I was watching YouTube when This video was suggested to me. I cannot tell you how much of a relief and vindication it is to have a stranger voice the opinions that I have had about defining canon. I feel a little derpy that my phrasing about it all has always been defensive - only decanonizing something after a law had been broken rather than making assertive statements about what defines canon. Doomcock said everything I have been saying except as an assertive statement. The full video contains the explanation behind each of these points, but here they are, The Five Laws of Canon:

Canon is Chronological: Anything that contradicts a previously establish fact is not canon.

Canon may only be revised or discarded by the original creator, not by a creator's heirs or assigns.

The moral right of canon supersedes the legal right of intellectual property.
( One who buys the Mono Lisa has the legal right to paint over it or even destroy it, but such an act would be a violation of global heritage. Doomcock talked about long standing universes, however, this also applies to the original creators. A universe must remain consistent to its self. Chatoyance explains this in the essay The World: The most important character of all. )

Nothing that disregards a creator's written treatment or script can be regarded as canon.
( George Lucas creator of Star Wars, sold Star Wars to Disney with details concerning what was supposed to happen until the end of the story with the intention that this was going to be used to make future movies. Disney's Star Wars films disregarded it completely. )

In the end, works of genius can be ratified as canon by fans.
( This does not mean that only what is extremely popular is canonized, but that which is popular because it is highly intelligent, thought provoking, and enriching to the universe, can be accepted as equal to canon. The best examples of The Fifth Law of Canon are cases where a new universe is created with content that goes against canonical aspects of the original, and events within it are so profound that they universally effect the perception, and possibly the actual direction, of the original. )

I would like to point out something beautiful between Law One and Law Five. Lauren Faust grew up on the original My Little Pony, and the world she created started as fan fiction to the original. Most fans today believe that Faust's version is unquestionably better than the original, but as someone who also grew up watching the original, I cannot disregard the causality. Because of Lauren Faust’s fan fiction, Law Five looped back to become Law One - the birth of a universe. It is beautiful to acknowledge these moments of creativity because they are moments of great care and attention. We have seen several alternative universes created in the same fashion.

Doomcock's essay holds that canon is history, and history can only be expanded not rewritten. I would like to expand upon the importance of pop culture canon as a practice in integrity and self-improvement. In The Hogfather, Terry Pratchett through DEATH, said that we must practice the little lies to believe in the big ones such as justice and mercy. We tell ourselves stories about what our lives are and have been, but for many people these stories are not a factual history, they are not canonical to the truth. However, when we acknowledge history in its entirety, be it external or internal, we allow ourselves to see what it is that needs improving. The Five Laws of Canon are an external practice of integrity for the internal practice of integrity that could be called The Laws of Personal Growth. All it takes is a little inverse of the laws to apply to one's self to see that they really are one in the same. I list them now for further clarity:

Through pride, we often pretend that we were born perfect, but we were not. We don't know everything, and what we do know, we learned, and there were failures along the path of learning. If we allow ourselves the delusion of pride in thinking that the past is malleable, we refuse to extend patience to others as they learn through their lives. We also fail our future-selves, because if we refuse to see our own failings, then we most assuredly will not find a reason to improve ourselves.

Because of how we were raised, our society, or our own laziness, selfishness, or fear, we often believe that we have no choice but to automatically take certain actions. Almost exclusively, these automatic actions are where the path of least resistance meets the path of most selfish gain. That clearly causes chaos and suffering for others and will inevitably cause chaos and suffering in our own lives. Taking these automatic responses also creates a sense of angry helplessness in the individual who knows that these actions will always cause more frustration than gain.

It might take a moment to see how this relates to the original Law Three of Canon, but just as The Mona Lisa should not be altered because it was the creation of someone else, someone else's freewill should not be altered, that is to say devalued, within one's own mind. When will, desire, is taken out of the question, answers to conflict of interest rise to objective decision making.

Because we all have freewill and because we all learn at different paces, there will be people who cause chaos and suffering for personal gain at our expense. The fact that they are doing this tempts us to believe that we were wrong in our calculations about respecting others. Thinking this, is our own mind trying to return to the path of least resistance.

We go through life with a limited perspective. As such, we may be led to believe that thinking or doing something one way is absolutely the right way, but if we learn otherwise, it is our duty to change the way we think and act. For example, we may go through life thinking that someone who has been influential in our life has had only the best of intentions for us, later we learn that this person was always self-centered, but the circumstances surrounding our involvement with this person has built a positive image where harmful actions and beliefs only became clear as such after such a realization. Similarly, and actually more common, is when we blame someone for doing something where blame and inaction become the foundation of our lives. In all cases, failure to acknowledge this information as fact holds us back.

