More Musings on Canon · 3:37am Dec 15th, 2016
So, I've already written one blog on the topic of canon, but that one tended to focus more on shipping, sexual orientation, and romance. This blog will focus more on the idea of canon itself, in the hopes of basically being a more thorough dictionary explanation.
Speaking of dictionaries, lets begin there. OED (the only dictionary worth a shit) defines canon thusly:
2.1 The works of a particular author or artist that are recognized as genuine
There are of course other definitions appropriate to other contexts, but this definition forms the basis of how most people think of and use the term canon in relation to MLP and writing fanfiction or discussing either.
Some people try to argue that, for example, the IDW comics are canon, B-canon, semi-canon, or various other words to try and ascribe some kind of "canon-like" value to them. Some people make similar judgement calls about how canon the EqG movies are. Earlier generations of ponies get similar thought, and so on. Most of these discussions miss the point entirely though.
Also, I'll be referring to this contrast between the comics and canon as my go-to example in this blog. This isn't to pick on the comics. This argument refers to anything that anyone might erroneously argue should be or shouldn't be considered canon. The comics are just popular and familiar to enough people to make the points clear.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is one single group of works from a particular author/artist and are genuine. This refers explicitly and exclusively to the show itself. The "artist" in question is the collection of people authorized to work on the project, including writers, animators, and so on. Since the same artist-group also produces EqG, it is also canon. They officially state it as so for all purposes. The comics, while produced with permission from Hasbro (for those concerned with copyright), are explicitly not canon. The show can, does, and will contradict stories found in the comics.
Now, before you get up in arms about this, lets get into the part where people make their mistakes. What being canon actually means to us, fanfic writers.
When you, as an author, write a story, your story has its own canon. Anything you include and decide is canon to your story is. That is the right you have as an author. This is the point I repeatedly hammered home in my previous blog. Write whatever the fuck you want, aka Rule#0. You are free to completely ignore anything and everything, accept as canon within your story anything from any other source, and so on. Canon is not a set of rules you have to adhere to. It simply defines what is and isn't part of a work or collection of works that are grouped together.
What drives people to obsess so hard over what counts as and what doesn't count as canon for MLP is that we're all writing fanfiction of an existing intellectual property instead of something of our own creation. In order to actually be a fanfiction of a thing, it has to be about that thing. Clearly there is a lot of room for interpretation on how close to that thing you have to be in order to count. But the principle is there.
In addition to needing to be about ponies, most people have a mindset that adhering to canon is better than not adhering to canon. This is a fine opinion to have. You can write a great alternate universe, crossover, or experimental fic. But if someone comes to the site looking for stories about ponies, they expect to find stories about ponies. Stray too far from that expectation, and you stray from your audience. There is indeed value to writing what your audience expects, within certain boundaries.
The mistake people often make when they try to assert the canon-value of things like the comics isn't whether or not these things are canon to MLP:FiM (they're not). They're trying to assert the value those things have as a source material for their own stories (or, even less worthy of attention: their headcanons). The mistake is that, if you agree with them that the comics are canon, then anything they write or discuss on that assumption can share in the same judgement value that adhering to canon provides. If you closely adhere to something pulled from the comics, you can expect praise the same way someone else gets praise for adhering closely to an episode of the show. Conversely, if you disagree that the comics are canon, you automatically devalue a story or discussion point relying on that. Thus the desire isn't necessarily to be right in a pedantic sense that comics do or do not count as canon, but to convince the audience to value their works or ideas more by defining themselves as "better."
Just as canon doesn't form a set of rules you must abide by, neither do the comics. Like canon, the comics are a perfectly valid source of material to draw from when you're creating your own works, or having discussions. With as loose a definition we're working under of "must be about ponies" to be allowed on the site, you're fully free to draw from other sources. Especially if those sources are themselves about ponies, as the comics are. You're free to draw from other fanfics, which people have done with some amount of frequency.
Source material.
