Fandoms can be vast and occasionally confusing places. Any given IP can include mythos and multiverses that span thousands of comic books, video games, theatrical releases, novels and even multiple television series. Personally, it’s hard to keep track of what is canon, what is plain awful fan fiction and well, the lines can be blurred around the status of all that extra media.
Disney has recently decided that it is time to clean house and have begun the great culling of Star Wars 2014. The have announced the creation of the Star Wars Story Group and they will be responsible to sort through all of the existing Holocron of SW fiction and decide on what stays as all official canon and what must go. The house of mouse is ready to hit the reset button on the Star Wars EU and this has some fans up in arms.
I’ve never understood the notion that not being canon makes a story less worthwhile or less enjoyable. I mean, so what if it isn’t real? canon isn’t real either. It’s not like you’re studying for a history test and have to research only the correct sources. They’re stories for entertainment. As long as they’re entertaining, does it matter if they’re consistent with each other? I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice if they are. However, I can still enjoy reading novels or comics that aren’t compatible with the pocket novel-verse, because they’re still entertaining stories about characters and concepts that I enjoy. Consistency is a nice bonus, but it’s not the sole and exclusive source of the work’s value.
However, Let’s just says if canon was indeed history and tie-ins were considered historical fiction. Someone who enjoys reading about the life of, say, Benjamin Franklin might equally enjoy reading a novel series in which Ben Franklin solves murder mysteries (something I bet he totally could’ve done). They know it didn’t really happen, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable to read more stories about a person and a setting that you enjoy thinking about. It’s only a problem if you mistake the Ben Franklin Mysteries for historical fact and then read a history book proving that they couldn’t have happened.
Except, of course, that history is real, and canon is just another story. How many universes exist in multiple contradictory realities? How many different versions are there of Batman, of Spider-Man, of Tarzan, of Godzilla, of the Transformers? In cases like that, it makes little sense to pick only one as the “true” version and ignore all the others, because there can be great stories in all (well, most or sometimes many) of them. There’s no hierarchy of one story being somehow less imaginary than another; they’re all just alternative interpretations. It can be fun to explore the different ways a fictional universe can be reinterpreted and reinvented.
I hope that once other franchises that have had their runs, they might be open to avoid the constant closed “reset” button on stories as the result as just been better storytelling with true stakes instead of the fake “yeah yeah we know how this ends” wink you really get from page one. They’re all stories. Enjoy them. Leave the worries about canonicity to people with OCD.
-Dagobot
Get at me on twitter: @markdago
Like me on THE Facebook: facebook.com/markdagoraps
Download my latest EP for free: markdago.bandcamp.com
Listen to MY podcast http: http://poppundits.libsyn.com