Subject: With you on the Star Wars
Author:
Posted on: 2010-06-08 03:12:00 UTC
I'm not willing to admit the existence of half of the Star Wars EU, but love the other half (the bits written by Timothy Zahn, mainly, plus some of Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston's work).
Elcalion, prejudiced
We all get angry at badfic. We gawp at what has happened to our beloved canon, and realize that the author of such badfic has little respect for the soul of the material and just wanted to play around with it. Which, in and of itself, is okay, as long as we learn from it. That's how most of us started writing. (I myself am guilty of a Zelda/Yu-Gi-Oh! crossover 'Sue, the only redeeming feature of which is that I never let it out of my hard drive.)
But when the story in question is published, piggybacking on a deceased author's body of work, and licensed by the estate (or the copyright has run out), is it still "okay" to get angry about "damage" done to the canon? As the new story is licensed and published, it counts as canon (so far as I understand the PPC's rules) - but what if it violates everything the original canon stood for? What if it contradicts key information that the original author wrote (and cannot correct it due to Author Existence Failure)? What if beloved characters are killed off with no real reason? What if a main character's age is suddenly changed (or disregarded)? Or his backstory? Or his entire personality?
What if the "continuation" is really a different series with this character's/universe's name slapped onto it like a cheap, off-brand Post-it note?
Is "badfic rage" justified in such a case? Does it even technically count as canon if there are such blatant character/'verse replacements?
This Penny Arcade comic pretty much sums up the phenomenon to which I refer. There's a series very close to my heart that is getting this treatment. A new book in the continuations just came out, and I managed to read the inside dustjacket cover without throwing it across the bookstore. Barely. It shreds what little is left of the canon at this point (after far more continuation books published than in the original series). Am I right to be angry, or do I just have issues?
Only speaking of Star Wars here, but there is actually a proper system for how canonical some of the EU material is. Wildly-AU works don't count as canon, but unfortunately even some of the worst of the books *cough*Crystal Star*cough* do count as canon.
See our wiki article or the Wookieepedia article for more details.
Ahhh... Stupid after-series. With some, it's not so bad, but with popular series and classics, it can get pretty bad.
Curiously enough, LOTR has never gotten that treatment. Probably because LOTR practically defines fantasy. You just can't do anything more. With Dune, though, it just went way too far, and don't even get me started on Star Wars. Prequels, sequels, alternate-historequels... Ugh. Little more than published badfic. I'm surprised there aren't lame AUs and Bad Slash books.
I agree with what Cliever said; they're a divergent canon that includes the original but is not included in the original. Unless they're just horribly, disgustingly lame--then they're in a category all their own, specifically for despising. Like the later Dune spinoffs. And most of the Star Wars spinoffs.
Specifically with the upcoming Xcom FPS, which is supposedly somehow connected to the X-com top-down turn based isometric squad tactical game. I think what irritates me most is that it is inexplicably set in the 1960's with the main character being an FBI agent. Mostly because I see no possible reason for that change.
The general consensus was that if they're published, they're canon, but it's a sort of splinter canon where it might include the originals but the originals don't include it.
Basically, unless the badfic specifically includes the unofficial sequel, it can be safely disregarded for the consideration of missions. For instance, a 'Love Never Dies' badfic must consider 'The Phantom of the Opera,' but a 'Phantom of the Opera' badfic does not necessarily include 'Love Never Dies.'
I'd say it's pretty much up to each individual fan what's part of canon and what isn't. What troubles me personally is Sherlock Holmes published fiction. A lot of authors seem to use Holmes' name as a crutch to get their borderline fanfiction published, and I don't feel that's appropriate.
