Canon shift? - What is more Official?

[Atia]

 

[...]

 

Yep, time walking Azrael and friends who create a warprift that eats Caliban and "saves" the Fallen is canon.

 

[...]

 

..Wat? Did I miss something?

 

Now tell me Azrael was played by Christian Bale and my life will be complete

 

 

Tuchulca follows Azraels "I command you. Get us away. get everyone safely away from the breach" command very well - he also saves Typhus, the Terminus Est and it's implied the Fallen/Cypher aswell. 

 

Later Azrael asks Ezekiel:

"Am I right? Did I witness what I thought I did? The destruction of Caliban. The scattering of the Fallen. The cause of our shame."

Ezekiel replies: "Not just witnessed, brother. It would be much easier if we had been merely witnesses."

 

Time is a flat circle. Good job Azrael, pray that your Primarch will never awake lol.

[Frater Cornelius]

 

 

[...]

 

Yep, time walking Azrael and friends who create a warprift that eats Caliban and "saves" the Fallen is canon.

 

[...]

 

..Wat? Did I miss something?

 

Now tell me Azrael was played by Christian Bale and my life will be complete

 

 

Tuchulca follows Azraels "I command you. Get us away. get everyone safely away from the breach" command very well - he also saves Typhus, the Terminus Est and it's implied the Fallen/Cypher aswell. 

 

Later Azrael asks Ezekiel:

"Am I right? Did I witness what I thought I did? The destruction of Caliban. The scattering of the Fallen. The cause of our shame."

Ezekiel replies: "Not just witnessed, brother. It would be much easier if we had been merely witnesses."

 

Time is a flat circle. Good job Azrael, pray that your Primarch will never awake lol.

 

 

Why is everything regarding DA fluff so complicated :D

[Atia]

 

 

 

Why is everything regarding DA fluff so complicated 

You know nothing, Jon Snow?^^

[Frater Cornelius]

 

 

 

 

Why is everything regarding DA fluff so complicated 

You know nothing, Jon Snow?^^

 

 

As a matter of fact, I never watched GoT either. I had to look up who that is :D

[FerociousBeast]

Sorry, but that's how it goes.

 

 

Your "argument" consists of making a bunch of statements and saying, "I'm right." A well-stated opinion, perhaps, but again, it's not how canon truly works. While fans usually do submit to the wishes of the publisher, when the publisher cares about canon, any authority that the publisher has comes from the fact that the fans trust and accept it as the authority. This may not be what Disney, Inc. communicates in its press releases, but it's how it works in reality.

 

I'm not, by the way, as you seem to think, saying that a single person can determine what canon is. I'm saying the exact opposite of that. There is no such thing as personal canon, per se. I use the phrase to reinforce my point that's there no canon in 40k, because what's published is contradictory, fans have their own takes on what's canon and what isn't, and GW/BL isn't even trying to help sort the mess out.

 

EDIT: 

 

I'll go further. You seem to be advocating a definition of "canon" as "whatever the owner of the IP publishes." So when someone asks, "Is this story canon?", you can thumb to the copyright page, see if it was published by GW or BL, and there you have your answer. But that's not very interesting, and, the fact that the question of canonicity comes up so often means that it's not what people really want to know. If it was, debates about canonicity would simply not exist. 

 

But such debates do arise, quite regularly, so, fundamentally, people must doubt that simplistic definition. It can't simply be a question of whether or not a story was published by the trademark holder of the IP. And that, friends, means that canon is not determined by the trademark holder of the IP.

 

A better definition of canon, from your point of view, would be "whatever the owner of the IP lists as canon." But again, while I would argue even with this definition from a philosophical point of view, in the case of 40k, there are no such lists.

Edited July 31, 2017 by FerociousBeast

[Bryan Blaire]

I'm not sure that you are even using the same definiton of Canon that I am: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_(fiction)

 

Canon is what the publisher/author officially determines it is (even if that decision is a non-statement about it). It's definitely not what the fans/some community says it is, they've got no official standing to determine anything.

 

I agree that great debates go on about this. They are functionally meaningless. Even if the Star Wars "community" (because let's face it, there's not just one) were to determine that X books from the EU were all canon, the official next creation from Lucasfilms could say that the stars of X books was either dead or never existed, and in canon, the character(s) are dead or never existed. They've even already said "the EU is not canon" and are ignoring it except the parts they want to take from it. The parts that show up in the i official material are now canon.