What we know is that friendship is not a base emotion. The longing for people to respect canon as history, to respect a story as an unchangeable log of sequential events, is born as a parallel to the longing for lives, our own as well as others, to move always in the direction of improvement. Valuing friendship comes from personal growth, and further personal growth teaches us how to be better friends. Each Law of Canon and Law of Personal Growth are built on the previous law, and one can only move on to the next when one has fully understood the previous, but they really are the same. The value of our character comes from what we believe and how we act upon what we believe. My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is not just a symbol for our personal growth, but a practical guide to personal growth.

Doomcock ends each of his videos by telling the viewer to "stay angry". For years, I was angry because I felt that I was being attacked by Hasbro's alterations to Faust's vision. One day I realized that my anger was coming from a different place. I could see and understand the message in Faust's vision, and it was really for the sake of others that I felt so shaken. There was still personal grievances over not being able to discuss the same world with others, but what really scared me was the idea that devaluing fictional history was teaching young viewers to devalue real history and by extension their own personal history, thereby stagnate their personal growth. That at least was a noble fear, but I also realized that I was born into a time when no one seemed to care about order and yet, I grew in spite of that. Anger and fear prevent us from being good friends, prevent us from growing, but by understanding what we value, why we value it, and why we felt disappointment in the first place, we can continue to grow in spite of these things having happened.

7054645
Doomcock is great, and I like your extension to the personal side because you put together some excellent guidelines for self-improvement.

Also, I think you should cross-post this to the much more active We Hate What's Happened to MLP group because there are a lot of people there who would be interested in reading this and a number of thoughtful discussions that seriously explore what's wrong and how to do better.

7056100
I'm glad you liked it, but I'm not too keen on any group whose name starts with "We Hate". I realize the intention might start out similar to this group, but when the focus is on the negative instead of the positive, it slowly degrades into general hate over time. Especially now that the series is over, there is no one left to rally against except members already within the group.

7056797
I get where you'e coming from, but in practice the group is actually a bastion of deep thought and rational discussion about the show and how to do better. Go read through some threads on the forum and you'll see what I mean.

7056812
I read a few posts. The one pinned at the top that asks members to actually explain why they hate what happened makes a lot of sense, however, the group admin referred to Nightmare Moon as having an extremely lazy origin story. I respect the admin’s other opinions about the show’s declining quality, but hearing this shows me that this person didn’t understand that Nightmare Moon is a byproduct of a life without friendship. Nightmare Moon’s literary existence was to demonstrate the need for friendship – the need for love.

The purpose of MLP is to make a demonstration to viewers why it is important to extend love to others and how to overcome the difficulties of the imperfections of ourselves and others that hinder our ability to love. This is what is important to me.

In the We Hate group, you wrote a 3,776 word essay about what you want to see in a future MLP G6, however not one thing you suggested has any barring on anything meaningful to the purpose of MLPFM. Most of what you wrote about was arbitrary details like Spike’s age, how close Ponyville is to Canterlot, and how Luna should giggle at finding a changeling in her room. These are pointless details. Actually, Spike is supposed to be a baby dragon because he is a baby dragon in every generation, because he is a callback to G1. I can agree that Spike was never treated fairly, however his age at least in G4S1 allowed him to exist as the less than polite character to teach viewers the immediate consequences of saying the obvious and rude thing. It bothers me that you firstly don’t know that and secondly want to arbitrarily change his character.

Another post I read was on Trixie, and this one wasn’t that bad. I agree with some of it really: future writers used Trixie as a gag when she was supposed to be just a normal stage performer. However, the writer of that post is so enraged that he doesn’t seem to understand that it was other writers who wrote her as such, and his perception of all of the writers’ intentions is skewed by the end result of her treatment instead of understanding that her treatment is the result of several writers many of whom can and should be ignored.

This is the problem with hate. Hate makes people forget where the boundaries are, where reality ends and fantasy, albeit a fantasy constructed of fear, begins. Hate is the opposite of friendship. Talking about what you hate in a group doesn’t fix that thing. Hate doesn’t lead to the construction of anything only the destruction. The other topics include “Whats’ the worst story you’ve read on this site?” and “What’s the worst aspect about the finale?” Don’t you understand that when you put your focus on what is wrong that you are not focusing on what is right?