I once read a Holmes novel entitled "The Seven Percent Solution." I went in assuming that was a reference to the eventual solution to the crime, but it was actually referring to Holmes' frequent use of a 7% mixture of cocaine in water. The novel is a crossover with real-life Sigmund Freud, who psychoanalyzes Holmes (who is a worse addict than he ever was in the original stories) to uncover the mommy issues that keep him a bachelor and led to his substance dependencies. My real problem with the novel is that it implies Moriarty, the admittedly never-developed villain of the Holmes-verse, to be a common math professor; Holmes has subconsciously imagined all his criminal activities, probably because Moriarty was romantically involved with Holmes' mother or something. Freud eventually convinces Holmes to seek treatment for his drug use, prompting Holmes to ask Watson to publish a false account of his death temporarily to avoid attention (which is implied to be "The Adventure of the Final Problem").
"The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" annoyed me because it basically sought to undo part of the established Holmes canon (and because Freud, whose beliefs I hate vehemently, was in it, but that's not important right now). On the other hand, I've also read another piece of published Holmes literature called "The Einstein Paradox," which used the vehicle of Holmes (and Professor Challenger, another Doyle character) solving mysteries as usual as a backdrop for explaining quantum physics mechanics. Despite the educational intent of this book (which was even used as a textbook for my high school's AP Physics class), I absolutely loved reading it, because it remained true to the main canon, and really did read remarkably like an original Holmes story. (I highly recommend it to any Sherlock Holmes fans; the author is Colin Bruce.)
So to finally get around to the heart of this discussion, this extra published fiction is very similar to fanfiction: sometimes, it's good, and we enjoy it becomes it fits well with the canon; other times, it's bad, and makes us cringe because it doesn't jive well with the parts of the canon we remember and love. In those latter cases, we just have to accept that those publications do exist, but that we can choose to ignore them. I don't think it's even worth getting angry about, because, as we, of all people, know, there will always be bad writing. We just have to keep ourselves busy with the good stuff.
My apologies for the long rant.
that's a really good example. If "The Seven Percent Solution" was a fanfiction, it would have been PPCed for sure. But it was published, and now? Canon or non canon? I think it's not canon, because it COMPLETELY destroys canon.
Saying that rage isn't justified would be like telling me I'm not allowed to be angry about environmental damage just because people enjoy driving cars.
Things like Lost in Austen and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies make me furious, and half the fandom discussions nowadays seem to be about whether new additions to canon are 'official' or otherwise good enough. Everyone has their own opinion, and I don't see why something truly upsetting should be suppressed. Of course you have the right to be angry.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies had the potential to be funny. Most of those things do. I just wish the authors would show a bit more creativity about it--a lot of the lines sounded like they were quoted directly from the book. It's like the minor badfic genre-- "I'm too lazy to make my own plot, so I'll just write the canon in story form." Only found in visual-media genres, especially manga and anime.
And, that's exactly what they did: took the source material, changed some things around, and injected zombies between the lines. I only looked at the first few chapters, but still. I'm not even a fan of the source material, and I hate it with a passion. {= P
~Neshomeh
Though, I admit, I do kind of like the Zombies. It's nicely random and sort of well done. Fun, at least. But yeah, not canon.
As for being angry, the only difference between badfic and bad profic is that one is legal and one is questionable. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to exhibit the same response. There's also, in my opinion, a difference between spin offs and official continuations. Pride and Prejudice spin offs/sequels are probably not canon because they weren't made with Jane Austen's knowledge and/or approval. The new Dr. Who, on the other hand, is accepted as canon, mostly, because it was made, as far as I know, with permission and/or knowledge of the original creators, or at least owners.
--anamia
Totally not canon, but entertainingly bizarre. Whether the spawned sequels and imitators stay as entertaining remains to be seen.
The only way I think I could ever get through Middlemarch is if they added some form of monsters to it. Glaurung, but that's a boring book.
Elcalion
...it depends how bad the story is. I mean, in Doctor Who, a lot of people got mad at the eighth Doctor TV movie and don't count it as canon because they said a lot of things that contradict established canon. But a lot of people do count it, and think it was good.
