Part 2. Canon Bear It:
The Myth of Selective Canon
So last time, we talked about Aaron
Dembski-Bowden's little Apologist piece in which he singularly failed
to address contradictions in Black Library Fluff by espousing two
contradictory maxims as his apologetics. In this part we're going to
talk about Canon in general (mostly as it pertains to Black Library),
and to disparage the idea that there are any different kind of
ways to handle it beyond the common sense of “Don't contradict
shit, you worthless Mercenary Hacks” (which as we learned last time
is more about avoiding criticism than anything else). Selective
Canon, in any form, is not only bad for the Industries it is used to
protect, but also not great for the writers themselves. I mean, this
is GW we are talking about, so it's not as if they have a
massively discerning audience to turn away, but we are without doubt
living in an age where more gamers couldn't give less of a shit
about what the lore of GW's works actually is. That is principally
because GW and BL have done so much damage to their brand that their
lore literally and figuratively scrapes the bottom of the barrel.
So before we begin, let's recap. The
last time GW and BL willingly admitted their own attitude to Canon
was through Aaron Dembski-Bowden. He gave voice to an edict that GW's
IP Manager uses as an overall attitude to their brand. He did this
poorly, and I dissected it thoroughly last time. For the purposes of
this recap, we will recall Edict Version 2: “all of it's true
and one of it's true” to be “fair” to the guy who spent
more time writing passive aggressive shade at his own audience than
he did proof reading. This edict basically leaves the door open for
all forms of author and company based deniability, which I have no
doubt is its principle function. It's basically moving the goalposts
of what makes a successful story onto the reader. The reader is
allowed their interpretation,
and it's as valid as everyone else's, as it is with people who have
never read any GW fluff whatsoever. The intention is to promote the
idea that the only right of discernment of what is true in that
setting is either nobody ever,
or GW's official representatives. They can thus use this same
edict as an alibi to not research; to not answer questions; to not
accept criticism, and to not accept any responsibility of any kind.
They can also use this edict to reinvent the entire wheel of
everything to do with their universe for no reason other than to sell
it again. Naturally a lot of GW fanboys think this is great. This is
why they get Mat Ward, G.S. Goto and Aaron
Dembski-Passive-Aggressive-Bowden.
Black Library has always had a dodgy
attitude to Canon. Most of the company's heads have gone on to say
that there is no canon, or the canon is in one way or another
selective. Their logic is that they have too many writers to regulate
that kind of continuum, and that it fits the unreliable nature of
truth in the setting. Whilst these issues are true, they fail to
denounce Canon. Canon comes from the Greek for “Rule” and it
usually denotes the standard,
the current accepted and authentic works of something. I mean, call
me picky, but if you're dodging the most basic yardstick
of what legitimately matters
in your setting, and are thus unwilling to attach anything to it,
you're giving far too much away about your opinion of your own brand.
Canon can naturally mean different things to different people, and
for me that's because in the modern age, Canon seems most commonly
used by fans in a different manner to that of people who produce
material for them. For the people in authority, they seem worried
that they are being tied to a permanent contract of standards, and
for the fans, it's a pragmatic way of figuring out the truth. GW and
BL's response is, there isn't any.
The problem with that is, that's
not their call.
Obviously,
the battleground over who gets to call what “The Truth” is going
to be fought over. The one thing I would point out is to look at what
is at stake for the victor, because that's the real secret behind
these kinds of denouncements in all material written for any IP. With
Black Library and GW's “approach”, they claim a Grimdark Universe
legitimately gives them an alibi from responsibility of truth, and
thus any determination is of equal validity but none of it is
legitimate in any permanent sense. In a sense, this is also
pragmatic. Fans try to pragmatically build a complete picture, the
big corporation pragmatically responds: we are always going
to have an unstable picture for a multitude of reasons.
The trouble with this response is that they are endeavouring to
create a totality of freedom from any consistency or standards, and
that can just never wash. The reason is actually quite
straightforward: there will always be a limited number of legitimate,
logical conclusions from any of BL or GW's work, because their own
material makes it impossible for it to be otherwise, because they do
stick to some (not many, but enough) points of unalterable
consistency. For instance, the Emperor is never going to have a gay,
effeminate cousin called Eddie who lives in a bedsit in St. Ives. You
could never, by the Selective Canon Edict argue categorically for or
against “Cousin Eddie” in a definitive sense, but the amount of
information standing against it defeats the notion more or less
permanently. In essence, the idea is so absurd, that if BL
had wrote a novel legitimising the existence of this character,
it would immediately be
denounced wholesale by pretty much the entire fucking 40k audience.
Because the very idea of it is objectively absurd within that
context. The corollary is thus: there are only so many
valid interpretations, because
we know enough to know what does and does not fit. The reason for
this is because any work cannot help but have Canon.
Black Library's very idea that they can decide their material has no
Canon or even selective concepts of it is as absurd as it is
arrogant.
I
mean, don't get me wrong, I get it. Writing is hard, especially when
you aren't entirely in control of the direction of the material
you're writing for. But here's the nub, writers have a
choice. If you're not keen on
the whole idea of sharing a setting with potential quicksand if you
are not tuned into the material that came before you and that
surrounds you from other writers, why put yourself in that position?
Attitudes like Selective Canon allow writers like this the best of
both worlds: all the privilege of the existing IP and basically none
of the responsibility, the
implied deal of that being “You produce material that is ours and
we pay you, neither of us asks too many questions about that
arrangement”. That is ultimately what it's for, and that's Black
Library's admission of intent. They see a market, they have the
monopoly on that market, and they intend to fill it. Their desire to
fill that void to cash in on it is obviously far, far greater than
any conception of the actual literary value of the stuff that's
there. It's cheap sales fodder, because why wouldn't it be? The
alternative is setting standards, it's a bar most writers would
flunk, and it's a bar you can't reasonably set, because what
self-respecting writer with the talent, time and consideration to do
such a thing expertly would attach themselves to such an idea?
