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Jan. 24th, 2024 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethTumblr did a "what is canon" poll and it didnt have the right divisions for me to say how I figure.
Although actually canon is whatever makes the story go today. I mean my fandoms are Whoniverse (canon is bigger on the inside and got fully rebooted in universe so good luck) and assorted comics (ditto actually), with multiverses both in universe and as a way of explaining all the tie ins out here, and... there is no canon, only story.
But, also:
Canon is a thread that makes this story in particular make sense.
Or, canon is an arc fanning out from a shared starting point.
Or, TV is central canon and comics, books, and audios are spin off 'verses.
Or... actors are more likely to remember things they were in, and by this point are the most consistent part of the stories their characters are in, so maybe things the actor has acted are More Canon?
Like, Doctor Who, the tv show on the tele is central canon, but the BBC audios are also on channels by the same company so they're like one hop sideways, but the Big Finish audios have also been on BBC radio so they're at most another hop further out, but the books are often written by the same people as the audios or even TV, but then again the books get raided for TV plots, as do the comics, so either the same things happen twice to different Doctors or the TV is a different canon to books and comics, or, actually, after some books and audios, actually both, because sometimes they stop and explain how a timeline got fractured and events happened to more than one set of people.
And! Actually! Sometimes it gets even more complicated!
Like, TV episodes are canon, but minisodes are Slightly Less Canon, right? Sometimes they're being more funny than accurate? Except! Everything is/was on the iplayer, so now they're all on the same channel, are they all canon?
AND! Sometimes, for instance when an actor ends up writing the majority of hours of acting that character has had, their audios kind of feel More Canon, because they got to record it and so forth, but technically it still isnt on TV, so *big shrug*. Like, Ianto as a character is so different if you only have TV episodes than if you include BBC and Big Finish audios.
AND ALSO sometimes Big Finish will do stories that are explicitly in a different continuity, like they're from the books, except there's been more than one continuity of books, except then the characters turn up again and you think they're in the main stories too, but who knows? And then Big Finish do an audio that explicitly brings in characters from books and comics, so those are all Big Finish now. And then a minisode on the red button had the Doctor refer to Big Finish companions, so that loops them back in, but also some people disagree what he actually says, so does it?
And then of course Big Finish get to play with TV canon in new directions now than they did to start with.
And there were a whole chunk of stories I've only heard about, which existed on VHS for a while, but I know not of.
... are things less canon when I dont know how to get hold of them any more?
... does stuff on VHS slowly cease to be canonical?
Are the Lost Stories canon when literally no one can refer back to them for so long? I mean people watched them and there was audio if you knew how, but can something fall out of canon and then fall back in if it gets rediscovered?
Is difficulty of access a factor? Is the Big Finish that was on the radio more central to canon than the ones that weren't? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0gsdcby actually that's streaming, is broadcast more central than streaming, and does it matter when it was?
And what the heck is the canon status of the website tie ins? Same people making the same little videos but distributed in what was then a different way but is now just like the iplayer. And you can't get hold of them any more. And they were as internally contradictory as actual TV episodes were.
Heck what's the canon status of things characters say out loud vs things written on props vs things on the scenery vs same topic on a different day with different writers and designers? Because there are characters with three canon birthdates and there's a website that reckons if you count all the discrepancies there's exactly equal evidence fo Torchwood season one being set on roughly the dates of broadcast or a year after, following the time skip established in Doctor Who's first season or forgetting about it.
So what is canon?
... well I can make story mileage of time being that fractured in universe, and in the River Song adventures from Big Finish they do make story out of the UNIT dates thing, so, canon is what makes the story go...
Tie ins make it so you can't even draw a clear bright line between the fictions that create the Whoniverse and the kind of encylopedia or archives books that are just rearranging the fictions to report on them. Because you get new little notes from the characters around the edges of the collected information, sometimes written by the same real world people as do episodes. And just as often contradicted by them next time it's their turn with the story.
Canon can be perceived as a nested hierarchy, but it twists in and out of different mediums so much it dont really work well to try it. The more expensive productions ie TV seem to be more central, everything else refers back to them but not necessarily each other, until, well, it doesnt this time.
The only thing I will say is no amount of out of character or behind the scenes stuff is canon. Doesnt matter how many times anyone says it, if they're saying it out of character, it isnt canon, it's word of god. Whole different thing.
