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[Magwik]

Yeah, this pretty much covers it.



39. She's 16 years younger than Tenzin.

But look what popped up when I googled lol:

16 years younger than Tenzin? Dude's getting some.

 

[Infinite Justice]

Well taking that big of a decision is a really legendary thing to do.

Even if you don't believe that as legendary, the way she was willing to sacrifice herself for the air nation is a story people in our world would certainly put in history books.

If the reason for the decision wasn't just "eh why not" i would agree but hey the air benders came back somehow so it worked out.

As for the latter it was certainly noble but she would be seen as a martyr at that point and that's usually a shoe in for the history books regardless especially given her role

Man she started graying early like every other Asian woman I know.

Having those kids can take a toll, especially since they are magic kids

 

[Hamlet]

You mean the one thing she had no thought of doing before the big bad basically forced her into the issue? some legend there but you know what they say by history being written by the "winners"


Seriously though this what/what isn't canon stuff is pretty weird tbh

Still can't deny the impact it had and how it sorta changed the world. Plus I'm sure it's going to be quite a while before any avatar can say they successfully prevented 10,000 years of darkness ha.

 

[Veelk]

ED: I also thought about this under a fluidity of the English language perspective, in that the word 'canon' may be taking on a new meaning in the context of fans using it to describe fictional media content, but because the word is still used for its original definition and purpose by actual content creators and businesses, I think it's more appropriate for a new word or term to arise to describe what fans are feeling/believing.

No we just disagree. I agree with Kinvara that the original creators have a centralized authority that viewers cannot have. The origin of canon is from a particular religious and historical context. The early christian church hierarchy was determining which books would be official and which would not. It was not a question for individual members, it was a question for the leaders of the faith who were accepted as having the inherent authority to make those kinds of decisions. The authoritative bodies of other sects and denominations made different decisions about what to include in the biblical canon, but in no sense was the canon ever seen as a personal or individual decision. That was the whole point of the canon in the first place; to have an absolute authority decide what must be accepted as official to avoid continued personal disagreement/fighting. Otherwise every individual member would have their own unique list of what they considered canon and the church would have no way to police its own communal identity and internal consistency. Discourse and doctrine would be impossible.

In the content creator context, the question is a non-issue because there are no legitimate disputes over hierarchy or source of authority; there's nothing resembling the church structure and consumers are not part of some larger organizational body. There's a group of creators who are the only possible people with the inherent authority to make a decision regarding the canon. You could have the equivalent of a Catholic/Protestant split if co-creators split up after the first series and they both created spinoffs simultaneously. Then you might have two people with seemingly equal claims of authority making canonical claims that are inherently in opposition. But presumably they would both accept the canonicity of the original series which would make it part of the undisputed canon.

By the very definition of the word only Bryke and Co. can promulgate a canon. You can't have your own canon because it would imply you have an equal claim of authority to make those decisions. Different people don't have different canons, different authoritative bodies have different canons. The authority to decree is implicit to canon making; perhaps you object to the idea that anyone should have that kind of authority, but in that case you're more rejecting the very concept of canon itself. The term I usually hear thrown about is 'headcanon', which I think gets across the inherent contradiction between the official canon and an individual's own personal ideal/belief about what they wish the canon actually was.

Canon in it's historical context was conceived by the church to centralize their leadership. There, canon meant that those who claimed authority (the church) to say what it is and is not canon and was not left to individuals to choose. I read about up on this a long time ago, but before the king james version of the bible, people had to rely on the church for religious lessons, making it the only self proclaimed authority on the subject. People couldn't dispute this because any lessons they could dig up that would be rooted in historical evidence would be within the church's hands. If the church said that Jesus did X based on translations from the dead sea scrolls only they could read, what is the basis on which they could dispute that? Since the bible was put in the hands of the public, they started getting their own ideas of what has and has not happened. Given that it was a manipulative tactic to gain power, I feel that makes it's historical validity questionable at best. And, as you said, times change the english language and the term of canon has taken on new meanings, in addition to this being fiction. With the dead sea scrolls, it was a matter of translating an existing text. With fiction, there is no objective model that we absolutely have to follow.

Anyway, the source of our disagreement here is not the technical definition, but that Bryke has special authority on the subject that other viewers simply don't. My definition of canon is a model of something that details what happens vs what does not relative to a given person. For example, I have more than one story model for the avatar franchise, one that includes TLA and LoK, one that is just TLA, one that is TLA and LoK but altered.....but the one I take as the 'official one', just TLA, is the canon one for me. It is essentially what Bryke did when creating LoK, brain storming various ideas, accepting and rejecting various models until he found one that is right for him, which is presumably the one he presented to us. But it's just a story model, one of thousands. I do accept the concept of canon, but authority lies within each personal individual choosing among several story models, not that there is a lack of authority in being able to choose for people other than the creators.

And I just don't see the justification for Bryke's authority. There needs to be ownership of IP's for the sake of legal and economic reasons, but I don't see an inherent justification of Bryke owning a story model just because he's the one who put it together. Or, an alternate way of viewing it is if I acknowledge the Bryke's story as canon, but I don't really give it any power, and still subscribe to my idea of how events happened because I prefer them. In this way, canon has the definition you present is just a semantic acknowledgement, while I take my own noncanon events. The point is that I seek to have the best possible story model presented to me, and I don't really care much where it originates from. I don't hear a reason why that is an invalid position to take.

 

[Gotchaye]

ED: I also thought about this under a fluidity of the English language perspective, in that the word 'canon' may be taking on a new meaning in the context of fans using it to reflect their opinions concerning fictional media content, but because the word is still used for its original definition and purpose by actual content creators and businesses, I think it's more appropriate for a new word or term to arise to describe what fans are feeling/believing.

