On Canon · 1:06pm May 12th, 2014
With the close of season 4 I've noticed a few blogs on my feed pondering the changes and bemoaning the jossing of various bits of headcanon and story. It comes up all the time (I've been known to bellyache about bits of canon that contradict my carefully planned *snrk* stories from time to time), though most of the time it's in the sort of joking "Oh no, I've been jossed again, damn you McCarthy! *shake fist*" vein, rather than genuine angst. Most of the time.
There are one or two exceptions, of course...
Perhaps I should define things a little so that we're all on the same page, because I often see arguments about canon that get it completely wrong. Okay university education, don't fail me now...
Canon as a term arises from the ancient greek κανών, which means something like a measuring rod, standard or rule. It's the thing against which other things are compared. It went through Latin, where it also came to mean a member of the clergy (back in the days when such people were upstanding and noble sorts to whom you would wish favourable comparison) and a body of text known to be the genuine work of an author. In that latter sense, they were the known standard by which you could compare other works claimed to be by the same author.
Shakespearean canon, for instance, consists of the plays known to have been written by him. If you turn up with a manuscript of his lost Cardenio, it'll be compared to that set of known works - to canon - and more than likely found wanting.
So now we understand that canon is the genuine thing.
The definition tightens up as media becomes more mass-produced. Where you have a work created by a single author, canon remains as above: the body of work created by that author. Where you have media that is the product of multiple creators, however, it gets a little more complex. You can't look at Star Trek and say that only the episodes Gene Roddenberry wrote are canon and then ignore everything else, because that's not how television works. All those scripts had multiple authors working on them. So, the definition of canon has to change slightly from the body of work of a single creator to the body of work of a single product.
In film that's easy. You have one film: that's canon. In television it's a little more complex, but you can state with certainty that you have one television series, and that's canon.
In principle the definition is still almost the same. Canon is the genuine thing, it's just that how you define your genuine thing is a little different. Anything else claiming to be a part of that body of work has to be compared to the genuine thing, and if it fits without contradiction, it can be considered canon. So, in Star Trek terms, The Next Generation is canon with The Original Series because it doesn't contradict it, whilst the new films are most definitely not canon because they contradict just about everything that happened from the pilot forwards. Though they are part of the franchise, those films form an entirely separate canon.
I'll get back to this idea in a moment.
So you have your measuring rod, your principle that it measures, and your set of outcomes. With that in mind lets look at, to pick an entirely random example, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
To begin with, the TV series is canon. We can't dispute this: it's the body of work, the genuine thing. If the series isn't canon to itself, then you have something of an ontological problem, because you're measuring canon against a rule that doesn't exist. Individual episodes might be argued about, but the series as a whole is canon, because it is itself.
Remaining in the show's primary medium of animation, we can look at Equestria Girls and ask if that is also canon. The answer is yes... to a certain degree. It doesn't contradict anything in the source work. It's made by the same people. It shares commonality.
Moving beyond the source medium we can look at the books written by G M Berrow, or the comics that everyone finds so popular. These by and large also don't contradict the source. They share commonality. They can be considered canon.
But then here we stumble across a peculiar quirk of these collective works: the concept of franchise, in which a source has a number of closely related, officially approved sister works created by third parties. This introduces the stumbling block upon which so many shatter their shins in the debate about canon: the idea of primary and secondary canon.
This primary and secondary canon concept is necessary when a work becomes a franchise. In a collectively produced single work, everyone is singing from the same show bible (which is their canon, against which everything they produce has to be measured). In a franchise, while the individuals and organisations may communicate the broad scope of their ideas, they are no longer a unified whole, because they will no longer have access to the ultimate source of canon. They are officially recognised as part of the franchise, but they may start to include their own ideas for how things should be.
This is most clearly illustrated by the differences between the IDW comic books and the series itself. By and large they don't conflict, but they are divergent (in fact if you examine the comics you can see that they're divergent from one another as well, but that would needlessly complicate things so I'm ignoring it for now), and that leaves a question mark hovering over what should be considered genuine and what should be relegated to non-genuine. Within a franchise, this conflict can be counter-productive: both things want to be considered genuine, otherwise what's the point of franchising them?
