Forum:Updating policies, guidelines and the wiki/Canon

This page details the wiki's stance on the issue of canon in the Halo franchise.

What is canon?
Canon is defined as characters, locations, and details that are considered to be genuine (or "official"), and those events, characters, settings, etc. that are considered to have inarguable existence within the fictional universe. Halopedia operates strictly as a collection of Halo canon information. "Official" Halo canon can only be created by developers of the Halo universe. Therefore, any material added to Halopedia must be official, sanctioned canon that can be cited from a work created or sanctioned by Halo's creators, Bungie Studios and 343 Industries. Better put, Halopedia is not a site for fanfiction.

"When a painter starts, they have an idea. They sketch, they doodle, they make strokes on canvas and paper with pencil, pen, brush, charcoal, whatever... Until the painting is finished, any previous stroke of the brush can be covered by a later one, altering the position of a tree, the color of the sky, a reflection in the water, the placement of a person, the existence of anything.... until the artist says "fin", it is not up to others to determine what is "so" and what is an "alteration"."

- Recon Number 54

The general rule of the canon policy is fairly simple, as explored in the canonical case of i love bees, that "the content should be considered canonical unless contradicted by more authoritative sources".

How do we interpret the canon?
There are various ways of interpreting canon but in most cases, they will typically refer to two modes of interpretation: Watsonian and Doylist. The most common approach in most fanbase would be from a Watsonian perspective, that is to interpret the information from the standpoint of the text. This is sometimes called an in-universe perspective. The Doylist approach refers to the real world perspective. As Fanlore puts it, "[t]hings that happen in canon happen because of decisions made by the author or TPTB; inconsistencies are probably authorial error. These explanations will sometimes be written right into the canon."

A Watsonian perspective seeks to amend canonical inconsistencies by presenting an in-universe plausible explanation. To do this, they will examine the available canonical information about the subject, look at other similar cases in the canon, and put themselves in the minds of any characters involved to guess their decisions. For instance, a Watsonian would look at the varying appearances of the MJOLNIR Mark IV and say "My theory is that the varying appearances are different armor plating variants. We see from armor permutations that the Mark V and Mark VI were highly modular, therefore it's likely the Mark IV could also have its appearance changed, even dramatically, while the underlying hardware remained the same." A Watsonian perspective is very helpful to solve inconsistencies, but can risk veering into "fanon", and without an official source behind it cannot be considered on the same authority as canon.

But a Doylist perspective handles canonical inconsistencies by an explanation of what the creators were likely thinking. They will examine from an authorial point-of-view, read up on behind-the-scenes information, seek for story meaning, try to put themselves into the minds of the authors, and keep in mind that human creators are often fallible. A Doylist would address the same issue of the MJOLNIR Mark IV's appearances with "Likely the authors just wanted the suit to look cool. The Mark VI appearance of the Chief in Halo 3 sold really well and looks iconic, so they made it look similar in Halo Wars so it'd sell more. They don't intend it to be realistic, and The Cole Protocol version of the suit looks more realistic and was drawn by a Bungie employee, so that's probably what the Mark IV actually looks like." Doylist perspectives ground the work in the real world and let us see what the authors may have been thinking, but it too can often involve just as much guesswork as Watsonian theories and sometimes is misused as a platform for complaining about the story direction.