MK Canonicity?

[IcarusBen]

I was wondering what the general consensus is on MK's work being canon.

Personally, I view it as Broad Strokes Canon, i.e. anything that doesn't contradict anything in lore is canon, although I refuse to believe CODA and the events of the Fifth Era onwards are considered "canon." The Thalmor planning the erasure of Man? I'll accept that. That they actually succeed? No. Just... no. Then the Nerevarine pops into existence driving a giant robot that he supposedly destroying hundreds of years prior, and...

What's your opinion?

[Musicman247]

The only things considered canon are the things Bethesda says are canon. Anything else is fanon. There are a few topics in TES General about this already.

[Rezalon]

"Remember that only things that have been published in Elder Scrolls games should be considered official lore." - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fan_Interview_III

And

"Yes, we consider the Elder Scrolls novels canon to TES lore." - twitterDOTcom/dcdeacon/status/21951830233710592

So only the games, their companion pieces, and the two Greg Keyes novels are canon.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

Which still leaves plenty of works by MK, to be fair, since he did a ton of writing for Redguard, Morrowind and Oblivion.

edit: Also, there's little touches that allude to his out of game texts, even if they're not presented in their full forms, like the painted cows in Skyrim being a direct reference to "Seven Fights of the Aldudagga". ESO's main quest as originally written featured multiple references to Nu-Mantia Intercept, but the finalized product was streamlined and altered heavily. It's pretty obvious the dev team decided to narrow the focus of the main quest of that game midway through development.

[Musicman247]

Things in the games are automatically canon, but allusions (or you could call them Easter eggs) don't make those works canon, just the pieces present in the game.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

That may be true on a very technical scale, but the fact that Bethesda didn't bother to attempt to write a lore book that explained the Giants and their culture in any detail for TES VI despite their prevalence, but still included an allusion to an out of game text, means that whenever someone asks me "Hey, what's the significance of the painted cows?" that's about all I have to refer them to. Granted, ESO solved this problem somewhat by fleshing out Giant lore a bit more (just a little bit more, not a ton) but before it came along the text I referred to by name earlier was about all we had about Skyrim giants besides what we saw in game. I had no problem sharing it with people, adding the disclaimer that it's a pre-development document and that it's clearly meant to be a myth.

I actually prefer to refer to in-game texts whenever possible, but those areas where something is clearly alluded to in game but no actual texts exist outside of OOG texts (Not just MK's of course. There are others, too.) are instances where I'll happily refer people to Apocrypha, but always with the aforementioned disclaimer. The way I see it, there are two equally extreme and equally silly positions on such stories and insights. There's Party A who loves it, laps it all up and blindly lumps it in with game level canon with no filter when speaking to newbies. This creates a lot of confusion and resentment down the line. Then there's the second group who has this strong dislike of OOG to the point they'll actually warn people away from it or denounce it. I consider it another asset/resource for lore discussion, but one with a narrow applicability. It absolutely has a place in those grey area instances I mentioned where it's the only source for something otherwise alluded to. In fact, I believe that's how the wiki for this site already uses it. The problem is when someone on reddit or something like that quotes it without context alongside official sources with no disclaimer. That habit has become very commonplace and I've always felt it was misguided.

[AKB]

I'm not sure the cows were necessarily a reference, it's quite possible for more than one person to have an idea. I don't mind the out of game texts if they're clearly labeled as such, and it's accepted that its canonicity stops the moment that something is said that clearly contradicts that. I'm also not going to defend The Seven Fights of Aldugagga. That's some of the worst writing I've ever read. It reads like bad extremely bad fan fiction.

[legoless]

In fact, I believe that's how the wiki for this site already uses it.

Correct, that's basically our policy on using OOG works as sources. Flesh out and expand, but not contradict or create.

[Minor Edits]

Short answer, no, Kirkbride's unofficial work is not canon, provided Bethesda has not been orchestrating some kind of long-term shadow marketing campaign.

Long answer: This requires a long, dense answer, one of several reasons why I don't like talking about it. Canon debates can significantly derail substantive discussion of the lore itself. However, to have an open, honest, and thus worthwhile discussion at all, it is unavoidable. I will defend to the death the right and necessity of freely discussing it, because I think all the manipulation taking place out there is spreading wrong impressions about what most fans interested in the lore actually think about the "canonicity" of Kirkbride's work. Since you bring it up, and the majority's objections to distorted conceptions of TES canon are being wrongfully suppressed and censored elsewhere, and I'm sick as a dog with nothing better to do, I'm gonna lay out everything as I see it.