I suppose it is justified if the characters are really OOC, i.e if it were fanfic, we would class it as Bleepfic-or-even-worse. That way, regardless of canonicity (is that a word?) it is still bad because the author clearly knows nothing about/disrespects that particular canon. Also, they must have a reaction with more than just you if they are as bad as you say, so a section of the fandom do not like it or indeed class it as canon.
It's got its own Facebook group. Granted, a small one, but the Amazon.com reviews are either "Fun read!" or "You are making Robert Ludlum cause earthquakes of 8.6 on the Richter scale, please stop doing that." The one-star reviews outnumber the others.
This might be my favorite: "Fiction requires a 'suspension of disbelief,' but from the start this book demanded more, a 'suspension of intelligence.'"
I will admit I raeg fireballs at certain profics. I flat out gave up on the Star Wars books after Barbara Hambly's... thing and the absolute crap R. A. Salvatore pulled from his a**. I refuse to touch anything beyond the original Dune books (Kevin J. Anderson seems to be one of those who pops up in EUs that suck). I once read a sequel to Pride and Prejudice that I'm sure would make Austen spin in her grave.
I don't consider profics as part of the canon. I could say I would if the author/creator has given approval to someone else continuing his/her works, but some of the time that creator is dead and their works get nasty things done to them for the sake of making money.
The PPC as a whole may consider them canon, but I'm not wasting any more of my money or time on crap churned out by the likes of Kevin J. Anderson, Dave Wolverton, etc. (Although, I might consider reading William Shatner's Star Trek novels just for the amusement. XD)
Long story short, I totally understand the rage. It makes me feel better to ignore the existance of works that defile canon. -_-
They scare me. I once read a "sequel" to Huckleberry Finn that I was hard-pressed not to return to the library in tatters.
This review says it all:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3286RI6SVGEAK/ref=cmcrrdp_perm
I wonder where the prohibition on published adaptations ends. Can you count a school play written by the sixth-grade music teacher? How about the high school drama teacher? What if fanfiction is published in a school newspaper? What if it's a college newspaper? A nationally-sold fanfiction magazine?
Actually, come to think of it, adaptations seem to be fair game for the PPC under all of what I know (which could be the problem because I don't know nearly enough). Can someone explain that to me?
Very short, because I should have long since gone to sleep:
If it's making money, definitely. If not, depends on the context. I don't think a school play is much of a violation (unless they charge door fees), but I've heard of people making a fuss over such things. Newspapers, I'm not sure. If they are 'sold', gamble on the side of caution.
There's a wiki article with more on the subject, but I can't find it back now. I did chatter about the topic further down on the thread, if that helps. (If not, go ahead and start a new thread at the top of the board and ask. We'll probably start a fun little debate.)
I'm not willing to admit the existence of half of the Star Wars EU, but love the other half (the bits written by Timothy Zahn, mainly, plus some of Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston's work).
Elcalion, prejudiced
I like his stuff. Aaron Allston is definitely still the funniest.
I was in two minds about Traitor... I liked having a novel that didn't portray Jacen as a whiny bitch, but especially after the whole Legacy of the Force debacle I'm not a fan of the book that started him down the path to being Darth Junior. Destroy one of the favourite characters of my childhood, why don't you...
Elcalion, only slightly bitter
I think that evil!Jacen could've potentially been pretty good, but the way it was done just did not work. Some of the writers were better than others, though. *is not a Traviss fan*
I did really like Shatterpoint and the RotS novelization by Stover.
Basically, the rumor is that Anakin was supposed to swap roles with Jacen, and then George Lucas decided that idea was a stupid idea. It does explain a lot about the structuring of the character arcs prior to Anakin's death. Dunno if there is any evidence to back it up, though.
That they were originally going to have Anakin be the hero of NJO, but George Lucas thought that people would get confused if there were two Anakins.
Killing both Mara and Jacen over the course of the series was not the thing to do to endear it to me. Now only Corran and Mirax are alive out of my favourite EU characters, and I doubt we'll see much more of either of them.
