I’m going to put a stop to this entire argument. People are already skirting Rule #0 here, so don’t escalate it any further.
 
There is literally no further points that can be made here, and nothing else can be said on the topic without resorting to petty namecalling or ad-hominem bullshit. If you want to continue, take it to the forums and learn how to make a point without throwing insults.

@TexasUberAlles  
Is that so? Because I haven’t seen you post “an intelligent or reasonable thing” in this thread yet. You haven’t actually proved anyone wrong, and after me and that other guy pointing out the clear contradictions between what you’ve said and the TF wiki link you were promoting so hard, you’re just gonna ignore that too. And that particular excerpt is not special, so why parade it around as being somehow different? It’s a similar argument that I’ve worded in various ways over my various posts. The comics are not part of the show’s reality, universe or continuity, and thus they are not part of the show canon.
 
That’s not only an argument that I’ve made in that part you quoted, it’s one of the various arguments I’ve been making in just about every post that you’ve either been strawmanning or straight up failing to properly understand. It’s not my or anyone else’s personal opinion that the comics are not part of the same reality, continuity, or whatever the hell word pleases you most as the show, it’s a fact. Yes, an objective fact.
 
What’s so hard to understand about that? You keep bringing up my supposed personal opinion in your posts, but I’ve not once alluded to any of this being about anyone’s opinion. If someone wants to take a headcanon from the comics, that’s fine, but it’s not an opinion to point out the clear fact that the IDW comics and the content inside of them are not part of the same reality, and thus the ‘canon’, of the show.
 
Frankly, I can’t see where you got the outright delusion that it’s somehow about my or anyone else’s “personal opinion”. If I went off into some rant about the quality of the comics for example, whether arguing for good or bad, then that’d be a personal opinion, because a lot of that would be subjective and such, but simply stating the simple fact that they and the contents (writing, characterization, etc) inside of them aren’t part of the show reality/canon/universe/whatever is not.
 
I will say that I find it very ironic that you attempt to claim that I’m not arguing in good faith or with ‘valid points’, when you’ve ignored, strawmanned, or just flat out misunderstood the vast majority of the things I and the other people who’ve been disagreeing with you have said. What’s the endgame here? Because talking with you about “muh vocabulary” and your extremist obsession with it is not productive or meaningful, and I’d like to sleep. The comics are not canon to the show no matter how much you talk down to everyone else in the most condescending way possible, sorry. If that’s all you’re going to continue doing, then don’t even bother responding.
 
@Background Pony #F5D9  
I don’t know why I even bother :^(
 
@TexasUberAlles  
Oh boo hoo, complain some more about it, will you? But in the meantime, do you have any sort of actual point to make? Because while many of those parts definitely could have been worded better, all I was trying to do was explain the reality of the word’s usage in the MLP fandom, to try and demonstrate/help point out the ways we weren’t on the same page, and put a stop to those hefty strawmen you were building with the mindset that everyone is somehow using the definition that you’ve been peddling, when in reality most people simply aren’t.
 
I’m still trying to find the right words for this, because as I mentioned the parts about this in particular weren’t worded as well as I would have liked, but whether you think it’s right or wrong, and all judgement about it cast aside, when someone in the MLP fandom uses the word canon, chances are they aren’t using the same definition you’ve been promoting. If it wasn’t so common you wouldn’t have felt the need to make a meme complaining about it, so let’s not pretend that the usage I’m referring to and that everyone but you in this comments thread has been using isn’t far more common at this point. It’s certainly all I’ve ever known. Do you mean to attempt to attack me for simply pointing that out?
 
Either way, I may go to bed soon, so if you decide to pointlessly continue this circus spectacle of a conversation, then I might not be able to reply for a while, depending on what I decide.

@Background Pony #F5D9  
Dude, don’t even bother with weak sauce like that, you’re just embarrassing yourself.

Vic Sage’s dog under the dinner table doesn’t beg the question this hard.

@TexasUberAlles
 

 
Keep talking to that mirror, tex.

@Background Pony #52C0  
I’m not going into another wall of text  
>immediately goes into another wall of text  
>is still wrong  
gg, G.  