 

For GW, this is even easier: it's all official, therefore it's all canon - discrepancies and outright contradictions and all. How you want to piece that together in your mind is up to you, but the official standing of all material is official. Therefore all canon.

Edited July 31, 2017 by Bryan Blaire

[Lord Ragnarok]

I thought ADB had a very thoughtful response on what is and what is not canon. If I remember correctly all of it is canon. A better, and more specific question, is what parts of canon do we include, or not include for our favorite armies?(in this case Dark Angels). Edited July 31, 2017 by Lord Ragnarok

[Bryan Blaire]

I thought ADB had a very thoughtful response on what is and what is not canon. If I remember correctly all of it is canon.

He has made that response, and that's about the extent of it. He said there are some hard facts about the universe, and the rest is sand-boxy, but it is all canon, whether we like it or not, inconsistencies and all.

[Wargamer]

When it comes to Dark Angels, I like to assume anything stupid is propaganda to obfuscate the truth.

 

With that in mind, the DA have no canon. :P

[Master Sheol]

I consider the Gav fluff the worst ever written in all 40K and if this is DA canon well i will ignore all canon and play DA as i was still in 2nd edition

 

The Gav stuff if bad written, boring to Read, full of plotholes, not respecting the established 20years old canon...

In two words: Pure Garbage

 

I wish Gav never started to write anything for DA... I would like better beign totally ignored by BL than having this ugly stories that Paint us like the worst legion with the most stupid characters ever..

 

Gag stories instead of painting DA like fallen Knights with a tragic story shows DA like arrogants that keep doing stupid mistakes and hiding the outcome cause only DA knows now to handle this and nobody should put his nose in the mess they do...

 

m2c on BL fluff (both HH and 40k)

Edited August 1, 2017 by Master Sheol

[FerociousBeast]

I'm not sure that you are even using the same definiton of Canon that I am: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_(fiction)

 

 

We certainly aren't using the same definition, that's precisely why we're debating :p

 

That said, I think your link actually supports my definition better than yours. Nowhere does your link say anything about canon being what the copyright holder says it is; rather, it says "canon is the material ACCEPTED as officially part of the story in an individual universe of that story" (my emphasis). Who is "accepting" it? Well, your article doesn't answer this question, but it seems clear to me that it's by the fan community. If it were the publisher, then it wouldn't say "accepted", it would say "declared" or "listed" or something authoritative like that.

 

Remember, the question of canonicity is not primarily a question of authorship, though authorship IS important. Fan fiction, after all, is only very rarely considered canon.* Rather, the question of canonicity is how one makes sense of the various works officially published by the author or publisher. To simply say that one doesn't make sense of them ("Everything is canon!") is to dodge the question entirely. It is not an answer. So without an answer from GW, we are left to our own devices to sort it out for ourselves. I don't actually think GW would disagree with me, except that I go further and say that if we are left to ourselves, there is no canon.

 

*(The only example I can think of where fan fiction of a sort became canon is in the case of the genesis of the Star Wars E.U., Heir to the Empire, a book written without Lucasfilms' involvement, but then accepted after the fact and became the bedrock of the official EU.)

[Bryan Blaire]

It specifically says "the Canon of Star Trek is defined on the Star Trek website" (which is officially run by the owners of Star Trek). It also states how the canon is defined by Star Wars/LucasFilms. It also states that the canon can simply be "not resolved at all", like in 40K (i.e., it's all canon). It also states how the makers of Doctor Who specifically avoid discussing it (leaving it unresolved).

 

You can maintain your own (what I consider loony) idea that somehow "official" can be determined by someone other than the official source, clearly your definition is more important to you than understanding how canon actually works.

 

"The term "canon" nowadays refers to all works of fiction within a franchise's fictional universe which are considered "to have actually happened" within the fictional universe they belong to." - if you think you or a set of fans can determine what "actually happened within the fictional universe", you might want to consider that again when the only official source disagrees with you.

 

"When there are multiple "official" works or original media, the question of what is and what is not canonical can be unclear. This is resolved either by explicitly excluding certain media from the status of canon (as in the case of Star Trek and Star Wars), by assigning different levels of canonicity to different media (as was in the case of Star Wars before the franchise was purchased by Disney), by considering different but licensed media treatments official and equally canonical to the series timeline within their own continuities universe, but not across them, or not resolved at all."

 

You can think we're debating, but we're not.

