What is canon?

[pinetree]

Whats this about the last encore website?

Also for my answer : A miserable little pile of secrets

With each episode of Last Encore, there was a collection of glossary entries on its website. Some people thought some of those were required to even understand parts of what was going on, some others thought that was not the case. Heated debates.

I actually went back to that thread some time ago and it is some comedy gold, it's a great read. It's one absurd reveal after the next fueling months-long arguments.

The reveal of Nasu's specific instructions to leave Tamamo and the fourth floor out of the anime after months of memes and dumb theories was absolutely hysterical.

[Byegod]

I actually went back to that thread some time ago and it is some comedy gold, it's a great read. It's one absurd reveal after the next fueling months-long arguments.

The reveal of Nasu's specific instructions to leave Tamamo and the fourth floor out of the anime after months of memes and dumb theories was absolutely hysterical.

I mean it had the mistake of leaving best girl out, but it also means tamamo isnt in last encore...

Which page does that stuff all start?

[Rafflesiac]

1

- - - Updated - - -

In other news, my stance is as voted since my fanon by definition will never be canon and various works are far too different to connect with each other.

[pinetree]

I mean, the stuff around Tamamo goes all the way back to that episode in which they showed a sticker of her.
I think the meat of the arguments around Last Encore and supplementary information started around 220 or something.

[Quoren]

Literally everything with the exception of stuff they clearly point out as being formulated by the opinions of outside authors, like From Lostbelt and Chaldea Case Files (though the setting details seem to be canon). But even then, Nasu could easily say that stuff is a parallel universe without issue. The absolute dumbest form of identifying canon is definitely the original author argument, like some people even seem to think other stuff sanctioned by the author isn't canon simply due to not being written by them.

[Hawkeye]

I'd say anything officially published by a group or author (In this case Type-Moon) is part of it's 'canon', after that, it's a more or less a flow chart to find what you're looking for.

For example, everything is canon, but I only want the Fate Canon, so take out everything that isn't Fate. I then want to find only the Extra canon, so then I eliminate everything unrelated to that. Finally, I just want what are the core stories from that, that gets me to the games and that's the one I'm down to.

[LegalLoliLover]

Literally everything with the exception of stuff they clearly point out as being formulated by the opinions of outside authors, like From Lostbelt and Chaldea Case Files (though the setting details seem to be canon). But even then, Nasu could easily say that stuff is a parallel universe without issue. The absolute dumbest form of identifying canon is definitely the original author argument, like some people even seem to think other stuff sanctioned by the author isn't canon simply due to not being written by them.

So essentially, the infinite branching universes in TM is used in the same way as CHIM in the Elder Scrolls universe? It's all somehow canon, even in the contradictory stuff.

[You]

Baby Hakuno Extella

[pinetree]

I'm surprised you even remember that.

[Byegod]

Didnt that get cancelled

[the god of world-0]

Since when something not being fully released stops it from being part of the Canon?

[Reign]

We joke about it until Baby Hakuno appears in a GO event and suddenly it's the most relevant part of Extella

[Menwearpink]

My answer is a mix of "Common setting and works that follows its rules" (aka not when the authors say on twitter please don't take this as applicable to the rest) and the "serious" works. Although you can take a few things from those as ideas that can apply maybe.

So Fate Tiger isn't something you'll say is canon per-say, or Carnival Phantasm or Servant Universe stuff. Nor Prisma and stuff like that.

But being canon or not doesn't elevate or lower its value as a work in the end. Stuff that's bad will be bad if its canon, and stuff that's good will be good even if it isn't.

• The Nasuverse as a common setting and the works that follow its rules.
• The stories & lore that you personally consider "serious", as opposed to "jokes/memes/etc".

[Guga]

I consider pretty much everything that TM has published as canon in some way (excluding things that with common sense you can see that are obviously jokes) even when the rules go crazy and far off the common setting like in Prisma Illya, since you can explain this with timelines, different trees, etc. The only exception would be adaptations, especially when they change something that was stated on the original work, since their only function is just adapt something and not create new lore unless the OG author says so (This is not to say that adaptations cannot be better or fix some narrative problems)

[SpoonyViking]

I know very few who say it doesn't, and they happen to not particularly care about the idea of lore in general. For the moderately immersed fan I'd posit that it not only exists and interfaces with it but at a certain point even supplants the text itself.

I'd argue that, in regards to Fate and most other franchises, it very much does. At least in the sense that the writers expect you to be aware of that information.

Then, accepting that it does exist even if it doesn't appear in the primary works... *Should* it exist? My preference is that except for direct continuations, all works (even those that share a setting or characters with others) should be capable of standing alone without any explicit intertextuality* being required to engage with them (either on an intellectual or emotional level).

* By its very nature, it's impossible to avoid implicit intertextuality.

