If people would be happier with a different paradigm? Then why shouldn't I think that they might benefit from changing how they view something like this?
Because it's their decision as to what makes them happier, not yours. As an aside, I saw the subsequent paragraph where you said "don't answer this," but I felt that an answer was warranted. At the end of the day, this discussion comes down to what people find worthwhile, and I personally don't see the moral dimension involved with telling someone that what they find worthwhile is wrong (with the usual caveats about not hurting yourself or others, etc.).
See, but this does tie into the issue, doesn't it? Because by searching for canonity and then figuring and declaring "this is canon" you are trying to remove that from other versions of that property. You are trying to find which version of the property is the "real" one, which is a pointless endeavor because they are all real.
The fact that you see the reality of some of these properties and say that it is an attempt to undermine your understand of canon, just shows how deep this goes. You feel like there has to be a true and canon version of Sherlock Holmes, but that misses the entire point of the Sherlock IP as it currently stands.
I don't believe that figuring out what's canon and what isn't "removes" the things that aren't canon so much as it confirms the things that are. I suppose you could say that's the difference between the glass being half-empty and half-full - which I suppose is this entire conversation in a nutshell - but to me (and, I think, a lot of the people who place an importance on canon), it's not so much about ruling stuff out as it is an investigation of what can help us understand the externalized framework whose existence is the draw (for that mode of engagement). It's not that canon is being "removed" from those properties, but that they're understood to never have had it in the first place, barring instances where something is de-canonized.
And I was using it as "judging value" which I thought was obvious.
In that case, it goes to show that there's still miscommunications occurring, and that a better way to frame the discussion is necessary. Judging the value of something is inherently relative (at least in terms of what's qualitative), and since everyone will do so on their own, there's no real basis to back up a sentiment of "if you abandoned your own judgment of value and adopted mine, you'd be better off for it." (At least with regard to what constitutes modes of engagement with various areas of imagination.)
Ah, I thought it was clear in the context. Anderson is one of the writer's for the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In fact, he was one of the three major writers for it, as a very cursory Google Search showed me.
Which is why I thought you were dodging, because what he wrote was considered canon, and then was considered not canon. And it ties directly into these questions. If I read his work when it was canon, should I consider that experience differently now? If I go to read it now, has something about his stories changed? How should I consider his work, once canon, then not?
As "should" questions, these are inherently personal to you, and aren't something I can answer. Part of that is because it depends on your mode of engagement (i.e. you can read his work for entertainment without caring about canon, or you can read it for a greater understanding of the wider Star Wars canon; in the case of the latter, that will radically change depending on whether it's currently held as part of the canon, whereas in the former case that won't matter at all).
To put it another way, I'm trying to explain what (I think) canon is and how that particular mode of engagement functions. The value derived from it isn't part of what I'm discussing, because that's not something that can be rationalized or justified. "I like it" is reason enough on its own.
If a person recommends that I read a book because of the cover art, and then I buy a version with different cover art... have I fundamentally bought a different story that they didn't recommend? Sure, people can like things for whatever reason they want, but there are aspects of reasons people can like something that are arbitrary and are generally considered not vital. You can enjoy a meal more or less if the body of the fork is straight or wavy, but do you not think it would be strange to rate a meal poorly and say the chef did a poor job because the fork was the wrong type?
You insist, repeatedly, that being canon is a value for people. That being canon is something that matters. But why? I can tell you why well-written characters are important to a story. I can tell you why a strong and engaging plot is important. Why a well-built and consistent world is important. Why strong prose that flows well is important. I can't tell you why official canon is important. I can't make an argument that supports it.
I'm having a hard time figuring out why my previous answers haven't helped you understand the answer (or at least, my answer) to this question, because that's what I've been saying since I first replied to you in this thread. Canon is important because it establishes a facet of realism for an imaginary framework, and in doing so makes it more appreciable. The manner in which it establishes that facet of realism is by imbuing it with an externality - and, as a result of that, an inability to personally alter it - which gives it a stability akin to how we perceive the real world (which is also something we can't change simply by willing it to be so, unlike a realm of imagination). That inability to alter it is because the canon is governed by an authority who maintains the exclusive ability to make further changes to the canon body of the total framework.