This is what people need to realize they're referring to. This is the term that people need to focus on when they're having these arguments. A work that references another source material is better when it adheres to that source material more closely than not. It doesn't matter if that source material is canon. A source material is a source material. There is no need to define comics as something they're not: canon. They're a source material for your story/discussion.
Drawing from a source material lets you piggyback on the fame that source material has. Fans of MLP are more interested in MLP fanfics (usually) than non-fans. You can assume safely that anyone reading a story you publish on Fimfiction is interested in stories about ponies, and thus is familiar with the MLP canon. This makes the MLP canon a great source material to draw from. Your audience is already a fan of it, and already familiar with it.
The comics are popular enough that you can gain similar value from them as a source material too. However, they are less popular than the show. You can expect less value from them in this manner. You are less likely to count on every reader knowing the content of the comics, thus if your story relies on that knowledge, you may leave readers in the dark. This has nothing to do with how canon or not canon the comics are, but in their popularity. How widespread the knowledge contained within them is among your potential audience members.
These are important distinctions to think about when you're figuring out how much you need to educate your readers. You don't ever need to explain to the reader that Scootaloo is orange. Everyone knows that. In fact, if you spend time describing how orange Scootaloo is, you're going to bore your readers. If you explain to them how her favorite hobby is to ride around on her scooter, you're again going to bore them. They already know this. Scootaloo also loves potatoes. Any way you cook them, she loves her some spuds. This isn't shown anywhere in the show, so you will have to educate your readers about Scoot's spudlove. You could write a story in which Scootaloo never sets hoof on her scooter. There are many reasons why this might be the case. Maybe the story takes place entirely in the clubhouse. Maybe your story never features any outside activities. Just because Scootaloo loves to scoot about doesn't mean you have to ever depict her doing so. On the other hand, you can describe her riding her scooter around Ponyville, without any explanation why, and your readers will not bat an eye. They'll accept this as fact without dissonance. However, if you have Scootaloo sitting down to enjoy a meal of potatoes, you might need to let the readers know she is enjoying herself. It isn't something they'll just assume if you don't describe it that way.
Maybe you feel like writing a story where Scootaloo is deathly afraid of scooters. I think we can all imagine the kinds of reactions such a decision would have. You're going to have quite a lot of trouble getting readers to accept that. It directly contradicts what we see in the source material. Now, you could get away with it. Perhaps your story drags us along the trials and tribulations Scootaloo goes through, and at some point she has a terrible accident while scooting. Maybe the trauma of that accident makes her afraid to set hoof on another running board ever again. If you do the work to convince the readers, you can have your story do even something like this. But it clearly takes much more literary effort than convincing the audience that she loves taters, or is orange.
The fact that you can or can't get away with these things easily has nothing to do with canon. It has to do with the knowledge your readers come into your story with. It has to do with their familiarity with your source material, which happens to (likely) be canon.
Understanding these things lets you write better stories. Attempting to argue with people what is and isn't canon doesn't. Write whatever you want to write. Do the correct amount of work for any and every element within your story to get the readers to understand and accept what your story is telling them has happened.
This also forms the basis of why canon isn't a set of rules you must follow, and why so many stories can be so distantly related to ponies and still be acceptable. This is why clopfics can get away with having ponies banging, and why action stories can have ponies fighting, and gory dark stories can have ponies murdering, even though the show never will really show these things (by fighting I mean much more explicit, brutal fighting than even the fight with Tirek. Think Fight Club or Rambo). You can find a valuable resource in your readers in not having to describe Scootaloo as orange. But if her being orange is somehow relevant to the scene at hand, you'd be better off mentioning that fact. Maybe she's trying to hide among some very purple foliage, and sticks out like an orange thing on a purple background. But you can feel free to make up stuff, even things that contradict canon, as long as you do the correct amount of work. Even though Pinkie Pie is a happy pony interested in being everyone's friend, and making everyone smile, you can write her as a mass murderer in a dark fic. As long as you do the work setting up the creepy tone and focusing on her being off her rocker. If you guide the readers to the facts of your story, you can write whatever the fuck you want.