This is literally the first intelligent and reasonable thing you’ve said in this thread. I remain baffled that you for whatever reason have decided to smash over six thousand words into the keyboard just to die on a hill of poor vocabulary skills when you’ve already made the only point that actually matters to this pointless arglebargle. If you were actually right about anything and arguing in good faith with a valid point, you’d handwave the comics as irrelevant to the show and move the hell on instead of murdering nearly 33,000 innocent characters in an attempt to _~canonize your personal opinion as an objective fact that applies to everyone else in the fandom instead of just you.
 
The comics are still canon no matter how divergent their continuity might be from the cartoon, and you are still wrong. “Congratulating yourself on having a universally-believed opinion in a thread where multiple people are pointing out how wrong you are” is not, in fact, a synonym for “being right”.

@Daring-Do  
Nah. I don’t think such minor shoutouts in something like those books would be any sort of justification to try and claim a whole comic is retroactively canon or something, that’d be pretty silly/unreasonable. I can understand the arguments for the G.M Berrow chapter book that was explicitly referenced, again, but absolutely not the comics, which are clearly a separate reality and such as I’ve been saying in my giant walls of text. I don’t think relatively minor references contained in a book that itself only had basic, primary plot events/points mentioned in passing has any significance at all. Unless the events of something is brought up explicitly in the show, they’re not canon.
 
Anyway, as I said, I’d like to be getting to bed soon, so hopefully this little conversation won’t drag on too much longer. If I stick around too much longer, other people might start showing up and keeping things more extended than they need to be.

@Background Pony #52C0  
Yeah, I think people are mostly fine with the chapter books. Though that brings me to my other point - if a chapter book references the comics, and said chapter book is considered to have happened, does that mean the comic(s) referenced also happened?

@Daring-Do  
Fair point on the timeframes for that one in particular. I can see an argument for that specific G.M Berrow book being part of the same reality/continuity or whatever, but not the others that haven’t had their events explicitly referenced. And ones that happened in a more tightly knit timeframe are more up in the air, with no real way to know for sure.
 
G.M Berrow has written for the show though, maybe if she does more we’ll see another reference or two to the events of one of her books in the future. who knows. I don’t think many people would have an issue with that, as her books from what I’ve seen seem pretty light-hearted and non-controversial, though most of them I haven’t read other than screenshots posted on here and other sites, so maybe I’m missing something, haha.

@Background Pony #52C0
 
“And even then it’s certainly no guarantee, see the tweet in the picture above and what people were claiming before it came to light.”
 
I’m aware - Many of the references the chapter books have made were close enough that people generally agree they were the result of advance scripts (the chapter books have actually been a neat source of advance episode hints in the past - hinting at Maud Pie, the Griffonstone episode, etc. in ways that make me suspect they knew full well that they were planting teasers). But the specific cases I’m talking about were references the show made YEARS after these chapter books came out, when the episodes in question likely weren’t even thought of, let alone written.

@Daring-Do  
I’m not going into another wall of text, because I’m tired (and will likely head to bed soon, as I should have much earlier) and between my posts and others (such as DanielTepesKraus’s posts on the matter), many relevant points and counterarguments have been made, but that’s just plain wrong. The comics absolutely are non-canon and are a totally separate reality from the show, and that’s especially obvious for the older issues.
 
The comics and their content aren’t part of the same reality, universe, continuity, or whatever you want to call it as the show, that much should be obvious at this point, and again, that’s especially true for the older issues, compared to the newer ones that at least seem to be using more story elements from the show, albeit that doesn’t make them canon either, it just makes them focus less on their own totally original stories and more on things based to varying extents off of stories from the source material. Though that certainly doesn’t guarantee quality, as seen in that latest couple of issues; maybe they’ll get better though. And EQG is a false equivalence, though I don’t want to get into any arguments about EQG.
 
The G.M Berrow books on the other hand are an interesting case, but I can only see an argument for the specific ones that have been clearly referenced, not any of the others. And even then it’s certainly no guarantee, see the tweet in the picture above and what people were claiming before it came to light.