Surely it's this newer sense of the word that's at issue, though, even if you want to say that really people should come up with a different word.

'Canon', as it's used among fans of some work of fiction, is about building on the conceit that in some sense the fictional story is real. People often interact with a work of fiction as if the author is reporting on events in some actual world. People take there to be a fact of the matter about the name of Harry Potter's red-haired friend, even though of course 'Ron Weasley' (or even 'Harry Potter') doesn't refer to any actual person.

When people like comics fans get into arguments about what is canon, they're not arguing about what any particular writer has said is official work. They're approaching the question as historians (historians with incredible biases, but still). What seems to happen is that the canon, in the old sense, gets treated as a bunch of potentially unreliable primary sources shedding light on the canonical fictional reality, in the new sense. The canon isn't a set of works but rather a consistent set of propositions that are to be teased out of the sometimes-inconsistent primary sources. The goal is not to say that "these are the official works" but to say that "this is how it actually happened", for this weird sense of 'actually'. You sometimes get arguments about the status of individual works, which can look like arguments about what's officially sanctioned, but this is about discrediting them as sources. More often works will be acknowledged as officially-sanctioned but their content will be recognized to have been superseded by some later retcon.

There are other possible approaches - other criteria for picking out the canonical story - but I don't think you can look at how fans actually use the term and say that debates about canonicity must be resolved by looking to what works are officially sanctioned. In many cases that's not even applicable.

Edit: ^that's my avatar. Do I need to go read those posts?

 

[m_shortpants]

Edit: nvm lol

 

[zeemumu]

Can an earthbender levitate the rock that they're on and fly like Terra?

 

[Bit-Bit]

I was gonna talk about the idea of canon and how I think fans can make up their own stories within the universe but cannot pick and choose what is already established by the creator.


However, you guys took this thread into a whole different direction....

 

[Gotchaye]

Just hold out for two more days, people. Then you can do whatever and I can ban the lot of you.

 

[Joeytj]

You mean the one thing she had no thought of doing before the big bad basically forced her into the issue? some legend there but you know what they say by history being written by the "winners"


Seriously though this what/what isn't canon stuff is pretty weird tbh

No Avatar has actually done anything out of their own progressive views. Almost all of them, with the exception of Wan, have reacted to forces, even Aang. Korra's decision of keeping the the spirit portals open was actually hers, not her Uncle's. Granted, it's easier to make a decision after someone already made it for you, but that was more proactive than a lot of Aang's decisions.

 

[JadedWriter]

Just hold out for two more days, people. Then you can do whatever and I can ban the lot of you.

For future reference have I ever said anything ban worthy?

 

[Bit-Bit]

Can an earthbender levitate the rock that they're on and fly like Terra?

I'd imagine it would be an incredibly hard thing to do since Earthbenders have to be grounded to properly bend the earth around them. It's one of the rules established in the universe that a bender must be within range of whatever it is that they are bending, so that a bender from one end of the earth cannot bend a rock on the other end.

It's also how the Beifongs were kept in a prison suspended in the middle of a cavern. Although they were surrounded by earth, they didn't have a direct physical connection to it and thus could not bend it.

 

[Bit-Bit]

No Avatar has actually done anything out of their own progressive views. Almost all of them, with the exception of Wan, have reacted to forces, even Aang. Korra's decision of keeping the the spirit portals open was actually hers, not her Uncle's. Granted, it's easier to make a decision after someone already made it for you, but that was more proactive than a lot of Aang's decisions.

Hmm, I'd say that Aang being unshaking in his passive philosophy against Ozai is a pretty progressive view considering everyone and their mother expected him to "take out" Ozai.

 

[Veelk]

Hmm, I'd say that Aang being unshaking in his passive philosophy against Ozai is a pretty progressive view considering everyone and their mother expected him to "take out" Ozai.

I think it's only fair to point out we only ever got small glimpses into the lives of other avatars. Who knows what policies they enacted outside the scope of TLA that might have been progressive?

 

[Trey]

For future reference have I ever said anything ban worthy?

Afterwards, (Amon) dying in a boat explosion was the best thing to ever happen to him.

.

 

[Kinvara]

Anyway, the source of our disagreement here is not the technical definition, but that Bryke has special authority on the subject that other viewers simply don't. My definition of canon is a model of something that details what happens vs what does not relative to a given person. For example, I have more than one story model for the avatar franchise, one that includes TLA and LoK, one that is just TLA, one that is TLA and LoK but altered.....but the one I take as the 'official one', just TLA, is the canon one for me. It is essentially what Bryke did when creating LoK, brain storming various ideas, accepting and rejecting various models until he found one that is right for him, which is presumably the one he presented to us. But it's just a story model, one of thousands. I do accept the concept of canon, but authority lies within each personal individual, not that there is a lack of authority.

And I just don't see the justification for Bryke's authority. There needs to be ownership of IP's for the sake of legal and economic reasons, but I don't see an inherent justification of Bryke owning a story model just because he's the one who put it together. Or, an alternate way of viewing it is if I acknowledge the Bryke's story as canon, but I don't really give it any power, and still subscribe to my idea of how events happened because I prefer them. In this way, canon has the definition you present, but it doesn't have any power to it. I take my version of events as preferences whether they're canon or not, which kind of makes the term meaningless in my eyes. The point is that I seek to have the best possible story model presented to me, and I don't really care much where it originates from.

Bryke created both A:TLA and TLOK but you have thrown out TLOK simply because it doesn't meet your standards. You are treating A:TLA as if Bryke weren't the ones who created it in the first place. Many of the ideas present in TLOK are from when Bryke originally devised the Avatar world (IIRC the story of the first Avatar was written back during A:TLA Book 2). They have just never had the opportunity to present these concepts until now.

