[ SECRET POST #5046 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5046 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 13 secrets from Secret Submission Post #722.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

There isn't canon or fanon at all. Just throw those concepts out.

There's the text, and then there's interpretations of it, which are more or less plausible and more or less textual.

[(Anonymous)]

The text is what makes up the canon... if the text exists, the canon exists

[(Anonymous)]

If the canon is nothing more than the text, then why even talk about "canon" at all?

And if the canon is something more than the text, then where do the elements that make it canon come from, and why should we care about them? To be clear, I think this one is what people mean when they talk about canon on an every day basis. Canon usually means something more than just the text - it usually means one specific interpretation of the text that 'counts' as 'official', and I don't see any reason to think of one interpretation of the text as 'official'. Unless you're working in branding or continuity or something.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know and am not here to debate all that, but you said to throw out the concept of canon and that's not possible to do while saying there is "text" and "else" because then that just means the text is canon and else is fanon. I'm not sure you know exactly what canon means, because it has meaning and use beyond fandom

[(Anonymous)]

Saying that the text is canon and everything else is fanon is dramatically different from the current state of affairs as those words are actually used, where one interpretation is treated as canon and all other interpretations are treated as fanon.

If you want to say "the text is canon and everything else is fanon" as another way of saying "there is the text and then there are a bunch of interpretations of the text", fine, although I think it's going to be confusing because I think people will tend to use the same meanings of 'canon' and 'fanon' they do now.

[(Anonymous)]

Depends on what fandom and what you consider part of canon? For example if there are extended universes and the creators say some books are canonical and these other books are non-canon AUs, then their statement there is part of the series canon whether it's stated in the books themselves or not, especially since it would make no sense for that to be stated in the books themselves since it's a totally meta and out of world concept

The only people who get to decide what is canon is the creators, despite any outcries of "but it's soooo canon" from fandom or anyone who is not a creator

This doesn't mean the ideas are meaningless and should be thrown out, or that all text is equal text and things like "this series is AU and non canonical to the main universe" are just interpretations by the author

[(Anonymous)]

They exist, being delusional about it not existing is just as bad as being delusional about them being the only thing that matters. A middle ground does exist you know.

[(Anonymous)]

They exist in the conventional sense that they're ideas in peoples' heads and words that people use to talk about things.

But we could abandon that particular construct for understanding things, and we'd all be a lot better off if we did.

[(Anonymous)]

nah

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

What are you talking about even though, honestly? If the ideas and words are from the creators own mouth than it's canon, like Bilbo Baggin's is a Hobbit, canon. Bilbo and Thorin make a great ship, (at least according to the above secret) fanon. Media can't exist without a canon basis, fandom doesn't exist without a fanon base.

We need that basic construct to understand and perceive media, a middle ground is what we need not the extremes of an all or nothing.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT: Um, you do know that Bilbo is also, canonically, an unreliable narrator, so his autobiography must be viewed as both subjective and somewhat fictionalized?

[(Anonymous)]

SA: Not only is Bilbo canonically an unreliable narrator, Tolkien is canonically an unreliable fictional translator.

[(Anonymous)]

you're using the concept of fanon and canon just with different words, saying 'interpretation' and 'text' doesn't mean you're not adhering to the same status quo everyone else is, you're just pretending you're not by using different words.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it's actually the same.

A few big differences I see: one, canon demands that everything be internally consistent and is not as good at accepting contradictions or ambiguities. Two, canon tends to care a lot about WOG. Three, canon in practice tends to put one particular interpretation on a pedestal and reduce all other interpretations to "headcanons" and treat them as if they're just a product of fans making them up, which I disagree with.

[type_wild]

"Fanon" is a very useful term for things like when the fandom has collectively decided that something is fact even though it has absolutely no basis in the source text. The shampoo scent of a character (yes, really) is a fairly trivial example of it, but even that gets annyoing after a while.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a fair point and I accept it!

[(Anonymous)]

I mean you are free to be as obnoxiously postmodern as your Introduction to Philosophy class is letting you be, but if "The Exciting Adventures of Alice, Bob, Jane, and Mary" contains a scene wherein Bob and Alice declare their love for one another and swear undying partnership forever, the people who insist that Bob and Jane are the "real" ship of the piece are being deliberately obtuse. So are the rival shippers who claim that Jane and Mary are "canonically" deeply-in-love life partners despite the fact that literally nothing that ever happens on-screen indicates that we are supposed to think so. People are allowed to debate interpretation and death of the author all they want, but they look like total dumbasses when they try to claim that events that didn't happen on-page or on-screen DID happen, or that events that did happen on-page or on-screen DIDN'T happen. Just because they aren't satisfied with fan fic and their emotional health somehow hangs on pretending that two random fictional characters banged/wanted to bang in the original piece of media. It's always some shipping bullshit with these people, always.

[(Anonymous)]

DA - Pretty much all of this gets a +100000 from me.

+2000000

[(Anonymous)]

MTE

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that interpretations that contradict the text are bad interpretations! I don't think this is really arguing against any point that I'm making. I mean, people can obviously go and write fic based on whatever they want, but, no.

In a way, I agree with OP's point that fandom shouldn't arbitrarily decide on a specific correct interpretation of what's going on. But I think that insisting on the idea of 'canon' is... pretty much doing exactly that. And a lot of the times, when people get into the kind of arguments that OP talks about, I think that's really what they're doing - taking one interpretation and treating it as the official one. I think instead of deciding on a specific official interpretation, we should accept that sometimes there are going to be multiple different interpretations and that's OK, and we should be trying to judge interpretations as interpretations.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT: Oh yes. Fandom's use of canon has more in common with certain flavors of fundamentalist religion than any form of literary interpretation (or good writing) that's been practiced in the last half century. According to fandom, there is one truth, ambiguous stories just don't exist, narrative voices are 100% reliable, and we can confirm that truth by stalking the author across multiple conferences and social media accounts.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I have a feeling you're focusing on one specific scenario and letting the point of this conversation go straight over your head. It just seems like what you're talking about and what everyone else is saying are two completely different things.

[(Anonymous)]

People who don't understand death of the author shouldn't use it to justify their ship, which doesn't need to be justified anyway.

They also shouldn't use it as a straw man to justify ideas about lit that should be laughed out of a high school class. As you just did.

[(Anonymous)]

You must be new to fandom if you haven't seen people doing exactly the thing I described tbh

[(Anonymous)]

There is no opinion so stupid that it can't be found in fandom. That still doesn't mean that there is an objective truth about fictional characters that defines whether the text has been read properly or not.