inb4 "the guy who isn't translating apocrypha"
Everything TM has published.
Everything Nasu has written.
The "core" Nasu works (name them).
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".
Whatever fits your personal idea of what the Nasuverse is and how it works, fanon included.
Each TM work in its own right and in relation to its self-contained setting.
There is no canon, just an illusion of a consistent setting.
inb4 "the guy who isn't translating apocrypha"
Damn I've become predictable
Hangups over "canon" seem like a weirdly Western obsession.
I've seen this ball bounced back and forth in other fandoms, too, such as Gundam. There's a lot of raging debate about whichever manga or spin-off counts toward canon, whether or not the Zeta Gundam movies make ZZ non-canon, if Tomino-written manga have as much weight as non-Tomino animated entries, etc.
None it mattered over there, either.
Mark Simmons, a prolific translator and super-fan, has pointed out that the Japanese Gundam fans don't really care. Stories are stories. Enjoy them or hate them. Take it or leave it.
So it doesn't matter if a new spin-off introduces ideas of Grand Servants or a reserve system or if Touko shows up in Case Files. They're all just stories. You're not obligated to read them all or try to cram them all together. It's not a tapestry that was meant to be woven together. It's an ongoing jam session.
Last edited by Imperial; June 14th, 2020 at 02:53 PM.
Spoiler:
What Japan says (author included) is irrelevant, this is about the English-speaking fandom in the first place.
"Baby, don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more"...
Canon Inc. (キヤノンキャノン株式会社, Kyanon kabushiki gaisha) is a Japanese multinational corporation specializing in the manufacture of imaging and optical products, including cameras, camcorders, professional displays, TV broadcasting and film equipment, projectors, photocopiers, photolitography equipment (steppers, scanners), computer printers, image scanners, binoculars, microscopes, medical equipment (including Computer Tomography diagnostic systems, MRI and diagnostic ultrasound systems), LCD and OLED panel manufacturing equipment, CCTV solutions, imagining sensors, calculators, high precision positioning and measurement devices (such as rotary encoders), and custom optical components (including lenses) for third party companies. It is headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan.[3]
Paisen NTR doujins.
Originally Posted by Arashi_Leonhart
Q.) What is "Canon"?
"Man, if you have to ask what it is, you'll never know."
- Louis Armstrong (Definitely)
"You can't explain [canon] to anyone without losing the experience because it's feelings, not words."
- Bill Evans (...Probably)
"[Canon] is the type of [narrative] that can absorb so many things and still be [canon]."
- Sonny Rollins (...maybe?)
-----
Yeah, I got nuffin' chief.
"Here's a bangin lil' tune about takin' on The Man!"
(Check out my Super Special Awesome Servant Compendium here)
My fault for being too wordy then.
I was using Gundam to get at my main point:
It doesn't matter. Never did. The mythology is only ever a skeleton that you hang the meat of the story on.
That Kairi got a pack of smokes from Touko is immaterial. Who he is as a person and how he strives to achieve his wish make him far more compelling than who he knows or what oblique reference can be gleaned from his background.
It's a living, breathing franchise with new entries and retcons being made all of the time. Trying to keep it consistent is a fool's errand. Let the stories be stories and don't bother tracking power levels or DEEPEST LORE.
Even shorter now: The question of "canon" isn't worth answering.
Spoiler:
First we gotta elect bishops and a Pope, then we gotta hold a council...
Whether you have nothing else to say or had to get it out of your systems, shitposts earn warnings from now on.
My opinion on canons
Spoiler:
Last edited by Glazy; June 14th, 2020 at 03:24 PM.
It matters, and Nasu would never have tried so hard to make the clarifications he did about why X thing is like this in one work and like that in the other while this world Y is like world Z if this thing never happened if it did not. What is the point of material books and dictionaries if not to establish a corpus of canonical information in relation to the existing works? That this model became untenable the more far-fetched the connections became and the more ridiculous the rationalisations had to be in turn to maintain the pretense of consistency is not indicative of the authorial attitude that spawned GD lore-policing in the first place.