Edited August 1, 2017 by Bryan Blaire

[A D-B]

 

So without an answer from GW, we are left to our own devices to sort it out for ourselves. I don't actually think GW would disagree with me, except that I go further and say that if we are left to ourselves, there is no canon.

 

You're totally right, dude. But also... you go wrong, with a few bits.

 

This is two different points - or, rather, the same point but filtered through two lenses. You say GW hasn't ever given an answer, but of course, it has. I've even detailed that answer a bunch of times, and explained how it works. Now, you may not like the answer - or you may love it to bits - but it's still the answer. So saying "I prefer the codexes" is fine/cool/accurate, but "I think the codexes are a higher tier of canon" isn't. GW specifically goes against that in how it functions: it wants all of it be real, and none of it to be real. That's not an accident. It's not an excuse. It's the point of a complicated future history. 

 

So you're wrong there, but that's also where your point loops back around to being dead right again. GW wouldn't disagree with you: the entire point is indeed to decide for yourself. You choose the sources you prefer. That's baked into the whole deal. Heck, it is the whole deal. But with that comes the GW mandate and intention that, no, no one official source is held in higher esteem than others, internally. You choose the sources you prefer. You don't choose which sources are official canon.

[FerociousBeast]

@Bryan Blaire - For a moderator, you seem strangely keen to start a flame fest. If I were a wiser man, I'd leave it at "agree to disagree" and move on to why I dislike the work Gav has done on the Dangles. But I'm a foolish man, so here goes, once more unto the breach.

 

Once again, your quotes actually support my argument about canon in 40k.

 

From your link. "When there are multiple 'official' works or original media, the question of what is and what is not canonical can be unclear. This is resolved either by

1. ... or not resolved at all." 

 

The question of what is/is not canonical might not be resolved at all. Hence, no canon in such a case. This applies in the case of 40k.

 

@ADB - I know GW has provided an answer, but my point is that it's not a helpful answer to the question that fans have. The question "is this canon?" is really the question "did this happen?" To put meat on the rhetorical bones, (don't click if you have yet to finish Gav's Legacy of Caliban)

did the Chaos gods cast the Fallen to the eight winds of Chaos, or was it Tuchulcha and Azrael?

The official GW position doesn't provide any clarity for this underlying question, and is therefore unsatisfying for many of us. I understand it would be freeing for a writer such as yourself, though if it were me, I'd personally also be apprehensive about it, since my work could be eclipsed down the line by someone else's. I imagine Rick Priestly, Andy Chambers, et al would have complicated feelings about some of the BL stuff these days.

Edited August 1, 2017 by FerociousBeast

[Bryan Blaire]

:facepalm: I'm good, dude, you've "proven your point" whatever it was. You're right, I don't agree. We're too far gone from the topic as it is.

 

If you're spoiling for a fight though, that's on you. Nothing I have said or done is an incitement.

Edited August 1, 2017 by Bryan Blaire

[A D-B]

@ADB - I know GW has provided an answer, but my point is that it's not a helpful answer to the question that fans have. The question "is this canon?" is really the question "did this happen?" 

 

That's a great point. But, again, it presumes your perspective is the right one - that the questions you have about what canon is and its import are universal. I don't know a single creator of the setting who considers that perspective important, f'rex. I know very few fans that do, either. You, and many people I tend to presume, are indeed asking "Did this happen?" But that's the point. I'll elaborate:

 

Take any history book. Literally any one. Now compare it with three, five, ten, twenty others about that subject. They're unreliable. They conflict. They add the weight of opinion, bias, conjecture. They openly acknowledge conflicts with other texts. Do it with events or people that blend in with myth, and the effect is magnified tenfold: King Arthur, Troy, and so on. Now take historical fiction, and the effect is magnified a hundredfold.

 

That's what 40K is. It's future history. That's what we always say and always explain on this topic when it comes up, and honestly, pretty much everyone I've ever spoken to has gotten it. The exceptions don't like it (totally fair!) or insist we're wrong (bizarre, but okay), and make cases for why it shouldn't be that way. But that doesn't change that it is that way. And you say fans have these questions, but this is something I deal with practically every day, and I'm on a lot of forums on top of that - and honestly, most people seem to get it and be fine with it. I don't see this lingering dissatisfaction with it, that you're implying. Ten, fifteen years ago, when it was never talked about? Sure, it was more prevalent then. But that attitude has largely gone the way of the nonsensical "Forge World isn't official" attitude, too. That was also never true - but look at the ferocity people believed it. Look at the stubbornness of how it was argued, when people tried to shout FW down. The same held with the "BL isn't canon" crowd, when it existed as more than echoes.

