On the subject of canon

[thebratqueen]

I started to babble this to herself_nyc in a reply then realized it was getting wordy, so I decided to slap it into a new post.

Basically, I've been thinking about how last night's ep of Angel raises the question of what we do and don't accept as canon. Now obviously there's one view of canon which is "Look, it aired on the show, it happened, it's canon, end of discussion." And that's valid and if that's your kink it's certainly okay.

But there's another point of view which is that in a show that's written by many people of diverse views, and on a show where, well, canonically canon is whatever they said last (Angel is Spike's sire, except not), it leaves it open for interpretation as to what is and isn't a more "canon" canon so to speak.

There's also the issue that within the show itself certain writers skew characters and ships one way versus another. Take s3 Fred, for example (please! ba dum bum). Writers like Joss and Mere Smith obviously felt she was the greatest thing since Mary met Sue. Writers like Tim Minear and David Fury felt differently. This resulted in some episodes where Fred was perfect and wonderful and beloved by all and could do anything except shut up, and other eps where the people who previously loved her were actually kind of annoyed by her, and she herself would do things like sit there and act like Bones with "I'm a physicist, not a demonologist". At which point then what's the canon? Do they like her or not like her? Is she only a physicist or can she out demon-knowledge Wesley on any given day? Or is it a meld of something in between?

So when you've got a canon that's as flexible as it is I think it's safe to say that some leeway can be granted for the human factor of the writing. And that the "real" canon, so to speak, is built up more out of ongoing themes than necessarily out of any one moment. In the case of Fred, though many of us found her to be annoying the ongoing theme of the show was that the characters loved and adored her, so that then is the canon, no matter how much we might like to put more weight on the eps where Cordy was secretly plotting in the stage directions to kick her out and never let her come back.

This then lets us sit back and say "Okay, clearly that wasn't meant to be canon" or at least "That wasn't meant to be canon as much as this other bit was". So when can we ask that question, and when can we say that things were so off the rails that no, really, we're not going to count it as canon in spite of the fact that yes it aired and yes it was on the show.

Now one thing I want to make clear is that I'm definitely drawing a difference between things that we can say "That was clearly out of character, that was clearly not real canon" and "That doesn't agree with my view, therefore it wasn't canon." Because I think that's an important distinction to make.

For example, and not to pick on poor Fred but since y'all know me so well I think she comes off as a good example to use, obviously my ideal view of Wesley is that he's longing to do nothing except have sex with Angel until the Shanshu comes home. However, canon disagrees with me and insists on saying that Fred is the be-all and end-all of his existence. Now as a viewer I can sit there and say I don't like that relationship, or I don't agree with that relationship, or that it doesn't make sense for how I view Wesley regardless of my Angel/Wes OTP issues, but I can't say that it wasn't canon. This has been going on for years now. Wes likes Fred. Nobody can dispute that. We can spin it, we can try to explain it, we can write fic where we quickly get rid of it, but we can't say that the canon is that Wes doesn't like Fred. He does. That's an end of discussion.

So what can be thrown out? When is it okay to throw something out? Can we look at eps like A Hole in the World and The Girl in Question and say "Look, since so much was obviously out of character these eps are not good places to hang an argument about canon" or do we have to say "Look, the ep aired, the facts are there, we've got to accept them like it or not."

Do we, for example, accept that the new canon is that Darla apparently cared about someone who had goodness in them even though she previously hated even the hint of something like that or do we write it off as yet one more mistake in an entire episode of writing mishaps? Is The Girl in Question the new "Dru is Spike's sire" or is it more like "Magic is good, except when it's evil, except when it's good, look just go with whatever works for the plot, okay?"

Quite possibly I have no point here, but these were the thoughts percolating inside of my head so there they are for what they're worth. =)