[Leftovers]

It's a convenient tool for writing derivative fiction. The familiar draws the eye, carries inherent value, and compresses contextual information in a single reference; the extension of the familiar into the unfamiliar is even more enticing - to conceptualise this I imagine a Burial Agency Mission Files spinoff that develops and expands the "Holy Church lore", then consider how much I want it even if I should know better by now. To add to the convenience, the groundwork has already been laid down for the setting if not the characters. Writing into the "lore" is very much a case of plug-and-play provided there exists an imaginative capacity to follow it through into uncharted territory. This isn't a bad thing inherently: it's a writing crutch, and also a gratifying exercise in interconnectivity. I believe Nasu speaks about his desire to link his works together in the interview mew translated.

Now, both old works and newer spinoffs engage in infodumps of varying severity to bring the reader up to speed without pointing them to the 100+ hours long Visual Novel and telling them to read it for context. You could drop someone into KnK, Tsukihime, or Fate and they would grasp the premise of the setting without agonising too much about what's up with the Einzbern's Rheingold or who this Enhance guy is; as we move to derivative works, the value of lore is not so much in understanding something vital to the story but in gaining full appreciation of the story's elements. Say someone has no idea who Touko is before reading Case Files; is their appreciatione of this character's appearance, her actions and techniques the same as the person's who recognises her from KnK, remembers the sealing designation, the puppets and the shadowcat, and so on? What about Rita's train and Enhance? Grey and Saber? Faker and Alexander? Intertextuality is inevitable, as you said. How hard one leans on it determines whether their work can stand without it. Should it exist? At this point it has been the dominant mode of creative writing for too long to imagine TM without it. And if Nasu can reproduce the essence of his setting in a vacuum, I cannot say the same for the spinoff writers.

In the end, wherever you're standing in the sandbox, you're playing with the same sand as everyone else, and the box is still a box. Although I suppose one can always try to dig their way out.

[pinetree]

Then, accepting that it does exist even if it doesn't appear in the primary works... *Should* it exist? My preference is that except for direct continuations, all works (even those that share a setting or characters with others) should be capable of standing alone without any explicit intertextuality* being required to engage with them (either on an intellectual or emotional level).

* By its very nature, it's impossible to avoid implicit intertextuality.

I don't think there's a right answer to this one, it's too reliant on how one chooses to interact with these works.

In my case, I'm the kind of person who will try to start from the beginning whenever interacting with any media or franchise. I could never understand having an interest in Fate/Extra but not going back to Fate/stay night first or in Doctor Aphra without watching the Star Wars movies. I think there's only ever been two times when I didn't exercise that: with Gatchaman Crowds, because it is so vastly different and separate from the original work that basically nothing is shared beyond names, and Star Wars, because I just didn't finish the movies in time for the latest one and I couldn't cancel my arrangement with a friend to go watch it.
I value and appreciate this explicit intertextuality, purposeful or not, that is inevitable in franchises and multi-work series. I think it's a really unique feature of how stories are told in our time, and one I'm happy to engage with.

That said, I'm not a fan of isolated supplementary information intruding in that, and that is inevitable as long as that information exists. In fact, I usually ignore supplementary canon (from interviews, data books, etc). The only reason Fate is an exception is because I stumbled onto this forum, and because I like discussing them here.

So, to answer your question, I don't think this information should exist if it only exists as that: data, information. But I value this essential characteristic that is the exchange between related works, even if they are not direct sequels or prequels, and how it affects those that engage with them. Others might say ythat understanding these connection is not required to appreciate these works, but to me they're important enough that I see no problem with them being.

[SpoonyViking]

I don't think there's a right answer to this one, it's too reliant on how one chooses to interact with these works.

I'd argue that is true, but only to an extent. I'd say a work that *requires* an understanding which only comes from supplementary material is undeniably the lesser for it. For instance, anyone can perfectly enjoy something like "Monte Castelo" even if they don't know the song's verses are based on the Bible and Camões' poetry, but imagine reading the Lord of the Rings novels if they never explained what's the big deal with this One Ring thing and you only found out what it was by reading book 3's appendix!

[pinetree]

I agree on both accounts, though I don't think Monte Castelo is really comparable to the situations we're discussing.

Regardless, that is why I made the distinction between supplementary information and information contained in other works. Information about the one ring being contained only on the appendix would certainly make Lord of the Ring a lesser work, but if instead that information was in The Hobbit, then LotR wouldn't be lesser, it would just have a different public in mind.

Going back to TM, Last Encore is the perfect example. I absolutely think it was made worse by having information contained only on the website, but if instead that information was contained in Extella Link, I wouldn't care nearly as much.

[Deathhappens]

Depending on the context, either one consistent timeline where stories are placed in sequence (example: The Pokemon anime), or a broader fictional universe in which stories can be placed in any order as long as they don't contradict each other (example: Warhammer 40k). Sometimes stories can be written in the same context that are not canon to each other (example: the Pokemon Adventures manga is not canon to the Pokemon anime and vice-versa) and sometimes stories can be written from different contexts but be canon to both verses (example: the Chaos Gods in 40k are ostensibly the same entities as the ones in WHFB and Age of Sigmar.)


Alternatively: "Canon, noun: A word that has nothing to do with Type-Moon whatsoever, as its writers disregard previous and concurrent works and statements by other writers at their leisure".