There is nothing inherently inferior about a noncanonical derivative work. Elementary and Sherlock are modern reimaginings of the original series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which in turn have their own individual canon independent of the parent story that they're based upon.

Your argument pretty much boils down to "I can write a better story than Bryke therefore I should have the authority to declare what is and isn't canon."

You're free to reimagine the story Bryke has created but you can't declare it canon as your idea/stories were created in direct reaction to Bryke's- by either accepting or rejecting the concepts/story they have presented.

 

[Joeytj]

I think it's only fair to point out we only ever got small glimpses into the lives of other avatars. Who knows what policies they enacted outside the scope of TLA that might have been progressive?

Well I meant progressive in that, absent a war or conflict, they said "hmm, you know what, I don't think X needs to be happening this way anymore, so I'll go in and change it." And rarely have we seen an Avatar take it upon his or herself to change something that isn't directly affecting them or their nation.

But I guess that's the role of the Avatar. To keep balance sometimes means being conservative and not enacting anything that might alter the world too much. After all, the Avatar rarely concerns itself with everyday problems, outside of major conflicts within or outside the four nations. Each Avatar starts his or her journey from the vantage point that the current overall all dynamics of the world is in balance and should not be altered.

At least, from what we know of the 6 or 7 Avatars we've seen in the show. To be a "legend" I guess, both Aang and Korra got that title (It's called the "Legend of Aang" outside the U.S.) because of the profound changes that happened under their watch, whether it was their idea or not.

 

[Trey]

Korra has been the most progressive character in the franchise.

 

[JadedWriter]

.

Considering how people complain about his reveal, I wasn't wrong. He went from "badass masked ninja dude" to "go see a psychologist."

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Canon in it's historical context was conceived by the church to centralize their leadership. There, canon meant that those who claimed authority (the church) to say what it is and is not canon and was not left to individuals to choose. I read about up on this a long time ago, but before the king james version of the bible, people had to rely on the church for religious lessons, making it the only self proclaimed authority on the subject. People couldn't dispute this because any lessons they could dig up that would be rooted in historical evidence would be within the church's hands. If the church said that Jesus did X based on translations from the dead sea scrolls only they could read, what is the basis on which they could dispute that? Since the bible was put in the hands of the public, they started getting their own ideas of what has and has not happened. Given that it was a manipulative tactic to gain power, I feel that makes it's historical validity questionable at best. And, as you said, times change the english language and the term of canon has taken on new meanings, in addition to this being fiction. With the dead sea scrolls, it was a matter of translating an existing text. With fiction, there is no objective model that we absolutely have to follow.

I'm going try very hard to succinctly respond without derailing any further into history, but I think you're conflating common medieval era Reformation complaints (such as the bible being written in Latin) with the actual origin and meaning of the word canon (the Protestants have their own canon anyway). Questions of interpreting the canon are different from questions of what is in the canon. The material that would make up the canon of the early church had been organically developing long before it was officially enumerated, so I really think the machiavellian interpretation of early church leaders creating it out of nothing is overblown. And even if leaders acted badly, they still had to have the support of followers to get into a position where they had the authority to act, and their actions would still have to be seen by followers as legitimate. Not sure about the dead sea scrolls references, no one was digging up texts, everything was copies of copies of copies of oral accounts. We can take to PM if you want to discuss the history stuff further.

Anyway, the source of our disagreement here is not the technical definition, but that Bryke has special authority on the subject that other viewers simply don't. My definition of canon is a model of something that details what happens vs what does not relative to a given person. For example, I have more than one story model for the avatar franchise, one that includes TLA and LoK, one that is just TLA, one that is TLA and LoK but altered.....but the one I take as the 'official one', just TLA, is the canon one for me. It is essentially what Bryke did when creating LoK, and the one he presented is presumably which story model he chose above others to use, but it's just his story model. I do accept the concept of canon, but authority lies within each personal individual, not that there is a lack of authority.

I would still dispute the definition of canon as being 'technical', but I don't understand why the creator wouldn't be thought to have special authority. If Byrke for example, wrote a one-off comic strip where Zuko and Katara hook up, why wouldn't we defer to him when he says it wasn't intended to reflect something that actually happened in the universe and was just something that he posted to the internet for fun?

I completely understand and agree with the position that the author doesn't get special authority to proclaim the official interpretation of something in the content or canon that is otherwise ambiguous, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to say the creator has special authority in deciding what counts as officially created content and what does not.

And I just don't see why Bryke should have authority exclusively if they are not the ones who can use the stories most efficiently. Or, an alternate way of viewing it is if I acknowledge the Bryke's story as canon, but I don't really give it any power, and still subscribe to my idea of how events happened because I prefer them. In this way, canon has the definition you present, but it doesn't have any power to it. I take my version of events as preferences whether they're canon or not, which kind of makes the term meaningless in my eyes. The point is that I seek to have the best possible story model presented to me, and I don't really care much where it originates from.

Why should authority have anything to do with who can use stories most efficiently or most anything? Would it not be much simpler to defer to something like an intellectual property ownership model in terms of authority? Otherwise you could imagine a super-savant who has mastered all forms of media on a level eclipsing every other human. Presumably we would not say that person should have exclusive or superior authority over all content just because they can use it "best" relative to the rest of us.

If the use of 'canon' basically devolves into being a synonym for 'opinion', then it's not really helpful in practice. In fact, it just gets way more complicated. Should we discuss the show under the umbrella of our personal canons? Can our canons ignore certain episodes? Certain scenes or dialogue? Entire characters? It just seems entirely unnecessary and confusing, we need to have a common base from which to discuss content. Especially when the difference is basically "I think the TLA works better as a standalone series" as opposed to "My canon is the TLA as a standalone series".

