon is audience reaction material. It exists externally to the work or franchise in question and is not supported by Word of God. If a character previously thought to have been discarded from the EU reappears in canon, then we would note that as trivia and move on. None of it has any internal relevance to what appears in the actual works.

edited 25th Feb '16 11:33:31 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

@ Another Duck: I'm really not seeing how what I'm describing is Fanon. Looking at the description of the Fanon trope, it's talking about the things fans believe to be true, based on what has occurred in the official work, but is not officially supported by said work. Things like "oh, those two characters totally had sex during that 15 minutes of screentime they were nowhere to be found." Could be quite logical based on the UST those characters may have, but there's no direct implication they did, and nothing official stating if they did or didn't. The fans just choose to believe they did.

What I'm talking about is officially-licensed expanded universe material with a questionable canon relationship to the official product. That's not Fanon; it has been licensed and approved by the holder of the copyright license for that intellectual property, but the people actually working with said property in it's primary medium are under no obligation to pay attention to this official material in other mediums when releasing new official material in the primary medium. If, for instance, a Star Trek novel set after Into Darkness has Captain Kirk and Carol Marcus get married, that incident would be Schrodinger's Canon, not Fanon, because it wasn't invented by fans, it was licensed and approved by Paramount. Then the third Star Trek film comes out and shows that Kirk and Carol Marcus have a contentious dating life. They are not and have not been married, and thus the earlier novel is now proven to be non-canon, because another work of the intellectual property (Star Trek) in it's primary medium (film, in this case) has stated it is not. Or the third Star Trek film comes out, and shows that Captain Kirk and Carol Marcus are now married, and the novel is now proven to be canon, because another work of the intellectual property in its primary medium has shown it to be true.

If I'm having a misunderstanding about what Fanon is, then I sincerely apologize. But I just don't see, in the definition for Fanon on its page, that it has anything to do with actual, officially published expanded universe materials, rather that it involves fan speculation, fanfics, and the like. I'm also not talking about Shrug of God, where a creator of a work refuses to give a solid answer about a piece of canon, either to keep the audience in suspense for an unrevealed plot twist, because they just don't want to say, or because they don't actually know. I'm only talking about officially licensed and published works, related to a franchise, where the canonicity of such works is not fully established in relation to the franchise in its primary medium.

@crazysamaritan: I have to disagree with you there. Canon is what the creators of a work in its primary medium have established as true. Buffy killed The Master at the end of Season One of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That is canon. Buffy burned down her old high school gym because it was full of vampires. That is canon. Buffy took a very long magical road trip with Angel and Oz because they were using magical paths that could only be traversed by beings who were touched by the supernatural appeared in a series of tie-in novels, and thus may or may not be canon. Buffy, Xander, and Willow had a threesome shortly after the end of the pilot episode, and it was so awkward they all agreed never to talk about it again, is pure speculation, i.e. Fanon (as I understand it.) When it comes to long-running or relatively open-source franchises (like Sherlock Holmes, where many other authors have written stories of wildly varying qualities), yes, what is and is not canon can become harder to nail down, especially since the "expanded universe" stories take place in the same primary medium as the original creator stories. Still, I daresay most Holmsians consider only Arthur Conan Doyle's stories actually canon, and everything else Expanded Universe. The various Sherlock TV shows are in roughly the same boat as the MCU: updated adaptations of the characters and situations with a new spin and free reign to determine what their version of this particular take's story will be. They are not canon with the other stories any more than Marvel Comics are canon with the MCU, and vice versa.

@Fighteer: I would quibble on one point: canon is more up to the actual creator of the work than the company who owns the copyright. The actual creator is working on the work in its primary medium, they (theoretically) have the most creative control. (Yes, studios/publishers can and will meddle because they think something will be better or sell better if you do it a different way, but it's still up to the primary creator/creators to do the work that establishes what is fully canon.) If a studio decides "Hey, we've got a really hot property on our hands, let's milk it for all it's worth!" and hires a bunch of outside creators to expand on the work in other mediums, that doesn't necessarily mean anything at all to the primary creator/creators, especially in something ongoing like a TV series. Joss Whedon was certainly not expected to read and incorporate every comic, novel, video game, etc. licensed for Buffy the Vampire Slayer while he was creating the show, both because the show was already dense enough that expecting audiences to follow it into other mediums to get this season's plotline would have been insane (All There in the Manual), and because the studio executives seemed to realize that when you have Joss Whedon, you just let him be Joss Whedon (within budget constraints.)

I absolutely agree that fan speculation and fanfics are not this trope, and already covered under their own trope. But I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about officially-licensed and published expanded universe works as part of a franchise, where the people making the primary decisions about what is and is not canon within that franchise are completely free (if not encouraged) to completely ignore those expanded universe works if they don't fit with where they want the franchise in its primary medium to go.

I can see there's a lot of friction towards this idea, and I don't want to push it if people really think there's no place for it. I'm just trying to make sure it gets rejected based on what it is, not what it isn't, and it looks to me like there's a lot of misunderstanding about the point I'm trying to get at. I apologize if I'm incorrect about that. I just want to try and be as clear as possible here, which is why this came out so long, and why I called each of you out individually. I'm sorry if that seems personal, I just wanted to try and address each point on it's own to minimize potential confusion.

Thank you all for your input, I look forward to seeing what else may come out of this.

It's only questionable to fans. If the creator has said it belongs in canon, it belongs in canon. If the creator hasn't said it belongs in canon, it's fanon. It doesn't matter who invents the event. It matters who believes where it belongs. It's the speculation about whether it belongs in canon that makes it fanon.

Check out my fanfiction!

What do you call material that's published and approved by the same company that made the canon, but not outright declared to be "canon"?

Expanded Universe is the catch-all bucket for such side material. The degree to which any given part of it is canon is up to the owners of the IP in question.

edited 26th Feb '16 5:33:41 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Also see Alternate Continuity. We're not limited to a single capital-C Canon here, you know. The new Star Wars material belongs in one canon, the old Legends material in another (which may be mined for ideas for the former). The first six films and Star Wars: The Clone Wars are in both.

I'd rather view Star Wars Clone Wars as the show belonging to the old canon, and the CGI film and cartoon existing only in the new one... if at all. There's also the still ongoing Old Republic storyline, which is part of the old canon.

At any rate, I think the main issue here can be defined as the potential for continuity overlap. To that effect, I usually presume that any set of expanded universe stories has it's own continuity, elements of which may or may not be included in another. And to make it easier, I'd also add that characters and events related thereof may be subject to royalties, so for what it's worth, the only things going into the new Star Wars canon will likely be ships and planets. For instance, Star Wars: Commander has Dark Troopers in it, but somehow I don't think anyone would bring back the awesomeness that is Kyle Katarn... as opposed to a blatant lawyer-friendly expy.

So, basically the consensus is that this overlaps with already-established definitions for Expanded Universe and so on?

The thing is that what is considered canon varies from work to work, sometimes within the work itself. Broad Strokes is more or less the catch-all term for these unusual variations, and probably the closest trope to your idea.