I’m not sure on “completely separate”. Like a lot of expanded universe material, it’s a mostly one-sided exchange. The comics aren’t intended to be a separate reality; they’re supposed to be the same reality and universe as the show. The show, of course, is unlikely to go out of its way to reference or acknowledge the comics (except via slight meaningless things like the cameo of Price and Cook’s OCs), so if your definition of canon is “affects the prime source material in a meaningful way”, then I suppose you might have a point. Not being acknowledged isn’t necessarily the same thing as “never happened”, however. Consider the case of Equestria Girls - Meghan McCarthy has outright said it’s canon in the sense that it happened and Twilight learned something from it, but that it won’t be discussed in the show proper. (Yet we did still have Flash Sentry cameos in Season 4)
 
Let’s ponder how the G.M. Berrow chapter books relate to all this. The chapter books are more frequently agreed to be canon than the comics are - and no, not because of the “advance scripts” thing they had going on. A.K. Rogers made a throwaway but very explicit reference to the events of the old Pinkie Pie chapter book in the cold opening for The Mane Attraction, very clearly indicating “this happened”. Hearthbreakers also used the names for Pinkie Pie’s family members established by that book, and the recent Equestria Girls Movie Magic short (said short wasn’t written by Berrow) was all about a film adaptation for Daring Do and the Marked Thief of Marapore - heavily featuring characters, locations and plot points from that chapter book in the in-universe movie.
 
The reason I bring this up is because the chapter books - including Daring Do and the Marked Thief of Marapore - have a tendency to reference the comics. Goops for Stuff hide ointment from the Rarity micro comic is actually a fairly important plot point in Marked Thief of Marapore, and Hoofbeard of the pirate comics arc is discussed.

@TexasUberAlles  
You misread it.  

 
IDW comics are canon in their own IDW continuity, but they’re still NOT CANON in the show’s continuity.

@TexasUberAlles  
It sounds like you’re ignoring everything I say, and putting a strawman in it’s place. Once again, literally nobody has said that IDW is not officially licensed, just that it’s not part of the show canon, and thus not part of it’s reality, universe, continuity, or whatever. The Transformers wiki has no real authority, but even it agrees with that much.
 
From my post, that you obviously neglected to read or put any level of effort into understanding.
 
“It also says that canon is used as a synonym for official with Transformers, but even ignoring the fact that Transformers is not MLP, that literally doesn’t contradict a single thing I’ve ever said in this comments thread, because I’ve never said that IDW is not technically ’official’ in the sense that it has a license, just that it’s not part of the reality, universe, continuity, and so on that the show is, and thus the information/content inside including stories, the characters/characterization, the setting, and so on, is irrelevant and not part of the show canon.”
 
I clearly acknowledged the part of the article you refer to (and made it clear that nobody other than you is attempting to use canon as a synonym for official here), and I’m saying that nothing whatsoever in that part contradicts a word I’ve said. I pointed out that second sentence because it’s basically reaffirming the definition of the word that me and everyone else here but you is using, not because it’s the only part of the article I read.
 
Here’s another little excerpt I found enlightening - “canon from one continuity cannot, in general, be used as evidence to support canon in a different continuity” which not only acknowledges that things such as the show and comics have completely separate canons, it is also basically what I’ve been arguing when I say that information from the comics has no relevance or authority to the show or anything from the show. It’s basically fanfiction in that regard, not in a literal sense, but certainly in it’s level of authority on the show’s reality.
 
And no, whether or not something is canon in the sense that people are arguing about has ZERO to do with personal headcanon. It’s a matter of fact and what’s simply true or not, because canonicity, or what’s part of the same reality as the show, is not a matter of opinion. As I said, if you want to take headcanon from IDW, or pick and choose whatever you damn please from it, be my guest, but it doesn’t change the fact that IDW is not part of the same canon as the show, by the wiki articles very definition (it literally talks about separate canons having separate continuities/realities and such, and that they should not be conflated with each other), and the definition of just about everyone in this fandom.
 
IDW is a completely separate reality, with completely separate characters/characterization, stories, and settings, and while that doesn’t mean that a headcanon from it is invalid, it has zero authority on the show and is no different in relevance to the show than a headcanon you might take from a fanfiction you liked. So if you attempt to bring up something from the comics as evidence for something in a debate about what’s factual in the show/main canon, anyone with half a brain is gonna brush you off and remind you that it’s nothing more than your headcanon to do so.
 
Either way, the IDW comics are not canon, certainly not to the show, end of story. It has it’s own separate canon, reality, universe, and continuity, but it’s not part of, and is in fact completely separate from the show’s canon, reality, universe, and continuity. As the TF wiki article you linked states itself, what’s true in the comics separate canon can not in any way shape or form be used as evidence for something in the show canon, because they aren’t the same thing. The content in the comics is not part of the show canon, and nothing in the comics is valid or relevant evidence in any sort of debate about something from the show canon.

