Watson's war wounds and wives

[scarfman]

Here's the essay on canon that I've promised once or twice. Reprinted from the fanfiction website. Subject to editing in reaction to comments.

Sometime in early 2005 I stopped using the word canon to describe bodies of fiction. Religious scriptures have canon. Fiction has sources. I'm told that the first fans to apply the word canon to their fandom's source (who would be early or middle twentieth-century Sherlock Holmes fans) did it with tongue firmly in cheek. But you have only to peruse screen fandom internet discussion forums to see that there's no humor in it any more.

You see the problem is it works both ways. Canon implies a level of truth or of fact, to fiction just as it does in religion, but in the case of fiction it isn't there (notwithstanding the person who walks up to tv actors and seems to, or genuinely, believes that they are the characters they portray). You may fall on either side of the argument that the Doctor is half human, or that Hawkeye has siblings or a spouse, or that Solo is too old not to remember the old Jedi Order. But try to support your argument and all you can point to are works of fiction, not fact. Even endorsement by the property's creator(s) is no measure, because they change their minds, or lie, or forget, or don't care, or took the job over from someone else, or leave it to someone else, or any combination of the above. Sherlock Holmes fans argued (probably still do) about which of two candidates is the Baker Street house that Holmes and Watson lived in because it was fun ... and because they wanted to put a plaque on the correct house ... but screen property fans argue on the internet which stories "count" or don't "count" because I'm right and you're wrong end of discussion goddammit!!.

Once when presenting this argument in a fanfiction forum, I had it put to me that the usage of canon I appear to be employing doesn't match any dictionary definition of the word. I concluded that that's irrelevent, because the usage I seem to be employing is, dictionary definition or not, the usage employed by the fans I'm discussing: as if being factual and being imaginary were not binary conditions, as if there were degrees of being true or of being imaginary, and as if some works fall into some sort of hybrid category and some don't. Well, they are binary conditions, and they're conditions that describe the antithesis of each other. One of the earliest philosophical principles was that no thing can possess an attribute and that attribute's opposite.

When canon means what's "true" as it does in its usage in fiction fandoms (just like that, with the quotation marks), and fiction means what's imaginary, applying canon to bodies of fiction is an oxymoron - an oxymoron that, in my experience, divides fandoms bitterly, religiously, and to no meaningful purpose, when the purpose of fandoms is to bring people together.

Even granting the applicability of canon to bodies of fiction, what practical difference does a fan's identification of canon make? Really, except to piss off other fans, what's genuinely accomplished? For your opinion of what's canon to make any practical difference, you must be someone actively adding to it, whether in the series' production office or in a fanfiction forum. The storytellers get to say what canon is, by applying it, at least for the duration of the consumption of their story. But fans' opinions don't have any practical effect on it (except, perhaps, as purchase of tie-in merchandise may be affected) outside their own flamewars.

Edit: British tv writer and Doctor Who novelist and screenwriter Paul Cornell has an essay in his blog from February 2007 in which he says many of the same things I'd been saying for years. Not everything: in the context of arguing that Doctor Who isn't one of them, he contends that there are franchise/folklores for whom authorities (e.g., Joss Whedon for BVS) exist to say what's canon and what isn't. But he argues that not having canon is a strength (at least in Doctor Who's case), on which he is in agreement with me. (But he's wrong when he says no one ever picked up on the alternate-Dalek-history theory he co-authored in The Discontinuity Guide. I use it in my fanfiction.)

Edit: In the advent of the 2009 Star Trek movie Leonard Nimoy told Reuters, "Canon is only important to certain people because they have to cling to their knowledge of the minutiae. Open your mind! Be a 'Star Trek' fan and open your mind and say, 'Where does Star Trek want to take me now'."

Edit: A blogger styled Teatime Brutality posted in July 2009 about how Doctor Who has no canon. Like Cornell s/he seems to accept the concept that a property with an authority has a canon if the authority says so, but this argument differs from Cornell's in that s/he maintains Doctor Who has authorities who deny there's a canon. S/he also touches on the binary nature of being imaginary (but doesn't take the next logical step and assert that no bodies of fiction have canon) by alluding to the first panel of Alan Moore's 1985 Superman story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, in which the story's introductory narration makes the elementary observation that no Superman story is more or less imaginary than any other. I've started referring to that as the Moore Axiom.

So I've stopped applying canon to bodies of fiction. I'm not the only one. Russell T. Davies, the outgoing producer of Doctor Who [quoted by Teatime Brutality], is on record that the word is not used in his offices. And the punchline of the anecdote about the Baker Street argument is the Holmesian who turned his back on his fellows muttering, "A plaque on both your houses."

