Scholars On The Mount #1: What Does Canon Mean

CANON:

homestuck

hiveswap

friendsim

pesterquest

paradox space

Isn't the whole point of post-homestuck material that its optional and non-canonical? I remember the marketing of beyond canon in particular being that "homestuck belonged to the fans", even if hs^2 was considered less fan-canonical by virtue of being somewhat officially sanctioned.

I personally dont respect canon as a concept, and have never really cared for the epilogues, hs^2 or even hiveswap. their tonal and world-building inconsistencies make it hard for me to see them as part of a shared story, and I don't really identify their characters with those in homestuck who share their names. But if I did have to seriously engage with the question of what is or isn't canon, as dictated by the IP-holders of homestuck, it honestly seems like only the original webcomic is considered canon? Like is there any indication that jude or joey ever existed on beta earth? Is Hiveswap's alternia not a totally different version of the planet? Do the epilogues and HSBC not literally take place beyond homestuck's canon?

I guess I understand what you're trying to say, that there's some distinction between what HSBC/the epilogues are trying to do with their metacommentary, and what friendsim/pesterquest set out to do, but to use more... ubiquitous terms, both are pretty much "what if" stories as far as I see it.

i wouldn't really call them "what if" stories, at this point. i think a lot of that came out of negative fan reception to the epilogues. though i don't really know what calling anything "optional media" is in, like, a world with 500 sequels and spin-offs to everything. like, yeah, everything's optional media. homestuck is optional media. a lot of people stopped reading at cascade, at game over, at collide. you can skip literally anything. i don't really see that as a metric. so you're free to not like the shit you don't like, even i'm not a homestuck 100% runner, but i feel like introducing sentiments such as "didn't like, didn't read" to whether it counts in an objective sense is kinda silly.

Without retreading too much of what people smarter than I have already said, my opinion is that canon as a concept is only really useful when given unambiguously by an authority (whether that's an author or a few centuries of theological inertia) or decided on a personal basis to inform your own understanding. It's safe to say that we probably aren't getting an official unambiguous delineation of what's canon and what's not; and unlike, say, the Bible and its associated writings, Homestuck & Friends are more interested in exploring, playing with, and challenging the idea of canonicity than presenting an indisputable narrative of What Is True. This makes them about as easy to sort into canon categories (canongories) as mice are to sort into egg cartons. This also gives us, as fans, enough uncertainty that we will likely never agree on a true canon...

... is what someone with less pizzazz would say. I put forward this interpretation that I'm sure everyone will agree with:

Canon:
Specifically the following phrase from Page 18 of the Epilogues (Candy):
"Jake stares transfixed into the full moon of the clown’s buttocks [....]"

Postcanon:
Everything occurring chronologically afterwards: the rest of Candy, HSBC, etc.

Precanon:
Everything occurring chronologically beforehands: the preceding parts of Candy, Homestuck, Hiveswap, etc.

Dubiously Canon:
Everything occurring at a time or in a reality that cannot be, with certainty, placed relative to the clown's buttocks: Meat, Friendsim, nearly every other work of fiction ever made, etc.

My reasoning for them not being canon isn't that I don't like them, though I do encourage people to compartmentalize things in that way rather than worry about canon. I think I made that point clear. Its the proprietors of Homestuck who create these distinctions between what is or isn't canon, and though they rarely comment on the topic directly, the actual contents of the works seem to skirt around the idea that they're canon at all. Even the very format of the epilogues, the only post-canon, non-hussie work to be hosted right next to the original webcomic, kind of serves to separate itself from the source material.