And the people defending it are saying it is important.. because it is important, but it isn't only that it makes it "official" and "right" but that seems to be the only part of it that changes or seems to be under attack. Your "modes of engagement" was an interesting take, but as we dig down into it, it seems more and more that your position is that people can't enjoy reading a story or a history of lore, unless it has an official stamp from the IP holder saying it is definitely the most true. And that is a bizarre position to me.
If that seems bizarre, that's because you're reading
into what I'm saying rather than what I'm actually saying; to make this absolutely clear, in no way am I stating that people can't enjoy something without it being canon. For one thing, I've presented to you repeatedly that you
can enjoy a story or a history of lore if it's not canon; you just won't appreciate it if the mode you're engaging in it with is "learning more about the canon." You can still enjoy it through other modes of engagement.
But if you elect to engage with something through that particular mode (i.e. canon), then a work which isn't canon will likely have little to offer you. (But only via that particular mode.)
A strange take because if the author decides it is no longer canon... that is still an externalized and grounded nature beyond what the reader can personally alter. The author declaring something non-canonical doesn't change that aspect of canon. In fact, by changing something that the reader can't, it demonstrates that externalized nature.
Even leaving aside the issue of whether or not the author is the one who makes that determination (which isn't always the case), a non-canon work is
not externalized and grounded when you're looking at its integration into an established canon. That's what makes it non-canon to begin with; by lacking that particular designation, it can no longer be relied upon to help inform anything about the greater body of imagination to which you're appreciating.
And I have no idea what you mean about "the parts of the world the reader can't see".
I'll refer you back to my
original post on this topic, where I said the following:
In her book
Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, Lisa Zunshine posits that reading, like writing, is inherently a creative act. The reason for this boils down to how we fill in the "gaps" in what's there; that we read between the lines to a far greater degree than is commonly acknowledged. That is, that while we might read a passage about a knight charging a dragon, we're imagining the various details that go unwritten in that passage: about the fear the knight is feeling and how they're dealing with it, or perhaps that they're excited rather than afraid, or perhaps that they're filled with a quiet resignation, experiencing neither excitement nor dread.
That's the part we can't see, and is what canon helps to establish. By adding that element of realism to an imaginary realm, it makes it easier to imagine the parts that
haven't been established, and in that way abets imagination.
That's not how things work. The only parts of a novel or written work the reader can't see are the things the author hasn't written, and the canon is what they wrote. I suppose you are thinking of "the shape of the void" where the written material makes a shape around something you can't see, but that doesn't mean you understand it, that just means you can make guesses about what is in there... which doesn't mean you are right.
Again, it's not about being right. Imagination isn't a question of right or wrong; canon is ultimately in service to imagination because by defining various parts of the imaginary world, we can better imagine the parts that haven't been grounded yet.
I'm using it because you have made a point that this is about value. While you seem to have clarified that you want to only discuss that people hold values, but there is a flip side to that that I am pointing out. Value of the work. The value of characters. The value of continuity. The value of canon.
Like all values, those are personal in nature, and so have no metric by which they can be judged, nor do they have any need to be rationalized. That's not a flip side, that's the same thing I was pointing out previously. You can try and maintain that a particular work is "good," but at the end of the day that's a value judgment which lacks any objective means of measuring, even when there's broad consensus.
So, I found it bizarre that you wanted to go forward and rank canon in tiers. By definition that would mean that some works are more valuable than others. Some canons are more valuable. Which, would also tell people that there is an expectation that they should value those higher tiers more.
You're misunderstanding; I
never wanted to rank canon in tiers. You were the one who postulated that there would be multiple iterations of canon for the same properties; I pointed out that doing so would cause ambiguity because some sort of ranking system a la tiers seems like - if not an inherent state of that - then a natural consequence of it. It's not something I find desirable, or particularly useful. Canon is, as I see it, binary, and works best that way.