Keep in mind that, despite everything below, "canon" is of limited importance. It is something which must be narrowly construed in TES lore. Due to the Unreliable Narrator, any given fact is only as good as its source. But that does not, as some fans seem to think, mean that canon is nonexistent. It just means that facts require close analysis and critical thought to discern, and what is "canon" often amounts to a penumbra of possibilities, rather than one straightforward answer.

Spoiler:

A relatively small but vocal group of dedicated TES lore fans are running a metaroleplay, with Kirkbride as their de facto DM. A fairly entertaining one, if you have the time and inclination. This metaroleplay uses TES concepts as a foundation, as interpreted and supplemented in a largely united front by Kirkbride & Co. Occasionally, Bethesda will give a tip of the hat to Kirkbride's unofficial work, which is to be expected given his ongoing input and their demonstrated propensity for paying tribute to things they like, whether it's Wil Wheaton's DnD role play character, Daggerfall beta testers, Pac-Man, Minecraft, etc. It's interesting, and fun, and offers some insights through its exploration of TES concepts. But it's not canon, and it's pretentious to assume that anyone who wants to have a lore discussion also wants to participate in this metaroleplay. To think that Kirkbride's unofficial works dictate TES lore is like the tail wagging the dog.

The situation is made unique due to Kirkbride's history with the series and his ongoing, if sporadic, official contributions. And I don't mean unique just within TES. As far as I know, Kirkbride's relationship with TES lore has no parallel in popular culture. Which is one aspect of this whole matter I find pretty fascinating, to be honest. His metaroleplay is distinguishable from others as a result, which is why we allow references to his work in limited circumstances in the lore section. But that doesn't make his unofficial works "canon", as our disclaimer acknowledges, and acting as if it does, or that "there is no established canon", is disingenuous. This lie persists due to fan observances which can easily mislead newcomers or more casual followers of the lore, to the point it has become institutionalized in some forums.

The canon debate only tends to crop up when people start to interweave Kirkbride's stuff with established canon, making no distinction between the two. That is all the canon debates amount to: whether this should be tolerated. Whether it's wrong for you to be object when you see someone making what you think are misleading statements about what is true in TES. Whether it's wrong for you to voice your skepticism. I believe treating his unofficial works as equatable to canon lore is not significantly different from doing so with any given fan role play. Skepticism is warranted.

A lot of Kirkbride's work is essentially a mod for the lore. And like some technical mods, people who incorporate it tend to assume everyone else should be doing the same. I remember watching a Twitch stream of Skyrim a while back, and one or two people in chat asked what was wrong with the interface. They had been using SkyUI for so long they just thought it was normal, and no longer recognized the vanilla UI. And among their target audiences, I don't think Kirkbride's work has quite the same broad appeal as SkyUI. You don't have to read a bunch of Kirkbride to be a lore buff. In fact, not reading Kirkbride may make you a more versatile lore buff, as it's a lot easier to think outside of a box which you never stepped into in the first place.

If TES canon is viewed as a set of enacted laws, Kirkbride's "metalore", as Schick calls it, might be generously understood as proposed laws. Suggestions. Bits of them have been cherry-picked and enacted over the years, but as for what remains, it's often impossible to tell whether any given bit of it may be enacted in the future, may form the inspiration for a similar idea, or may have been tabled and abandoned a long time ago. Taking them as TES fact is extremely inadvisable for that reason. Even offering them as a some kind of secondary source could be misleading, if the audience is not given the proper context. And while not many people are interested in taking a lot of time to be a wet blanket, there often seem to be plenty of enthusiastic Kirkbride fans in lore forums across the web armed with what seem to be pre-prepared statements on why you should accept Kirkbride as your Lore Lord and Savior.

To stretch the legal metaphor, proposed laws can be very interesting to legal scholars. They can serve to provide some context and insights for that select group with special knowledge and interest. But what about the average person on the street - ie, the average TES fan? When you're trying to determine what's legally possible and what's not, does a proposed law have any bearing? Does it, or should it, restrict you in any way? No, of course not. But by acting as if it does, essentially assuming it will one day, Kirkbride fans hope to make it into a self-fulfilling prophecy, giving them a perverse incentive to shove it down every newcomer's throat as much as possible.

