Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions - what's the differences between these?

Asked on Trope Finder, but was suggested to discuss here.

Before adding to Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions, what's the difference between:

• Original Flavour vs Pseudo-Canonical Fic
• The Stations of the Canon vs Broad Strokes vs In Spite of a Nail vs For Want Of A Nail
• You Rebel Scum! vs Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters
• Loose Canon vs Schrödinger's Canon vs Broad Strokes
• Unintentional Period Piece vs Period Piece vs 20 Minutes into the Past vs Present-Day Past

• Technically, Original Flavor is a subtrope of Pseudo-Canonical Fic. Both are fully consistent with the original show's canon, but Original Flavor has the additional constraint of copying the original's style and tone as much as possible, too. Imagine a Slice of Life show about Alice and Bob, with a running gag about the off-screen adventures of Bob's cousin Dave, who the audience never actually sees. An Original Flavor fic based on this show would be a Slice Of Life story starring Alice and Bob that could pass for a real episode. While if you wrote a globe-spanning thriller about cousin Dave's career as a spy, incorporating every passing reference to Dave from the original show as an event in your story, that would be Pseudocanonical but definitely not Original Flavor.

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• For Want Of A Nail: In a time travel or alternate universe story, a tiny change to initial starting conditions cascades to huge changes later. (Ex: Time travel into the distant prehistoric past and accidentally step on an insect. When you return to the present, humans no longer exist, and intelligent birds are now the dominant species on Earth.)
• In Spite of a Nail: Even after a timeline has diverged wildly from the original timeline (OTL), history still conspires to produce recognizable parallels to OTL, no matter how little sense it makes. (Ex: In the alternate Earth with intelligent birds as the dominant species, somehow there's a bird version of the USA, a bird version of New York City, and a bird version of your hometown, with bird versions of your friends and family.)
• The Stations of the Canon is a Trope in Aggregate more focused on narrative function than in-universe chronology. It's focused on how certain big events from the original show appear in multiple AU stories as a way for authors to show how their AU differs from canon or OTL. It can overlap with For Want Of A Nail (especially if at each station the AU diverges further from canon) or with In Spite Of A Nail (when an event happens just because it occurred in the original canon, in spite of divergences in this AU making that hard to believe) but it doesn't have to be either.
• Broad Strokes is all the negative space that the above three tropes don't show. Broad Strokes means a sort of fuzzy canon, where the major events are consistent between two stories, but the smaller details might be contradictory. But if you can point to a single starting difference that caused all the contradictions (ie. For Want Of A Nail), then the two stories are defined AU's of each other, and it's no longer a Broad Strokes relationship. Similarly, the more shared/parallel events (analogous to the Stations of the Canon) you can point to between the two stories, the more likely you're looking at AU's rather than Broad Strokes.

It's getting late here, so I'll have to cut this short.

Thank you.

Another one to consider for the page:

• Divorced Installment vs Dolled-Up Installment vs Alternate Continuity

Alternate Continuity has virtually nothing to do with either of them beyond perhaps a mechanism for the divorcing/dolling up. Where are you getting the idea that they are similar?

• Divorced Installment: A work starts out as part of a series/franchise but is retooled into a standalone work.
• Dolled-Up Installment: A work starts out as a standalone but is retooled into part of a series/franchise.

The "overlap" mentioned is only in the specific case when a work starts out as part of a preexisting work and then is retooled into part of another work.

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These two also are very different beyond the titles.

• You Rebel Scum!: High ranked villain insults low ranked hero. Not actually limited to rebels, it's just a Star Wars reference.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Differing views on a group's actions within a work. The usual iteration is a group being branded as terrorists by The Empire or whoever and committing terrorist acts, but also functioning as La Résistance.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jan 15th 2021 at 12:48:05 PM

Thank you.