Note though, I made this policy change some seven years after the creation of my fanfiction website, through which canon is shot through like tribbles in air ducts. Therefore I elected not to even try to excise the usage of canon from existing pages there, so you'll still encounter it, often. Ignore it. It's no longer true. It doesn't "count" any more. It's not canon; it never was, there isn't any. I say, a plaque on all your houses.

Comments

[ianmcin.livejournal.com]

Canon implies a level of truth or of fact, to fiction just as it does in religion, but in the case of fiction it isn't there (notwithstanding the person who walks up to tv actors and seems to, or genuinely, believes that they are the characters they portray).

This rather depends on the assumption that religion is somehow less fictitious than outright fiction.

[scarfman]

Religions are less fictitious to their followers than fictions are to theirs.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Canon implies a level of truth or of fact, to fiction just as it does in religion, but in the case of fiction it isn't there...

Religious canon is still something to be taken with a grain of salt. There's canon, and there are apocrypha. The only reason Christianity has 'canon' is that someone decided which parts of the Bible were official and which should be swept under the rug. How do we know they were right? How do we know they didn't throw out a bit that God would have wanted us to keep, or vice versa? It could be that there are apocryphal things that are just as 'true' (either literally or metaphorically) as some of the stuff that's in the canon.

That's the sense in which I use 'canon' when talking about fanfic. Canon isn't 'the truth', but rather the bits of knowledge that have been set apart as officially sanctioned by the copyright holder (an author, a filmmaker, a TV studio, etc.). Usually that only includes the material created by the copyright holder, but can sometimes be extended to other things, as in the case of professionally-published fanthologies or a contract being farmed out to other publishers/producers.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Personally, while this is a fairly well-constructed argument, it begins from a false premise, in my opinion - namely that "canon" is equivalent to "truth". I can refer to the Catholic "canon" without believing that it is factual truth, just as I can refer to the Star Trek "canon" without believing that any of it actually existed. (I'm not going to go so far as to declaim Catholic canon as "fiction", but I don't believe it to be literal truth.)

"Canon", to my mind, is not a question of truth versus falsehood, but rather a question of authoritative versus non-authoritative information.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

There is also the fact that the English language continues to shift and grow all the time. While I understand your dislike of the divisiveness of fan culture when two sides of an argument get going, I don't think eliminating the word 'canon' from the vernacular is really going to fix anything.

In many ways, 'canon' serves a useful purpose in such cultures, because it allows us to instantly delineate what is from the original source material and what has been added by fan sources. When I am working on the reference material for a game set in a particular author's world setting, I can get most people to understand exactly what I mean when I point out which bits we're using are canon and which are specifically for the game and intended to exist within the theme of the original source material.

While the Holmsian fans may have had their tongues in cheek, but the word has taken on a life of its own at this stage of the game.

[scarfman]

It is part of my argument above that there is no authoritative information about a fiction. I.e., one, there are facts about a story but no facts in a story; and also, two, there are no authorities with final, ultimate, buck-stops-here say about a fiction or body of fictions, except the present storyteller(s), and only for the duration of the consumption of the present story.

I'm not necessarily contending that canon is equal to truth. I'm contending that canon is used as equal to truth in religion and in fandom, and that in fandom it's an incorrect and counterproductive usage. Whether it's an incorrect usage in religion is outside the scope of my argument. Whether some fans use canon as meaning something other than truth is not outside the scope of my argument, in that it misleads others who don't see the difference, which is why I propose that it not be used at all.

[scarfman]

I don't think eliminating the word 'canon' from the vernacular is really going to fix anything.

You're probably right. They'd just call it another term and be divisive, or be divisive over something else. No, both. But one remains compelled to try.

In many ways, 'canon' serves a useful purpose in such cultures

That's true, and I don't particularly expect ever to win this argument. Certainly no comment I've ever had on it has been an agreement.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

But that's just it. When an author creates a work of fiction, that author's description of the world and of the characters is authoritative information - that information doesn't have to be literal truth about the real world to be information. (I sense another argument underneath this, though, about who "controls" the world of a story or body of stories - the storyteller/publisher/whatever or the audience perceiving it - and that could be an interesting discussion on the nature of storytelling (and particularly mythologies) itself.)

And I'm curious why you consider "canon" to be a counterproductive usage, and why you're so worried about it being confused for a literal definition of "truth". Do you actually think that some people are going to be mislead into believing that the fiction is reality? What are the people who don't see (or don't care about) the difference going to be misled into believing?

