On 4/25/26 08:17, Terrence Fugate wrote:
> What do "we", the group as a whole] consider cannon? Or is it up to each
> of us as individuals?

Fundamentally, this is always up to each individual.

I ran into this strongly with Star Trek - I developed my own ideas of
how Star Trek works, and often individual episodes or incidents will
break these notions of how the thing actually works.

Trek is vague enough so that it has room for lots of people to have lots
of different ideas of how it works.

So I realized Trek Fans make up their own ideas of what makes sensible
Star Trek and then filter the product through this internal filter.
Each fan builds their own idiosyncratic filter.

With Piper,  it's easier.  What the man wrote.  His internal consistency
is remarkable and laudable, but not perfect.

But even so - each of us has an internal vision of how the THFH or
Paratime works.  We filter Pipers words through that filter.

The notion of "Canon" is actually a tool with limited use.

If I talk about Vulcans in the THFH, you can rightly say "That didn't
happen, that's not canon."

But did Fenris get nuked at some point or was Piper thinking of
someplace else?  Canon says it was - the words say that, but Four Day
Planet seems to contradict that.

Canon is a touch point.  A navigational beacon.  If you're doing a
textual analysis it's useful to set the borders of the project.

But, by it nature,  it cannot be the end-all and be-all.

We're story telling creatures.  We tell ourselves stories about our
stories.  You can't really stop that.