 

[m_shortpants]

Bryke created both A:TLA and TLOK but you have thrown out TLOK simply because it doesn't meet your standards. You are treating A:TLA as if Bryke weren't the ones who created it in the first place. Many of the ideas present in TLOK are from when Bryke originally devised the Avatar world (IIRC the story of the first Avatar was written back during A:TLA Book 2). They have just never had the opportunity to present these concepts until now.

There is nothing inherently inferior about a noncanonical derivative work. Elementary and Sherlock are modern reimaginings of the original series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which in turn have their own individual canon independent of the parent story that they're based upon.

Your argument pretty much boils down to "I can write a better story than Bryke therefore I should have the authority to declare what is and isn't canon."

You're free to reimagine the story Bryke has created but you can't declare it canon as your idea/stories were created in direct reaction to Bryke's- by either accepting or rejecting the concepts/story they have presented.

I agree I think.

We can get away with saying Dragonball GT isn't canon because Toriyama had nothing to do with it and there were a lot of inconsistencies. That's very different from what Korra is and has been.

 

[Veelk]

Bryke created both A:TLA and TLOK but you have thrown out TLOK simply because it doesn't meet your standards. You are treating A:TLA as if Bryke weren't the ones who created it in the first place. Many of the ideas present in TLOK are from when Bryke originally devised the Avatar world (IIRC the story of the first Avatar was written back during A:TLA Book 2). They have just never had the opportunity to present these concepts until now.

There is nothing inherently inferior about a noncanonical derivative work. Elementary and Sherlock are modern reimaginings of the original series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which in turn have their own individual canon independent of the parent story that they're based upon.

Your argument pretty much boils down to "I can write a better story than Bryke therefore I should have the authority to declare what is and isn't canon."

You're free to reimagine the story Bryke has created but you can't declare it canon as your idea/stories were created in reaction to Bryke's- by either accepting or rejecting the concepts/story they have presented.

Why not?

I'm not treating TLA as if Bryke didn't write it. I don't care who wrote it. The source is immaterial to me. Nor do I really care that LoK was made from preconceived story elements of season 2 TLA. All I really care about is getting the best possible story.

I'm not sure where you decided to turn the story on me. I'm not writing the story so much as modulating the story events. I'm taking part in forming the story by removing LoK, but I wouldn't consider myself to be writing it.

I feel we are repeating ourselves. You still haven't explained the reason why Bryke has some kind of authority over the material merely because he created the chief source of ideas that I am modulating. I explained how I take the view that writing an original story like Doyle's Sherlock holmes isn't functionally different from writing something more derivative, like BBC's Sherlock. It is merely a greater degree of work because it requires more ideas to be connected to each other, while something derivative has a good deal of them set in place already. But it's not a catergorically different process. And I explained what definition of canon I adhere to in the very post you quoted.

So explain to me, why can't I reject Bryke's authority on the material with my given explanation for how I view canon? If that view of canon is invalid, go into why it can't work. Otherwise, we're just going to keep going in circles.

 

[Joeytj]

I agree I think.

We can get away with saying Dragonball GT isn't canon because Toriyama had nothing to do with it and there were a lot of inconsistencies. That's very different from what Korra is and has been.

Yeah, Veelk shouldn't put the word "canon" on a pedestal, so to say. Yeah, it would be awesome for a lot of the great fanfic and art to be what truly happens in the Avatar World, but it isn't.

End of story. If you don't like what the writers of the story wrote, or what they permit to be written about their world, then well... too bad. The truth is, a lot of canon material, in many franchises, suck. And it happens to the best of the world builders, from Tolkien to GRRM.

 

[Icyflamez96]

I can only take so many words in one page

 

[Atraveller]

If you accept it now it'll hurt less later. They can never hurt you if you know what they're up to.

Words of wisdom.

 

[360pages]

Korra has been the most progressive character in the franchise.

Inverse, maybe, but then again she is very much a character that things happen to rather than a character that does things for the world. But there is no arguing that things happened under her watch that changed the world, and despite my grievances with everything she was there.

In media? Lol no, she is actually a really shitty character overall. I'm not joking when I say shonen characters have more development and an understandable arc than any of the characters in this show.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Surely it's this newer sense of the word that's at issue, though, even if you want to say that really people should come up with a different word.

'Canon', as it's used among fans of some work of fiction, is about building on the conceit that in some sense the fictional story is real. People often interact with a work of fiction as if the author is reporting on events in some actual world. People take there to be a fact of the matter about the name of Harry Potter's red-haired friend, even though of course 'Ron Weasley' (or even 'Harry Potter') doesn't refer to any actual person.

Well that's why I mentioned the term "headcanon" as a term I think is already in use and more appropriate to situations where 'canon' might be used. Canon=/=internal consistency=/=authorial intent. And I don't think anything I said about 'canon' is incompatible with this description you offered about what fans are doing; an author dictated canon can only help this kind of process. If JK Rowling writes a short story that contradicts things that happened in the mainline series, it would only help fans struggling to figure how it can fit into the existing story if she mentions it was intended to be a creative exercise and not actually something that happened.

When people like comics fans get into arguments about what is canon, they're not arguing about what any particular writer has said is official work. They're approaching the question as historians (historians with incredible biases, but still). What seems to happen is that the canon, in the old sense, gets treated as a bunch of potentially unreliable primary sources shedding light on the canonical fictional reality, in the new sense. The canon isn't a set of works but rather a consistent set of propositions that are to be teased out of the sometimes-inconsistent primary sources. The goal is not to say that "these are the official works" but to say that "this is how it actually happened", for this weird sense of 'actually'. You sometimes get arguments about the status of individual works, which can look like arguments about what's officially sanctioned, but this is about discrediting them as sources. More often works will be acknowledged as officially-sanctioned but their content will be recognized to have been superseded by some later retcon.