Even in the event Bethesda utilizes some term or concept which originally appeared in Kirkbride's unofficial work, it doesn't necessarily have the meaning and connotations Kirkbride may ascribe to it. That's something people often, woefully, seem to lose sight of: the author is dead. An author's intent is always interesting to hear, but it does not absolutely dictate how the ultimate work is interpreted. It's like the legislative history of a statute: relevant, but not determinative of how the statute is interpreted. This ambiguity is especially integral to TES and its lore. CHIM, for example, is an extremely undefined concept which fans are largely free to ignore or define as they see fit, as far as "canon" is concerned.

Interwoven into this is the unfortunate predilection of people to state their opinion as fact, based on either ignorance, or the unfortunate belief that conditioning your assertions is a sign of a weak argument, and thus not persuasive. It is absolutely the opposite. Overstating what we know does not make you more persuasive, it just makes you wrong. To the discerning reader, at least. Further, the goal in the first place should be to inform, not to persuade, unless a topic requests otherwise. People who are looking for an honest discourse in good faith value accuracy. People who are looking to push an agenda (like, say, to recruit others into a roleplay) value persuasiveness.

What Bethesda gives us is the mere skeleton of TES lore. We are expected, even required, to flesh out its body as we see fit. But they're still the only ones who get to provide the template of TES lore we all start from. Kirkbride's vision of how to put flesh on these bones is merely one among countless others. In other words, if your vision of TES is contradicted in some respect by "canon" lore, you have to adapt your story around it, or ignore it. But if your vision of TES is contradicted by Kirkbride's unofficial work, you don't have to do either. You're not even obliged to ignore it, because it was never established to begin with. It is a crucial but nuanced distinction that some apparently fail to grasp.

You're no more obliged to take unofficial lore into account than you would be to take into account Tolkien lore. And yet, you'll have people indicating that some idea is wrong or misguided if it is even remotely contrary to some extrapolation they've made from Kirkbride OOG. Maybe that would be relevant in the Kirkbride metaroleplay, but it's relatively insubstantial in a TES lore discussion. But unless and until you have a good grasp of the sources, it can be very hard to tell who's giving you the canon lore and who's mixing in unofficial stuff.

And that's what everyone should understand by now: they're two different things. As TES sprang from a homebrew role play largely based on Tolkien concepts, the Kirkbride metaroleplay is something separate which has sprung up from TES concepts. It is not TES itself. His unofficial work remains, at its core, fan fiction, and I don't think it's stuff fans should be continually compelled to delve into, let alone accept as the same as established lore, because doing so limits our imagination of what the world could be.

And this is the fundamental problem I have with infusing Kirkbride's unofficial works and assertions into established TES lore: it artificially constricts and distorts how we can reasonably interpret Tamriel. It insists that we view TES through one particular lens, which I believe goes against the very nature of TES lore. In order to see and appreciate the pattern of possibility at its fullest and come to your own conclusions, I believe you have to look at the lore unfiltered.

[VirtualWeasel]

I'm also not going to defend The Seven Fights of Aldugagga. That's some of the worst writing I've ever read. It reads like extremely bad fan fiction.

"Holy crap, I've never seen something this dumb!"
—Anonymous Dirtbird

[Pilaf The Defiler]

I'd like to add that yet another MK idea from Seven Fights - Thu'uming giants - has just appeared in the Orsinium traler.

[BetaB17]

Do explain, in MK fashion, how giants could do such? I can imagine thus how else it could be done, but I wish to spare my brain cells from reading MK's off-canon works

[Lady Nerevar]

I'm not sure the cows were necessarily a reference, it's quite possible for more than one person to have an idea.

It's confirmed by one of the lead designers to be a reference to the Aldudaggas. And really, more than one person independently invented giants being really fond of painted cows?

Do explain, in MK fashion, how giants could do such? I can imagine thus how else it could be done, but I wish to spare my brain cells from reading MK's off-canon works

Why shouldn't they be able to?

