fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5046 ]

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I agree that those are things that people usually include in the idea of 'canon', and things like that are why I think it would be better to move away from thinking in terms of canon.

For me, what's in the text is what's in the text. I do, in fact, think that which books "count" is something that's open to interpretation, and I don't see why I shouldn't be. I don't think there's any actual need to have a cohesive set of books that "count" and books that "don't count", unless you're actually like, working as a branding manager or continuity editor on a large franchise, which fandom almost by definition is not.

I really don't see why it should matter a damn to a fan that the author said that some work counted and some work didn't count. Obviously something like that might help make sense of what is going on in a given work. But I don't think interpretations have to be bound by that.

NAYRT: Which version of canon are we talking about? The one where there's entire libraries of debate about minutiae of interpretation of traditional texts which are probably the synthesis works of multiple oral and literary traditions?

The one where the most notable work is itself derivative of multiple versions where the text has been lost?

Or the one where media companies run several versions of the same stories across multiple imprints, media, and networks, each tailored to triangulate to a specific audience?

Or the one where modern works are deliberately written to support multiple interpretations from the audience?

The anon did not specify, and so being like "get rid of the idea of canon" supposedly applies to them all which makes no sense.

Getting rid of the idea of canon doesn't mean getting rid of those things. It means stop using the idea of canon as the single framework for understanding all of those things, because they're actually very disparate, and it doesn't make sense to treat them all with the same cut-and-dried idea of "canon".

One of the things that's funny is that the fandom concept of "canon" was an inside joke in pre-internet Sherlock Holmes that reconciling all of the contradictions in Doyle's stories involved the same kinds interpretive somersaults as biblical literalism.

But the secret criticizes the view that "a canon has a specific correct interpretations of events and/or relationships." And no, we don't need that as demonstrated by the historic flexibility of canon which can easily accommodate multiple versions and variations.

[ SECRET POST #5046 ]

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