I'm not sure that comic books are a good example because aren't people arguing less about whether a particular issue is 'canon' or 'happened' and more about how something in the canon/issue should have happened. I.E., this character should never have beaten this villain because he's supposed to be weak to his powers as seen in a previous issue. It's not a claim that the issue didn't happen, but that the issue is not internally consistent.

I'm not a comic book fan, but don't they also have one-shot or "What If" stories/issues? That seems like it would fit very nicely with the historical use of the word canon, as that would distinguish between what issues fans should look to for evaluating internal consistency and which they should not. This one was a humorous Halloween story that is 'non-canon' but this issue is part of an ongoing series that will impact other stories.

There are other possible approaches - other criteria for picking out the canonical story - but I don't think you can look at how fans actually use the term and say that debates about canonicity must be resolved by looking to what works are officially sanctioned. In many cases that's not even applicable.

Again, I'm not saying that debates about what's in the canon should end or that authors get exclusive authority to decide what the correct interpretation is, merely that the authors are the ones who should determine what the canon is so we know the boundaries and have a common base of knowledge to work off of. I still want "X vs Y" debates for comics, but I think even in those threads people have an understanding about what counts as evidence and what doesn't. Squirrel Girl isn't seriously considered top tier for example because those issues were just jokes (or maybe not?).

 

[Infinite Justice]

No Avatar has actually done anything out of their own progressive views. Almost all of them, with the exception of Wan, have reacted to forces, even Aang. Korra's decision of keeping the the spirit portals open was actually hers, not her Uncle's. Granted, it's easier to make a decision after someone already made it for you, but that was more proactive than a lot of Aang's decisions.

and nothing was given for why, which is why i'm not as impressed and it comes off more her uncles doing after been placed in the forefront of the matter.

Also i disagree on the last line.

Hmm, I'd say that Aang being unshaking in his passive philosophy against Ozai is a pretty progressive view considering everyone and their mother expected him to "take out" Ozai.

That was one and he also gave his reasons even if everyone in the show or the audience might not have agreed with it.

For Korra there was hardly any of that and it was kinda disappointing, but i guess her being cooped up was partly the blame for that.

Inverse, maybe, but then again she is very much a character that things happen to rather than a character that does things for the world. But there is no arguing that things happened under her watch that changed the world, and despite my grievances with everything she was there.

Which is why i think her isolation was to her detriment even after though they tried to give justification via Zaheer/Red Lotus

 

[Veelk]

I would still dispute the definition of canon as being 'technical', but I don't understand why the creator wouldn't be thought to have special authority. If Byrke for example, wrote a one-off comic strip where Zuko and Katara hook up, why wouldn't we defer to him when he says it wasn't intended to reflect something that actually happened in the universe and was just something that he posted to the internet for fun?

I completely understand and agree with the position that the author doesn't get special authority to proclaim the official interpretation of something in the content or canon that is otherwise ambiguous, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to say the creator has special authority in deciding what counts as officially created content and what does not.

I reject authors having special authority because stories are just ideas interconnected with each other. No one owns ideas, so I don't see why they'd own particular arrangements of ideas. They can say they originated with them, but I don't think that implies ownership. Myths are easier examples to understand this. The source of most myths is uncertain, so there is no official authority to stop you if you decide that Hercules did 13 labors instead of 12. But suppose we could find the original author. I don't think anyone would really bother to track the original mythology except as an exercise of curiosity. The myths that grew from it are more meaningful to the whole world than whatever the original version of the myths. If canon is just a marker of who it originated with, no one would care. If it was something that tried to enforce what version of the myths people heard, people would reject it if they preferred to do so, because the altered ones would be more meaningful to them. Usually, this is because it's the version of events that they heard first or something. The story no longer belongs to the original author anymore. It belongs to everyone. I think the same thing happens in modern times and that just gets obscured by the fact that we can easily trace the source author in modern times.

It'd actually be a cool experiment to have people read fanfic stories before watching the original series, and then have them react to the original show which has events that contradict the fanfic, and then see their tendency to recognize the original source as the 'canon' one.

The point of stories as an audience is to gain things from them. And make no mistake, any time we remember stories, it is merely a retelling of those stories to ourselves. If we exclude or change parts we don't like to make it better, I don't consider that to be a wrong thing. Canon then changes either into something utterly irrelevant or it's meaning changes to mean what the definition I take. What does it matter if LoK is the 'official' canon if I find a fanfiction with a different person in the avatar cycle that blows LoK so far out of the water there is no point even considering LoK in the running? Why wouldn't I forfeit the LoK story model in favor of the fanfic one?

Why should authority have anything to do with who can use stories most efficiently or most anything? Would it not be much simpler to defer to something like an intellectual property ownership model in terms of authority? Otherwise you could imagine a super-savant who has mastered all forms of media on a level eclipsing every other human. Presumably we would not say that person should have exclusive or superior authority over all content just because they can use it "best" relative to the rest of us.

If the use of 'canon' basically devolves into being a synonym for 'opinion', then it's not really helpful in practice. In fact, it just gets way more complicated. Should we discuss the show under the umbrella of our personal canons? Can our canons ignore certain episodes? Certain scenes or dialogue? Entire characters? It just seems entirely unnecessary and confusing, we need to have a common base from which to discuss content. Especially when the difference is basically "I think the TLA works better as a standalone series" as opposed to "My canon is the TLA as a standalone series".

