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fandomsecrets2021-11-30 08:16 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2021-11-30 08:16 pm
[ SECRET POST #5443 ]
⌈ Secret Post #5443 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #779.
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.
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(Anonymous) 2021-12-01 01:38 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2021-12-01 02:01 am (UTC)(link)I don't agree with AYRT at all, and I agree with your basic statement - the books are still there, and it doesn't matter whether or not they're canon, you can read them and enjoy them just the same whether they're canon or whether they're not canon.
But the idea that the EU wasn't canon is not strictly speaking true. It was always the case that things from the Star Wars EU were less canon than other things - it was understood that anything George said would supercede anything from the EU, and it was always possible that George would come back and rewrite everything and it would stop being canon entirely if he did that. But it was understood that there were multiple levels of canon. EU stuff was not as canon as the films were, but it was still canon of a sort until and unless it was superceded. It wasn't non-canon in the way that, for example, the Star Trek novels were, where they were completely non-canon and meaningless and could wildly contradict each other and even contradict the actual TV series and no one cared because the rules were made up and the points didn't matter. The EU books were intended to be part of a single fictional universe which was intended to be, and presented as, part of the same canon as the original films. That's the way that it was understood at the time, IE, in the 1990s.
Of course that doesn't mean that getting rid of the EU was in any way wrong. Because it was always a possibility that it would happen, and the movies always came first, and that's fine, and anyway if you really like the EU it's still there, you can just read the books the same as you could before. But their status as canon did actually change when the new movies came out. It's a minor distinction and of course it doesn't matter very much in the grand scheme of the universe, but it is what happened.
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(Anonymous) 2021-12-01 01:43 am (UTC)(link)Exactly. The thing OP loves is still around. The EU was a muddle of different writers trying to each get their contradictory versions "canonized," when in reality, none of it was canon. There was always a possibility or even likelihood that things would be changed later, especially if more films eventually got made. It's like the Doctor Who novels and Big Finish Audio episodes for that canon.
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(Anonymous) 2021-12-01 02:25 am (UTC)(link)OK, OK, you mentioned the Doctor Who non-TV stuff, I'm going to talk about the ways that canon, what is considered canon, and the very definition of an "EU" has always been treated differently between what might be considered the "big 3" sci fi franchises: Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who. Keep in mind that this is something I've thought about A LOT, and I feel that the way that these various franchises have treated canon historically and how that's changed with the relatively recent franchise boom is really interesting.
Now, Star Trek has never tried to meld the TV and non-TV stuff in any way whatsoever. There have been literally hundreds of books, comics, etc., but there's always been an understanding that the TV stuff is completely unbeholden to the non-TV stuff and, to a certain extent, even vice-versa. For example, there's a Star Trek book series called The Department of Temporal Investigations that adheres to the few mentions of time travel in Deep Space 9 and some of Enterprise but blatantly contradicts a huge portion of Enterprise - all in service of a good story. Because the EU has never pretended to be beholden to the TV shows, there is very little drama when it comes to the EU being contradicted by the TV shows - to the point where there are literally two separate fan wikis for the TV canon and everything else (Memory Alpha and Memory Beta).
Star Wars is an interesting case where the base canon was very, very limited for a very, very long time. Even when the Prequel Trilogy came out, they were just that - prequels - and therefore they didn't contradict more than a small portion of the EU canon. This created a situation where Lucasfilm itself had this sort of unofficial hierarchy of canon that went movies -> stuff Lucas had imput on (mostly TV shows) -> stuff not contradicted by the Prequels -> stuff contradicted by the prequels. In the 2000s in particular there was a concentrated effort to make the EU consistent with both the movies and itself, which led to fans who were into the EU treating it as, essentially, canon on nearly the same level as the movies. When Disney bought Lucasfilm and swept away this massive web of *stuff* in one fell swoop, some EU fans felt betrayed as a direct consequence of the way the EU had previously been treated by both the EU writers and Lucasfilm in general.
Now, the Doctor Who franchise's treatment of both TV canon and EU canon is probably my favorite. The thing with Doctor Who is that even the main canon is very, very self-contradictory. There are at least three Cyberman origins in Classic Who, the Daleks went from needing static electricity to move around to literally flying up stairs, hell, the Doctor went from "probably a human from the future" to "alien" over the course of the first season. With a main canon that is so self-contradictory, the EU being contradicted or contradicting itself is pretty much just par for the course. I mean, Big Finish has put out two different versions of the Sixth Doctors regeneration, both which contradict both the TV version and each other. If you're mad about what one bit or another of Doctor Who is doing - and oh boy do people get mad - you can rest assured that it's probably going to either get folded into preexisting canon or just plain contradicted.
This is why, imo, you have to look at different aspects of these franchises to access their "health" as a whole. Star Trek's health as a franchise can easily be judged solely based on the current or most recent TV shows. Star Wars is on shakey ground right now - with the Sequel Trilogy being so controversial and Disney having to rebuild their non-mainline canon nearly from scratch, it'll be a bit before we can judge how durable the franchise will be moving forward. Doctor Who, no matter how controversial, has a certain durability as a franchise, imo, specifically because the relationship between mainline and EU canon is so open. My only concern with it atm is that BBC Books has massively slowed down their output.
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(Anonymous) 2021-12-01 01:52 am (UTC)(link)