The discussion of canon in the games and without them, about MK or ESO or anything else, pretty much ignores how TES games, as games, work. When I say that there is no canon I mean that there is no canon. There is a library from which fans and developers pick and chose, but getting anyone (including the devs!) to decide what is part of that library and what in that library is true or still relevant is impossible. There are far too many loopholes, even ignoring out of game ex-developer texts. What about previous drafts of texts? What about stuff that's in the data but inaccessible in game? What about things shown in early drafts of the game but cut in the final release version? What about the game contradicting itself because designers didn't talk or don't agree? What about fan made but developer published media?

UESP has set down a standard library for what it considers worthy of listing on its pages. TIL has a different standard, as does the official forum or reddit or anyplace else TES lore is discussed. Often, they don't agree on what that standard is. I see that as a positive overall - someone who wants to write their own C0DA can do so on r/teslore, while someone who doesn't wish to hear anything about C0DA can hang out on UESP. But attempting to say that there is only one standard library of references for the whole community is just foolish, not least of all because the people within Bethesda softworks cannot themselves agree what that library is.

As for C0DA and its events, I highly suggest this thread. It is one possible alternate take on the universe, not a continuation of the universe as portrayed in game. Wondering if it's canon or not is missing the point.

[Rezalon]

As for C0DA and its events, I highly suggest this thread. It is one possible alternate take on the universe, not a continuation of the universe as portrayed in game. Wondering if it's canon or not is missing the point.

There shouldn't be "takes" or interpretations on the universe. This isn't like a certain religious text were you pick and choose what you think was real or not, it is 100% established what has happened in the games are canon.

"Remember that only things that have been published in Elder Scrolls games should be considered official lore." - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fan_Interview_III

And

"Yes, we consider the Elder Scrolls novels canon to TES lore." - twitterDOTcom/dcdeacon/status/21951830233710592

So only the games, their companion pieces, and the two Greg Keyes novels are canon.

[MetaCthulhu]

...It is 100% established what has happened in the games are canon.

Like the back path?

[Rezalon]

Define back path.

[MetaCthulhu]

Yagrum Bagarn and Wraithguard. Defeating Dagoth Ur without being the Nerevarine. Several pieces of dialogue in later games mention the Nerevarine defeating Dagoth Ur, with would be impossible if the back path is cannon.

[Rezalon]

I'm pretty sure the Wiki considers quests that have the "best outcome" (such as joining the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion/Skyrim rather than killing Lachance/all of them) to be the official canon/lore, so I wouldn't think the back path would be considered canon/lore.

[AKB]

I'm not sure the cows were necessarily a reference, it's quite possible for more than one person to have an idea.

It's confirmed by one of the lead designers to be a reference to the Aldudaggas. And really, more than one person independently invented giants being really fond of painted cows?

Do explain, in MK fashion, how giants could do such? I can imagine thus how else it could be done, but I wish to spare my brain cells from reading MK's off-canon works

Why shouldn't they be able to?

Lady Nerevar! You don't stop by often enough! Your site has been spreading throughout our sources. I'm unaware of such a confirmation towards that being a clear reference, not that I doubt you, I'm just unaware of it existing. I also don't see why it's impossible for multiple people to think up painted cows simultaneously. That cow does look cool, after all. I also don't see the issue with giants being able to use the Thu'um. They certainly needed more going on than they had.

There is a library from which fans and developers pick and chose, but getting anyone (including the devs!) to decide what is part of that library and what in that library is true or still relevant is impossible. There are far too many loopholes, even ignoring out of game ex-developer texts. What about previous drafts of texts? What about stuff that's in the data but inaccessible in game? What about things shown in early drafts of the game but cut in the final release version? What about the game contradicting itself because designers didn't talk or don't agree? What about fan made but developer published media?

If something clearly and utterly contradicts previous information, we mention both version, old and new. Ebonarm was silently removed from a book mentioning him in ESO, which we clearly mention to address the fact that the developers have kind of swept this character under the rug. He still exists as part of the greater setting, but we're going to mention the fact that the developers are not treating him as a continuing part of the series, for whatever reason.

But for the rest of that, we try to be inclusionary with tons of asterisks mentioning its origin.