It's like when they make an animated batman movie which adapts one of the comics. It assumes some foreknowledge on the viewer's part, it assumes that certain events from those comics have happened, but by design they aren't intended to contribute to that canon, even though it introduces new material, like batgirl sleeping with batman. They're like, simultaneously self contained and also reliant on the source material, if that makes sense.

re: siofra's argument

hmmm... let's look at star wars. admittedly, i don't know a lot of stuff about star wars, but i do have some broad strokes knowledge about how canon is handled. i remember this being a big deal a number of years ago.

is the stuff with ahsoka canon? she's from that clone wars tv show, that takes place between episode 2 and 3. and then now she has a show of her own i guess? but i don't think she's mentioned in any of the movies that take place after that, even the ones that were made after she was a character. but she has apparently been there the whole time, like one of the main character of star wars just had this whole padawan that we just did not know anything about. (the expanded universe stuff that was decanonized after disney bought star wars i would classify as "apocrypha")

i think this is just part of writing stuff in expanded universe, though. seeing a lot of gaps to be filled. hiveswap is, broadly, about the children of jake harley, who is kind of more of a symbol in homestuck than a character. but this is a gap that can be filled, it is not a stretch to assume that jake harley (and the rest of the guardians) had a life outside of the main story of hs. would you feel differently if the homestuck cartoon mentions joey and jude, or uses the more fleshed out version of alternia from hiveswap?

i also think tone is a bad benchmark to use, the tone of hs itself can vary wildly from part to part. we can also take look at another series with a convoluted canon, zelda. is wind waker less canon than twilight princess?

i will say i think canon is a live, shifting thing. for instance, the stuff from the snapchats was just used in bc. if the plot stuff from the end of pq is ever brought up in beyond canon, i would consider it more canonical than apocryphal. even now, i could probably be swayed to include everything that is "officially homestuck" as canon. and of course, the homestuck cartoon will also be canon, even though it is (seemingly) an adaptation of the webcomic.

ahaha wait its SO funny that as i was typing allllllla that you responded with something about an animated adaptation

All of the discourse around "canon" is just flavour and aesthetics. "Canon", as "a set of works that are officially defined as true and reliable", means nothing in terms of fictional legitimacy and media analysis.

People will accept or dismiss statements, even by the original creator(s), at every turn. People will accept or dismiss sequels, even by the original creator(s), at every turn. To some people the Alien canon starts and stops with the 1979 movie, for some others it stops with AlienS, or Alien 3, or it ONLY contains Alien + Prometheus + Alien: Covenant, etc.

Most Alien fans for example will absolutely refuse the idea, expressed by Ridley Scott, that Jesus was an Engineer. They will also refuse the idea, expressed by Dan O'Bannon, that the Alien is a sapient and sophont species and can develop a detailed culture similar to humans. They will refuse concepts given by these original creators of the Alien franchise at every turn.

Furthermore, there are a thousand franchises out there which switched hands a thousand times or were even continued against the will of the original creator(s).

"The one and only canon" isn't a thing. It is an illusion produced by the capitalistic necessity to establish a specific line of products as authentic and high-quality, derivative of the necessity for hierarchical religions to establish a monolithic dogma.
There are a thousand franchises out there that switched hands a thousand times or were even continued against the will of the original creator(s).

For creators and audiences alike, canons have always been a shifting set of overlapping systems of "legitimate" works, whose mutations and number vary according to the magnitude of the franchise.

Relinquish the illusion of an absolute and immovable canon.

To be clear again, the tone is purely an obstacle for my enjoyment and ability to see the works as following a shared continuity. That and like, what I would consider inconsistent characterisation, though that exists to varying degrees in Homestuck proper. That's a different argument to canon, which is that same metric as dictated by the people who legally own Homestuck.

Forget I said anything about Jude or Joey. The bigger "clue" to me which suggests Hiveswap was never intended to be canon is Alternia. Not just in the sense that it only superficially resembles Alternian society as described in Homestuck, but also because the moons are very consistently depicted to be different than the ones in Universe A's Alternia. The green one being smaller in Hiveswap, vs. larger in Homestuck. Once you can brush off as a mistake, maybe try to make an argument about the position of the moons making them appear bigger or smaller. But when it's every time? Including supplemental material like Friendsim? They were clearly trying to signpost that this was a different Alternia, and at that point I would assume a different earth too.