I love My Little Pony, and my love for what this cartoon represents grew so much that I couldn’t keep it to myself. I have written 29,744 words of published pony fiction, I have no idea how many posts trying to explain why it is beautiful, and half a dozen unpublished stories. Hate could never help me create something worth sharing with the world. I have always believed that people should be good, but my love for My Little Pony made me believe that even now, I can grow to become even more.

I cannot join a group focused on hate because even though there are moments of goodness, the purpose of the group will always be centered on destruction not construction. The members of the group really should put it into an archival stage and move on to something constructive. If you want to copy my essay to the group, please do so, link the original post, and also share with them this:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” - Martin Luthor King Jr.

So, I generally like this approach on the practical level, but it's also just another take on the debate that completely misses the entire point of what canon even is. Canon is not specific events, characters, or anything at all that can be described as existing in-universe. Canon is a body of text, it's literally just a set of works - even if it's only one work - that are included in the list that definies a given "canon". It has absolutely nothing to do with how much they contradict each other, or themselves. Those begin to play part only when you, the audience, engage with those works and attempt to make sense of them. Essentially, that's the area of one's personal headcanon with all that implies, which is where those "laws" can be useful. I'd agree that consistency within the canon is usually a good thing that tends to improve appreciation of it, but the lack thereof does not make something within the text "not canon".

And as a side note, it's definitely not some sort of a newfangled postmodern assault on the Western culture, canons were self-contradictory pretty much since writing existed - I mean, just look at the Bible for a good example. If we accept Hollywood products as the integral part of the modern Western mythology, internal inconsistencies only put them on a level field with every other mythology.

7057640
Eh, he's not real active. Humanity is the primary mod running the group and has been for years. That said, Nightmare Moon is a more complicated case so I'll break it down a bit more, but first I want to say that his line was far too brief to capture nuance of Nightmare Moon's shortcomings as a character and you're missing a key piece of context so I want to expand that briefly here.

Now, to start with the key context, Nightmare Moon was the antagonist in the pilot. That's a critical point to remember because pilots are very tricky things and impose unique constraints that don't apply to other episodes. The key difference is that in about 45 minutes of screen time it had to introduce the entire core cast including the important nuances of their characters that go beyond the obvious stereotypes, introduce the setting, and establish the general idea behind the series in addition to all the other things an episode has to do to function. That imposes serious constraints on the episode and sharply limits their ability to spend time on Nightmare Moon.

Now, you are right that she does establish a lot of important ideas for the show along with a very relatable motive which makes her orders of magnitude better than yet another omnicidal maniac, but that doesn't change the fact that she's a flat character with minimal backstory. Within the context of the pilot that was absolutely the right decision to make because they needed their time to expand on who the main characters were and why we should care about them. They knew it was far more important to develop the girls we would be spending the entire series with than the villain that would never reappear, so they made the deliberate choice to sacrifice depth and nuance with Nightmare Moon for the sake of the larger show.

You can see a clear example of how this constraint changes things with Discord who was able to be far more interesting than Nightmare Moon since the season 2 premier didn't have to introduce the girls and could spend much more time exploring him instead. That was more or less the same team for both episodes taking on a broadly similar adventure, so the biggest difference between the two was the constraints of Nightmare Moon being in the pilot.

Moving on to my idea, there's a lot that went into that. I'm not going to dive into it here because that belongs in that thread, but suffice to say there are a number of prickly structural issues and setting inconsistencies with G4 that took a lot of thinking to address in a cohesive way and demanded most of those details. Also, you clearly didn't think about what I wrote if you thought I was making Spike an adult since I was very clear he was still a baby and thus could not be sexually attracted to Rarity or that the peripheral gag idea about Luna was more than a side thought to spice things up. Now, if you want to provide detailed, point-by-point criticism there I'll be happy to explain my thinking in detail, but that does not belong in this thread so put any further discussion where it belongs.

Regarding the Trixie thread, it sounds like you failed to read the full thread. Things calmed down as the discussion progressed because that group is all about breaking things down rationally. We pulled apart the problem more, drew comparisons, and generally had a calm, rational discussion after that thread. Also note that the author of the original post just joined the group and is learning about how we operate so the tone of subsequent posts is more revealing than the OP.

Anyways, based on your comment here it seems like you're hellbent on hating the other group based on its name instead of looking deeper and seeing what's actually going on. I know full well that logic can't defeat irrational hate so I don't expect this post to have any impact on your thinking, but I'm not willing to leave your allegations unanswered, both due to my own ethics and because there's a chance someone more open minded could read this thread.