For example, previous drafts of texts are noted if they are interesting (in some way divergent from the original, not just essentially a similar, but cleaned up version). As an example, here's our article on Avrusa, where the notes mention that the original script had Avrusa as Aduri's mother, not sister. Less interesting ones are usually left on the cutting room floor, though. I just find it hard to fit every little divergence in the script, when it's a change like "Would you pass the peas?" to "Could you pass the peas?", and when such minor alterations cover almost every line. It's not trying to be exclusionary or ignoring some hidden secrets of the series, it's simply trying to keep the pages manageable in such cases where every line was rewritten, just slightly. I can think of fewer cases of texts going through this last time I did some serious game file digging, but I can't name any examples of this off the top of my head, unfortunately.

As for inaccessible information, that's mentioned as well, clearly noted as not being represented in anyway but within the game's internal files. See Scouts-Many-Marshes. Were you aware that he was friends with Ulfric Stormcloak? You wouldn't be able to tell so from his comments about him, how he wishes he is reincarnated as an Argonian living under the tyranny of a Nord so that he knows what it's like. But his actor entry has them being labeled as friends, so that is recorded, even if it's not necessarily reflected within the actual game.

Cut content also deserves its place, alongside notices that it was cut. We have articles on cut quests and characters, like here's a section on the removed Windhelm Pit as a random example, which gets mentioned on some relevant pages like Alain Dufont's.

As for contradictory content, we try to mention everything if at all possible, I can't think of many cases where we don't alert users of multiple takes on certain situations when there was clearly supposed to be multiple points of view on the subject, like on the multiple views on who Tiber Septim was.

As for fan made but dev published material, it becomes usable once the developers use it. Maybe not the original document for it, but we're not going to not mention it being a part of the series once it has become a part of the series. We would probably note the original source in such a case, with a notice that it comes from outside of the usual sources of information. I'm having troubles of thinking of things that fall into this category to provide examples.

UESP has set down a standard library for what it considers worthy of listing on its pages. TIL has a different standard, as does the official forum or reddit or anyplace else TES lore is discussed. Often, they don't agree on what that standard is. I see that as a positive overall - someone who wants to write their own C0DA can do so on r/teslore, while someone who doesn't wish to hear anything about C0DA can hang out on UESP. But attempting to say that there is only one standard library of references for the whole community is just foolish, not least of all because the people within Bethesda softworks cannot themselves agree what that library is.

With all that said above, is the UESP's methodology not a fair way of going about things? The UESP tries to maintain a standard of excellence, while remaining as unbiased as possible, while still trying to present this setting in a readable fashion. I think the only firm difference in policy here is that we try not to host purely OOG content ourselves whenever we can avoid it, we do link to it if we feel it is necessary to further explain the concept. Those links, incidentally, go almost exclusively to your site, which should boost your search engine rankings and traffic, if ever so slightly. Win win, right? We just make sure to draw attention to the fact that its source is outside of the usual confines of the information we get about this setting. I always thought TIL did basically the same thing, you cordon off the developer's works in their own section. Am I wrong about that?

If I had to say we drew the line anywhere for excluded content that diverges from yours, as far as my understanding goes (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), it would be material purely created outside of Bethesda's scope by an ex-developer that was not reflected in what Bethesda did release. We also would not include purely fan created content outside of user space.

And I would not say the UESP tries to act like we're the one set of references for the whole of the community, I mean, look at our site's name. We clearly state we're unofficial, when we decide to declare ourselves to the the Official Elder Scrolls Pages, and that all other sources of any information must be sent to the Ministry of Truth for education and detention, then yes, I'd say we are in the wrong there.

The setting is ultimately whatever you want it to be, Tamriel is a playground. I'm not one to say you can't say your character is an Imperial were-elf, every time there is an eclipse you turn into a different kind of elf that can only speak in reverse tongues, which is quite good since during this time they can also only say extremely racist things. I can't say that your character comes from the Cloud Imperium of Nxaulos, which controls all of reality from beneath the surface of the world, where the capital of Nxaulos is. And if you want to say your character's journey is to slaughter every single other living being with a severed Nord's arm, by all means. Have fun with that, you crazy gem! I will say that you can't write that into our articles as an established part of the setting, though. I admit, if every other user were to disagree with me on this policy, then I couldn't stop it from being added, but most users here agree with this method of doing things. Which I'm happy for, since I'm leaving for a while this week, actually.