 

And you're right that it's freeing, creatively. It's a massive part of the appeal of the setting. A great deal of the point of the setting, in fact. Do I worry my stuff will be eclipsed and overwritten? Of course, I'd be a much better man than I am, to think otherwise. But I also accept it as part of the deal. There is no distinct 100% pure formed 40K: there are ideas and vague truths that we all view through a different lens. What it comes down to is finding a lens you like, and sharing the view, treating its view as the one you prefer.

 

You're mad at a cupcake for not being french fries, man. So much of what you're saying is insightful, right, and interesting. But the underlying point is just a few degrees off the mark, so it ruins the foundations of your whole angle.

 

EDIT: tl;dr -- "Did this happen?" Well, not knowing if and how it happened is pretty much central to the themes of 40K. That's not some new shift in policy. That's 40K. That's what the future history vibe has always been. There are just more sources now.

Edited August 1, 2017 by A D-B

[Doctor Doom]

 

You're mad at a cupcake for not being french fries, man. So much of what you're saying is insightful, right, and interesting. But the underlying point is just a few degrees off the mark, so it ruins the foundations of your whole angle.

 

EDIT: tl;dr -- "Did this happen?" Well, not knowing if and how it happened is pretty much central to the themes of 40K. That's not some new shift in policy. That's 40K. That's what the future history vibe has always been. There are just more sources now.

 

 

Ah hah! So you do admit it to being a cupcake? Or are you just covering up the french fries? Darn, I have to reread this again. I'm also hungry for fried cupcakes. 

[A D-B]

 

 

You're mad at a cupcake for not being french fries, man. So much of what you're saying is insightful, right, and interesting. But the underlying point is just a few degrees off the mark, so it ruins the foundations of your whole angle.

 

EDIT: tl;dr -- "Did this happen?" Well, not knowing if and how it happened is pretty much central to the themes of 40K. That's not some new shift in policy. That's 40K. That's what the future history vibe has always been. There are just more sources now.

 

 

Ah hah! So you do admit it to being a cupcake? Or are you just covering up the french fries? Darn, I have to reread this again. I'm also hungry for fried cupcakes. 

 

 

Y-you're not a real doctor. Doctors don't talk this way.

[FerociousBeast]

@ADB - I'm okay with what you're saying in general, in theory. I imagine most are, and that's why, as you say, you don't seem to get much kick back against it these days. But it's in the particulars, in the end results of this approach, that people can begin to chafe and demand answers.

 

As mentioned in my spoilered section above, the question of canon actually becomes a bigger deal when we have to deal with pretty earth shattering revelations that we don't like, as in the conclusion to The Unforgiven. I assume you've read it and are familiar with its implications, but if not, in spoiler-free summary, one of the most defining moments in the Dark Angels background, one of the things that is most precious to Dangle fans, is twisted in a way that some of us find unacceptable. One of the criticisms of Gav's Dark Angels novels is that he makes the DAs look like Keystone Cops, running around doing stupid stuff and shooting themselves in the foot. Well this tendency of his reaches its apotheosis in The Unforgiven.

 

So, you'd say: "That's cool, GW is fine with you disregarding it and leaning on codex fluff instead. Whatever floats your boat." Problem is, most fans aren't so philosophical. Bryan Blaire and others will tell us that Black Library is PUBLISHED and therefore TRUE and you can't disregard it. Fans demand continuity, and they take the written word seriously, and so the Dark Angels become what Gav makes them.

 

Anyway. I got over The Unforgiven long ago, and it doesn't really piss me off that much anymore, but I still find the topic stimulating, as you can tell.

Edited August 1, 2017 by FerociousBeast

[Bryan Blaire]

It's published, and therefore canon.

 

That doesn't mean it's not open to being contradicted, which if published by any part of GW Corp will also make that contradiction canon. That's kinda the point of the setting, and what I said in my very first post in this topic - I even gave examples of that specific type of instance.

 

So of course you can disregard it - I never stated that we couldn't each have our own lens to view 40K, what I said is that just because you disregard something, it doesn't cease to become canon.

 

As far as I'm concerned, everything in 40K is effectively Schrodinger's Cat. It's both true and it isn't at the exact same time. That's the nature of what is being written. Even in our world, eye witnesses are nortoriously unreliable, and if you ask two friends going through a single event together to give you an exact statement about "what actually happened" in separate rooms, you are likely to get two stories only sharing specifics but having slightly different details. That doesn't mean to each of those people it wasn't exactly what happened.

