“Canon is a tool and not a crutch.”

This started out as a Facebook comment, but danged if it didn’t turn out half bad. I’m refraining from fiddling with it further. Oh, and obviously it’s to the tune of If You’re Happy And You Know It.

8 thoughts on ““Canon is a tool and not a crutch.””

    1. It was mostly a reminder to me that the dumbest thing you can do when writing a fantasy series and you’re using your TTRPG supplement as a world bible is make the book magic match the TTRPG magic system point-for-point. 🙂

      1. Ohhhhhh. I get it. Good game mechanics do not always port over to good Novel mechanics. Or movies, as we’ve seen.

  2. Were gonna lay blame for this squarely at the feet of George Lucas and his
    ‘Certain point of view’ bullshit combined with his ‘every character gets a toy’ greed.

  3. Seems like “Canon” is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it helps the writer build a believable world with a solid, consistent foundation. But I suppose that could also be limiting, especially if you happen to be a very large corporation looking to squeeze every last dime out of a given work of fiction. You can’t simultaneously be all things to all people and operate under a consistent, specific history, culture, and set of natural rules.
    I haven’t encountered the advantages and challenges of maintaining a canon, because I always end up talking myself out of it. My inner critic is quite effective when it comes to that.

  4. Canon is inviolate without a d*mned good reason that’s internal to the story.

    The understanding of the world can change.
    The character that shrugs and says, “It’s a free country” is going to undergo character development when the COVID lockdowns hit.
    The evil puppermaster can turn out to be just another puppet.

    But you can’t go from the fight against Darth Maul in which relative elevation meant nothing to “It’s over, Anikin. I have the high ground.” (Or any of the other headdesk contradictions of the prequels.)
    Or violate everything we know about the setting like the end of Mass Effect 3.

    1. Or Firefly turning on a dime from being a Western in space where anyone can die, to a Superhero Origin story where River had plot immunity.

      Or my turning on the Heavy Metal radio channel this morning, and hearing Nickleback. (Followed by Radiohead and Green Day. Evidently, there’s been a format change since I last took a significant drive.)

      1. Firefly never got a chance to slowly develop River as a character. The movie was kind of tacked on to bring closure to the story. I don’t think the show had enough episodes to really even have a proper canon.
        It’s still too painful to really think about.

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