@Background Pony #52C0  
Yeah, you’re sure sickburnin’ me there about my “rants”, what with the over 5600 increasingly histrionic words you’ve spent desperately trying to justify your agenda-based misuse of just one.
 
Literally the second sentence in your link  
If your strategy is to read two sentences in to something and declare victory, I think I’m beginning to see the root of the problem. Ordinarily I’d suggest just… looking at the pictures, but you clearly didn’t actually do that.  
 
 
 

 
Here’s the part you should have kept scrolling to.

Since three sentences is apparently a space bridge too far, I’ll go ahead and quote their page on personal canon here as well, because it cuts to the heart of why you remain, as ever, wrong:

…Sound familiar?

@Background Pony #52C0  
Anyway, I feel like I could have worded a lot of that reply to your second comment (the response to the other BP) better, or maybe just avoided replying to that one at all since it wasn’t really necessary to also reply to your snark, but sadly the edit timer expired before I could improve that part of my post or reconsider the need to address that particularly condescending little comment (the edit timer does protect me from spending far too much time trying to iron out every little detail in my post, though, haha). Either way, I’m tired, so I’ll probably go to bed soon and worry about that stuff later, but who knows.

@ChuymaruZ  
Spicy, but at this point so painfully accurate.
 
@DanielTepesKraus  
Well yeah, but it’s not just events that happened, it’s also the characterization and stuff to do with the setting.
 
@TexasUberAlles  
“In the 20th century, however, the term has also been adopted in the discussion of most long-running media franchises to mean any event, character, or location within the fiction that is considered to have been “real” with respect to that fictional continuity”
 
Literally the second sentence in your link. Stop being ridiculous, because that’s exactly the sorts of arguments that I and everyone else here but you has been using, whether arguing for or against canon. IDW is not part of the continuity, universe, or indeed, reality of the show, and thus is non-canon to the show by the very definition you just posted. Material from the comics should not and can not be used as evidence on debates on the nature of the fictional universe from the show and the characters that inhabit it.
 
What point are you trying to make with that TF wiki link? Because literally the first few sentences disagree with the nonsense you’ve been posting. Going by those sentences, the IDW comics are indisputably, factually, non-canon.
 
It then literally goes on to talk about how different continuities, universes, realities, etc are part of completely separate canons, and that what’s true in one cannot be used as evidence or proof of something in another. It also clearly states that what’s canon for one continuity/universe/reality is not canon for another, separate one. IDW may well have it’s own separate canon, but it’s not a part of the show canon in any way, no matter how many strawmen you attack. None of the content from the comics is canon TO THE SHOW.
 
It also says that canon is used as a synonym for official with Transformers, but even ignoring the fact that Transformers is not MLP, that literally doesn’t contradict a single thing I’ve ever said in this comments thread, because I’ve never said that IDW is not technically ‘official’ in the sense that it has a license, just that it’s not part of the reality, universe, continuity, and so on that the show is, and thus the information/content inside including stories, the characters/characterization, the setting, and so on, is irrelevant and not part of the show canon. Albeit, it is a potential source for personal headcanon if somebody so chooses, nothing wrong with that. Either way, the article you linked agrees with all of that.
 
Anyway, people in the MLP fandom are not using ‘canon’ as a synonym for official, they’re using it as a shorthand phrase to get points like that across. Literally nobody without brain damage denies IDW being officially licensed, or even having it’s own separate canon, if that sort of technicality is all that you’re upset about, but their material certainly isn’t a part of the show or it’s canon. It’s not technically fanfiction, obviously, but it certainly has the same level of total irrelevance and lack of authority to the show’s reality or anything from that reality, and when people say ‘canon’ in this fandom, they are in fact referring to the show canon specifically. IDW is not canon.
 
Again, do you actually disagree with any of this, or the arguments being made, or is it just the wording being used that you’re complaining about? Because nobody gives a damn about that, believe me.
 
