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I like his stuff. Aaron Allston is definitely still the funniest.

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.'

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.

No problem, I already have all I need. A Beretta 92 and a knife should be enough for most Sues in modern settings.

A little question I didn't found answer on the Wiki. Who writes PPC's spinoffs is allowed to make new gadgets? Because I had an idea for a funny new one.
It's called Random Sue Execution Gun (RSEG). A small pistol that when aimed at a Sue transforms itself into a single-use very different weapon, mostly illogical ones (A non-functional rifle with a giant sue-smashing hammer hinged to it, for example). And very often, being PPC tecnology, useless/self destructing ones. As a rubber ducky gun.

MMh... No more Sue invasions... Am I late or am I very, very lucky?

However, I spent some time on the links, and i'm surely not going to mess up things for my own fun. After all, i'm only a rookie here.

Welcome, welcome.
Have some Sue hunting weaponry that you'll never use because it's from an obscure fandom. :)

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.

Specifically, see the Guide to the PPC, section 2.2: What NOT to Write. Then check out my other post in this thread and go through the rest of the links. {= )

~Neshomeh

I asked about this on the Unclaimed Badfic discussion page the other day, but it ended up getting buried in the Activity Feed. Should there be a new category on the Unclaimed/Claimed/Killed Badfic pages for internet media?

I'm asking because I found a grotty little badfic set in the Red vs Blue universe, which you can read at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4938785/1/WelcometoBlood_Gulch if you really want to. For those of you who don't know, Red vs. Blue is a machinima series that uses the Halo video game engine as its medium. I'd like to claim it, but I have no idea where to put it. I don't want to put it in Halo because it's not officially part of the Halo canon.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Hello! Nice to meet you. I know none of your fandoms, so my gift to you is a Featherduster of Steel. Have fun!

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.

Far more succinctly and eloquantly than I, too. Ah, well.

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?

Feed it only Generic Meat.

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

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.

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.

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.)

Anamia did that, and I'm very grateful to her for it.

I notice you seem to have figured it out now though.