Silly artist

you can still create fanworks when it comes to old media!! PLEASE do!! there are always going to be new fans who will appreciate it, and veteran fans who are dying for new content and new perspectives. also, less than a year is NOTHING. the original Star Trek series was on TV six decades ago and there are still people losing their minds over it, writing stories and reblogging gifsets daily, and that's only one example.

This means that if you're in transformative fandom, "canon vs fanon" isn't a binary, but a spectrum.

YGO is an interesting case because there's a zillion canons to pull from, all of which both reinforce and contradict each other constantly. Also, much of the fandom has been kicking around for 20+ years, mixing and matching at will; the horse is out of the gate, and trying to enforce strict delineation between anime/manga/spinoff films/filler/dub/sub/etc on the entire fandom is a lost cause. I think that's actually even more of a reason to add in some nuance and work off a spectrum, because in a canon this (I say lovingly) convoluted, there's some real value in being able to broaden your evaluation tools past "canon vs. non-canon" and figure out which bits of 'fanon' might actually trace back somewhere.

Here's the rubric I tend to work off:

"Honda Hiroto attends Domino High School" - this is stated canon. It is a declared fact in-story, and there are no conflicts across any Yu-Gi-Oh! medias.

"Honda is loyal and conscientious" - this is directly conveyed canon. Honda is demonstrably loyal to Jounouchi and later to Yuugi. Honda carries and looks after people when they're incapacitated. Honda makes sure people aren't left behind: he advocates for the Kaiba brothers in Duelist Kingdom despite his personal distaste, and he checks up on Bakura more than anyone else. This is a major character trait and you're clearly meant to get this out of the source.

"Honda is interested in machinery" - this can be reasonably inferred from canon. Honda rides a motorcycle, is frequently associated with mechanical imagery in the context of Duel Monsters, and is seen in DSOD repairing Jounouchi's duel disk. It's not the major focus of his character, but it's still a straight line you can draw from canon.

"Honda really fucking likes cantaloupes" - this is esoteric canon. It is mentioned Once in capsule monsters, and literally never again. This could easily be confused for fanon, but...it is indisputably canon. to something.

"Honda would become a mechanic post-canon" - this is grounded fanon. Despite his interests, Honda never actually mentions wanting to be a mechanic. While he does mention that he's expected to work at his father's factory post-graduation, he's clearly not thrilled about it. Because the series ends before we see what he actually chooses, there's nothing directly supporting or contradicting this fanon; but it also doesn't come out of absolutely nowhere.

"Honda has asthma" - this is ungrounded fanon. I give Honda asthma in my personal headcanons because I have asthma, and I love Honda and relate to him and want to project my shitty lungs onto him. There is absolutely nothing in canon to suggest this. If you wanted, you could argue with me and tell me that this is a ridiculous headcanon. It would be unnecessarily confrontational, but you'd be correct. And if I were to go around telling people they were stupid for not making Honda asthmatic, I'd be both unnecessarily confrontational and wrong.

For anyone who's not familiar with this particular bit of esoterica, it appears ONLY in one panel of the English manga translation, and absolutely nowhere else (that I know of):

It is, unquestionably, canon to something - the English-language manga. It is very, very likely a mistranslation or at least something that wasn't given a lot of thought. But it's there, it was published, it's never been refuted in any other piece of canon.

So the question isn't really "is it canon," but "how seriously do we take 'esoteric canon."

Someone absolutely is not wrong, or making things up, if they write Honda as a melon lover or Yuugi as a diabetic. They're working off published canon. HOWEVER, both Honda's melon obsession and Yuugi's supposed diabetes are one-offs that have absolutely no impact on the story before or after they're mentioned. We never see Yuugi have to make any concessions to being diabetic. Even if it wasn't a mistranslation and was 100% Takahashi's intention, it's still kind of a random one-off. So if someone chooses to ignore Yuugi's diabetes, they're also not wrong.

2 angels and 2 demons walk into a bar. It’s a gay bar. They are gay.

Yes this is a Pride Month post and yes I forgot to post it earlier

close ups under the cut!