Naturally, they have a few big names, mostly Dan Abnett and Bill
King, who have done this Merc Writer thing for a long, long time and
do it well. It's not as if individual writers cannot approach things
with their own standards (not that they do consistency, but I find it
more tragic that writers of theircalibre have some level of
insecurity of thinking that they need other people's IPs to put out
good work).
Of
course, to the Black Library writers, they find themselves concerned
that Fans think “Canon” is the legitimate all-encompassing truth
beyond doubt. They seem to think that the few fans who are incredibly
picky and observant represent a threat worthy of a status that
reinforces an artificial construct of their setting that their own
writing style usually pays less heed to. Most readers though, just
don't care about that (perhaps BL counts on that, but readers are not
apathetic). They do care,
but they care more that the writers are convincingly
considerate of the setting and
thoughtful about writing for it.
That's why if you look at fan communities that talk about Canon and
IP fodder providers like Black Library, they discuss the individual
merits of particular writers from positions of trust: i.e. to what
extent they are willing to trust that the particular writer gets
it and thus whether they are
willing to bother reading it. They are irritated by obvious signs of
bias and preference for particular factions or individuals, of clear
indications that little research has gone into the making of it. The
trouble with claiming that only those making the content know which
of it is right or true is the very fact that this is not remotely,
nor has ever been
true, and that is demonstrated in simple facts, such as the varied
reputation of individual writers (the popularity of Dan Abnett and
Sandy Mitchell versus the outright hated writers
such as Ward and Goto). The audience already knows what it
wants. It already knows what 40k
represents, and what drives GW's consumers. That is not to say that
GW's fans are always right about everything, but when you set up your
entire book selling business model about assuring that basically fans
are technically always wrong, you have a problem there. In fact, you
just told your fanbase you're functionally irrelevant.
Human
Beings by nature look for patterns. Sometimes those patterns aren't
there, but we desire to understand. One of the advantages of fiction
is that it offers some semblance of constructed understanding.
Naturally, it can be as artistic and interesting to defy the
expectation of understanding with a setting that cannot be so, but it
risks a dangerous and distressing possibility. Because it's pretty
hard to get invested in something you can never count on at least to
a significant portion understanding. So how does GW and BL get away
with this, if that's the case? Well, the answer is two-pronged.
Firstly, well, they don't. Many potential readers are just turned off
by the obtuse nature of the fluff, particularly its abstracted
nature. Many readers have long since abandoned GW's lore simply
because they're sick of waiting around for contradictions and change
that generally detract more than they add to the setting. This itself
has driven my disinterest and removal of investment in the lore. I am
tired of reading something principally handed to writers I do not
respect, trust nor appreciate. Thus, I'm out. But in a way they do
get away with it, because their opinion on what is or is not Canon
does not remotely matter.
I do
find it kind of cute that Black Library has a suite of writers who
get behind the Selective Canon argument, given that one of the most
well-known semantic think-pieces on literature is Roland Barthes'
coinage of Death of the Author.
It's so well-known that it eclipses the rest of his work, and has
made its way into public consciousness. I find it rather depressing
that writers would be fine deciding for everyone else what their
takeaway from any media they produce is, even if said audience ask
for it. Because their opinion could not matter less, and not just
because connotative interpretation has the capacity not just to see
conscious authorial intent but also unconscious authorial meditation;
readers themselves are the same sorts of human beings as the ones who
write this shit, and they form their own ideas because why wouldn't
they. The only perplexing thing of this whole enterprise is why there
is even any need to denounce Canon at all, when its concept is a
metaphysical impossibility as anything rigid in any form, and any
setting? Once again, I fall back to motives. A corporate company
hates criticism, writers hate criticism. Writers hate getting
harassed for a handful of sentences they wrote when they were sleep
deprived trying to push this horrendous beast up some more words to
meet that fucking publishing deadline that was entirely off the cuff
to add a bit of flavour, and more keenly to satisfy the editor, or
whatever overseer BL uses, if any. But when your endeavour to address
the handful of people who pick up on minor issues like that ends up
fundamentally undermining the very medium you write for, was that
small bit of passive aggressive “We don't do Canon here, because
fuck you guys” …well, was it worth it?
What
is most tragic about Black Library is its irrelevance. It is the only
source of additional, detailed narrative within the Games Workshop
brand, or at least, it was,
and now it spends more time as a prospect for the miniscule handful
of people who bother with Black Library at all, which is actually a
minority within that gaming circle as far as I can see. It has its
fans of course, I'm sure plenty of the literature BL has is
literature enough in at least the way Twilight is literature, but
that also highlights that any old shit can have a big audience and
quality is not immediately assured by the number of eyes that read
it. Whilst it is difficult to discern precisely whether Black Libary
does well or not, I can't particularly see them basically removing
themselves from the standard of standard acceptability
doing them many favours amongst anyone worried about parting with £8
for some entertaining fodder. Maybe they're onto a winner, not
worrying about it, but they do seem to spend a lot of time chafing
about criticism and being denounced for not getting things right for
a bunch of writers who promote the idea that there is no right or
wrong in their circle. But there is
a right or wrong. Black Library exists because a fandom exists. They
exist to give that fandom more of what they already
like. That's your Canon
right there Black Library. Go on, you go and put out a novel that
violates some of the basic expectations of what 40k is, and you tell
me all about how you're above that shit.
Oh
wait, you did. It was C.S. Goto's short, unpopular career.
Well,
that's unfortunate for you guys.
40k
has Canon. That's just tough. You mercenary writers need to grow the
fuck up and do your fucking job.