Last edited by Leftovers; June 14th, 2020 at 03:28 PM.
That's like asking why DC Comics needs mega-crossover retcon events like The Crisis of Infinite Earths to sort out their continuity tangles. It's all a wild mess, and trying to line it up creates more headaches than it cures. Each author goes off and does his own thing with his own idea of how the rules work (or should work), and then some editor on high (or Nasu) has to try to tie it all back together again.
I don't care if Gotham by Gaslight is an Elseworlds title that sits outside of the main DC narrative or if Fate/Apocrypha exists in a split timeline where the Fourth and Fifth Grail Wars never happened. Do I find them entertaining or thematically resonant or simply worth my time?
I've certainly bugged moon runers like You for out-of-text explanations from those source books they so lovingly translate for us, but these revelations are decorative.
If Nasu swings in during an interview ten years from now to tell us that Shirou is distantly related to the Ryougi family, it won't change Fate/Stay Night in any way.
Spoiler:
Idk, it's more that making this a detail is dumb
I went with "The stories & lore that you personally consider "serious", as opposed to "jokes/memes/etc".", but mostly because Leftovers already said "it doesn't matter what japan thinks (the author included)".
Because to me, everything within the nasuverse at large pretty much fits into canon, although I obviously don't really put as much weight to works where the author literally says "don't think about it too much" (like prillya or redline). However, obvious gag stuff I don't really include. But that's of course where it gets iffy, but I'd say my bar for what I consider "gag" is pretty high at least. Mats jokes, FGO events, even those silly games like capsule servants could get a pass, depending on what you're talking about. Really, I only ignore stuff if either the author says to ignore it, or if it's like some short 4-koma chibi shit. And even then, I only ignore it until it for some reason becomes relevant.
In general though it's always felt like more of a "just use your god damn common sense" and less of a hard rule.
"The Nasuverse as a common setting and the works that follow its rules" is the most reasonable answer there, though "There is no canon, just an illusion of a consistent setting" is pretty good too.
There's obviously care put into maintaining worldbuilding and a consistent set of rules across the canonical bubble of the "Nasuverse" works. That said, it's not something people should be as worried about as they usually are because, while TM cares about canonicity, they seem to care much more about writer freedom in their individual works. If someone wants to tell a story that would bring inconsistencies into the setting, Nasu seems perfectly happy to allow them to do so, though they also make sure to tell that this work is not part of the consistent setting, or that only certain parts of it will adhere to pre-established rules etc.
In other words, stop thinking so hard about it and
Everything is canon, yet everything (i.e. most of everything) is also its own continuity/timeline. It's all, ultimately, a sandbox. One is welcome to devise a TYPE-MOON Unification Theory of Everything comprised of fitting and cool details if they want to, or just play with the general framework of it all.
Big JHS? Little JHS? All that matters is an individual's own values.
My Fanfics. Read 'em. Or not.McJon01: We all know that the real reason Archer would lose to Rider is because the events of his own Holy Grail War left him with a particular weakness toward "older sister" types.
Canon is a convention. The story itself is the only thing that matters. Any possible connection is cool, and can add deeper meaning to what is happening in the story, but trying to solve contradictions and timelines and whatnot is a quest of futility.
Because you are too young. Or too stupid. Or both.
I'm pretty much with IRUN. Confrimed multiverse means everything is canon, and all the X is closer to Human Order so DAA don't exist are just flavour text behind any given branched timeline.
All the little bits, like Touko's smokes or Kairi being in both Apo and Case Files are just little nods to other works. Fun little asides and the occasional chance to bring in a popular character from elsewhere, but not really relevant to whatever story is being told.
Plus having no defined unified universe means there's more motivation for a fanfic to attempt to meld the two together, and more fanfic is a good thing.
Binged All Of Gundam In 4 Years, 1 Week and All I Got Was This Stupid Mask
FF XIV: Walked to the End
Started Legend of the Galactic Heroes (14/07/23), pray for me.
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