Jetlag
Rear Admiral
Originally posted by Nemesis
But there must be levels of canon. If there were no hierarchies of sources, then we each would indeed be free to “walk away believing what we want”. We would have no basis for distinguishing the quality of information in, say, a published versus an unpublished source, a game manual versus a press release, or an “official” versus an “unofficial” guide. In short, WC lore could not commonly exist.
Yes, the development of canon is downright messy, even helter-skelter. But show me any generally accepted proposition in the proverbial real world (such that the earth orbits the sun) and I’ll show you a “simple” belief that has gone through a baptism of hellish fire. There’s nothing new here. The kind of arguments we’re having in WC about the authority of various sources occur all the time in science, law, religion, art, and politics. Welcome to human civilization and its many different “quests” for knowledge and certainty.
You used the phrase "WC lore" and that's exactly what I'm talking about. It's literature and art. It's an entire mythos. We should be so lucky that the WC universe converges as much as it does. We're not arguing Creationism versus Darwinism here. Some would like to force one version of events above another and I believe that to be a flawed action. In our world there is fact and fiction which is constantly being tested, but in the WC universe we are presented with a ficticious universe, and we are given the facts therein. The contents of the games and novels and even the movie and cartoon must be considered canon, even if they contradict, when they contradict, and especially when they contradict. You can't just sweep things under the carpet that you don't like.
There need be no "quests" for certainty, for there is absolute certainty. I am absolutely certain that in the context of the movie, Kilrathi are not covered in hair. I am absolutely certain that in the context of the games the Kilrathi have plenty of hair. In the context of the WC universe in general, I am absolutely certain that both of those statements are true. An explanation would be nice, but frankly it's not something I'm going to blow a fuse over. This isn't the first time details in an ongoing story get a little fuzzy, and it won't be the last. The problem arises from the fact that people are believing certain things, and throwing away other things, and they want others to do the same. I'll believe that about as much as I'll believe WC fan-fiction is canon, because that's what some of arguments amount to.
As a side note, I'm wondering whether or not we're breaking rule 3 here, for some of the arguments here are specifically "game vs. book." I know, it isn't quite as cut-and-dry as "Enterprise vs. Tiger's Claw" and everyone seems to be playing nice so far, although stubbornness often turns into flaming; I was just curious as to what the governing parties might think of this. Do "versus" thread bans pertain just to inter-universe discussions, or also to intra-universe ones?