I do it for a lot of shows, and it never causes any problems in discourse for me. All I do is remember that the original source from which we heard it is the story model most people are familiar with and have accepted, so that is the 'canon' one for them. Again, Having my own personal canon does not mean I can't accept other story models. It's just that I hold one above them all, which is my version of the 'actual' events that happened when I recall the story. You wouldn't need a supersavant to do that, you can decide for yourself what the 'best' version of the story is.

Yeah, Veelk shouldn't put the word "canon" on a pedestal, so to say. Yeah, it would be awesome for a lot of the great fanfic and art to be what truly happens in the Avatar World, but it isn't.

End of story. If you don't like what the writers of the story wrote, or what they permit to be written about their world, then well... too bad. The truth is, a lot of canon material, in many franchises, suck. And it happens to the best of the world builders, from Tolkien to GRRM.

I could make the same argument. You're the writers of the story? Too bad, I reject your canon in favor of my own.

Well that's why I mentioned the term "headcanon" as a term I think is already in use and more appropriate to situations where 'canon' might be used. Canon=/=internal consistency=/=authorial intent. And I don't think anything I said about 'canon' is incompatible with this description you offered about what fans are doing; an author dictated canon can only help this kind of process. If JK Rowling writes a short story that contradicts things that happened in the mainline series, it would only help fans struggling to figure how it can fit into the existing story if she mentions it was intended to be a creative exercise and not actually something that happened.

The more we get into this debate, the more I feel it is just semantics.

You call it headcanon, I just call it canon.

I still acknowledge that LoK came from the creators and it is the story model that they take to use and the one that most people are aware of. I don't like it, so i make up a 'headcanon' that I take in lieu of the actual canon. I acknowledge it contradicts what happens in the supposed mainline series, but I take it anyway.

We mean the same thing, we just call it different things. I don't hold authorial ownership in any particular reverence so I have no problem rejecting it for what I think is better.

 

[Infinite Justice]

Won't jump too much in the is/isn't canon argument here but my personal opinion would be for it to exist so i can rake the authors over the coals for delivering such a lower tier story (shit tier if i'm feeling really annoyed) rather than ignoring it and giving them a pass of sorts.


Same thing is happening to Bungie with Destiny

 

[A-V-B]

I'm sorry I got this conversation started

 

[Veelk]

Won't jump too much in the is/isn't canon argument here but my personal opinion would be for it to exist so i can rake the authors over the coals for delivering such a lower tier story (shit tier if i'm feeling really annoyed) rather than ignoring it and giving them a pass of sorts.


Same thing is happening to Bungie with Destiny

You'd still be able to do that. No one would get confused over which story model you'd be talking about. For the most part, people just absorb stories. They don't put in the effort to modulating it.

I'm sorry I got this conversation started

Yeah, you're right, we should get back to the conversation about Lin's rock vagina.

 

[WrenchNinja]

He said as much about Iroh, and zuko when he turned on him, and they're not just fire nation but fire nation royalty. Even in that quote, he talks about it being 'his' world rather than the fire nations. I mean, fine, I guess you can say that he would hate the air nomads, but that hatred is rooted in their personal philosophies. He's a social darwinist, they're pacifists. He doesn't hate them because they're air nomads, but he hates things like compassion and that's what the air nomads promoted. I imagine he'd be more respectful of zaheers more violent methodology, even though he follows air nomad beliefs otherwise. So no, I don't think he thinks the fire nation is inherently better. His line of thinking is "The fire nation is the most powerful, therefore it is better" rather than "The Fire Nation is better, therefore it has the most power." which is the line of thinking a real racist would have.

I just don't see him caring about race that much. Racism is a lack of empathy for a specific race or ethnicity. Sociopaths don't need an excuse since they lack empathy for everyone. A racist sociopath is like a human murderer(that is, a murderer of humans). It's an unnecessary specification.

Iroh and Zuko betrayed the Fire Nation. He's always thought they were weak, but he didn't go and try to kill them over it until they betrayed the Fire Nation.

He talks about the old world first, and then his new world.

 

[Trey]

I kinda agree with Veelk. George RR Martin rubbed me the wrong way with some of his comments toward fan art and fiction. Stories belong to the collective conscious, it's how they become rich and full.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it didn't happen, but I get where he's coming from.

Inverse, maybe, but then again she is very much a character that things happen to rather than a character that does things for the world. But there is no arguing that things happened under her watch that changed the world, and despite my grievances with everything she was there.

I don't see Aang opening any spirit portals and restoring the airbender nation almost singlehandedly.

Bow down.

 

[Veelk]

Iroh and Zuko betrayed the Fire Nation. He's always thought they were weak, but he didn't go and try to kill them over it until they betrayed the Fire Nation.

He talks about the old world first, and then his new world.

Why would he? His methodology is to gain power over things, not necessarily kill them. I imagine he'd be just as happy to enslave airbenders as kill them, were it possible. He sought to disempower Iroh and Zuko for being weak, and he did by taking over the throne and sending off his son on a journey that he thought would make him 'strong'. If they became enemies that moved against him, then that's a different story than just them being submissive.

His new world thing I always thought was when he'd rule the whole world rather than just the fire nation.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

I don't see Aang opening any spirit portals and restoring the airbender nation almost singlehandedly.

Bow down.

The Spirit World stuff and Vaatu/Raava didn't even exist back then so lol

 

[Trey]

The Spirit World stuff and Vaatu/Raava didn't even exist back then so lol

Mike and Bryan actually wanted to introduce the spirits in AtLA, but I guess they realized that AS was convoluted enough as it was. And lore wise, they did exist in Aang's time, so Korra still has the advantage.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

Mike and Bryan actually wanted to introduce the spirits in AtLA, but I guess they realized that AS was convoluted enough as it was. And lore wise, they did exist in Aang's time, so Korra still has the advantage.