Edited August 1, 2017 by Bryan Blaire

[A D-B]

@ADB - I'm okay with what you're saying in general, in theory. I imagine most are, and that's why, as you say, you don't seem to get much kick back against it these days. But it's in the particulars, in the end results of this approach, that people can begin to chafe and demand answers.

 

As mentioned in my spoilered section above, the question of canon actually becomes a bigger deal when we have to deal with pretty earth shattering revelations that we don't like, as in the conclusion to The Unforgiven. I assume you've read it and are familiar with its implications, but if not, in spoiler-free summary, one of the most defining moments in the Dark Angels background, one of the things that is most precious to Dangle fans, is twisted in a way that some of us find unacceptable. One of the criticisms of Gav's Dark Angels novels is that he makes the DAs look like Keystone Cops, running around doing stupid stuff and shooting themselves in the foot. Well this tendency of his reaches its apotheosis in The Unforgiven.

 

So, you'd say: "That's cool, GW is fine with you disregarding it and leaning on codex fluff instead. Whatever floats your boat." Problem is, most fans aren't so philosophical. Bryan Blaire and others will tell us that Black Library is PUBLISHED and therefore TRUE and you can't disregard it. Fans demand continuity, and they take the written word seriously, and so the Dark Angels become what Gav makes them.

 

Anyway. I got over The Unforgiven long ago, and it doesn't really piss me off that much anymore, but I still find the topic stimulating, as you can tell.

 

I know what you mean, yeah. It's messy. And "It's supposed to be messy, that's the point!" still means, well, it's freaking messy. (And an egregious use of an exclamation mark, for which I apologise.)

 

I mean this 100% sincerely, and I know it'll sound patronising as all hell, which is categorically not my intention. But a few very wise peeps said it to me, and I cringed when they did, but it was among the best advice I've ever been given in 40K. 

 

"Stop worrying what other people think is canon. Stop worrying what they do and don't understand in 40K. It doesn't matter."

 

I think one of the reasons I empathise with your angle so much, even if I'm all "Technically, no..." about it, is that I recognise it intimately. And it's fine for me to say now "Oh, it's always been like this in 40K", but I sure as heck didn't know that until I had it hammered into me. Sure, I ultimately prefer it with the context it gave me, but I still spend too long worrying over what people will or won't see as legitimate. That's the kind of thing guys like Dan Abnett, Andy Chambers, John French, Alan Bligh, etc. never do. (Alan especially would sigh when I'd bring it up.)

Edited August 1, 2017 by A D-B

[FerociousBeast]

"Stop worrying what other people think is canon. Stop worrying what they do and don't understand in 40K. It doesn't matter."

 

Sure, it doesn't matter. After all, we're talking about a fictitious setting created to sell plastic toys to men who should really have grown out of it by now...

But one of GW's (and BL's) greatest accomplishments is in creating a system of tribal loyalties, very much like that of sports fanatics. Tell me my Washington Redskins/Dark Angels suck and I'll break a beer bottle over your head!

 

You BL writers get to be the coach of the "team" for a while, and as such be prepared for the vitriol of all of us arm chair quarterbacks if/when the team fumbles the ball on your watch!

 

 

...but I still spend too long worrying over what people will or won't see as legitimate

This, sir, is probably one of the biggest reasons you are as popular a writer as you are. Keep up the good work.

Edited August 1, 2017 by FerociousBeast

[bluntblade]

It's interesting that BL authors seem to pick up storylines and then drop them.  We had the whole "was the Lion a traitor was he not" ambiguity introduced in Angels of Darkness, which added this extra layer of complexity (though not necessarily quality) to the story of the Fallen...and then kill that stone dead in the HH series.

Another BL book as had a Black Legionary tell his Inquisition interrogators that there were Dark Angels in the Eye of Terra before the Black Crusades began. Wonder if anything will have come of it during the hundred year gap.

[twopounder]

I've always considered black library to be over priced fan fiction.

[Chaplain Killmer]

I see the story behind our chapter a bit like the movies of Batman or Spiderman on the big screen. Every new edition of the codex tries to reinvent the wheel once again and is designed to hook new players to the fold. I really liked the story written in the Angels of Death 2nd edition codex - since then its only a few bits that changed the black library books are like the small boxes to me. Who are there only to flavour the story. My story develops during the battles and the painting of the minatures.