Once upon a time, as such a time is when these things often occur, there was an art class. A bunch of students were taking the course. Some of the students prefer working in pen. Other students prefer working in pencil. Every day when the students take to their easels they find a fresh piece of paper. However, the teacher has drawn a few shapes and lines on the paper in the respective ink or graphite. The teacher tells the students they will be graded on their individuality.
For quite some time, all the students are content and consistently received excellent grades. Those who worked with pencil would often find themselves erasing some or even all of the pre-drawn bits to fit their artwork. Those who worked with pen could not erase anything, but they enjoyed the technical aspect of incorporating the pre-drawn bits into their final piece. Everybody had fun comparing art and seeing how each individual expressed themselves through their work.
However, as the semester went on, things began to change. Every day, the teacher added more and more shapes and lines to the paper. Those students who worked with pencil simply did more erasing in order to make expressive art and maintain a grade. On the other hand, the students who worked in pen watched as their grades began to plummet. Every time more lines were added they found it more difficult to make the pieces personal to themselves. In fact, an increasing number of pieces from different students began to look almost exactly alike.
One day, with the semester almost over, the students came in, sat down before their easels, and beheld what awaited them. Every easel had a piece of paper with an intricate drawing of a sailboat, a lighthouse, and a rocky beach. The only things missing were the lighthouse's roof and part of the sailboat's mast. The pencil-using students got right to work erasing everything they didn't want to work with. The students who used pen, however, were dumbfounded. One of them stood up and got the teacher's attention.
"Yes?" asked the teacher. "What seems to be the problem?"
"The problem is what you're making us work with," the student said. "You've been making it harder and harder for us to make our artwork unique to ourselves by continually adding more to the page that we have to work around. Now you've left us with almost nothing we can even do! Each of us is going to wind up with a picture of a sailboat, a lighthouse, and a rocky beach."
"So? I prefer when inked art is depicting sailboats, lighthouses, and rocky beaches."
"But we don't want to draw those things, the people who come to see our art don't want those things, and now we can't get a good grade because our art won't reflect our individuality."
"That's because you're working in ink. If you want to get good grades you'll have to work in pencil. I only want ink art of sailboats, lighthouses, and rocky beaches."
"If you want those so bad, then why don't you make that art for yourself and stop making things difficult for us ink-users?"
"It's quite simple," the teacher said. "I'm the one who gets to come in here before class and draw on the easels. That's why."
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This is what's happening with the "rampant canonization", folks. Some of us in the community like being able to do whatever we please with our stories, artwork, and MOCs. Those who don't want to work with a bit of the established canon just ignore it. They erase and move forward with their pencils working away. But some of us, myself included, really like working with ink. We don't want to change what's on the paper already, what the established canon is. In fact, we like the technical aspect of working with what's already there. But now all these people pushing the additional canonization of facts are throwing more and more on the page. This doesn't affect the pencil-users because erasing things that don't fit their ideas is already their forte. But the pen-users now find themselves in an increasingly tightening bind. Those pre-drawn bits, the established canon, are no longer interesting pieces, they're restrictions. We're being told by the "canonizers" that we can make our art, MOCs, and fanfics just as easily; all we have to do is switch to pencil, ignore the canon. But if we want to keep working in our preferred medium, if we want to work with the canon, we're restricted to what they keep adding to the page. Why? Because they want all the ink pictures their way and we can't stop them from adding more lines and shapes before class.
I seriously considered posting this in its own topic in COT
TN
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