How is it her advantage? All of this stuff about allowing the worlds to join wasn't really made until Vaatu and Raava got put into the lore, and if they say "we actually wanted to put this in AtLA but didn't have time" I call bullshit they had more than plenty of episodes to at the least mention those two. Not to mention that Aang was off learning the elements and preparing to take down a super power Nazi army in a very specific date with what amounted to the rebel army. Korra didn't even explicitly do it herself, she fucked up and it happened and then it was all "maybe this isn't a bad thing" and by pure luck airbenders started to come back.

If you're talking spirits in general that's fine, we knew there was such a thing as being spiritual so it isn't impossible to understand that they wanted to expand on it.

 

[WrenchNinja]

Why would he? His methodology is to gain power over things, not necessarily kill them. I imagine he'd be just as happy to enslave airbenders as kill them, were it possible. He sought to disempower Iroh and Zuko for being weak, and he did by taking over the throne and sending off his son on a journey that he thought would make him 'strong'.

His new world thing I always thought was when he'd rule the whole world rather than just the fire nation.

Well he's killing the other nations because he thinks theyre weak. He already has absolute power over the people in the Fire Nation, no one would question his decision if he did want Iroh and Zuko dead because they're weak, but he lets then live and only decides to kill them once theyve betrayed the Fire Nation. He doesnt think the air nomads should exist at all because theyre weak. Gaining power over the Earth Kingdom wouldn't work if you wipe out everyone. All you'd be left with is scorched earth and no one to have power over of that you didn't already have power over of.

 

[Trey]

How is it her advantage? All of this stuff about allowing the worlds to join wasn't really made until Vaatu and Raava got put into the lore, and if they say "we actually wanted to put this in AtLA but didn't have time" I call bullshit they had more than plenty of episodes to at the least mention those two. Not to mention that Aang was off learning the elements and preparing to take down a super power Nazi army in a very specific date with what amounted to the rebel army. Korra didn't even explicitly do it herself, she fucked up and it happened and then it was all "maybe this isn't a bad thing" and by pure luck airbenders started to come back.

If you're talking spirits in general that's fine, we knew there was such a thing as being spiritual so it isn't impossible to understand that they wanted to expand on it.

It's not a matter of which was more capable or had the best chance of being progressive, dear sir, it's a matter of which one did more progressive actions.

Korra did more progressive actions.

By pure luck was penicillin and teflon discovered, among countless other progressive entities. Can't hold that against Korra that she didn't know airbenders would be reborn due to her actions, but you can credit her for her agency in the matter. She meant to lead the world into a new spiritual age, and she did.

 

[Mononoke]

Korra has been the most progressive character in the franchise.

Uh, maybe in concept. But not in execution.

Actually no, I think Zuko was actually more progressive then Korra. At least, the way his plot was handled. lol

On paper I wanted to agree with you. But now that I think about it, I kind of find the idea insulting. The most progressive thing about Korra is that she went from being a mafioso thug threatening judges 24 style, abusing her boyfriend by kicking his desk across the room at his work place, to being passive not (but being extremely worn out and broken). So progressive. I've come around to Korra, and I started to like her in Book 3. But let's not act like the way her arc has been handled, that suddenly it was this amazing journey of progression.

It really wasn't. Even t his season has been totally botched with us feeling for her and her struggles.

I'm sorry I got this conversation started

Glad I skipped it.

Before anyone asks, lost a bet (avtar). Wah wah wah.

.

Why is that ban worthy? I'm really confused. Did something change, where people are getting banned for saying things? Confused. He basically just said that, at the point that Amon was butchered, the best thing that could have happened for the character was his death (ie. him being written of the show). I actually think he's right. I don't think there was much more you could for the character after that. The way they handled his plot was atrocious, and they really undercut anything about the character that was interesting.

In comparison, Zaheer was still interesting after being defeated. Because his overall story was interesting. So it makes sense to keep him around.

 

[Veelk]

Well he's killing the other nations because he thinks theyre weak. He already has absolute power over the people in the Fire Nation, no one would question his decision if he did want Iroh and Zuko dead because they're weak, but he lets then live and only decides to kill them once theyve betrayed the Fire Nation. He doesnt think the air nomads should exist at all because theyre weak. Gaining power over the Earth Kingdom wouldn't work if you wipe out everyone. All you'd be left with is scorched earth and no one to have power over of that you didn't already have power over of.

He's killing the earth kingdom because subjugating it has turned out to be too much of a pain in the ass. That's what the board meeting established. He was frustrated with why he couldn't get the earth kingdom to bow down and asked for Zuko's advise. He said how the earth kingdom is full of strong people. He took that to mean that they are too powerful to subjugate, so he's all "f it, lets just burn them all then." And the killing of a person is a demonstration of power over them, just a more permanent one. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise. It's preferable to enslave people because hey, free labor force, but him killing them all is a power move as well.

Also, I just checked Azula's dialogue from the first episode of season 2. He doesn't seem to actually think Zuko and Iroh betrayed him, but just fucked up in the north pole mission strongly enough that they need to die to prevent further shows of 'weakness'. He's a sociopath, not a homocidal maniac. He is willing to enforce all forms of power domination, including murder, but that doesn't mean he has a desire to murder every around him at the slightest whim.

 

[360pages]

Damn it all, this makes me want an EarthBound animated series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hVuv7mDNqM

Also, Korra changed the world, but almost all the agency was mostly due to her actions before. One could say her messing up was the best thing to happen to the world, in theory she did the most. But it wasn't because she played an active role in it.