Adhering to your source material, using only canon as your source material, and so on are decisions that are up to you to make, and do not on their own make your story better. But you have to consider how the audience will be digesting what you write, and these bits of consideration can dictate how to best make your story digestible as possible, so your audience enjoys it better.
This is what I meant by thoughts last night.
More thoughts, please. You're pretty good at them. :P
thedwarfers.net/otherstuff/random/ponies/Scootato.png
--Sweetie Belle
I can't find an applause gif that adequately sums up my "THIS" feel.
I believe it was Archonix who likened
canonthe source material to a buffet line. Each author takes what he or she likes and works with it, even if that means nothing but a plate full of croutons and bacon bits from the salad bar.In any case, excellent bit of insight. Thank you for it.
Agreed. It's a fickle thing - you want to have the freedom to write whatever you want, but your readers will expect a certain adherence to the source material.
In the end, though, I'd say you should consider canon a tool, and not a straitjacket. Don't let it hinder your creativity. Use it to give structure to your stories, but make the changes you feel are needed to for the story you want to tell. If the story calls for Scootaloo to be deathly afraid of scooters, or for Big Mac to secretly be a bounty hunter, or for Fluttershy to be a fire truck, then so be it. As long as you can make it work, and make an interesting story out of it, go ahead.
As for the readers... as long as the story is good, there will be people to read it.
I like your thinking on just how far you can stretch canon, and how to balance your own writing goals with giving your readers what they want.
However, the state of the writing group for the show, EQG and the comics is a lot more fluid than you described. The show is unquestionably canon, even though almost all the writers who started on the show have moved on to other projects (Lauren Faust to Josh Haber and all that).
At the beginning of the launch of EQG, the writers group consulted heavily on the series, just as they consulted heavily on the launch of the comics. Currently the EQG universe, and the last two movies were written by a separate writing team from the show (Josh Haber actually started on the EQG Writing team and moved to the show after Friendship Games).
MLP Comics also has a separate writing staff, though Hasbro gives them notes to conform to show accuracy, and apparently there is some big tie-in special between the comics and season 7 coming up. So you have two adjunct properties that the show writers consult on but don't actually create themselves, it's hard to see how EQG is more canon than the comics, at least the last two movies. (And the blockbuster coming up has a ton of writers who left the show staff for a year or two to work on that, not sure how that fits in either).
4341369
I think you missed the point.
What does and does not count as canon doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter if I'm wrong or right about the Comics or EqG being canon or not.
People misunderstand what it even means for anything to be canon. Not from a definition standpoint, which would only produce semantic arguments. But in an actual, effective use sense. All the above mentioned sources could be completely canon, and unquestionably so. They would still hold equal value to us as fanfic folks. It matters more how familiar the audience is with any particular bit than if something is or isn't canon.
The things you point out are likely factual. The definition of the word, as linked by me from the OED, implies one singular artist/author, and includes all of their works. It ignores something like the MLP team which changes over time and includes several people. It ignores the possibility of a single artist/author producing works for different sets of canon (Piers Anthony, for example, has written a great many novels for his Xanth series, none of which is canon to his other series or vice versa).
This uncertainty and ill-defined aspect of the word "canon" as it regards to general art (as opposed to its main definition regarding holy texts) is the source of confusion. It isn't clear what it should cover, what it shouldn't, and a great deal of importance is placed on this term and the coverage of it.
That is the point of this blog. That the term canon isn't terribly useful, or important. Attempting to more accurately define it is a red herring.
4341305
I like my bacon bits on pancakes.
...yeesh I wish I was as good at articulating things as you are. I'd feel a lot less like an idiot if I did.