7057916
Actually, the word "canon" comes from a Greek Word meaning "measuring stick" and the way we use it today comes directly from the christian church bickering over what they believe actually happened in their favorite fiction. We measure the truth of a story. Is it because we hate the story and desire only to tear it down? No, of course not; we measure to understand. Sometimes we are trying to understand the world, and other times, we are trying to understand ourselves. Practicing both is good.

7059477
To this day different Christian denominations have different Biblican canons, that is different sets of books that constitute 'The Bible'. Another common usage is 'the literary Canon', the supposed, although admittedly vague, list of works of fiction of ultimate importance within the Western culture - note how that has absolutely nothing to do with those works forming any sort of a consistent shared universe. That's just not what the word means.

7059499
I do not often tell people that they are wrong, however, you are wrong and you need to correct yourself. The link I gave to the Etymology of the word canon shows that the the definition of canon as “standard of judging” has existed in English since 1600, before 1600 the word had that same definition except that it was a Greek and Latin exclusive word not spoken in English. The link shows that the Greek and Latin exclusive use of the word goes back to at least 1200, and probably much further. The link also shows that the definition that you are using first appeared over a hundred years after its introduction into English in the 1700s and only exists because it was an incorrect interpretation for the meaning of the word.

Even if you wish to continue using this word in its slang definition, you need to accept that I am using it in its original definition. Trying to invalidate everything I have said because you are trying to twist the words I am using to mean something that I do not is both insulting to me and willfully ignorant on your part. If you cannot mentally replace the slang definition of “canon” to the original definition, copy my essay to a document file then replace all instances of “canon” with “standard of judgment”, and that should make the intended message clear to you.

7059952
I'm just not sure why on Earth you believe that "standard of judging" must necessarily and exclusively refer to judging in-universe claims, rather than the body of text as a whole. Furthermore, sticking to the precise definition of the word as it existed centuries ago in a completely different language sounds incredibly silly to me.

The larger point I could've made more clear, is that the way that video is talking about 'canon' is immensely counterproductive. It presents this one standard version of in-universe events and entities as the only 'real' in some sense version (not to mention a fundamental building block of culture itself, lol). I'd expect people on a fanfiction website to have a more nuanced view on the matter. That debate would be better served by a straightforward admission that the only 'actually real' thing about any fictional universe is letters on the paper, celluloid rolls, etc., etc., and what the whole argumant is actually about is different people's interpretations of that universe. Again, I find it useful, but within a different framework.

7060236

I'm just not sure why on Earth you believe that "standard of judging" must necessarily and exclusively refer to judging in-universe claims, rather than the body of text as a whole.

The “body of text as a whole” is called the setting, the universe, or in extreme cases the genre. I’m not part of many groups here, but The Optimalverse has a universe that is not compatible with MLPFM. It also has rules about what makes an Optimalverse story. The group has folders for canon compatible and non-canon stories. The canon compatible stories only need to be compatible with the first story. What makes a non-canon story then? Well, a non-canon story is one that relies on part of the source material for something to have happened, but then goes in a different direction so that it is no longer possible for both stories to have happened within the same time line.

I really don’t know what you mean by “[judging] a body of text as a whole” especially when you are referring to multiple works by different authors that may only be connected by one unique aspect. The way you use the word canon implies that you mean to include fan works as well as official works in the body to be judged. There would be no consistency there, not in plot, character, world design, genre, not even in what names refer to what - so what would you be judging based on your definition?

Furthermore, sticking to the precise definition of the word as it existed centuries ago in a completely different language sounds incredibly silly to me.

Consider the fact that we are able to read and understand the original version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet that was written at the latest in 1595. That was 424 years ago. Definitions have to last centuries in order to transfer knowledge. Slang is quick to change meaning, but the core definition of words stay as long as the language is alive. It is necessary for definitions to remain steady in order to create progress. The computers that we are using right now only came into existence because they were built up by ideas being passed around by all sorts of people from all sorts of interests from varying points in history. The staying power of language allows history to exist, and from history comes knowledge.

It presents this one standard version of in-universe events and entities as the only 'real' in some sense version (not to mention a fundamental building block of culture itself, lol).

History is a fundamental building block of culture itself, and yes, there is only one “real” history per universe, and by that I mean that quantum physics has given us reason to believe that there are many parallel realities that would have histories that do not link up to our own, but within this universe/reality there is only one real history. Even when there is confusion about what really happened during a point in history, we understand that contradictory things could not have happened.

I'd expect people on a fanfiction website to have a more nuanced view on the matter.

