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"Canon" makes sense in the context of religious documents where adherents believe some documents to represent reality and others not. But in the context of wor
by lupusreal 2y ago
"Canon" makes sense in the context of religious documents where adherents believe some documents to represent reality and others not. But in the context of works recognized by all who care to be fiction, its just a senseless thing for internet quibbling. "This fiction is more valid than that fiction, because the legal entity presently holding the copyright says so." Get a grip.
- croes 2y agoSome fans react in the same way that some religious people react to those they consider heretics.
- throwpoaster 2y agoPeople value good stories, correct.
- darkxanthos 2y agoNot all fiction is equivalent. When you are actively world building making explicit revisions is useful for those trying to follow along. If you'd prefer a different word you should say so.
- croes 2y agoSomehow the people had less pf a problem with the Klingon change between TOS and TNG. Or that the things that happened in one episode had little impact on the next.
- lupire 2y agoAs the canon grows, people care more about it. In the US at least. Doctor Who doesn't worry about this.
- krapp 2y agoThe thing is, Trek canon was never that rigid or coherent to begin with, even within individual series.
- tboughen 2y agoI think that’s because the change wasn’t between TOS and TNG. It was between TOS series and TOS films; new style Klingons were in Star Trek 3 (1984) and Star Trek 4 (1986) before TNG started.
- throwpoaster 2y agoImagine for the sake of argument TOS and TNG are 99% aligned on storytelling and need a patch to make the 1% agree, and that patch is provided in TNG retroactively. Versus a new show comes along that is 20% aligned and would need an 80% patch to bring it into alignment. As an executive trying to revitalize a property where fans are complaining about lack of alignment, do you understand why you might just erase the 20% rather than create 80% more of an otherwise-failed project?
- krapp 2y ago>As an executive trying to revitalize a property where fans are complaining about lack of alignment, do you understand why you might just erase the 20% rather than create 80% more of an otherwise-failed project? If you're an executive, you understand that the purpose of these properties is to make money. Discovery makes money. It has fans. It sells merchandise. You don't erase money because of the rancor of some pedantic nerds, most people do not care.
- throwpoaster 2y agoBut it got canceled.
- krapp 2y agoCancellation is not the same as "erasure from canon." Lot of popular shows get cancelled all the time - Lower Decks got cancelled as well. Despite the narrative, Discovery was popular. It was a success.
- throwpoaster 2y agoBut Discovery got both cancelled and deleted.
- krapp 2y agoIt was not "deleted" in any sense I'm aware of. Discovery is still canon. The premise of this thread is a conspiracy theory which is not factual. Star Trek Discovery is still a part of the Star Trek franchise. You can still purchase official Discovery memorabilia. You can still stream it. It has an official Blu-ray release.
- hx8 2y agoIt sounds like you don't take fiction seriously, and are showing contempt for people that do. The issue of canon really occurs when different groups of people work on a singular fictional world over a long period of time. The people who work on these worlds have to take fiction seriously, and need a way to communicate with the fans which other works they are going to building on. It is a bit tiresome and over played, but is a natural consequence of large corporations handling these fictional universes.
- croes 2y agoAnd if the fans don’t like it they stop watching it. That’s how it works. Harassing people because they don’t like how it’s done is plain wrong. Sometimes you have to realize it’s not always to make existing fans happy but to try something new to get new fans. Otherwise is always the same in repeat.
- big-green-man 2y agoBut they don't stop watching it, their identities are invested in it. There's sunk cost fallacy going on there. They don't want it to suck, they want it to keep getting better. And it doesn't. And they complain. But they keep watching anyway. I know a guy that watched every episode of discovery, complained how bad it was, then watched the next one. It didn't matter that it sucked, you can't miss knowing the canon! They're entirely captured by the corporations that produce this stuff. Their minds are trapped arguing over the validity of literal nonsense because it's profitable to some company for that to be the case.
- throwpoaster 2y agoAnother way of saying this is that they share creative ownership with the corporation managing the commons, like open source software.
- big-green-man 2y agoThey don't share ownership of anything. The owners do whatever they want, then lip service the fandom after the fact, and the fandom takes it because they can't cut loose from their attachment. A die hard fan that won't drop something the minute it begins to be destroyed is a sucker for abuse, and their willingness to look past it afterwards is why the owners get away with it. And they'll do it again.
- arccy 2y agoif you want to build a coherent storyline across multiple media releases, you have to be able to recognize mistakes/missteps and be able to disavow them from what future releases will build on top of
- drewcoo 2y agoAll TV series have bibles. For the sake of continuity, writers follow it. https://www.startrek.com/news/a-look-inside-star-trek-series-bibles https://www.startrek.com/news/a-look-inside-star-trek-series... It makes sense to consider a set of interlocking bibles a canon. The fans are just using industry terms (they're that into their fandom!), not inventing something new for the sake of "Internet quibbling."
- throwpoaster 2y ago"Content is king!" Canon is a platform for fiction creation.
- lupire 2y agoWhat do you mean "reality"? Religious dogma is largely about the supernatural, not history.
- throwpoaster 2y agoCanon is an imagination tool that allows consistent storytelling that increases in complexity and value over time. "Darth Vader put on the One Ring and told Frodo to go back to Endor" is not going to be something that fans take seriously enough to make economically viable. Edit: someone prove me wrong, please.
- jinushaun 2y agoI don’t think you understand what canon is if you think that. Canon is simply internally consistent story telling. It’s agreeing that A follows B and C follows B, etc. It’s agreeing that “A” and “a” are two forms of the same thing, and make the same vowel sound. You run into trouble when you say “A” makes a “k” sound and the lowercase of “a” is “w”.