I maybe wrongly got the idea about Alternate Continuity from Series.Helstrom which was in the MCU, then removed from it, and Film.The Batman 2022, in the DCEU, then removed from it. That's where that bit came from.

• Loose Canon: When officially licensed Expanded Universe material isn't acknowledged one way or the other in the main canon. It isn't confirmed or contradicted. This only works if the expanded universe story is sufficiently "distant" (whether by happening at a different time, a different place, or with a different cast) that it doesn't become awkward that the main story never mentions it. (Ex. In Alice and Bob: The Video Game, Alice's sister Claire comes by for a short visit. Alice and Bob, the original TV series, never shows or mentions Claire... but Alice rarely ever talks about her family anyway, beyond establishing that said family lives in a different town. So it's still possible that Claire does exist in the universe of the TV show, just off-screen—so the plot of The Video Game could still be canon.)
• Schrödinger's Canon: When the main canon has to confirm or deny the canonicity of some expanded universe story—leaving it as Loose Canon isn't an option—but the main story hasn't gotten to that point yet, leaving the expanded universe's canonicity undefined. The trope article brings up two ways this can happen:
  • The expanded universe story introduces a major change to the series status quo, or otherwise ties in directly with the characters and plot of the main canon. (Ex: Alice and Bob: The Video Game is set immediately after season 2 of Alice and Bob the TV show. The plot of the video game involves Alice's sister Claire moving in with her, and scattering her huge collection of Beanie Babies all over Alice's living room, which by the way is one of the main locations in the show. The game ends with that as the new status quo. Now the fans are waiting for season 3 of the show to air. Will the show acknowledge the events of the game by featuring Claire in the supporting cast—or at least showing Claire's Beanie Baby collection in the living room? Or will the show just ignore the game and continue from where season 2 left off?)
  • Two expanded universe stories are consistent with the main canon, but they contradict each other, so they can't both be canon. The fans are waiting for the main canon to give some information that will canonize one story and consign the other to the apocrypha. (Ex: Alice and Bob: The Video Game introduces Alice's sister, Claire, and insists she's Alice's only sibling. Meanwhile, Alice and Bob: The Comic Book introduces Alice's brother, Carl, and also insists he's Alice's only sibling. The fans are hoping that season 3 of the original show will say something about Alice's family, because until then we can't figure out whether the game or the comic book is correct.)
• Broad Strokes: While the previous tropes are about an expanded universe story having undefined canonicity, in this one the canonicity is defined... but that definition is "yes and no". The main canon confirms the major events of the expanded universe story, but contradicts it on smaller details. (Ex: Alice and Bob: The Video Game involves Alice's sister Claire moving in with her after losing her job, and scattering her huge collection of Beanie Babies all over Alice's living room. When season 3 of Alice and Bob the TV show airs, it confirms that Claire has moved in with Alice—but she did so after a nasty breakup, not after losing her job. And instead of Beanie Babies, it's her collection of bootleg My Little Ponies that she scattered all over the living room.)

Thank you for the definitions. If I'm adding them, how to ensure it's the right style and tone without a Wall of Text.

I added these to Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions but is the style and tone wrong for that page:

Comic-Book Time vs Webcomic Time vs Frozen in Time

• Comic-Book Time is where the illusion of time passing means characters don't age much if at all.
• Webcomic Time is where time actually does pass over the course of the series, but at a much slower rate than its real-time publication or airing. Sometimes this can be achieved by backdating stories to match up with the date they are supposed to have occurred or explicitly setting it in the time the story started. Not to be confused with Alternate History which does a similar sort of thing, but not with the passage of time.
• Frozen in Time is when a work's concept is so tightly bound to a particular era it cannot leave that era or everything needs to be in a particular era in order for the work to make sense or be accepted by audiences (e.g. having a slavery story set in present day America would have very different implications than having a slavery story set in the Antebellum South). Outlander is one such example.

Edited by Merseyuser1 on Jan 16th 2021 at 2:50:03 PM