4341478
For another example, besides the My Little Pony episodes MA Larson wrote, he also wrote an episode of Gravity Falls with a photocopier that copies people, and the Pennyroyal Academy books, and while a school that teaches you how to be a princess might be handy in the My Little Pony world, I'm pretty sure neither are canon to it.
It'd get pretty silly if everything a writer writes is canon to all their other books, though some writers try to do that...
--Sweetie Belle
4341478 Fair point, canon is a slippery subject and can mean different things to different people. And with the examples you pointed out (Piers Anthony's Xanth series is barely canonical with itself, it has meandered so much over time), the term "canon" is too broad to be valuable.
But I do think canon is important. To quote a much better writer on this site (I can't remember who it was), canon is supposed to be the shared rules of the game we're all playing called "fanfiction." No one can really play the game perfectly, but if it doesn't even feel like someone is trying, then are they really participating in the shared experience?
Canon is often used in discussions of historical events or the laws of physics or magic in a setting, and those can get pretty arcane (no pun intended). But canon can also refer to things like the personalities and attitudes of our favorite characters. Twilight Sparkle being smart and loving books is a point of canon, and a story that starts with her just being an idiot would encounter a great deal of resistance from this site. When people complain about all those stories where say, Spike the dragon is abused by ponies, runs away from home and comes back with super powers and forms a harem, a big part of that complaint is that it violates the shared canon we all think we have.
Definitely an excellent reminder.
4341733
Things like that are also kinda lazy wish fulfillment, too. Everybody mistreats me, so I'll run away, do cool stuff, then everypony will love me?
Besides, it's usually easy enough to think of a more interesting in character plot.
Lets see, Spike is eager to help out, and doesn't like disappointing other ponies. So, during the course of the day, several ponies ask him to help out, and it turns out to all be on the same day, and he doesn't realise how much he's getting into. He tries to do it all and everything blows up in his face.
Rather than face the consequences, he runs away, than makes it through a series of adventures by snarkiness, hard work, and being able to spot the obvious when nopony else can. Eventually he gets home and makes up with everypony, who have compared notes by now, and know what happened.
I'm pretty sure the basics of that have been used plenty of times, but it still sounds like something I'd read...
--Sweetie Belle
4341752 It is lazy wish fulfillment, undoubtedly. But is that the main reason people are complaining about it? I've read countless stories where Celestia or Twilight crush their foes with overwhelming magic, and people rarely complain about those stories. Is wanting to read a story where Twilight (the main character your most identify with) handily crushes all those villains who remind you of jerks you know lazy wish fulfillment? Absolutely. But Twilight has a ton of magical power in canon, so those kind of stories are received much more positively.
Now, that story you described would make a wonderful character-building slice of life one-shot. But one of the reasons it would do so well is that if fits the canon of Spike's character better, as well as the canon of the attitudes and values of pony society that Spike is reacting to.
4341733
This story fails to adhere to canon, in particular where it comes to characterization, and does so about as egregiously as it is possible to break the "rules" you so describe.
This theory you have about canon forming a set of rules is a theory that someone far more intelligent than I directly contradicted once in a blog.
I think that, once again, you are attempting to put more coverage into what the word canon means. A lot of other people do this, and how other people like or dislike things in relation to canon/not-canon is a muddled affair. Stating something is a fact because some other people misuse it that way doesn't make it fact.
Your example with the Spike-harem story has nothing really to do with being canon or not. It has to do with a multitude of factors. One, it's a story about Spike. Two, it's a blatant wish-fulfillment story, as SweetAI Belle pointed out. Three, and this is super common with Spike stories, it is a thinly veiled author self-insert story. These stories are disliked because they are poorly written. They are about tired, boring, and juvenile subject matter.
Some of those stories are popular with fans of Spike. There are a lot of fans of stories that are poorly written (just look at the entire "Displaced" fad, which is by definition poorly written shit). A lot of the users on this site are themselves very juvenile.
Your contrasting example, of an over-powered Twilight or Celestia has its equal share of fans and detractors as well.