@TexasUberAlles  
You haven’t actually made any arguments, you’ve just whined and whined about how people aren’t using some word the ‘right’ way, when in fact the way it’s being used is pretty damn well-established. You may not like this comparison, but your rants are about as welcome as somebody complaining that the word ‘gay’ is being used to mean homosexual instead of just happy (not that the original meaning can’t be a valid use case too, but come on, when’s the last time you saw that?), or just about any other word with multiple or more modern meanings/usages.
 
As far as actual arguments go, you danced around engaging with any of them beautifully, in favor of attacking the words being used instead of the substance of the arguments themselves, and then when that fails, you’ve switched to building up some nice strawmen to attack, or alternatively you’ve just spectacularly misinterpreted what people are trying to say.
 
Either way, nobody gives a damn about what you think in regards to how people are using the word. You’re wasting peoples time trying to bark up that tree, including your own. I don’t personally care about what word is used, again, but canon is a well-established way to easily get many of these points across in just about every fandom, and that’s just the reality here. It’s not easily replaced, and as demonstrated in this thread, attempting to explain these arguments without it can be cumbersome to varying degrees.

@TexasUberAlles  
For starters, EqG is written by the same people who written for the show. But that doesn’t matter because your claim of “but nobody’s crying about EqG being non-canon” is definitely false.

@Background Pony #29FC  
Well, thank you for being big enough to admit you were wrong and conceding the argument.

@TexasUberAlles  
Yeah, I’m sure is just a bunch of people who don’t see it as canon and not your own personal impression :)

@Background Human  
neither of which acknowledged other published works as alternate universes within their own continuity  
I’m not actually sure what point you’re trying to make here. Equestria Girls, the Season 5 Finale, and Reflections all unambiguously establish the concept of alternate realities/timelines within their own frameworks; EqG has even more of a one-way-only relationship with Friendship Is Magic than the IDW comics do– since there have been numerous minor details that started out in the comics before jumping to the cartoon, and now we’re going to have an entire storyline which does that, while nothing aside from a reused character template from EqG has so far appeared in FIM at all– but nobody’s crying about EqG being “non-canon”. If “other published works” is the basis of your complaint, you’re going to have to explain why exactly that doesn’t also apply to EqG, which has its own distinct and separate production team.

@TexasUberAlles  
The multiversal nature of the Transformers franchise is crucial to its definition of canon. Each continuity is part of a single “meta-continuity”, and all Hasbro’s works are canon with respect to that continuity. By contrast, the closest we’ve gotten to an official multiverse in MLP is Equestria Girls and the “Reflections” arc, neither of which acknowledged other published works as alternate universes within their own continuity.

@Background Pony #29FC  
and another entrance for anyone else on this planet  
Or, alternately, we could see how Hasbro itself treats canon as regards to its toy-based generational multiversal multimedia franchises started in the early ‘80s. The people REEEEEEing about the IDW MLP comics being _~non-canon~ because they’re 200% MAD that the comics don’t line up with the cartoon don’t have any more valid an argument than if they were REEEEEEing about the IDW Transformers comics being _~non-canon~ because they’re buttmad that Megatron is an Autobot now instead the leader of the Decepticons he is in the TF:Prime cartoon. Different continuities within the same franchise have been an established part of comic book and cartoon universes for over half a century, they’re not going to stop being a thing because a handful of tree frogs are apoplectic that a blowed-up villain from the show got a new lease on life and a new/old girlfriend of questionable narrative value in the comics.
 
Again, the only people who are doing this are the ones trying to backwards-justify their seething hatred of the comics by declaring their personal opinions on the matter to be _{~objective fact}~; and again, trying to portray “a relatively small group of dedicated haters congregating to congratulate themselves for hating a thing” is in no way a fandom consensus or universal viewpoint, it’s just plain ol’ fashioned confirmation bias based on an extremely small sample.

@Background Pony #F5D9  
you nailed it. most importantly:
 
“The term “canon” nowadays refers to all works of fiction within a franchise’s fictional universe which are considered “to have actually happened” within the fictional universe they belong to.”
 
people can complain about canon not meaning that and run all over the booru trying to stir up as much drama as they want about it, but everyone else just doesn’t care and is going to keep using it that way because it’s pretty damned established and accepted.

@Background Pony #29FC  

@TexasUberAlles  
There should be a dictionary definition of “canon” based on TexasUbberAlles idea over this word and another entrance for anyone else on this planet.