hey asking for a friend but uh. whatâs it gonna take for fandom to relearn the difference between âcanonâ and âword of godâ?
â canon = the text itself; the show/movie/book/comic; the actual up-on-Netflix content; anything a casual fan would reasonably interact with â word of god = anything else, i.e. interviews with cast/crew/showrunners; DVD commentaries; comments from the crew on social media or at cons; literally any written or verbal remarks about the text made by writers or showrunners or actors
word of god does not equal canon, and yet i increasingly see fandoms conflating the two and acting like word of god comments from The Powers That Be count as canon and are equivalent to canon footnotes to the text and iâm. NO. listen. itâs not. thatâs not what canon means, and word of god comments should not be treated as part of the canon text. this isnât just me being a pedantic text purist, this has actual negative consequences for shows and fandoms and peopleâs experience of the stories, i mean:
it privileges the creatorâs interpretation of the text as the only âcorrectâ one. death of the author? no oneâs heard of her. writers and showrunners get to tell fans how to interpret the text, and a solid 80% of fandom is going âokay, if you say so!â
it stifles fandom debate and analysis, because fan analysis of the text at hand is rejected outright by other fans on the basis that âwell the showrunners said itâs like thisâ
it contributes to fandom bullying, in which word of god comments are used to harass people who have the audacity to want to interpret the work differently, or who disagree with the powers that be, or just donât want to consider those comments at all in their understanding of the story
word of god comments may be confusing; they may change over time or contradict earlier statements; they may even contradict the text itself. all of which leads to fans frantically trying to reconcile word of god comments with actual canon, rather than going âokay fuck this, it doesnât make sense so iâm disregarding itâ
again: this only creates more arguments in fandom; if creators say x at one point, and y at another, you end up with more fandom slap-fights over which comment was the âcorrectâ one and which interpretation âwinsâ
it encourages lazy and unsatisfying storytelling. if fanon will accept word of god comments as canon, showrunners develop an attitude of âit doesnât matter if it doesnât make sense, we can just handwave it in an interviewâ
this results in poor writing, or important plot points being explained in word of god comments rather than in actual canon
this in turn makes the story confusing and incomprehensible to anyone whoâs not knee-deep in fandom. casual fans, kids, someone bingeing the series 5 years from now on crunchyroll⌠theyâre not reading the interviews or tweets or watching the comicon panels. those viewers still need to be able to understand the story, and we are slip-sliding towards a creator-fandom model in which they wonât be able to, because word of god comments run the risk of becoming required reading for understanding the story
this has serious implications for how stories handle representation: if fans start accepting word of god as equivalent to canon, it means shows can keep canon rep (particularly queer rep) vague and ambiguous, and prop it up with word of god comments that âconfirm the representationâ. thereâs no incentive to actually commit to unambiguous, clear canon rep if stories can lean on word of god to compensate for the utter lack of actual diversity in the canon text itself
the canon text has to stand alone. word of god should serve as a trove of fun trivia or behind-the-scenes tidbits about the writing process; it is not supposed to be a substitute for clear, concise, and comprehensive storytelling. a story that doesnât make sense unless youâve read 8 different explanatory interviews by the writers is badly written. showrunners who treat interviews as a place to offload all the character development or plot explanations they didnât bother to include in the actual text are lazy hacks who are bad at their jobs.
word of god can be handy and fun and informative, and for people who are interested in creator comments or interviews thereâs no harm in paying attention to that stuff. but itâs not canon. the canon is the text itself. anything else is supplementary to that, and fans are absolutely allowed to disregard anything not in canon if they choose.