Elcalion, slight Mirax fanboy
Personally, if there's a professional fanfiction 'sequel' or 'prequel' that is desecrates all the ideas its parent canon stood for, or is vastly inferior to its parent canon, I can simply choose not to count it as canon. ("Wide Sargasso Sea" comes to mind, along with the last two "Shrek" sequels.) Those are simply banished to their paltry universes, never to be thought of again.
However, I will take issue with profics whose authors see fit to change things during the original story. For example, the truly godawful TV series "Lost in Austen" reads exactly like a bad Mary Suefic, with Amanda Price screwing up all the events of Pride and Prejudice and making Darcy and Bingley fall for her. Now, if the TV series had had Amanda Price come into the story after the events of the book, she would be a lot easier to ignore. But, even though a professionally written fic is technically its own canon, I will still call it canon-mangling and get irritated if it messes with things in medias res.
~Araeph
I'd read Shatner's Trek novels for fun, but that is just because Shatner is a fun guy. I like a lot of the old Star Trek Pocket Books, particularly Diane Duane's Rihannsu series. Good for learning about the Romulans - and Duane is great at world-building! :D
Feel free to dismiss my idle chatter as the merely the mumblings of someone who 'doesn't get' fandom. But from my perspective, nothing says that you, personally, have to accept new 'licensed' works as canon.
Alot of people were angered at the latest Star Trek movie. I honestly don't understand why. It was a fun action flick - nothing more, nothing less. There is no reason that it's existence means you /have/ to accept it as the new star trek universe. If The Next Generation is your favorite show, nothing is forcing you from saying that it's successors, or the plethora of bad movies after it were merely alternate universes. Even better, just keep in mind that fiction that is written doesn't /actually/ become reality, and just realize that if a book or movie is made that is 'official' doesn't mean you are tied to worshipping it.
Regardless, getting angry doesn't work.
...incompetence and willful ignorance. These books accomplish both. He seems to be a fairly capable author otherwise, but he needs to jump back from this fandom, IMO.
I'm a bit of a freak about fandom - it takes me a long time to get into things with "annoying" fandoms, because I like to discuss things I like with people who also like them, and I much prefer it if there's a fandom and not a fanDUMB.
Personally, I don't accept these books as canon. Not at all. Not even as doorstops. (And as an old-school Trekker, I loved the new movie, precisely because it's an alternate universe. It gets its own continuity, everybody happy. I can see where it might piss off the people who obsessively chronicle Federation history, but that's a whole other can of gagh.)
It doesn't work, but it's good to get it out of my system. And I am wondering about how it's viewed in the PPC, as profic - canon, or non-canon?
(And I know fiction's not reality - I'm not CWC over here. ;) )
If it's published, it's Canon. If it contradicts what happened in previous versions, it makes its own canon. For example, movieverse LotR didn' overwrite bookverse LotR. Exactly what counts as contradiction has never been established, to my knowledge. In TOS, I believe the movieverse/bookverse dichotomy was explained before the Two Towers movie launched, so draw from that what conclusions you will. Obviously, even relatively minor differences in events will split a Canon, but I don't think how far characters or themes need to be bent before splitting has ever been explored. In general, at least, we judge a fic by the setting it claims - if a Suefic is running around in Reboot!Trek, we'll charge and kill her for offences against Reboot!Trek.
(Speaking of which, I think it was a rather elegant solution to the problem.)
This is bugging me now, because I could have sworn I saw something about this on the wiki at some point, but I can't find it now. The examples were based on one or more of these, I think: Wizard of Oz, Phantom of the Opera, and/or Dracula. I may just be thinking of a Board discussion, though.
I am pretty sure I once saw a Board discussion about how the original Dracula book would relate to Castlevania, with the idea being put across that the book could influence the game, but the game could not influence the book, due to the origin effect, or something along those lines.