At that point you have to define a boundary, and that boundary is usually this: the primary source of canon is the originating work. It is the genuine thing against which other parts of canon must be compared. This creates a hierarchy within the franchise that significantly eases the conflict.
The same definition as we used before is maintained within the franchise, but now we have three outcomes: canon, non-canon, and "everything else". This "everything else" is the mushy area known as secondary canon. It hasn't contradicted the primary canon yet, but don't rely on it and don't expect it to be treated as canon by the primary source, because contradiction is almost inevitable.
So with our levels of canon defined, where does this leave us fanfic writers and fans of the show? It's clear first of all that even within the franchise, canon is not this absolute unified thing that cannot be contravened. All that secondary canon is still there to demonstrate that point quite adequately - it is canon, but it may not be at some point.
It's clear also that arguing about what's what from the secondary canon is a silly idea. You cannot and should not declare that writer X got it wrong because they didn't account for Shining Armor's love of Oubliettes and Ogres, because that is a secondary canon thing. It never appeared on the source work. It can be included or ignored by Writer X at a whim.
Of course it Writer X does include O&O in his fic, it would be equally silly to then argue that he's required to include a pile of 80s pop-culture refs. Based on the principle that secondary canon is only canon as long as it doesn't contradict the source material, secondary canon can be picked and chosen at will.
And the reverse becomes true fort similar reasons: Secondary canon, being effectively its own sub-canon within the franchise, can safely pick and choose from the primary source, and often does. If it exists in a perpetual state of "not yet decanonised" then it can do things that canon wouldn't, simply because it's already beyond the pale. The comics use Luna as a character, but their characterisation is different and potentially contradicts the show - though the show itself has had little to say about her character up to now.
For this reason the comics can refer to events on the show, but ignore others for the purpose of story, and often do so, maintaining their secondary canon status even as they introduce ideas that aren't canon.
Finally, within the source work, elements of canon are often ignored or not spoken of for similar reasons. Apparent internal contradictions of canon can usually be resolved by realising that canon requires a certain flexibility in order to bow to narrative necessity - if an event in a particular episode appears to contradict an earlier one, it doesn't actually matter: as long as it doesn't directly declare that the prior event never happened, the apparent contradiction can remain. It merely reveals more about the event in question.
Canon, in other words, is less an iron rule than a tailor's measuring tape. It is still a single genuine thing, a single standard against which other things are compared, but it is flexible and adaptable (even if it does sometimes appear to tie itself in knots).
Fanfiction writers are often more rigid about canon than the creators of the show they love. Sometimes this is a fair stance to take, but a lot of the time it can be counter-productive to enjoyment of the work. Ultimately, canon only becomes rigid after the franchise ends, at which point it is set in stone and cannot change. As a fanfiction writer in particular, cleaving too close to canon rigidity while the franchise is still moving leaves you with the inevitable risk of canon contradicting you.
Is the answer then to destroy anything that doesn't match canon 100%? Or that anything canon contradicts is inherently bad and wrong?
We can find the answer to that within the franchise itself.
NO
Until the work is complete, it's a bad idea to stick too close to a rigid definition of what is or is not canon. If the franchise itself can be so flexible about canon, then it is ludicrous to hold ourselves to a standard that even those who are paid to produce the work do not hold themselves to.
I've always maintained that canon is not some hard wall against which all deviant ideas must be lined up for execution, and I've tried many times to find a pithy soundbite to encompass this argument. The best I usually come up with is canon is there to be ignored, but that doesn't really cover it. I don't ignore canon. Not exactly. I pick and choose from it to find what suits my story, and bend other parts to fit if I like the idea but not the precise execution. Others pick different bits. Some take the whole lot and stuff their stories full of canon references, while yet others take only the barest skeleton of canon and build an entire world around it, one that is recognisable, and yet entirely new.
And that finally led me to the soundbite I was after:
Canon is a buffet, not a feeding tube
We aren't here to be force-fed these ideas without choice. We're fans of the show, not slaves to its output: we consume what we desire and produce what we enjoy.
We can argue about what is or is not canon all we want, but in the end all that matters is: does it feel like pony? If it does then great. If it doesn't, that is where you should question if you're at the right buffet. Until then, keep writing your fics, read what you enjoy, and above all be excellent to one another.
