How Important is Canon?

Got a few reminders this week of how useless I am. I’ll make it, though–Thanksgiving is coming up! There should be some good food. I also want to work on getting some more Dragon Age 3 done before Christmas, so hopefully this break will give me the opportunity.

UGH computer’s updating again.

Inspired a bit by an article on Reactor Mag!

How Important is Canon?

So there was an article on ReactorMag (Reactor Mag? I’m not sure) about canon, and gatekeeping, mostly in regards to Tolkien’s work and Rings of Power. The comments are not all on the author’s side, in large part because they’re of the opinion that this excuse only works if the changes to canon made are for the better to make a good story. Rings of Power, they contend, doesn’t fit the bill.

Alright, I haven’t watched Rings of Power, but this raises the interesting question in my head: how important is canon?

[I realize that the article is more about adaptation than it is about continuity, but this is where my mind went.]

In truth, I’ve flip-flopped on the subject myself a lot. There was a time to me that canon was all-important. I got out of the habit of even attempting to write fanfiction, or read most of it, because I’m such a stickler for canon, and anything that contradicts it pulls me out of the story. In recent years, however, I’ve relaxed that stance, because I’ve seen what a lot of attempts to maintain strict continuity do: make very bland products full of shout-outs to previous works that don’t go anywhere narratively. I also realize that with long-running stories, especially those by multiple authors, a lot of times you can’t help but have continuity issues creep in.

That being said, I still appreciate tightly-connected stories that are incredibly consistent, or at least make an effort for it. One of the things really frustrating about Star Wars right now is that, despite the early promise that the new continuity would all be consistent, it’s been anything but, and Dave Filoni has a habit of rewriting events from books and comics at the drop of a hat because he decided he’d rather do something else with his own shows. The Kanan comic, for instance, shows where Kanan Jarrus was in Order 66, only for the animated series The Bad Batch to change that scene completely. Dark Disciple kills off a character from Clone Wars, only for Bad Batch’s final season to bring her back with no explanation.

This has a cost–for me at least. I feel like I shouldn’t bother reading any of the comics or books in the new Star Wars canon at this point, because the events depicted in them will be overwritten by any new cartoon that comes out. I already had this problem with tie-in comics for… just about everything. There was a while (and it may still be happening, and I just haven’t been paying attention for the reasons I’ll outline) where every major superhero or fantasy film had a tie-in comic that acted as a prequel. I stopped reading those when I realized how pointless they were, how movies’ sequels disregarded them.

[This rule of mine doesn’t apply to the old EU; now that none of that is canon, I can just enjoy things like the Thrawn Trilogy because I know it won’t affect anything in SW now.]

Canon, and the rules it establishes, are important for grounding the viewer. It lets them know that the time they spent reading, or watching, or playing previous entries actually matters. It lets them know that anything they retained from that media could make a difference in how the story plays out going forward. If it doesn’t, well, that feels like the writers are cheating a bit. They didn’t do the homework necessary to make it all fit together, and instead are dictating on whims. And yeah, technically, writing is always the writers putting what they want down on paper, but it shouldn’t feel like it. It should feel as if you’re witnessing events unfolding, not watching someone making dolls do random things for funzies.

Like… in Red vs. Blue, one character, Tucker, gets an energy sword after the previous wielder dies. And we’re shown that the sword does not activate for anyone else–only Tucker. Anyone else picks it up, it shuts off. And so the only way to get it to work for you is to kill the previous owner and be the first one to pick it up afterward. But then Red vs. Blue: Zero, a spin-off that mostly focused on new characters, has a villain beat the snot out of Tucker, take the sword, and then move on, because suddenly, almost killing someone is close enough to count for the sword. That’s obviously not how it worked before, but it does now because the narrative needs one of the villains to get the sword.

And this is a cop-out–we have a hard and fast rule that the writers told us, and show us again and again, only to subvert it because… well, Plot needed it. What else could they do this with? Would they suddenly tell us the characters can fly now, because the Plot needs them to reach a cloud? This isn’t like the whole retcon of Reconstruction, where the story suddenly has a serious Plot, it’s breaking a hard set, often reinforced rule, in the sloppiest way possible. And the audience doesn’t trust the writers anymore because for all we know, anything goes now.

How do you get invested in a story, where there are no rules? It no longer works, it’s no longer satisfying, unless you’re the writer and your goal is surprising the audience. Which, for the audience, isn’t as fun as you think.

No, canon isn’t the most important thing, but it IS important. More and more, I’m seeing think pieces saying ‘Continuity/canon isn’t really important’, which seem to be apologist tracts for movies and shows that disregard canon. Again, little inconsistencies isn’t that big of a deal, but if the writers keep breaking established rules or events over and over again, that erodes the audience’s trust.

And that is a sucky position to be in, for a writer.

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