Selective Canon
| Synonyms: | Pick-and-choose canon, selective canon, canon rejection |
| See also: | Canon Rewrite; Canon AU; Fix-it; Continuity, What Continuity?; Canon Compliant; Reset Button; Denialfic; Fanlore (glossary term) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
This article or section needs expansion. |
Selective canon refers to the fragments of canon selectively accepted by a fan, while the rest is ignored and rejected.
A certain amount of canon compliance is expected, rather than rejecting the majority of canon and just referencing fanon alone.
Selectively recognizing canon is especially common when the canon is self-contradicting, with internal inconsistencies, retcons, reboots, and tonal and philosophical dissonance muddling the lore. Long-running, corporate-owned open canon media, such as Marvel Comics and DC Comics, are notorious for essentially requiring selective canon in order to be coherent.
Selective canon is used as the backbone of denialfic.
Selective canon leads to nerds and stans fighting in internet forums over what their favorite characters canonically did or did not do, because they decide upon wildly different selective conceptions of said characters.
Examples
| Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples. |
- Many fans disregard certain parts of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, sometimes in favor of the Star Wars Expanded Universe which has been declared non-canon by the Walt Disney Company.
- Many fans disregard the AXIS retcon that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are not Magneto's children.
- Many fans disregard the Marvel 616 retcon that Tony Stark is not the biological child of Maria and Howard Stark.
- Cassandra Cain fans largely ignore the massive changes to the character in the One Year Later story arc and the Batgirl: Redemption miniseries. Similarly, BatCat fans and Jason Todd fans also ignore many parts of this particular era.
- Many X-Men Movieverse fans seem to ignore as many as half of the movies, including X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: Apocalypse, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
- Some Pokémon anime fans end the series after Johto, but some treat their favorite regional series as the basis for canon (Kalos fans tend to do this a lot).
- Many Voltron: Legendary Defender fans ignore the final two seasons. More lenient fans either end it after S7 or even the first episode of S8.
Meta
| Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples. |
- https://jmonsaord.tumblr.com/post/185539267059/how-to-read-comic-pick-character-read-every-comic
- https://brawltogethernow.tumblr.com/post/658738405260312576 meme