So I don't have to include that ungodly and ugly castle in muh fanfic anymore? Yaaaaaaaaay!
I just wish people would stop with the whole savetree stupidity.
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2104173
Um, I was under the impression that #savetree is (or at least started as) a joke. What, people are taking it seriously now? I mean really seriously, not meta-humorously seriously? If so, Poe's Law strikes again.
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Very well said, sir. You have expressed my opinion on the matter in a far more succinct way than I have ever managed. If I may, I'd like to make use of the analogy myself.
2104162
It's still probably a good idea to explain why you aren't, just as you would explain why Canterlot isn't on the side of a mountain in a given story. Otherwise, people will ask.
You mention that fanfic writers tend to hold more tightly to canon than the show's own writers. I see the reasoning for this as twofold: wanting to respect the underlying material you're dealing with, and because any deviations from canon are going to be challenged by readers. If you change something, you've got to ultimately justify it somehow.
Something can also be canon, strictly speaking, yet also be so outlandish and stupid that it gets rejected by the audience. As a ridiculous example, imagine S5 reveals that Twilight is and always has been a sapient toaster instead of a unicorn. I think it's fair to say that almost everyone out there would reject it, due to the violation of suspension of disbelief if nothing else. In such a scenario, canonicity would have little meaning; it only really has any meaning if the audience collectively agrees to accept it.
Complicating things further, there's also the fact that the cartoon symbolically represents ideas, which you've touched on in a previous blog post. As an example, there's what 'really' happened with NMM, and then there's the two to three minute battle sequence we see in the S4 opener; it's (probably!) not canon that NMM's attempted takeover lasted a few minutes.
2104197 It started as a joke but 90% of the people doing it didn't realise that and now its an actual thing.
actually iirc hasbro and dhx have said as long as the show doesn't contradict the idw comics they are considered cannon. an example is that the daring don't episode effectively retconned twilights mother being the author of daring doo.
2104200 Please dooo
2104162 Oh no, that's ultra-mega-super canon. It's now always been there. The tree never existed any more.
#savecastle
2104271 I still think that episode was just Rainbow Dash writing a fanfic in the journal.
I've never understood why bronies have such a hard time with the concepts of canon and fanon. I still don't understand why knighty doesn't include canon tags for stories here -- i.e., letting users filter stories by whether or not they conform to Season 1, Season 2, etc. This was common practice on Harry Potter fanfic sites.
Canon is canon, and fanon is fanon, and it's okay for your story to contradict canon. Everyone should just chill.
As a Trekkie -- even one who hates the reboot -- not a great example, unfortunately. Abrams' Trek is absolutely canon. It's an alternate universe/timeline to the Prime timeline, but it's within the Trek canon. For example, Spock Prime exists in both, and his character in the reboot is the same character from TOS and TNG, not Nimoy playing a different Spock.
The rule with Star Trek is that only the TV episodes and movies are canonical. (There's an exception to every rule, and The Animated Series is a possible exception here.) The novels, comic books, etc, are called "beta canon" -- in other words, they're basically licensed fanfiction and carry no weight whatsoever for the showrunners.
2104446 I suppose I could have picked a better example, but it was all that came to mind.
And the ways of knighty are mysterious and ineffable. Blessed be the man who discovers knighty's true purpose, for he shall inherit the kingdom of Sparkle.
2104457
The canon of the Star Wars universe is interesting, especially with how the Extended Universe was recently gutted. And honestly, canonical Star Trek contradicts itself all the time; it's a big ol' unwieldy franchise.
So you know the finale was called Twilight's Kingdom, but in the end, is her Kingdom... Ponyville? The title plus the summary that the other alicorns were going to transfer their power to her made me wonder if she was just going to run Equestria from here on out... clearly not the case...
2104386 except there is no indication of it being a dream or a Fanfic. Just wishful thinking. It happened that book at the end is proof enough.
2104478 I got the feeling her kingdom was more of an ideal or a metaphysical concept than an actual place. Her castle is in Ponyville, but that doesn't mean she runs the place. It's just a big house where she lives.
2104540 YFW next season turns out she does run Ponyville into the ground and ends up doing cocaine and being extremely racist
2105875
I am 100% in rehab!
I learned stuff! Thank you.