I guess fandom doesnt like embeds but you get the picture

I wrote an article on the topic, so it doesn't seem all that complicated to me haha.

https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/MSPA_Wiki:Canonicity

does my word get a special little sticker attached to it because I was one of the guys responsible for initially codifying the phrase "dubiously canon"? ha ha

fuck my life I just put ha ha at the end of two sentences in a row now i seem like some kind of The Joker

So on a serious note I describe "Homestuck Canon" with an analogy to holy scriptures. I'm Jewish so I liken it to "Heres the comic, think Torah," followed by "heres common headcanons and discourse blogs on characters/mechanics" similar to Talmud/Oral Torah and go from there. I consider works like "Whistles," "Special Olympics," and early Hussie short films with her and her brother as the "primordial g oop" that informs what we have decided as canon (the comic itself) because it informs the Homestuck text. Just like there was shit before ppl wrote down the book we decided was "Canon"/the central text, the Torah has it's historical beginnings with influences from polytheism, pre-nation state politics and Zorastrianism.

which is to say, canon will always be a loose gesture towards a group of works, and it only exists when observed. Or if theres a lawsuit at some point over it in the future where they have to actually state it.

Jake's MSPA Wiki article is imo the "objective" answer in terms of the idea of labelling of canon as defined by how it's classified by "word of God" Hussie or previously accepted Canon Authority announcing it's level of "authenticity."

Skitis still has a more functional definition in an active fandom sense, of canon being relational and based on the compounding acceptance of works (if you are working in the "canon" of E, you have accepted the canon of A->B->D->E (skipping C to underline that not all are linear or require everything that came out chronologically before it)).

Oasis is correct in regards to it all being arbitrary. Like the idea of certain things being "dubiously canon" is universal for IP/stories that have multiple writers/creators who may have different ideas than the "true originator(s)." As Rozie mentioned (also: HEY LONG TIME NO SEE!!!!!!!!!!) Star Wars has the expanded universe which could have been generally agreed upon as canon until a "more canon" form of the mainline movies dismissed it, thus making it apocrypha. It would require a more Canon Authority to then return to it and elevate it into being considered canon material.

But this is also all based on fandom acceptance. And I used fandom acceptance here to also include creators. For example, if JJ Abrams had been obsessed with the expanded universe of Star Wars, he almost definitely would have "canonized" it by referencing it in his movies. If he becomes obsessed with it after making movies that might have contradicted them and made them seem apocrypha, he might even still be able to say "actually those are canon," retroactively if he still retained enough Canon Authority (if people still liked him enough).

This leads into Homestuck: the main reason there's still arguments about levels of canon is because people don't(/do) like it more than it's been labelled and/or are unconvinced on the Canon Authority who has defined it. The reason JJ Abrams had more Canon Authority to dismiss the expanded universe was because people watch movies more than tv shows or books or whatever. What the fandom remembers people think of as canon. Which is why fanon is so scary. When the Homestuck cartoon comes out people will be forced to come to terms with the absurdity of arguing over "canon" as so high stakes when the cartoon comes out and if anything, more people might end up watching it than reading the actual comic.

The main thing here is that this is the /hj problem. When someone says "canon" in reference to Homestuck, there are several competing definitions they could potentially be trying to say, and the source of all our woes is that it's very difficult to know which one they mean without further elaboration.

Definition 1a: A work is canon if it is first-party.

(Hiveswap Friendsim is canon)

Definition 1b: A work is canon if it is either first-party or a licensed third-party work that interacts meaningfully with the continuity of a first-party work. <- Doctor Who fans are here

(The Dead Shufflers Intermission is canon)

Definition 2: An event is canon if it is considered in-universe to be canon, that is, to be relevant, essential, and true in the sense these terms are used by the cast.