And this is the part of my post where I address the fact that I stepped around using the "C" word at any point before this one. No, I'm not speaking of country matters, I'm talking about canon. The word canon has seemed to driven some people to throw up their arms, "there is no canon", I've heard said so many times over and over. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Call me a Templar, but I don't agree with that. Canon is, according to Wiktionary:

(fandom) Those sources, especially including literary works, which are generally considered authoritative regarding a given fictional universe.

A spin-off book series revealed the aliens to be originally from Earth, but it's not canon.

What I am saying is, the word canon, has meaning. If there is no canon, then the story of Nxaulos's war with the morves (a crossbreed of the dwemer and moles) is just as proper a part of the story as the plot of every ES game. If you wish to reject the entire notion of there being anything authoritative in this setting, then fine. Anyone can write whatever they wish about the series and it is to be treated as authoritatively as the creations and comments of someone like myself, yourself, Michael Kirkbride, or Todd Howard. It's all the same, after all. That is what no canon is to the UESP, and where I believe we differ from some that causes these arguments. If you accept anything as being more authoritative than anything else, if you treat anything as more worthy than anything else, if you embrace a notion of there being a library from which fans and developers pick and choose, implying there is anything that might be outside it, then you're not rejecting the notion of canonicity, based on what it means to me.

And that is why the UESP tries to act like there is such a thing as canon. Not because we're exclusionary, shallow minded loreists. No, we do it because we try to provide the fullest picture of the setting as we can, but that requires there to be an actual picture to look at. If we did not reject fan works from lore, we would have to include on every article "This character was killed with a frozen Nord arm, because Xxdongslayer69xX wrote that". So if an ex-developer writes a work that has no real bearing on the rest of the series, and could even be directly contradictory to virtually everything else, we don't have much of a place for it. We treat it the same as were-elves, or underground cloud empires, or morves. And yes, we'd have considerable discussion about this, almost guaranteed, to really confirm if we do or not want something like that here. That could change, if the developers gave it official treatment, or just published it in the next game, for example. But we'd still draw our line at some point, without the entire culture of this site as it is changing.

So disagree with our methodology if you wish, but I can't see us disagreeing upon what canon is in anyway that isn't just semantics, which is a conversation which I can't see advancing in anyway productive.

[Lady Nerevar]

I think we agree in spirit, actually, but are getting caught up in semantics. I think the way UESP does things is, for most things, great. I don't think you're establishing canon but rather, like I said above, providing a library of sources for people to pick and chose from. You label sources clearly and point out contradictions. Each person is then welcome to look at it all and decide what to believe and how to believe it.

Canon, the way I think people use the word, is a static thing. An equivalent term for truth, or stuff worth talking about. But there's no one truth in TES, and what is talked about isn't the same stuff that's in game. It is undoubtedly useful to have a common ground in discussion, but it doesn't have to lead to constant arguments or insulting people.

[AKB]

I agree that this is mostly a semantical argument than any true difference in ideology or even practice. I'm not sure how widely understood the actual difference in position here is, even by the different parties in this little debate inside our community. Here we are, two of the more involved parts of this, and we can come to the conclusion that there is a very slim difference between our stances, ultimately. But I'm not sure how this can move past this point, how there can be a more permanent resolution to this conflict. The UESP will be seen as purely orthodox in its position, even though we're rather accepting of people enjoying TES however they want, while branches of the community like TIL and r/teslore will be seen as radical heretics promoting fanon above the all powerful lore by some.

So where does this go from here? Is there an actual end to this silly buggers argument over canon?

[MetaCthulhu]

@Rezalon

I'm pretty sure the Wiki considers quests that have the "best outcome" (such as joining the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion/Skyrim rather than killing Lachance/all of them) to be the official canon/lore, so I wouldn't think the back path would be considered canon/lore.

There shouldn't be "takes" or interpretations on the universe.

But you see, that's my problem: it's only official if it's in the game and Bethesda says it's official. If the ghost of Chancellor Ocato shows up in TES6, and he says, "Martin Septim expelled Mehrunes Dagon by assaulting him with a frozen Nord leg." that's cannon; no matter what you saw, or what you did, that's now cannon. They could turn Lord Harkon into a Pygmy marmoset with one joke piece of dialogue (I'm looking at you Neloth), which is why what's in the games isn't actually 100% canon, and if the games aren't 100% cannon, what is?