Spike or Twilight Sparkle behave a certain way in the source material, and adhering close to the source material has advantages in terms of making a more enjoyable story. However, some genres (notably comedy, romance, and dark) will very much use themes and characterization that differs from the show. Comedy in particular will take great indulgence with the characterization in order to pull off their jokes. The show itself does this all the time.
None of this has to do with canon. Characterization is the word. Adhering to the source material is the concept. Canon isn't. At best, canon is more of a bibliography term. Not one useful in fanfic design or discussion of the source material.
4341922
Never been much of a fan of that series, to be honest.
Well shoot, I suspect both of us are remembering blogs written by more intelligent members. I don't remember seeing the post contradicted, but if you happen to remember the blog post I would love to read it, and if I ever remember the blog post explaining the theory I will be happy to share it with you.
Ok, it sounds like you're saying I and a lot of other people misuse the word canon to refer to a broader series of issues than the term canon as defined in the OED. (BTW, I think definition 2 rather than 2.1 works better here, as it lets us side-step the single-author principle entirely). You have a point. Canon in that definition can only apply to an entire work, it cannot apply to elements within a work. (I.E. Rainbow Rocks can be canon/non-canon, but not individual pieces of it). This is turning into a discussion of semantics, so I'll drop this here.
That's a good point, Spike is not nearly as popular a character as Twilight and Celestia stories. But two and three apply equally to those Celestia/Twilight stories. They are also blatant wish fulfillment, and Twilight is used as a thinly veiled author self-insert at least as often as Spike is, if not more. Twilight/Celestia blasting the bad guys to bits comes off as pretty tired, boring and juvenile as well.
That's a fair point.
I would disagree about "equal-share." I have seen much more positive response to OP Twilight or Celestia stories, and from much more mature readers, than I have with Spike stories. Maybe it's because more mature readers are identifying with Twilight or even Celestia as their self-insert rather than Spike, but I think it's also because those characters have so much more magical power in the source material, so their is less disconnect to offend readers.
So now we're returning to semantics, in a sense. I do agree with you on semantics, based on the definitions and the way you've used them, if people properly differentiated between characterization, adhering to the source material, and "canon" in their discussion of fanfiction, we could have a much clearer discussion.
But then I'd just move to focus on how a shared adherence to the source materials that have received official input from the show lets the community follow rules and guidelines to build common characterization of the personalities of our favorite characters, and the way their world and its history works. I think it's very important that writers of fanfiction do their best to use existing characterizations as understood by the rest of the community, even though writers of different genres might have different tones in their stories.
4342642
Here is the blog I refer to.
The rest of it is a rehash of what was already said in the blog. Canon has little use outside of bibliography. Being canon or not canon bears far less import upon a fanfic than people give credence. Writing a good fanfic is a far more complicated endeavor, which is why so many people get it wrong. It's hard. Some adhere closely to their source material, and choose only canon as their source material, and still write poor stories. Some stray far from those ideals and write popular/good ones. If you insist on using the word canon as people misuse it, then we are indeed stuck on the semantics which I've repeatedly encouraged we don't. Focus on the concept, not the misused words.
4343151 That link seems to be directing me to this same blog post. In any case, I think you have a really good point about the term canon.
While of course poor stories can be written while adhering to the source material, I'd disagree with the latter part of that statement. One of the main purposes of writing fanfiction, as opposed to just fiction, is to use familiar characters and settings. This eases the learning curve of the reader, and lets the author focus on things like plot and dialogue rather than world-building. Stories that keep the name and settings while drastically changing the details of that world usually receive a poor reception, in my experience.
There are talented and experienced authors who can overcome the handicap of widely contradicting the source material and characterization of a setting and still create well-received stories, but those authors would have been able to make their story even more well-received if they had written it as an original fiction story. A fanfiction that violates characterization leaves its readers feeling duped by the bait-and-switch of using familiar names and concepts and then not using the commonly-accepted details that accompany them.