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?
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.