Editing Canon (section)

== Canonicity ==
Given that canon, the supposedly-always-extant elements of a story, is [[fail|somehow fungible, mutable, and iterative]], people who like stories often get into fights about what is canon and what isn't (especially if these stories have been told by several people across several decades or ''centuries'').  These are debates of ''canonicity''.

A lot of people confuse the idea of canonicity with 'continuity', 'consistency' or 'consensus'. The official, capitol-C "Canon" is what someone who is in charge of a particular fictional world tells you counts or doesn't count (more on this soon, I promise). Conflict arises when the canonical judgement on what exists doesn't match the consensus view of what ''should'' exist. For example: Jar-Jar-Binks is part of the Star Wars canon, because Disney says so; however the general consensus among Star Wars fans is to pretend that Jar-Jar-Binks never existed. This is known as '''fanon''' because this consensus view is most often adopted by the average ''fans'' of a franchise, even if it directly contradicts the canon proper.

Managing the canon of an old story, passed down to different storytellers (or teams of storytellers) over the years, can be a big hassle for the ''current'' storytellers who have been granted the power to run the show. There are numerous ways to go about this, but the two most common solutions are to either discredit huge portions of the canon (these are often known as '''reboots'''' or '''re-imaginings''', and cause huge fits of bitching about the current storytellers online) or ignore the problem entirely and march on telling new stories by whims and broad strokes (causing huge fits of bitching by fans at other fans online about "what's canon"). These are generally accepted to be poor ways to go about managing the canon bureaucracy.

[[Doctor Who]] is an example of a work involving multiple authors where the shows producers have officially denounced the notion of canon, by stating: "It is impossible for a show about a dimension-hopping time traveler to have a canon."  The show (and spin-offs) has continuity and consistency (such as how he's always played by a <strike>British man</strike>, ''human person'' though not the same actor, even though the Doctor can shape-shift into a person of any nationality or gender), but no official canon. Now, the Doctor is been [[Rule 63|female]]. Now retroactively many times. Oh, and the latest episode did a [[Skub|skub]] inducing level of the writers ignoring a lot of canon, and both annoying and pleasing many fans.

Canon is also different from '''consistency''', which is the look and feel of a series as a whole, rather than exact details. When fans talk about "being faithful" to a series, they are talking about maintaining consistency.

It should be lastly noted that canon ≠ [[cannon]], no matter how frequently it is used as such.