First off, I wanna say that I’m a meganerd, I get that. This is something really dumb , but bear with me.
As a teenager mumble mumble years ago, I was super into Star Wars, and as such was super into canon. I always kept up with canon, and what was going on behind the scenes in all the movies, books, comics, and TV shows.
I took the cancellation of the EU pretty hard, but was excited for what was to come with Disney’s new trilogy and all the exciting other content that took place in the already existing timeline, which was promised to flow better with the overall narrative presented with the six main films.
But now, it seems like they’re changing what’s considered canon so much to the point that it’s confusing (looking at recent Kanan comic and Ahsoka novel retcons and others), and I’m starting to get to a point where, I really just don’t care enough to worry about a gospel truth of a nonexistent world.
It’s frustrating to get invested into a franchise where at any moment, your favorite comic, novel ,game, or TV show can just be written off as never having happened in universe. For people who take these works of fiction seriously, it’s exhausting!
So I’ve found my solution, one which I maybe should have had long ago- I just don’t care anymore.
This started with Star Wars but has honestly just gone off into all my favorite works of fiction, to the point that the only thing I care about is whether its a great work of art and whether or not I have a great time with it.
Does anyone else have any thoughts regarding canon in fiction, and whether or not you actually care about it or whether you don’t care about it at all?
Maybe you’re just growing up? As I get older I just don’t have the emotional or mental capacity to really care that much about trivial knowledge anymore. Maybe you’re sad to let go of a love and an obsession that is tied concretely to your now fleeting youth…, and that’s a valid feeling. Ride it out and find out where you land maybe you’ll pick up a new love or obsession.
I have a bit more of a radical view of this…
Copyright has become a tool to enforce privatization of culture, which is a pretty modern take—and, obviously, it’s just another example of the ongoing attempts to squeeze every last possible dollar out of everything and everyone. Culture is supposed to belong to us, it’s supposed to be our culture.
Another way of looking at this is that absurd choice of word, “canon.” This is a religious term, for what a particular religious establishment accepts as the Truth, from among all the spiritual and theological writings a particular religious tradition has produced. But why does the Pope have the right to choose which stories are True? And why does Disney have the right to choose which stories are True?
This is one of the subtler reasons that Star Trek is so much better: while there is still a Star Trek Canon, that canon was massively diversified by their spec script policy (back in the days that Star Trek was still worth watching).
Anyway, this is also why fanfiction is such a big thing.
I just wanted to say thanks for putting this into words better than I could. I’d been thinking about this recently and this really helped make a few things click. I’ve been pretty frustrated with the idea of strict canon especially in anime communities, as well as what a bunch of different copyright holders of stuff like Star Wars have done to their media lately in the pursuit of profit. I’m pretty anti-copyright in general and I think this is a good way of explaining part of why I have that stance.
to be completely honest, if there is one good thing that has come from disney’s acquisition of star wars its that it pushed me into star trek.
I’ve watched the original series and movies and LOVED them, and I’ve started TNG. The first two seasons were a slog, so I’ve taken a long break, but I’m definitely looking forward to restarting my watch-through and getting further in the series.
There’s a balance to be had. I would be mad if, say, one novel had Ahsoka listed as a former Jedi. And the next has her as a failed Jedi. And the next as a member of the Jedi order, trying to rebuild it from the inside. As long as the related works agree with themselves enough that you aren’t confused with what’s going on, it’s probably okay.
that’s fair and I definitely agree with that aspect, but its just at the point where I’m really getting back into EU and I loved alot of the ideas there.
It really sucks that they are considered invalid to current canon and are either written off entirely or brought back to current canon as watered down versions of their original selves if that makes sense
It’s Mara Jade, right?
oh you absolutely know it, I have a huge weakness for red heads who could body me ;)
But in all seriousness, yeah, she and all the other characters of the EU, as well as Luke’s academy being wiped out are just some of the many reasons I miss the EU. The way they treated Luke’s academy was bogus. I still enjoyed the new movies for what they were, and I enjoyed the other new content too, but it definitely got frustrating when the stories started retconning each other to the point where there was no point in buying new comics or novels because you didn’t know when they would just delete it’s importance
I agree with you. If you find enjoyment in that part of the fiction, indulge in it. Who cares if it’s not officially canon. There’s still merit to those stories.
Exactly! there are stories I’m reading through now that are old EU stories that I missed that feel more “Star Wars” than alot of the stuff that’s coming out now. They are downright enjoyable and I hate to think that it’s technically not part of the universe, so I just don’t care anymore and enjoy each piece of media as its own thing
I think the larger issue at play is the inability to allow a story or properly to just end. If the companies refuse to allow their IP’s to die gracefully, then they will inevitably come to be ugly deformations of their former selves.
We don’t need a thousand new entries in Marvel, or Star Wars, or any intellectual property. You very quickly hit a threshold where you just water down the themes, messages, and ideas present within a story; rather than expand upon it.
I feel like sometimes, especially with movies and tv shows for streaming, companies put out content under the umbrella of an IP so that more people watch it because it would just be another mid streaming experience if it weren’t for the name it was attached to, so I agree there.
And you’re really right- there is nothing that has been made that comes close to capturing the magic of the original six films of star wars, with the exception of the clone wars and the first season of mando. I’ve heard andor is good but I haven’t checked it out.
I have been getting into other sci fi movies recently, especially cyber punk stuff, and Star Trek has been a whole new world for me that I’ve been loving lately
[Goofy joke] Sorry, but your rejection of the importance of canon has been retconned out ;P
If I belonged to disney, I wouldn’t be surprised if reality bended to support that retcon xD
IME, Star Wars fans are less a fan of the movies, and more a fan of the toys they played with when they were kids.
It doesn’t really matter what is or isn’t canon, because they only want to revel in their nostolgia-informed headcanon.
This is quite different from, say, nerds you’d meet at a Ren-faire. They are either fans of high fantasy, which everyone agrees is entirely made-up and headcanon and whatever a person wants, or fans of era-specific historical study which is an extremely large corpus of culture and literature and artifacts that is virtually unending.
IMO, with star wars, the fandom could really do better job of emulating and embracing the first group. Just try to have fun and stop worrying about canon. If you try to obess about minutia, you’re going to have to pick something with a wider breadth than a specific disney IP cobbled together by many different people over many decades which is going to be inhearently a mess.