:

Please don't take offence to anything I say, if I sound argumentative or antagonistic, it's just because like to play devils-advocate and argue both sides of the table. (Also, if I may, I would like to add the userbox you created to my page)

@AKB & Lady Nerevar(Who, from AKB's long and polite response, I can assume is an extremely well respected member of the community)
Can we have levels of canon? Star Wars and TV Tropes do, and it seems like a good system. Not only would it help a normal person sort through all of the lore, it would also raise Kirkbride's work above most other fanon (into what TV Tropes would call Word of St. Paul).

[Musicman247]

The problem with canon from people who formerly worked on something, is that it is meaningless until it is given meaning.

Take for a humorous instance: If someone took over the Transformers series from Michael Bay, and Michael Bay never wrote/produced/directed another Transformers movie. He could go online and say things like, "Guys, Optimus Prime is actually Bumblebee's father, and Megatron's mother. It's what I planned from the beginning of the series." But if that never appears in the movies, can it be considered canon? Here we have the guy who started the series, developed, produced and directed four of the movies. Does his word count? If not, why not? And if not, why should MK's?

Now what if in the next Transformer's movie it's alluded to that Optimus Prime is Bumblebee's father, but never stated outright. Does that make the second claim true as well? Same questions as above.

I don't have a dog in this fight either way, btw. I think there is a place in fandom for UESP and TIL.

[Rezalon]

@Rezalon

snip

But you see, that's my problem: it's only official if it's in the game and Bethesda says it's official. If the ghost of Chancellor Ocato shows up in TES6, and he says, "Martin Septim expelled Mehrunes Dagon by assaulting him with a frozen Nord leg." that's cannon; no matter what you saw, or what you did, that's now cannon. They could turn Lord Harkon into a Pygmy marmoset with one joke piece of dialogue (I'm looking at you Neloth), which is why what's in the games isn't actually 100% canon, and if the games aren't 100% cannon, what is?

:

Please don't take offence to anything I say, if I sound argumentative or antagonistic, it's just because like to play devils-advocate and argue both sides of the table. (Also, if I may, I would like to add the userbox you created to my page)

No offence taken at all! When people ask questions, I like to respond with facts and/or opinions. If there were changes in canon (ie, a retcon), then I think it should wildly be accepted as the new canon lore in the community (unless, of course, it's an obvious joke piece of lore, such as Ayrenn being a robot thing from MK's C0DA). Personally I would accept it, but if it was a terrible change, such as your jokes about Martin Septim and Lord Harkon, or Cyrodiil being a climate zone rather than a tropical zone in ESO (ZENIMAAAAAAAAAAX!!!!!!!!!!), then I'd be quite a bit miffed, but I'd still accept it as canon as that is what the official in-house lore masters have decided, and what the developing company, and maybe BGS, as a whole, have accepted.

In C0DA's case, and the other works of MK's that do not appear in the games, then I do not accept ANY of it as canon whatsoever, unless it was DIRECTLY mentioned (not alluded to, like the cows in Skyrim or, again Ayrenn being a robot). If any of his works DID end up in a game, it would be that piece of work and that piece of work alone and not any others that aren't added. This is because a) MK is an EX-employee, and is no longer an official in-house lore master for any of TES's developing companies. And b) Bethesda themselves, the legal owner of TES, said:

"Remember that only things that have been published in Elder Scrolls games should be considered official lore." - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fan_Interview_III

Which they said when asked if one of MK's OOG works was canon.

Anyway, feel free to use my userbox as you wish! It was only something I cooked up in 5 minutes

[legoless]

@AKB & Lady Nerevar(Who, from AKB's long and polite response, I can assume is an extremely well respected member of the community)
Can we have levels of canon? Star Wars and TV Tropes do, and it seems like a good system. Not only would it help a normal person sort through all of the lore, it would also raise Kirkbride's work above most other fanon (into what TV Tropes would call Word of St. Paul).

The wiki uses something similar, but instead of ugly banners we just use reference categories (the most common of which is 'out-of-game', i.e. developer fanon). Maybe a similar system will be brought in for the Loremaster's Archive at some point in the future, if the current mess of a consensus ever shifts.