I know this isn't really related to leftism or anything, but I thought you wonderful people on the hexadic angular bruin website like it when people talk about special interests. I'll spoiler everything to make it digestible.
My bias for canon
Yes, I know diegetic essentialism is a plague, and I shouldn't like works over internal consistency / ideas over a more meta literary analysis, but I still do, as it's quite enjoyable to talk about diegesis and play around with it. This is just a declaration of bias for a consistent and full canon over a non-canon.
What is the pseudo-canon, and why SCP is the primary example
A few day ago from writing this post, I made this comment on the previous megathread: https://hexbear.net/comment/6457308
It is my first talk of this on the website. My analysis is a little lackluster, and I wasn't very in depth. So, I'll try to talk about it a bit more, explaining the pseudo-canon as we go along.
The SCP wiki in particular maintains a policy of "no defining canon" meaning that nothing is offically canonical. However, this is de jure. If we look at the de facto side of things, there are very clearly established things as "fact."
Even though people are told to "curate their canons," to make their own universes by selectively interpreting the works provided to them, they more often than not go towards a very specific type of canon - the popular one. While this isn't necessarily wrong, it's an argument against the idea of the SCP mythology not holding a canon.
Let's talk about a key element: D-Class personnel. While, technically, they are not supposed to be defined, but instead interpreted by you, there is undoubtedly a common perception that defines what a D-Class personnel is.
The common and correct take via consensus is that they are prisoners, or in some cases, kidnapped individuals, who are forced to engage in tests deemed to hazardous for regular personnel.
If I were to say, for instance, D-Class personnel are actually volunteers who are given million dollar salary's and given the highest honors for their work dealing with anomalies, I would both be correct and wrong at the same time.
Correct in the sense that the "official" or at-least commonly touted rhetoric that there is no canon, but incorrect in the idea that 90% of the fan-base holds true and canonical the D-Class as prisoner idea.
This is the pseudo-canon. You are not officially or technically wrong, but nobody will consider your take on the subject as the preferable take to the popular one. In the best case scenario, a story containing the D-Class as volunteer idea will be a "fun experimentation" or "what if scenario" but rarely will it be considered apart of someone's canon.
The pseudo-canon is canonicity disguised as non-canonicity. If we move away from the wiki, we see this effect amplified by 100. Ask any casual SCP enjoyer (played a few games, read an article or two, watched some YouTube videos on it) and they will tell you the most mainstream and popular narrative as if it was fact.
And, indeed, if we look at those games or YouTube videos, by nature of HAVING to accept a specific idea of what the SCP mythos is in order to actually make their content, they create a canon. And most of the time, it is the most popular one.
The process of the pseudo-canon
The process of the pseudo-canon is a simple one.
We start out with canonical anarchy. A specific concept is undefined, vague, or whatever. Let's take who keeps the documents secret.
This was vague for the longest time, until a prolific author by the name of Dr. Clef invents the idea of RAISA (Recordkeeping and Information Security Agency) during a rewrite of the SCP-076 article. This is the second stage, where a concept is put out there. At this time, many concepts can be put out.
The third stage is standardization. People pick a concept, and slowly forget other concepts. Let's say somebody tried to publish an SCP article that said "The foundation's primary informational security thing is the Database Systems Enforcement Administration (DSEA)" or something like that.
In a world where the pseudo-canon was perfect at allowing people to entertain all concepts presented by all authors, both RAISA and DSEA would receive stories and tales, with neither of them taking precedent over the other.
However, it's pretty obvious that DSEA would get swept under the rug and RAISA would remain the thing that every author used whenever they want to write about redactions or whatever. By this point, standardization is complete. There can be other concepts, but people have already accepted one thing as canon, and nothing else is allowed to even come close to it.
Tl;dr: Canon anarchy, people don't really care or just make up whatever the want. Then suggestion, as people try to put out their ideas. Then it's standardization, as a singular idea is chosen as preferable to all others, and nothing is allowed to achieve or even come close to the same level of acceptance or "correctness" as the selected idea.
The flaws of pseudo-canon
The SCP wiki is a wiki about SCP. Not about mythology in general, not about spoopy scary things in general, but specifically about the SCP foundation. Sure, there is a canon in the SCP wiki which is about a what if scenario where the SCP foundation does not exist, but once again, refer to the idea of pseudo-canon, and how nobody is internalizing this idea or treating it as equal to the idea of the SCP foundation existing.
The SCP foundation as a concept is scarcely defined at moments, and most of it's definitions come not from discussion and consensus, but from proposition and consensus. Rather than sitting down and asking what the SCP foundation is, people just throw shit at the wall, and whatever sticks is canon to 90% of everyone.
"There is no canon" but anything that's popular enough is canon to the majority of individuals. The definition of what the SCP foundation is shifts every day, with more and more people flinging more and more shit at the wall.
This is a bad way to organize anything. Nobody wants to (or logistically can) agree on what the SCP foundation is, because it's an open project with millions of fans and thousands of writers. Once again, this is the SCP wiki, not the spoopy creatures wiki.
This wiki is centered around the SCP foundation yet can't be bothered to give a solid and unyielding baseline for what it is. The only thing that's constant is that people make shit up and if enough people like it, it's canon.
When you read an SCP article, you may find it enjoyable, and that's fair. But what you are not reading a cohesive and coherent diegesis. For every SCP article, you either have to rethink what the SCP foundation means (for stories that try to go against the pseudo-canon) or re-read the same old boring "SCP morally gray, save the world but also kinda mean" thing (for stories that conform with the pseudo-canon.)
I'm going to be honest, this is one of the least pressing contradictions there is. It's not actively harming anyone, and while some people might be mildly perturbed (like me), it's not going away anytime soon. But if we want to talk about solutions...
There is no middle ground between canon or non-canon
There are only two solutions to this contradiction.
The SCP wiki develops a vanguardist writing methodology where it removes a lot of freedom in exchange for narrative cohesion, losing it's "nothing is canon" and "curate your own content" messages.
or
The SCP wiki drops the SCP shit and becomes a generic scary monster wiki. It'll become a hub for everyone's ideas about anomalous entities, and it will be disorganized, chaotic, but it can also be fun.
Like I said, this is a non-pressing contradiction, and the SCP wiki can stay how it is for an extremely long time before any contradictions pop up. But, eventually, the contradictions will sharpen, and you can only blame the pseudo-canon at that point.
Anyway, this is long. You don't have to read it all or anything, but I hope you do, and I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks!