But of the rest, what is canon?
Good luck figuring that out.
Although actually canon is whatever makes the story go today. I mean my fandoms are Whoniverse (canon is bigger on the inside and got fully rebooted in universe so good luck) and assorted comics (ditto actually), with multiverses both in universe and as a way of explaining all the tie ins out here, and... there is no canon, only story.
But, also:
Canon is a thread that makes this story in particular make sense.
Or, canon is an arc fanning out from a shared starting point.
Or, TV is central canon and comics, books, and audios are spin off 'verses.
Or... actors are more likely to remember things they were in, and by this point are the most consistent part of the stories their characters are in, so maybe things the actor has acted are More Canon?
Like, Doctor Who, the tv show on the tele is central canon, but the BBC audios are also on channels by the same company so they're like one hop sideways, but the Big Finish audios have also been on BBC radio so they're at most another hop further out, but the books are often written by the same people as the audios or even TV, but then again the books get raided for TV plots, as do the comics, so either the same things happen twice to different Doctors or the TV is a different canon to books and comics, or, actually, after some books and audios, actually both, because sometimes they stop and explain how a timeline got fractured and events happened to more than one set of people.
And! Actually! Sometimes it gets even more complicated!
Like, TV episodes are canon, but minisodes are Slightly Less Canon, right? Sometimes they're being more funny than accurate? Except! Everything is/was on the iplayer, so now they're all on the same channel, are they all canon?
AND! Sometimes, for instance when an actor ends up writing the majority of hours of acting that character has had, their audios kind of feel More Canon, because they got to record it and so forth, but technically it still isnt on TV, so *big shrug*. Like, Ianto as a character is so different if you only have TV episodes than if you include BBC and Big Finish audios.
AND ALSO sometimes Big Finish will do stories that are explicitly in a different continuity, like they're from the books, except there's been more than one continuity of books, except then the characters turn up again and you think they're in the main stories too, but who knows? And then Big Finish do an audio that explicitly brings in characters from books and comics, so those are all Big Finish now. And then a minisode on the red button had the Doctor refer to Big Finish companions, so that loops them back in, but also some people disagree what he actually says, so does it?
And then of course Big Finish get to play with TV canon in new directions now than they did to start with.
And there were a whole chunk of stories I've only heard about, which existed on VHS for a while, but I know not of.
... are things less canon when I dont know how to get hold of them any more?
... does stuff on VHS slowly cease to be canonical?
Are the Lost Stories canon when literally no one can refer back to them for so long? I mean people watched them and there was audio if you knew how, but can something fall out of canon and then fall back in if it gets rediscovered?
Is difficulty of access a factor? Is the Big Finish that was on the radio more central to canon than the ones that weren't? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0gsdcby actually that's streaming, is broadcast more central than streaming, and does it matter when it was?
And what the heck is the canon status of the website tie ins? Same people making the same little videos but distributed in what was then a different way but is now just like the iplayer. And you can't get hold of them any more. And they were as internally contradictory as actual TV episodes were.
Heck what's the canon status of things characters say out loud vs things written on props vs things on the scenery vs same topic on a different day with different writers and designers? Because there are characters with three canon birthdates and there's a website that reckons if you count all the discrepancies there's exactly equal evidence fo Torchwood season one being set on roughly the dates of broadcast or a year after, following the time skip established in Doctor Who's first season or forgetting about it.
So what is canon?
... well I can make story mileage of time being that fractured in universe, and in the River Song adventures from Big Finish they do make story out of the UNIT dates thing, so, canon is what makes the story go...
Tie ins make it so you can't even draw a clear bright line between the fictions that create the Whoniverse and the kind of encylopedia or archives books that are just rearranging the fictions to report on them. Because you get new little notes from the characters around the edges of the collected information, sometimes written by the same real world people as do episodes. And just as often contradicted by them next time it's their turn with the story.
Canon can be perceived as a nested hierarchy, but it twists in and out of different mediums so much it dont really work well to try it. The more expensive productions ie TV seem to be more central, everything else refers back to them but not necessarily each other, until, well, it doesnt this time.
The only thing I will say is no amount of out of character or behind the scenes stuff is canon. Doesnt matter how many times anyone says it, if they're saying it out of character, it isnt canon, it's word of god. Whole different thing.
But of the rest, what is canon?
Good luck figuring that out.