Which isn't how that works for many many IPs. There isn't a clear "canon" "not canon" distinction. Your model doesn't cover the reality of many situations.
I disagree; the model works even when the dividing line between canon and non-canon isn't clear. It's just then a task of figuring out how to dispel that ambiguity.
But it is something that appears to weaken your argument. You are arguing for canon, on the basis that canon existed in 3.5 and 5e... but that skips the canon that existed in 4e.
Except it doesn't weaken my argument, because the example wasn't comprehensive; I mentioned two different editions offhandedly, and you're the one reading something that isn't there into my not mentioning another one. The canon for 4E isn't "skipped" skipped because I didn't mention it; it still fits within the framework that I've previously laid down (in fact, that was part of
why 4E had such a tumultuous reception).
Which, is actually a big thing to discuss. Maybe not you in particular, but many many people feel like 4e broke Canon and was therefore bad. In fact, many people ignored, skipped, and otherwise dismissed 4e. They would be, by one argument, dismissing canon. And that raises a question, if those same people are now complaining about things being declared non-canon... an act they already committed themselves by declaring 4e non-canon.
That disparity is resolved by recognizing that those people
can't declare 4E to be non-canon; that's not their declaration to make, as per what I said previously about the external nature of canon and its governance by an authority outside of yourself (in the general sense of "yourself"). People didn't like that 4E de-canonized a lot of lore for various D&D campaign worlds (by way of introducing retcons which were incompatible with the older material). If some people chose to disregard that in their games, that's absolutely their decision; their games are not beholden to canon because they're not a part of the canon.
And, yes, you've said canon is more than the stamp of approval, but you've also said we need a new word for "everything that is canon, except the stamp of approval by IP holder". That stamp of approval is what makes canon different from that other term we have not declared yet. It is, by your admission, what makes canon canon.
It's
part of what makes canon canon, which is also something I've said before. It's essentially a conceptualized version of the
Anna Karenina principle, where if even one step in a multi-step process fails, the entire process fails. Now, leaving aside loaded terms like "failure," that's a good way of looking at the necessity of authoritative governance over canon. It's one part of the issue, but not the solely-defining part. And if something has everything else except that, then we can't call it canon - we need a different term for it.
But canon is binary. It either is, or it isn't. And it is external and only alterable by the IP holder.
How do you engage with that? The only engagement is knowing that it is canon. That is the only thing that you can do, acknowledge that it is canon. That isn't engagement. That is an acknowledgement of status.
The engagement is that it becomes a springboard for imagination regarding the parts of the imaginary world that you can't see. It's essentially the
"boundaries spur imagination" idea, in that the more defined a particular work of imagination is, the more you an extrapolate out from it. Canon denotes what aids in that extrapolation.
Now obviously, people can and do introduce their own aids in extrapolation (e.g. "what if?" stories, crossovers, alternate universes, etc.) and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that a clear determination of canon helps to establish the baseline.
I'm not trying to say there is something wrong with it.
What I am saying is that going forward with "there is only one canon", and canon is different from our other term only by the official stamp of approval and making "it is canon" an entire type of engagement all circles around a single idea.
That the official stamp of approval is somehow important. To the point that a multi-billion dollar companies story, and a well respected author's story, are both "lacking" canon, because canon is something that can only be held by a single individual. And therefore caring about that is caring about who has "the right" to continue telling the story. Which is a bizarre way to approach art, and a truly bizarre way to approach TTRPGs where the entire point is that each table tells their own story.
The "official stamp of approval," as you term it, is important, because it remains a
part of what makes the canon what it is. Note that this authority isn't something that necessarily rests with a single individual: I mentioned in a previous post that it can rest with a corporate entity, which can make for some ambiguity in figuring out if something offered by a single individual within that entity can determine canon or not.
Regardless, while you might find that approach "bizarre" to you, a lot of other people don't. (Though, again, they don't really approach tabletop gaming that way, as it's a different mode of engagement.) To them, it's important, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
