Why the obsession with Canon...?

[Cessna]

White Wolf fans. Star Trek fans. Star Wars fans. Forgotten Realms fans. Tekumel fans.

The list goes on and on. All obsessed with canon and consistancy.

"Thou shalt never violate canon!"

What the hell, if it's a good story, tell it. It's all made up anyway...





(My mini-rant for the day)

With god as my witness I clicked on this thread thinking it was about Conan.

Of course, there's Conan Canon, and damn that could make for a confusing subject header.

Anyway, the fannish obsession with canon often boils down to good old fashion geekery ... Some fans get their jollies by pointing out mistakes. Some just treat it as a gentlemanly game, others get downright nasty and gloaty and crowy about it.

I try to be tolerant. For the REALLY hardcore geek, pointing out the mistakes of others may be the only pleasure life offers, I fear. {shudder}

[Balbinus]

It's not an rpg thing, it's a fan thing.

Hard core fans obsess on canon, not sure why.

My heartfelt and pedantic thanks though to both you and Phelps for spelling the word correctly when so few hereabouts do.

[Bahama'at]

It's like being a player in a game where the GM constantly changes the rules or background - then says he's doing it "for the sake of the story".

The sake of the story only works as an argument when I'm told to expect it, and I have fun going with it. If one or both of these are not true then things become problematic.

[Metallian]

Some people find that stories are enhanced by virtue of having a rich context and backdrop...they're not just stories, they're parts of a greater story.

Just as you (presumably) wouldn't want an inconsistency to crop up in a novel, fans of canon and continuity don't want an inconsistency to crop up in the big uber-story.


Then there's the fun of immersing oneself in a "shared world," which gives you a common frame of reference when discussing things with other fans, which is fun in its own right. The world seems more "real," or more "believable" (subject to any fantastic assumptions necessary to support the basic premises) if it's consistent.

That's how I see it, anyway. I'm not a big stickler for it in my gaming, but I'm really big on it in fiction.

The Metallian

[Jesse Custer]

Sometimes, not following canon means that you may invalidate future supplements. Less books is not good (for most gamers).

[Metallian]

Originally posted by Metallian
Some people find that stories are enhanced by virtue of having a rich context and backdrop...they're not just stories, they're parts of a greater story.

To provide a concrete example, when I'm reading an issue of X-Men, I don't think of it as just "a story about the X-Men," I think of it as "an X-Men-related part of the story of the Marvel Universe."

Marvel's been moving away from that, BTW, and that's part of why I've been less enthusiastic about X-Men lately.

Anyway, I'm sure it's the same with White Wolf and so on.

The Metallian

[Blackberry]

Star Trek fans are generally obsessed with continuity to begin with. Violating canon is sort of the biggest possible continuity error.

[Nobody]

Is it that hard to write a story that is consistent to what has come before?

I like how the Japaneese handle a lot of it. If you watch a series, say Tenchi, then watch Tenchi in Toyko, or Tenchi Universe, You know that there is going to bed a "reset" of sorts, the characters will be familiar, but not nessesaraly the same backstory, or how they decide to aproach a problem.

Then you get things like Captain America 2, splitting of things, and sloppy retconning. It is irritating, and don't get me started on "Crisis" level "fixes" that do more to confuse, and after six months is ignored anyway for the sake of the story.

[Bahama'at]

Originally posted by Cessna
"Thou shalt never violate canon!"

"... without good reason".

Changes in backstory - for good reasons (like eliminating overt racist references or political biases as was the case for a couple of World of Darkness books) is not a bad thing and the fandom understand this and agree with it generally speaking.

Changes the add to or elaborate existing backstory are also generally accepted. People don't always know the whole story of every factor, secondary character, or niggling detail at the time the original story takes place. Flashback episodes of Angel and Spike's backstory changed facts but added more context to their relationship so it was okay.

What the hell, if it's a good story, tell it.

Define, objectively in a way that everyone will agree with, a "good" story.

That's the hard part isn't it?

- Ma'at