Talk:Canon Era

Widening the scope of this page

When editing The Eagle page, I wanted to note which stories were 'canon era' (i.e. set in the Roman times of the movie) but wasn't able to link to this page as it's Merlin specific. Would it be possible to open this up to make it more general? amandawarrington (talk) 20:21, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Several Merlin fans started writing The Eagle fic when the movie came out, so the term probably migrated with them. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of Modern AUs in the Eagle fandom too, because otherwise a term like canon era wouldn't be needed. These kinds of connections between fandoms are always useful to document, I would say go for it. :) --Doro (talk) 23:06, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

In my experience, Eagle fandom is full of people comlaining that there are "only" modern AUs. ;) This term seems like one that would be easy to independently invent. I'm going to rework it to be a general fandom concept page with the main example being Merlin instead of a Merlin page. Even on AO3, it's not restricted to just those two fandoms. Franzeska (talk) 00:12, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

There are a LOT of AUs in Eagle fandom. Because it's closed canon, there was only so much people could write before much of it got 'samey'. The fandom has some writers who have extensive historical knowledge of the era and I suspect it that may have put a few people off writing canon era fic. That said, there is still plenty of it, and more is being written. :-) amandawarrington (talk) 02:38, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Eagle fandom is also full of Merlin writers, so it's unlikely that the fandom invented the term independently. ;) I'm not sure, though, what it's supposed to mean in Vampire Diaries fandom. The canon covers several centuries, including our now. ETA: I checked the tag and I don't think the numbers support the 'other fandoms' claim except for the Eagle. There is one user who tagged five Vampire Diaries stories set in the present day with canon era and there is one canon era Game of Thrones story by a writer who has written mostly Merlin fanfic. The other GoT use of the tag is for the podfic based on the story. --Doro (talk) 00:50, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for reworking the page. I've now linked to it from one of the fics listed on The Eagle page. amandawarrington (talk) 02:38, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Widening the scope of this page again

I really like the draft of the article intro deleted in this edit and I want to restore it. However, Frogspace seems to have felt very strongly about "canon era" being coined in the Merlin fandom, having changed "may have been coined" back to "was coined" less than half an hour after the more general draft of the page was created. So, I don't want to try to make this a general page again without any discussion. Here are my feelings.

• No one can deny that the Merlin fandom was certainly key in popularizing the term, I think there's plenty of evidence of that, despite none of it being cited.
• I've found at least one instance of "canon era" being used in fanfiction.net on a work published before Merlin aired in 2008. That 2007 fic might have had it added in later, but here are some instances of it being used on LJ in the Harry Potter fandom in 2007: this comment and fic the fic summary here of "Selfish" by Riley.
• Harry Potter also commonly used "Founders Era" and "Marauders Era" back in the day, so "Canon Era" makes sense as an outgrowth of that. Actually, just searching the use of the word "era" on ff.n shows that this kind of usage might go all the way back to 2000/2001 or even before then, which I don't think is history we should overlook, if possible, although that might call for an era page?

So... does that make sense? Can I restore some of them more general parts of that edit and contextualize the Merlin fandom's use-but-not-invention of the term? I was never in the Merlin fandom so it's possible I'm missing something here, of course. - Hoopla (talk) 16:03, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

My two cents: regardless of the origins of the term, its usage has crossed over into a generally fannish context, and it's used to describe works in a variety of fandoms. I'm in favor of restoring a more general introduction that retains the Merlin-specific information, and ideally, it'd be awesome if editors contributed more information about the originating context of the term. I had no idea that it was from Merlin fandom, but it's certainly something I've seen used in various places (specifically thinking of Harry Potter fandom). Claims that the term definitively originated within one fandom need to be cited in some form or another - this page would benefit from some references. It'd be good to hear from other editors - especially anyone familiar with Merlin fandom? - before major changes/reversions are made, though. - Fandomgeographies (talk) 21:43, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I'd like to hear from someone involved in the Merlin fandom as well! My sense from knowing a bunch of people in the Merlin fandom and following them on tumblr back in the day and so on is that most of the Merlin information is correct and good, even if I wish it were source more or elaborated on, but since "canon era" was clearly being used in 2007 for Harry Potter things and is now being used for way more fandoms besides Merlin, something about the page needs to chance.

I guess to add some nuance to my objection to the "Merlin fandom definitively coined this term" part, it seems right to me that Merlin fandom A) probably popularized the phrase "Canon Era" and B) might have even given it some additional fannish connotations that didn't previously exist for the phrase (like "canon era future fic" was maybe not a thing before Merlin?) but C) were not the first to use "canon era" to let people know fics were set around the time the canon material was set. - Hoopla (talk) 04:28, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

(Prefacing this with: I don't wish to step on any toes or be involved in any arguments. These are my own opinions and experiences, and I don't speak for anyone else.) I was very heavily in Merlin fandom and still consider myself to be on the periphery of it. That was not the first place I heard "Canon Era" as a term, but it was definitely the place where I first found it to be commonplace. Sort of like how magical reveals weren't invented by Merlin fandom, but that was where the concept ballooned in a specific way. I don't think that building a whole section on how the term didn't originate in Merlin fandom would be useful to users browsing, but aethel's edit didn't do that, as far as I can see. I think introducing the term more generally and including a section on its importance and popularization by Merlin fandom seems reasonable. I would also love to see links to searches or tags or examples added in, to give the page a richer contextualization.

This is such an interesting concept - the way we parse fandoms into smaller bits not just by pieces of media or ships, but also by time/setting. In a large enough fandom (like Merlin), a fan could immerse themselves in a particular preferred setting or time period. The same thing happened with SGA, to some extent. It really is a fascinating process, and I'd love to see some sort of broader page linking to these era concepts and looking at meta (if there is any) on the subject. But that's a dream for the future. :D -the old briar pipe (talk) 23:30, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I definitely agree that the Merlin fandom is very important to the usage of this term and, uh, sorry if I came off preemptively Very Argumentative about that! I like to include a section on the history of terms on pages when I can (like what I did for universe alteration recently) so the format would be a general introduction like the one in the edit version I linked with a mention in the intro of how the term took off because of Merlin, then there'd be a history section below that going through the history of the term and its spread, which would start with its use pre-Merlin but necessarily definitely have a big Merlin focus. (And if you have any suggestions for where to look for Merlin info circa 2008, I'm all ears!)

Hopefully I'll find enough stuff for a general "era" page! Harry Potter and Naruto both have a long history of distinctive eras for fanfiction, too, although I think Naruto has been less exact in their terminology than HP, where it was a staple of fic. Some 2007 HP fic I found in my search for usage of "Canon Era" included "Era:" in their fic header! - Hoopla (talk) 00:20, 7 February 2019 (UTC)