 

[Hamlet]

Why is that ban worthy? I'm really confused. Did something change, where people are getting banned for saying things? Confused.

The thread went a tad crazy with lewd stuff today and Gotchaye had to come in and fix it ha. He removed quite a few posts.

 

[Mononoke]

It's not a matter of which was more capable or had the best chance of being progressive, dear sir, it's a matter of which one did more progressive actions.

Korra did more progressive actions.

By pure luck was penicillin and teflon discovered, among countless other progressive entities. Can't hold that against Korra that she didn't know airbenders would be reborn due to her actions, but you can credit her for her agency in the matter. She meant to lead the world into a new spiritual age, and she did.

You throw around progressive too loosely, sir.

Again, maybe progressive in concept. But what is progression, if it really isn't executed well within the story itself. Loose ideas isn't worth praising. Because we are missing the growth and the proper journey for Korra changing (which gives meaning to her being progressive because she learned from her mistakes, and grew as a person to make these progressive decisions), this comes off hollow. If you want to get out a scratch pad and tally what "progressive" decisions Korra has made, fine. But doesn't really mean much given the way they went about doing it.

Korra will always come off as kind of a hollow character. And she's not really as fleshed out as Aang was. Or hell, Zuko. It really sucks.

The thread went a tad crazy with lewd stuff today and Gotchaye had to come in and fix it ha. He removed quite a few posts.

Okay. Got ya. I was just confused why Trey was saying that was ban worthy. Like wat. As I said in my edited post, Amon really was destroyed by that point. He wasn't worth keeping around (like Zaheer). So I agree that killing him (or just getting him off the show for good), was probably the best thing for that character by that point.

 

[WrenchNinja]

He does call Iroh a traitor. Go back to Siege of the North Part 2.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

I think the discussion is played out although I think there are interesting economic and philosophical discussions to be had relating to the 'no ownership of ideas' position. I would just add that I don't think the conversation was purely semantics anymore than a previous little discussion the thread had about language. If I recall we were discussing people using the word villain instead of antagonist and how that leads to confusion and difficulties in discourse, something I don't consider a trivial concern.

Choice of words and their meaning is incredibly important, words have power and the way we use them shapes our lives and the stories we tell. Yes, if we all understand what people 'really mean' and respond accordingly, then word choice never matters in a general sense, but we should want it to matter, we should idealize variety and specificity in our vocabularies. It increases our ability to express and understand ideas.

"Canon" carries latent information regarding the origins and labeling of material. Some may not like that it values the author's work differently than other work, but I feel quite comfortable in saying that the majority of society finds value in distinguishing between original content and fan fiction, and so we have a word that helps us do that. You may not think there should be a distinction, but that is a cultural/political belief as opposed to a language problem. "Society should not distinguish" is a different argument then "what word should society use to distinguish". As I suggested in an earlier post, I think you have a problem with canon existing as a concept more than whether it was the appropriate word to use.

 

[Trey]

Like wat. As I said in my edited post, Amon really was destroyed by that point. He wasn't worth keeping around (like Zaheer). So I agree that killing him (or just getting him off the show for good), was probably the best thing for that character by that point.

It was a joke.

He's a sociopath, not a homocidal maniac.

Glad we cleared that up.

 

[Mononoke]

Well taking that big of a decision is a really legendary thing to do.

Even if you don't believe that as legendary, the way she was willing to sacrifice herself for the air nation is a story people in our world would certainly put in history books.

Problem is, Korra really didn't have like a reasoning for keeping the portals open. There was nothing to back her combining the worlds. She just kind of went with her gut. So it's like okay. She still made that decision, and it should be noted in history. But from a story perspective, why should we as an audience feel that this decision, was one of her maturing as a character? Because there was no real thought behind her actions. She herself even admits this.

Which is really my problem with a lot of the things she's done so far. I think on paper, she's certainly done more then Aang (and you could argue she's done far more important things than Aang). But she kind of just does her duty as Avatar (just shows up). And we are missing that kind of arc that carries us from her character from beginning to end. Where her growth as a character starts to inform her decisions.

Korra has always come off as a very confused and conflicted person. And maybe that is the point of this entire series. I mean, given the entire Book 4 has been about her feeling haunted by her demons, and feeling like she's not relevant. It feels like Korra overall has been a bumbling avatar, the kind that fails and stumbles into success.

And that's fine. But I'm just wondering how they deal with this by the end of it. Like how does Korra accept this. Or what is her end game, the way she wraps up things for herself. As an audience, I can tell you it's kind of like, okay. She's done some great things. But I'm not particularly feeling like, in wow of them, because they weren't (again) decisions or actions informed by her character changing and growing. I wish there was more of an investment in the character. That her actions each season was a sign of her growth, and learning from her past. And maturing. But I never really got that sense (although I will say, Korra in Book 3 was a lot more matured and changed. I mean outside of the finale, just her day to day actions, were a lot more informed by her past. So I give them credit for that. But I just mean all of the big things she's done, none of them feel like they were a result of her maturing).

It was a joke.



Glad we cleared that up.

Fair enough. Muh bad.

 

[Spyder_Monkey]

I always thought Korra lined up pretty consistently with Airbender. The only thing I had a problem with were the Spirit Portals in North and South Poles. They were never hinted at in Airbender at all and kind of retconned an important part of it i.e. you can't bend. Hell, if I'm not mistaken, only the Avatar could enter the spirit world at will because of the whole portal between two worlds kind of thing. But then you got somebody like Zaheer and Aiwei communicating with each other in their.

But yeah other than that I would consider Korra just as canon as say Batman Beyond to the The Animated Series or DBZ to the original Dragon Ball.