Canon and truth in-universe

[eldargal]

Oh, that really made me laugh.

So I guess we could say that unlike Lucasarts, GW has a . . . loose canon

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. I hear the Salmon is delicious.

[Melissia]

That was so horrible it made me chuckle.

[Inquisitor Soren]

Wow that was so bad I had to get up and walk away from the PC. Holy Terra man!

[BuFFo]

The canon in 40k is what the writer decides it to be.

The game is an ever evolving game where history is rewritten to suit the gamer.

In essence, 40k has no canon. It changes when 1) codex authors deem it necessary and when 2) players deem it necessary for the narrative of their games.

One codex you, and all gamers for years believe in one way, then when the army is updated/redone with a new codex, most everything changes.

Think of 40k as more 'Dungeons and Dragons' and less 'Magic the Gathering' when it comes to the fluidity of the canon/story/history of the setting.

Last year there was a mini campaign in my area where the Necrons invaded Terra, instead of Chaos, during the Undead Uprising, instead of the Horus Heresy.

[Kahoolin]

In essence, 40k has no canon. It changes when 1) codex authors deem it necessary and when 2) players deem it necessary for the narrative of their games.

One codex you, and all gamers for years believe in one way, then when the army is updated/redone with a new codex, most everything changes.

Think of 40k as more 'Dungeons and Dragons' and less 'Magic the Gathering' when it comes to the fluidity of the canon/story/history of the setting.

Last year there was a mini campaign in my area where the Necrons invaded Terra, instead of Chaos, during the Undead Uprising, instead of the Horus Heresy.

I think this is the way GW sees it, so it's certainly a valid way to look at it. If you take this view though you can't really discuss fluff from an in-universe perspective - no-one can be wrong because what I make up for a game against my mates is just as much 40k canon as a codex.

So while this is fair enough, it doesn't really address the problem people often have with trying to resolve fluff discrepancies. You're simply saying there aren't any discrepancies because there is no canon.

[Nabterayl]

Yeah, I don't know if we can go quite that far practically speaking. I mean, hey, there are no space marines! There is no Chaos. I'm an author, and I decided. That's the way it works, right?

I mean ... surely not. Yes, canon can change. That's the nature of fiction. If George Lucas said tomorrow that there are not and never have been any Jedi Knights, that would be Star Wars canon ... from that point forward. But the fact that that could happen doesn't mean there's no such thing as canon.

[Kahoolin]

If George Lucas said tomorrow that there are not and never have been any Jedi Knights, that would be Star Wars canon ... from that point forward.

*cough*midichlorians*cough*

[Melissia]

Hell, Lucas even retconned that, making the midichlorians more a biological representation of how strong a person was in the force, rather than them being the force itself. Or some crap like that, personally, I'd rather just ignore it altogether anyway.

[Schnitzel]

Hell, Lucas even retconned that, making the midichlorians more a biological representation of how strong a person was in the force, rather than them being the force itself. Or some crap like that, personally, I'd rather just ignore it altogether anyway.

I'm getting a high midichlorian reading from this one.

[Kahoolin]

Actually George Lucas is interesting for a general discussion of canon and the creator of a work. Does he have the right to change it constantly? I'm not sure he does. Well, I don't think he should. I'm one of those people who flew into a nerd-rage when the Ewok's song got turned into pan pipes in the Return of the Jedi re-issue

To me, works are created mainly for the audience, not the satisfaction of the creator. Once a work is made public and accepted into the hearts of an audience, I think it is as much theirs as the creators, if not more so. Besides, in most cases you have paid money for it to be yours in a sense. The original SW trilogy were a massive part of my childhood, and many other people's, and when Lucas changed them because he felt like it I felt as if he didn't have that right. Yeah he's the creator, but so what? It's bigger than him once other people's emotions and memories are invested, and it's his fault those people's emotions and memories are invested. He bears a responsibility to accept that his creation succeeded and that he is no longer the only person who owns it emotionally. If he can't hack that he should be in a different business.

I'm not arguing for this view - it's just how I feel. By retconning the force via midichlorians for example he violated the spirit of his creation as he had originally presented it to the world. He turned Star Wars from being great science fantasy to being bad science fiction apparently on a whim, and I think that's bad creator-ness.

To relate this to 40k, when someone reads some retcon that they feel violates part of the spirit of the work that they have connected with, they often get the same feeling. Some people don't care and just take it in stride, but many have an urge to reject the retcon as being not authentic. It's almost like the first group has loyalty to the creator, and the second has loyalty to the work.