Maybe that would apply here if we take the new books as derivatives. They cannot effect the original universe no matter what, but the original universe, where not in direct conflict, does effect the derivative universe.
Okay, I'm rambling. Shutting up now.
So contradictions on the order of magnitude of "Oh hey, remember your dead son? Yeah, he didn't die, he's a Buddhist assassin with abandonment issues" and "You know your and everyone else's entire backstory? Yeah, just gonna change that around there and disregard the source material" would count as a separate canon? I'm bearing in mind that this series already has a (quite divergent) bookverse and movieverse - so the bookverse would splinter?
Forgive me; I like things organized.
(The reboot, I think, worked pretty well. I was glad they went that route so they still have wiggle room.)
When contradictions start to pile on top of each other, you quickly end up with a mangled mess - see what's happened to the DC and Marvel universes for an example. I don't think that how those get PPCed has been discussed much, though.
In your example, I would definitely consider that a splitting event. Character resurrection (even for Bourne) is a good bit much, and if he's flagrantly ignoring backstory, that's yet another problem.
In the DC and Marvel universes those dichotemies are internally changed - it's all one canon, but there are multiple 'universes' inside that one canon.
That's an interesting question - one that I am obviously not qualified to answer, but I will discuss anyway because I love to see myself type.
Canon's are usually based on specific authors, but obviously multi-author canon's exist (hence Star Trek). Many times contradictory factors come into being in the same canon (sometimes even by the same author). How does the PPC usually handle these?
I think what'll have to happen is that those canons really are affected by the new authors - The PPC just has to accept the canon as having developed many 'naturally occuring' plotholes, making the canon unstable.
Another possibility is that alternate canons are created. I'm pretty sure there is precedence for that.
Canons with multiple authors tend to have little contradictions. I'm thinking this probably connects with multiverse theory--that a story is not just what *is*, but also what *could be*; and that both versions exist simultaneously as slightly-alternate universes. Each continuum isn't just made of one universe, but of many universes, which is why AU fics still have to be PPC'd.
Adaptations far enough away from the original will create their own continua, though.
I can give you two examples.
Star Trek seems a good place to start. Generally, if it's canon somewhere, you have to acknowledge that. If someone's writing a Voyager fanfic and uses a technobable fact only mentioned in DS9, then it's not chargable, even if it doesn't make sense. If someone writing that same fanfic used a technobable fact from DS9 that was actively contradicted by something in Voyager, then it gets trickier; my best advice there is to be generous, and not charnge the author for nitpicks when they may have actively chosen to take one version of canon over another, since it's all one big mesh with no dominant 'truth'.
(When I write for Star Trek, I look for what makes sense, starting with the series (or even the specific episode) that's most relevant for the fic, and then searching around for more information. Frankly speaking, when it contradicts, I'll take the 'fact' that works best for me. There's no other practical way to do it.)
On the other hand, when there are more clear-cut 'verses - such as the four-way 'split between L Frank Baum's original Oz books, the 1939 movie with Judy Garland, Gregory Maguire's out-of-copyright novel Wicked, and the stage musical adaptation of Wicked. When PPCing fics for any of the four, I have to work out which 'verse it's intended to be set in (which usually isn't hard), but if they cross-exchange facts, especially if they try to blend two or more into a single, logical 'verse, it's not chargable, as far as I know. Only blatant lack of logic or internal contradictions can be charged in those circumstances.
Or so I think. Discussion, anyone?
Far more succinctly and eloquantly than I, too. Ah, well.
But I certainly RAGE at plenty of adaptations of books that I love (pause to glare at Peter Jackson), so I would say that just because something is profic not fanfic doesn't mean that you can't rage at how it destroyed canon.
I think the closest I've come to your situation is when I heard about ALW's sequel for The Phantom of the Opera, which sounded absolutely horrible. But I was always more a fan of the book than the musical anyway. And I was disappointed by some of the recent Star Wars novels, but that's different too. (At least, I think it is.)