What do you consider canon?

[donutsweeper]

This poll is brought to you by the fact that the international version of the White Collar pilot contained scenes not in the American one...

[Poll #1614567]

Comments

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

My answer (All of the Above) comes from my experience in Firefly fandom. What actually aired was three episodes short of what was filmed and finished. What was filmed and finished was an episode short of what was written (my icon is a line from the unfilmed episode script--a super insider Firefly reference); hints of stories that never got a chance to be told were made in commentary and even at cons. If you wanted to know what the Mandarin lines meant, you had to use the web, and things like a map of the Firefly 'verse were only available online. Then there were comics and a movie.

All in all, the line between Firefly canon and Firefly fanon is very blurry.

I think with the way episodic television is changing, F is a valid answer--whether it's just as valid for WC as for Firefly, I'm not sure, but it's a really interesting area of fannish speculation and I enjoyed thinking about it.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, there are several shows where the final episodes only could be seen via DVDs or whatever because they never aired anywhere.

What's your opinion on what makes up Supernatural's canon? There were officially licensed comic books that went directly against show canon (one famously had John buying the Impala post-fire when the car is shown in the pilot with the family sitting on it watching the house burn)

I've also noticed that the longer ago a show ended, the more blurred the line between canon and fanon becomes.

[emeraldsedai.livejournal.com]

Good question. I do think Firefly's very short canon life has a lot to do with the desire to include "extras" in canon. The only reason I even read the comics or looked for the unfilmed script was that there wasn't enough of the "real thing" to satisfy.

Supernatural, on the other hand? As far as I'm concerned, Season 6 will officially be too much of the real thing. There is so much available canon I can't imagine a need to look further.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

There certainly is a lot of available canon for SPN. It'll be interesting to see what fans do with S6.