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

I was actually struck by the similarity between your essay and a recent annotation for Irregular Webcomic (http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1349.html). Similar issue and theme, but different decision ultimately. :)

[scarfman]

I think I recall being struck by that when I read the annotation, too.

[scarfman]

When an author creates a work of fiction, that author's description of the world and of the characters is authoritative information - that information doesn't have to be literal truth about the real world to be information. (I sense another argument underneath this, though, about who "controls" the world of a story or body of stories[)] ...

Underneath? Let me repeat something from my argument above: "Even endorsement by the property's creator(s) is no measure, because they change their minds, or forget, or don't care, or took the job over from someone else, or die, or any combination of the above."

To control a story, you need only be a storyteller, "whether in the series' production office or in a fanfiction forum", whether around a campfire or in a licensed paperback novel, whether you are the legal intellectual property owner or not. For as long as you are telling that story (even if no one is listening but you), you control it.

Do you actually think that some people are going to be mislead into believing that the fiction is reality? What are the people who don't see (or don't care about) the difference going to be misled into believing?

What I see, as I state above, is people believing "being factual and being imaginary [are] not binary conditions, as if there were degrees of being true or of being imaginary, and as if some works fall into some sort of hybrid category [i.e., 'canon'] and some don't. Well, they are binary conditions, and they're conditions that describe the antithesis of each other."

(As for people "believing that the fiction is reality": Once when I was engaged in this argument, and someone threw at me [as has one commenter above] the argument that religion is just as fictitious as fiction, and I responded [as I did above] that the difference is religions are believed and fictions are not, this party came back with tales of a tv actor approached by fans as if she were truly the character she played on the program they watched. Such people are out there. This guy, however, seemed interested merely in contradicting anything I might say, for this point seems rather to support my argument he was otherwise rebutting, dunnit? But such people as he mentioned are probably beyond my help.)

[alias_sqbr]

Hello, I followed the link from snarkoleptics, sorry to barge into your private journal and disagree with you but I got the feeling you don't mind :)

Anyway, first off I agree with the people who see religious canon as official but neither reliable or unchanging, which I realise isn't entirely point. I think the issue here is people caring too much about the fine details of the original source, and the word is just a symptom.

Discussions of "canon" are imo neccesary for any decent fanfic(*). I'm not saying that fanfic is neccesarily bad if it diverges from canon, but the point of most fanfic is to stay true to the original setting and if someone doesn't do that then there needs to be a way to express it. For example, if someone writes a story where Holmes is suddenly this really nice guy then that's out of charcater and contradicts canon, and unless theres a good justification(**) I see that as a major flaw if they're trying to be in character. Otoh, your comic is clearly playing around with the themes and characters of the arthurian legend without being limited by staying in canon and that's cool. You've probably glossed over/not noticed the odd "fact" from the "original" stories (I'm no arthurian scholar and must admit to not having read much of your comic, but this seems likely) and that's ok too.

I mean really, we're just holding fanfiction to the same standards as the authors themselves. Sometimes an author(***) plays around with characters and does wacky stuff that doesn't really gel with the stuff before, and sometimes this is ok because it's cool, and sometimes it's just bad inconsistent writing. But people who go "Omigod, in book one you said this minor character had blue eyes, and in book 5 you said they're green!!!" are idiots in either case.

(*)I say as someone who got converted to fanfic within the last week or so :)
(**)"It makes for an enjoyable story" is good enough.
(***) Or "whichever team of writers are doing this season", etc

[scarfman]

Hello, I followed the link from snarkoleptics, sorry to barge into your private journal and disagree with you but I got the feeling you don't mind :)

No sweat. I posted the link in those comments to encourage conversation because, every time a good discussion gets going, my argument gets more refined.

I'm afraid, though, I have to say that I'm not getting your point so I'm not sure how you're disagreeing with me.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

I think I meant "underlying", not "underneath", because I didn't quite catch what you'd actually said the first time. Got it.

The reason there are arguments about canon among storytellers, though, apart from a desire to be right and prove the other person wrong, is that storytellers working in an existing body of work often desire as much consistency with the original canon (in the more vague sense of "a body of work") as possible. But I suppose that goes back to your preference of "sources" for that function... and "canon" has become shorthand for "original or authorized sources".

For what it's worth, yes there are some people credulous/dumb/insane enough to believe that an actor is the character she portrays. And it is worrying. But that's not the majority of people in a given fandom, and I don't think it's use of the word "canon" that's causing that problem, so much as a fundamental misunderstanding of the idea of "fiction".

