4 ms·

I'd tend to say that the author's stated intentions matter more than whatever headcanons you or I might come up with, but not as much as the work itself. After

by kemayo 3y ago

I'd tend to say that the author's stated intentions matter more than whatever headcanons you or I might come up with, but not as much as the work itself. After all, unpublished intentions like that can always be changed later if the author has cause to publish something that would contradict them. The author can (generally) be considered more correct than us about the details of their story, and what background elements exist that informed events but which weren't shown directly in-story. This certainly doesn't mean that people writing fanfic, or just enjoying the work, can't go wild and change these things. I just feel it's worth knowing where you're departing from "official canon", rather than claiming that you must be right.

kstrauser 3y ago
I almost feel like their stated intentions matter less. After all, they had every opportunity to say what they really meant. If they chose not to, then they must not have had strong feelings about it. Suppose Rowling said in an interview that, oh yeah, BTW, Ron Weasley was actually descended from King Arthur. I'd argue that no, he's not. If he was, she should've said so when she had the chance to make it, well, canon. Now, if she wrote another Harry Potter universe where Ron's great^20th grandpa was Art, fine! She just hadn't gotten around to that part of the story yet, and now she has. It's now canon. But until then, it's just chit-chat. For a real-world analogy, in American courts where 2 parties are arguing about how to interpret the words in a contract, judges tend to rule against the party who wrote the contract. After all, if their intention at the time they wrote it was the same as it was while they're debating in court, they should have phrased it that way.
- kemayo 3y ago
  The example you give of Ron being King Arthur's descendant is an extremely irrelevant fact, and so I'd be inclined to say "okay, sure, I'll accept that this is true, but so what?" if it was pronounced. It'd be canon or close-to-canon, but it has no actual use to explain or predict within the story. (Unless she'd said it before the series was done, I guess, in which case it'd have caused a bunch of speculation about whether Arthurian myth elements would suddenly become important.) This would create a situation where there's a canon / near-canon fact about a character... that's extremely unlikely to come up. So unlikely that I suspect that the only reason it might have impacted any fan works at all is that there's almost a million Harry Potter stories on fanfiction.net, so there's probably at least a handful that have used "sole living descendant of King Arthur" as a plot point. This gets back to my take that "X is canon" and "in my fan work Y is what's true instead" are not positions that're in conflict with each other. We can accept that the canon story has a bunch of canon background information that informs how it happened, but that's no reason not to change it if you want to tell a different story. Some not-stated-in-text background details do turn out to be deeply rooted in character motivations / setting functionality, and so are harder to rip out than others. Now, on to some rambling about how a story and a contract are different, and the conservation of detail in stories... A story that spells out absolutely everything about why the world is the way it is and exactly why every character does everything is probably not very well written. The author should give you enough details in story that you're willing to believe that there must be a perfectly good explanation for things, even if you've been not told it for any specific event. It's equally valid, of course, for the author to have elaborately planned out the history and structure of their world in advance, or to just make up non-contradictory new facts whenever they need to use them. Just so long as the right vibe is given. I'm generalizing a bit here, because exactly how true this is can be a matter of taste. I personally enjoy the sort of sci-fi/fantasy book that drops you in with weird words that you have to figure out from context and protagonists who won't consciously-explain anything that they already think of as "normal", so I'm clearly biased in one direction. (To give a popular recent example that doesn't go too hard on being weird, it takes a fair while in Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings before you realize what the fuck is going on with "grass" and "hounds".)
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    > in which case it'd have caused a bunch of speculation about whether Arthurian myth elements would suddenly become important Funny enough, in the recent Hogwarts Legacy game they have dozens of these little world puzzles called Merlin Trials, effectively actually tying Arthurian myth into the Harry Potter universe via Merlin, who was apparently a Slytherin? But arguably the game is not canon to the books. It's just funny because if Rowling HAD ever said something about a character being descended from King Arthur, it might have made a mention in the game. Mixed media canons can become very convoluted.
    - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      > Mixed media canons can become very convoluted. You’re telling me. Especially when works directly contradict each other despite being in the same timeline.
JohnBooty 3y ago
This is one of those times where I typed out a response to the original post, and thought to myself: "I wonder if somebody has already said it better than me." Imagine my amusement when it was said by somebody I know!
- kemayo 3y ago
  It's a small world sometimes! :D
msla 3y ago
> I'd tend to say that the author's stated intentions matter more than whatever headcanons you or I might come up with, but not as much as the work itself. After all, unpublished intentions like that can always be changed later if the author has cause to publish something that would contradict them. This runs headlong into the whole idea of textual criticism and the death of the author. If the author can have new ideas about a work which supersede someone else's head canon, they can undo a whole academic treatise with a magisterial wave of the hand, and that's unsupportable. Academia must be allowed to exist, which means the text stands alone. More simply: The academic is working with a specific text, not a text and whatever random ancillary material the author crapped out years or decades later. Their thesis is, therefore, not invalidated by that paratext and superfluous commentary.
- kemayo 3y ago
  It's worth noting that this is a reinterpretation of Death of the Author. The original essay isn't about this sort of "what is canon?" question at all, it's about the subjective meaning and interpretation of a text. It's arguing that asking the author "what does it mean that the curtains are blue?" isn't the way to get a definitive answer. To quote Barthes' essay: "all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin" -- i.e. the author's contribution is one part of the work, but what the reader is bringing to the work also matters when you're interpreting it. The author can't tell you how the work makes you feel. It's totally valid to say "I think what the author said is canon is junk, and I'm going to ignore it", but that's not technically Death of the Author. :D (This particular term being thrown around inaccurately is, perhaps, a pet peeve of mine.)

