Canon

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Background

Canon is that which counts, in terms of continuity.

Canonicity, as it applies to television series, is substantially different from its literary counterpart. For example, there is no question of which Sherlock Holmes stories (the first non-biblical literary works to which the term was applied) are canonical: those written by Doyle are, everything else isn't.

Television canonicity works much differently, as there are many authors involved. Works not officially sanctioned are generally outside of canonicity, but what remains inside is more nebulous. Officially licensed material, novelizations and tie-in novels are not usually considered canonical. Even broadcast material can be excluded from the canon when decreed by Word of God.

The primary issue is that canons for completed works (especially with a single author) are descriptive, whereas fans' attempts to define canonicity for ongoing works are prescriptive. If a fact is canonical, you are not allowed to contradict it.

The concept of canonicity is almost entirely an invention of fandom. The writers will generally ignore, include, or change whatever facts they like. This is not to say that the writers totally lack a sense of continuity, but it is a much weaker concept than "canonicity" as presented by fan communities. Writers can tweak continuity quite a lot without actually breaking it by using Broad Strokes (where the writers pick and choose what elements of an older story they want to accept into a more recent story).

In fan communities based on very loose continuities, what is "canonical" can sometimes boil down to "the bits we like". Fans will attempt to find any excuse to "de-canonize" facts that they personally find inconvenient. Under this wiki this is unacceptable, the only cases where one can “de-canonize” something is if it’s a direct statement from the author that’s contradicted thus giving Death of the Author or if the author themself has retconned something.

What’s Accepted As Canon

• Original Source Material: This is the material that is the primary source for all media in the franchise. For example, in video games like The Legend of Zelda, the video games would be the original source material while the lore books like Hyrule Historia and such are later established for further world-building.

• Official Guide Books/Databooks: This is the official material that explains a series, usually to apply more information, backstory, etcetera for a character. These are normally accepted as a secondary canon that’s allowed to be used to further add to the story. Normally though in long running verses there are some inconsistencies that are accidentally left in. This is a normal mistake and the inconsistencies should simply just be ignored.

• Reactive Adaptations: Reactive Adaptations can be canon depending on how they’re treated by the author. Generally it’s allowed to use an Reactive Adaptation of a scene if it matches the original source scene due to sometimes giving a more clearer image. For example, animes are generally an Reactive Adaptation of a manga, using an Reactive Adaptation scene of the anime that perfectly matches the manga’s to get a visual representation is considered canon and fine to use. When an Reactive Adaptation strays from the original source material is when it’s not considered canon.

• Spin-Offs: Spin-Offs are when part of a successful franchise, usually characters, but sometimes a general concept, are taken and given a series of it’s own. Generally spin-offs are considered canon and can be used to scale to main continuity.

Crossovers

A crossover is the placement of two or more franchises and merging them into a single story. Normally for fanservice reasonings. There are different levels of continuity and canon to crossovers.

Non-canon crossovers do not officially take place within any of the involved continuities. Examples may include Marvel Vs Capcom, the Dragon Ball/One Piece/Toriko special episode, Archie Sonic and Image Comics, etcetera. Due to not being canon they do not scale to their canon counterparts and only to the feats within the non-canon crossover.

One Sided crossovers officially take place within one continuity, but not the other. Normally the feats that are scaled are the ones that take place in the continuity while the feats outside of it aren’t considered.

An example is the version of Link in Soul Calibur II, who is based on his Ocarina of Time counterpart, with the same name and appearance. Though the Link in Soul Calibur would only scale to Soul Calibur feats, every Link outside of SouL Calibur and the Legend of Zelda characters outside of the game would not scale to the feats.

Canon crossovers officially take place within both continuities, and as such recurrently happen within a shared universe or feature characters made by the same creators. An example includes the overall Nintendo Multiverse, with characters being consistently shown in the same verses and having a universal Player entity along with being made by the same creator.

Take note that crossovers should preferably be referenced within the separate story settings themselves at some point in order to count as official on each side.

Do also note that just because a crossover is canon does not mean one can scale characters from each franchise. One should only scale canon crossovers if the characters feats are consistent, the cosmology is being used rather then another character, or if there are no contradictions for them to scale to said character.

Most characters within the public domain should only be considered as powerful as the originals if the crossover explicitly references their feats and nature. For example many vampire stories reference Dracula as the original vampire, without the vampires in the franchise following the same rules as those of Bram Stoker. Another common example would be the Cthulhu Mythos, for which characters appear in many franchises, sometimes even explicitly with similar backgrounds, without displaying remotely the same degree of power as the authentic versions. The same applies to mythological beings.

If a character in a crossover does not share the same history as the original, for example due to being an alternative universe version, it should not automatically be considered to possess the same degree of power.

Other Cross-Fiction Scaling Rules

For cross-verse scaling to be considered to be used between two separate works of fiction based on author statements, all of the following requirements must be fulfilled:

• There should not be considerable contradictions in the respective displayed power levels for the compared characters.
• The statements need to clearly have been intended seriously.
• The compared characters must share a similar nature in terms of types of powers.
• The characters if they exist in separate universes should have some display of cross-universal teleportation or Dimensional Travel, if the characters exist on the same planet this is not required.

For unofficially licensed non-canon crossovers, please read our Rules for Fanon Profiles.

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Discussion threads involving Canon