Further, when people discuss canon in a fandom, they are discussing the facts of the fictional world from within the viewpoint of the fictional world, specifically the shared fictional world which a group of fans share, and wish to discuss meaningfully. I agree that, if every fan thinking about a fictional world were utterly free to alter it and decide the traits and content of it however they like, if there were no need to reconcile two different people's views of a given world to allow discussion on a consistent basis, then "canon" in fandom would be meaningless. But that's simply not the case, and "canon" is a concise, useful term with which to discuss the differences between the conception of the fictional world that the fans share as a whole, and the individual variations which some fans create but are not considered true to the source material.

being factual and being imaginary [are] not binary conditions, as if there were degrees of being true or of being imaginary, and as if some works fall into some sort of hybrid category [i.e., 'canon'] and some don't. Well, they are binary conditions, and they're conditions that describe the antithesis of each other.

I don't think people (in general, barring the aforementioned people who can't tell fiction from reality in the first place) really consider "canon" to be some sort of fuzzy middle ground or hybrid between "fact" and "fiction". I think they consider it to be, in this usage, a differentiator between the fiction that agrees with the consensus opinion of what a fictional world is like, and the fiction that doesn't agree with that consensus opinion. As an example, despite the fact that both of them are fictional statements, there is clearly a difference between the statements "Leopold Bloom was a Dubliner who lived at the turn of the 20th century" and "Leopold Bloom was a time-traveling alien from the 25th century who was scoping out Dublin as the potential site of a cross-timeline invasion of Earth", when we're discussing the fictional world of Ulysses. That difference is that one of those statements is canon, and one of them is not.

[scarfman]

I think we've both reached the point that we're only repeating ourselves in new words for clarity's sake when we actually already understand each other's positions and haven't been persuaded. At least I haven't anything to reply to your most recent comments that I haven't already said. Thanks for your reactions.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

...I was getting that impression so. So we'll just have to disagree, at least on some things.

Thanks for the discussion, though. There are definitely some things I'll have to think about, in terms of "ownership" of a continuity and the like.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, at least this way you're not offended :)

Sorry, shouldn't post in a rush before work. Hmm, how to express myself better.

I geuss my point is:
1) I think that it is important to pay attention to what happens in the original source. You don't have to remain consistent with it, but you should try unless there's a specific reason not to or it's some niggling detail that doesn't matter.
2) Given (1), I don't have a problem with people calling the original source "canon".

It felt to me like you disagreed with (1) citing the example of people who pay too much attention to canon, without aknowledging that it is also possible to pay too little attention, and the issue is just finding the right balance. Unless you really are saying that you're ok with people being waaaaay out of character and inconsistent, in which case...well, we'll just have to agree to disagree :)

I realise you'd probably have a problem with (2) even if you accepted (1), but other people have argued that better than me so I'll leave it.

Hope that is clearer. Me+internet=poor communication.

[scarfman]

Okay, I think I get you now. But I'm not sure that you're disagreeing with me so much as I'm not sure that you quite understood me. My argument isn't that people ought to honor a sourcework by ignoring "canon". My argument is that the term canon itself, when applied to a fiction, refers to a concept of something that doesn't exist.

As far as "pay[ing] attention to what happens in the original source", I proceed from the assumption that a fan honors the sourcework. That's what fandom is. You say, "You don't have to remain consistent with it, but you should try unless there's a specific reason". Some of my favorite Arthurian works are intentional deconstructions of the legends*, but to do that sort of thing effectively you still must know and understand the source(s). That's very much what John M. Ford did in both his Star Trek novels. I'm perfectly in agreement with you on that point; it's just not express in my argument because it's one of the argument's unexamined assumptions (though I definitely have experienced fanfiction whose writers I suspected to be honoring elements of a source they'd brought to it rather than the reverse).

* While I like to say The Once and Future King is the father of my webcomic, The Mists of Avalon is its mother.

[alias_sqbr]

A lesson I have learned on the internet is that if you don't specify all your obvious assumptions someone will assume you don't believe them, sorry that person had to be me *blush*

I geuss it's just a word thing then, in which I disagree but it's not a big deal.

[alienfish.livejournal.com]

*crackcrackcrack* *crackcrackcrack*

"Excuse me, what are you doing?"

"Who, me?"

"Yeah, you."

"I'm putting up plaques on these houses."

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Even Conan Doyle was apathetic: Dr Watson's jezail war wound was in his leg in some stories, in his shoulder in others. Consensus - which is, perhaps, a more useful term than canon, if you think about it! - says 'leg,' and so modern Holmes stories have it.

Oop.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

The title of this post was not obvious in your page layout.