by kemayo 3y ago

kstrauser 3y ago

I almost feel like their stated intentions matter less. After all, they had every opportunity to say what they really meant. If they chose not to, then they must not have had strong feelings about it. Suppose Rowling said in an interview that, oh yeah, BTW, Ron Weasley was actually descended from King Arthur. I'd argue that no, he's not. If he was, she should've said so when she had the chance to make it, well, canon. Now, if she wrote another Harry Potter universe where Ron's great^20th grandpa was Art, fine! She just hadn't gotten around to that part of the story yet, and now she has. It's now canon. But until then, it's just chit-chat. For a real-world analogy, in American courts where 2 parties are arguing about how to interpret the words in a contract, judges tend to rule against the party who wrote the contract. After all, if their intention at the time they wrote it was the same as it was while they're debating in court, they should have phrased it that way.

kemayo 3y ago
The example you give of Ron being King Arthur's descendant is an extremely irrelevant fact, and so I'd be inclined to say "okay, sure, I'll accept that this is true, but so what?" if it was pronounced. It'd be canon or close-to-canon, but it has no actual use to explain or predict within the story. (Unless she'd said it before the series was done, I guess, in which case it'd have caused a bunch of speculation about whether Arthurian myth elements would suddenly become important.) This would create a situation where there's a canon / near-canon fact about a character... that's extremely unlikely to come up. So unlikely that I suspect that the only reason it might have impacted any fan works at all is that there's almost a million Harry Potter stories on fanfiction.net, so there's probably at least a handful that have used "sole living descendant of King Arthur" as a plot point. This gets back to my take that "X is canon" and "in my fan work Y is what's true instead" are not positions that're in conflict with each other. We can accept that the canon story has a bunch of canon background information that informs how it happened, but that's no reason not to change it if you want to tell a different story. Some not-stated-in-text background details do turn out to be deeply rooted in character motivations / setting functionality, and so are harder to rip out than others. Now, on to some rambling about how a story and a contract are different, and the conservation of detail in stories... A story that spells out absolutely everything about why the world is the way it is and exactly why every character does everything is probably not very well written. The author should give you enough details in story that you're willing to believe that there must be a perfectly good explanation for things, even if you've been not told it for any specific event. It's equally valid, of course, for the author to have elaborately planned out the history and structure of their world in advance, or to just make up non-contradictory new facts whenever they need to use them. Just so long as the right vibe is given. I'm generalizing a bit here, because exactly how true this is can be a matter of taste. I personally enjoy the sort of sci-fi/fantasy book that drops you in with weird words that you have to figure out from context and protagonists who won't consciously-explain anything that they already think of as "normal", so I'm clearly biased in one direction. (To give a popular recent example that doesn't go too hard on being weird, it takes a fair while in Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings before you realize what the fuck is going on with "grass" and "hounds".)
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  > in which case it'd have caused a bunch of speculation about whether Arthurian myth elements would suddenly become important Funny enough, in the recent Hogwarts Legacy game they have dozens of these little world puzzles called Merlin Trials, effectively actually tying Arthurian myth into the Harry Potter universe via Merlin, who was apparently a Slytherin? But arguably the game is not canon to the books. It's just funny because if Rowling HAD ever said something about a character being descended from King Arthur, it might have made a mention in the game. Mixed media canons can become very convoluted.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    > Mixed media canons can become very convoluted. You’re telling me. Especially when works directly contradict each other despite being in the same timeline.

JohnBooty 3y ago

This is one of those times where I typed out a response to the original post, and thought to myself: "I wonder if somebody has already said it better than me." Imagine my amusement when it was said by somebody I know!

kemayo 3y ago
It's a small world sometimes! :D

msla 3y ago

> I'd tend to say that the author's stated intentions matter more than whatever headcanons you or I might come up with, but not as much as the work itself. After all, unpublished intentions like that can always be changed later if the author has cause to publish something that would contradict them. This runs headlong into the whole idea of textual criticism and the death of the author. If the author can have new ideas about a work which supersede someone else's head canon, they can undo a whole academic treatise with a magisterial wave of the hand, and that's unsupportable. Academia must be allowed to exist, which means the text stands alone. More simply: The academic is working with a specific text, not a text and whatever random ancillary material the author crapped out years or decades later. Their thesis is, therefore, not invalidated by that paratext and superfluous commentary.

kemayo 3y ago
It's worth noting that this is a reinterpretation of Death of the Author. The original essay isn't about this sort of "what is canon?" question at all, it's about the subjective meaning and interpretation of a text. It's arguing that asking the author "what does it mean that the curtains are blue?" isn't the way to get a definitive answer. To quote Barthes' essay: "all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin" -- i.e. the author's contribution is one part of the work, but what the reader is bringing to the work also matters when you're interpreting it. The author can't tell you how the work makes you feel. It's totally valid to say "I think what the author said is canon is junk, and I'm going to ignore it", but that's not technically Death of the Author. :D (This particular term being thrown around inaccurately is, perhaps, a pet peeve of mine.)