We do. Fan universes are fine because it is easy to distinguish them from the core universe. When someone talks about fan universe X, it’s not talked about as sharing the same universe as the show, so it is possible to be a fan of the show and not that fan universe. The problem is that MLP the core show is borked. The first season started with a firm belief in the value of friendship and understanding but it ended with sending a child to hell and then turning her to stone. That happened because over the nine years that MLP existed it was not written by one person and no one from the start of the show was present by the end of it. To the later writers, MLP was meaningless. Although she has never officially said so, I believe Faust was very strict about throwing out scripts that didn’t reflect what was canon to the world. We see a bit of evidence for this in S2 when Merryweather Williams was nearly lynched for her episodes after Hasbro started to limit Faust’s control over the show.

The MLP fandom would not have ever started if it were not for the unified vision of the first season, but introducing inconsistencies shattered the unity of the fandom. MLP conventions started to shut down not because the show was over but because fans could no longer enjoy the show without arguing about what was real to the world of Equestria.

In late September of 2018, I had a conversation which nearly destroyed a friendship, and it happened because of the inconsistencies of My Little Pony. My friend Tee insisted upon trying to convince me why an episode and the movie was good based on events in the show while conveniently ignoring the contradictions. I strongly recommend reading that blog post, however, I will quote one part here:

Using only examples from the show before the movie, I proceeded to destroy the movie’s credibility as a logical extension of causality from prior events in the series. Using logic and more examples, I proceeded to annihilate every hope of an excuse he had of rationalizing the sequence of events from that point to this, finishing by reiterating that because there are so many writers who do not care about the characters or the setting following logical causality, it is not possible for the two of us, who naturally think in terms of logical causality and character development, to discuss this series without cherry picking our preferred interpretation of practically infinite contradictory points.

History, unity, created a fandom, and contradiction destroyed it. Nearly destroyed more than it created, because Tee and I didn’t meet because of ponies. When you read the blog, you’ll notice that it was not I who wanted to argue about ponies. I had learned as far back as S2 that I cannot talk about ponies without running into arguments, so I just stopped talking about it with everyone who didn’t already share my point of view.

This sort of friendship ending argument is not isolated to fandoms. About two years ago, in a gaming group, I made a joke about a daddy long legs on a list of deadly spiders for the game. The GM of that game said that it was the most deadly spider in the world in a matter of fact tone that implied he wasn’t talking about the game. I did not argue that at the time, but later sent him an email saying that it was fine if that was true in his game world, but it was not true in reality. I sent him two different sources that disproved that urban legend, and that is the core of the issue. The fact that there was solid evidence defused this argument before it happened, so this person was no longer needed to argue against my opinion of reality but against scientific experiment that had shown repeatable conclusion, if he wanted to argue it.

When there is a conflict of perceived reality, we long to know what is real. It is not merely that we want to argue, because I certainly don’t, but we want to verify that we are not standing on a wobbly platform of hearsay and that we do not allow ourselves or those we care about to place us or themselves on top of a similar unproven foundation.

There are people in Korea, I think, who believe that falling asleep with a fan running will kill them by suffocation. This belief may be from another country, but it was so strong that timers were placed on fans in that country. It’s laughably wrong because I prefer to sleep with a strong fan blowing on me, but it is a belief that lead to real action, and I point out all of this non-pony related stuff to show you how belief effects people. I would like to quote my favorite essay The Ethics of Belief, which states:

No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.

What William Clifford is telling us from all the way back in 1877, is that our beliefs become us. Clifford’s entire essay really just explains why we should not believe anything unless it has stood up to scrutiny. We do not apply scrutiny to Bugs Bunny or Tex Avery cartoons, though, so why do we apply it to My Little Pony, Star Wars, Star Trek, and fiction like this? The answer is that Tex Avery cartoons are not based in reality. They are not based in story telling. They are based in clear exaggeration of our hopes and fears. The universes we scrutinize are based in story telling, so we see in them the greater potential to accurately represent the way the world is or the way the world could be. Because these worlds are not absolutely untrue, there is room to allow them to shape our beliefs, so people who are aware that their beliefs are shaped by what they take in, scrutinize, judge, test for both truth and falsehood.

In my original essay, I had hoped to simply bring together the relationship of scrutinizing fiction as a causal relationship to scrutinizing reality without the need of so many words. For what it is worth, I do not agree with Doomcock’s phrasing. It particularly bothers me that he used the phrase “not of our tribe” as if that matters, but his conclusions are correct. People who measure all things for truth and consistency, measure themselves as well, and grow because of it; people who do not measure all things for truth and consistency, do not measure themselves either, and do not grow because of it.