(None of the Candy timeline is canon, except for [S] 8r8k and its immediate aftermath, which are made to meet all three conditions by Vriska's overwhelming Light aura)

Definition 3a: A work or event is canon if it can be reasonably expected that future first-party material will be compliant with it. <- Most fans of mixed media properties are here

(Catnapped is canon, The Skaianet Files is not)

Definition 3b: An event/account of events/piece of information is canon if evidence suggests or shows its existence/truth within the continuity of first-party material. <- Most, but not all, arguments about canon take place here

(Sonnetstuck's Detective Pony is canon)

Definition 4: An event is canon if it occurs on-screen in Homestuck (2009-2016). Optional qualifier: outside of the Credits, due to the story map giving it the act title of "Post Canon"

(Caliborn's Masterpiece is not canon)

That's six entirely different definitions right there, all in common use, and so it's inevitable that when people talk about something's positionality with respect to canon, and they can't agree on what they're referring to what they say "canon," things rapidly get confusing. The term "post-canon" itself evades such ambiguity because all but one of the definitions of canon are ongoing and so the agreed-upon meaning of "first-party works postdating Homestuck (2009-2016), i.e. the collected body of work surrounding The Homestuck Epilogues (2019)" is the only meaning that's coherent in the first place. (Though I do really like @victoria's use of the term "post-canon" to refer specifically to the Bridges and Off-Ramps philosophy that forms the foundation of the post-canon works, and it would be neat if that caught on outside this thread.) But saying something is "dubiously canon" is the /hj problem, because that phrase isn't parametrized for what meaning of "canon" it's dubious whether the described thing is part of.

Since we're theoretically here to hammer out usable definitions, here's my take:

I propose we stop using the term "canon" and its derivatives entirely except when referring either to in-universe canonicity (definition 2, which we shall represent in sentence case) or to the original Homestuck (2009-2016) (definition 4, which we shall represent in Title Case). In this way, we would say that something relevant, essential, and true is canon in lowercase, refer to the events of the Epilogues and onward as post-Canon with this awkward camel casing, and find alternative phrasing to refer to the four other definitions mentioned above. I don't have a strong grasp on what the best possible phrasing for those definitions are, but I feel like I should put this framework out there so as to avoid talking at cross purposes.

1a - This meaning is more or less trivially captured by the words "first-party" and "third-party." Any Homestuck works made by Hussie herself or the HICU are first-party, all others are third-party.

3a - I intuitively feel like "validity" or some derivation thereof should capture this one pretty well, in the sense of "is this information or account of events still valid." Dear sweet precious Swifer's original sign was valid as of the Credits, but no longer is as of Catnapped. In this sense, Detective Pony could be said to be "dubiously valid" because while Beyond Canon makes reference to a few elements from it, the reference is glancing enough that a hypothetical unrelated work sharing those broad parameters could still fit.

3b - This could be "presence" I guess???????????

With the various different categorizations defined, I would answer @kevin's classification dilemma like this:

Homestuck

first-party

canon

valid

present

Canon

Hiveswap

first-party

unknown canonicity (events in Hiveswap are of unclear relevance, essentiality, or truth)

dubious validity (it is currently unclear to what extent Hiveswap's worldbuilding reflects onto Homestuck)

unclear presence in Beyond Canon (cherub portals?????)

extra-Canon (outside of Canon but not part of the post-Canon project)

Friendsim

first-party

non-canon (stated in-universe to be part of an attempt at replacing the alpha timeline with non-canon bullshit)

dubious validity (it is currently unclear to what extent Hiveswap's worldbuilding reflects onto Homestuck)

weak presence in post-Canon (due to its direct sequel having presence)

extra-Canon (outside of Canon but not part of the post-Canon project)

Pesterquest

first-party

non-canon (stated in-universe to be part of an attempt at replacing the alpha timeline with non-canon bullshit)

weak validity (certain aspects of the writing are deliberately meant to reflect forward onto post-Canon)

present in Beyond Canon, specifically in A Threat, Sensed

post-Canon (part of the collected body of work surrounding The Homestuck Epilogues (2019))

Paradox Space

third-party (most of the anthology), first-party (Inaugural Death[...])

unknown canonicity (the Three Pillars of Canon were not public knowledge in 2014-2015 and thus PXS' authors, bar Hussie herself, were not writing with them in mind)

validity varies (assumed invalid by default unless referenced by later material)

weak presence in Beyond Canon (Inaugural Death[...], via stylistic and referential invocation in the Nepeta Intermission)

extra-Canon (outside of Canon but not part of the post-Canon project)