Monday DE: Got canon?

[bjornwilde]

What sort of canon(s) do you as a player prefer? And by canon I don’t mean genre. I mean more like an open or closed canon, i.e. an ongoing serialized canon or one that’s finished? Do you find yourself playing main characters with lots of details or side characters with few? A world that’s been developed a lot or one that gives you room to make up your own details?

And feel free to answer your own questions about the type of canon. These are just to give the idea of what I mean.  

Comments

[ceitfianna]

I tend to like closed canons with deep worldbuilding that I can explore and usually play side characters. One of my favorite aspects of RP is being able to create missing moments and the whys that canon doesn't go into so a character that has a lot of depth and a sense of a world that canon's only showing part of makes me happiest. When I can get the mix of clear sense of the world but space to play with character details I'm happiest. This is also true of when I write fanfic, I want space to play and explore without feeling as if canon is keeping me tightly to it. And the one's where the character feels part of a larger world tend to do that.

Though I've found I'll get annoyed when the author's worldbuilding tends to focus on other aspects, it can be nice to have that freedom but also annoying. The Old Kingdom is where this keeps happening for me. I love getting new canon, but for all the new canon, I still have little idea of how Sameth's Charter work happens. Since the author is more interested in even more details of the Abhorsens and Free Magic.

That's why Cassian works so well for me. Star Wars has deep worldbuilding but his story is only hinted at. I'm curious to see what will come out of the tv show but I'm also willing to go, don't like that. Big canons like Star Wars and Marvel give enough to space to say, I'm going to use this or interpret this that way, because not everyone knows or cares about it all. Canon is a resource and inspiration.

[bjornwilde]

I'm sort of on the fence about a closed canon vs an ongoing one. The closed canon needs to be rich if it will work for me, and the ongoing needs to have a season/volume/book or so before I feel comfortable starting said canon.

Like Fi, I used to tend towards side characters, but looking at my present roaster, I have a fair number of main protagonists. So I guess I can't say I prefer side characters any more.

I guess I like a big canon sandbox, with toys I understand clearly presented.

[cottoncandypink]

I very strongly prefer closed canons, which Wilford's was when I apped him. So imagine my surprise when I was minding my own business one morning, and found a new video in my sub feed, and then another, and then a short film, etc. And of course, it all immediately threw me all off my stride.

I don't think I'm drawn to any one particular type of canon, but rather characters that lend to a lot of worldbuilding, if that makes sense. There was a lot of worldbuilding to be done with this canon, but it really came secondary to what could be done with the character. I also like a canon that has elements I'm familiar with in one way or another. A lot of the characters I've played have either held the same jobs I've had, or are from canons I was into before I started playing them, where I put a lot of research into it. A few have had the same job as my husband, so there was a lot of knowledge through osmosis happening.

I've definitely played more main characters than side characters. When I do play a side character, it's always someone with a miniscule role. I either want a lot to work with, or a completely blank slate.

[takethatnature]

Looking at my roster, I apparently like pups from video games, although that might be a genuine coincidence. I prefer to play characters who have a solid foundation of canon info to work from, although it doesn't have to be extensive or delivered during a large portion of screen time. I definitely like it when canon provides the lion's share of the worldbuilding, though I also like being able to fill in gaps and connect pieces to each other on my own. I worry about being contradicted by the creators if canon is too open and mysterious; once I was trying to cultivate a Gunnerkrigg Court muse and then canon went in basically the complete opposite direction of my predictions and I just sort of threw in the towel on that one.

If there's a ton of worldbuilding to get caught up on before I can play a character without worrying about contradicting the source material, I'll probably get too daunted and/or overwhelmed and move on to the next thing instead of nurturing that budding muse into a full headvoice. I'd be in a real pickle if I got inspiration to play a Star Wars character, for instance, given how massive and sprawling and meticulously detailed that canon is and what a small piece of it I've personally checked out.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Usually I'd say that I'd prefer playing side characters from closed canons, but that's not actually holding true of late: Yamato and Eden are both main characters from ongoing canons, although Yamato's, at least, is 'ongoing' in the sense that it's seven discrete closed canons with another one lined up in the future.

That said, Eden, at least, is a customisable protagonist in the same vein as Fallout and Dragon Age protags, so there's a fair amount of wiggle room when it comes to making up details. Yamato, meanwhile, is probably the Digimon character we get the most canon details about, even moreso than Taichi, to the point where canon cheerfully provides us with his grandparents' names, home towns, and careers, despite not even introducing anyone else's grandparents.

As far as worlds go, the big one tends to be that I have to find the world interesting, with enough of a clear set of themes, aesthetic, and atmosphere that I can get at a concrete idea of how the world feels. A lot of rich worldbuilding details helps with that, but at the same time, Kingdom Hearts' worldbuilding is often borderline incoherent, and Digimon Adventure's worldbuilding employs heavily from the idea that the audience only actually needs the bare minimum of details to understand what's going on, and that everything else should be left as inference, implication, and symbolism.

(Which is admittedly one of the reasons I use the novels as a secondary canon source for Yamato, since they provide a more concrete mythology re: the Crests, Apocalymon, and Gennai, and they clarify a few points that were left implicit in the TV show, such as Devimon, Etemon, Vamdemon, and the Dark Masters all being fragments of Apocalymon.)