Fanfic Index Thread

[jwhouk]

Cinny was born about three-five years before Rock died. She remembers the funeral - barely.

[Warrl]

Joe, I believe we have a few new stories for the index...

A Texan Comes to Visit
Two Screws Shy of a Picknick <sic> Basket
Horse Sense

Paintball Madness (is this Extended Wapsiverse canon?)
Too Many Sparks (pretty sure it isn't canon, maybe put the non-canon stuff in a separate section and not worry about chronological order)

[TazManiac]

Wapsi Square FanFic.... Whats that?

[lake_wrangler]

Joe, I believe we have a few new stories for the index...

A Texan Comes to Visit
Two Screws Shy of a Picknick <sic> Basket
Horse Sense

Paintball Madness (is this Extended Wapsiverse canon?)
Too Many Sparks (pretty sure it isn't canon, maybe put the non-canon stuff in a separate section and not worry about chronological order)

Wait: are you saying there are canon fanfics, and non-canon fanfics?

I though all fanfic was non-canon, by definition...

[Warrl]

Wapsi Square FanFic.... Whats that?

If that's a serious question, go to this post (which is back on page 1 of this thread), right-click on one of the links in the list, and open it in another tab or window. Each link is to a thread in the Fan Art forum containing a story... along with, typically, lots of comments about the story.

If you like what you find, I suggest starting at the top of the list and working your way down.

A few of them have been formatted as books in PDF files. In that format, "Doing It Right" ran a bit over 500 pages. Yes, just the one story.

Wait: are you saying there are canon fanfics, and non-canon fanfics?

Well, there's the Wapsiverse that Pablo writes, and then there's the Extended Wapsiverse which is based on it and has a bunch of additional authors. And then there's Too Many Sparks, which is based on the Extended Wapsiverse, Girl Genius, and a few other things. It doesn't fit in the Extended Wapsiverse - doesn't even try.

[Dave]

And then there's Too Many Sparks, which is based on the Extended Wapsiverse, Girl Genius, and a few other things. It doesn't fit in the Extended Wapsiverse - doesn't even try.

Too Many Sparks did introduce a number of characters best described as canon fodder, though.

[lake_wrangler]

Paintball Madness (is this Extended Wapsiverse canon?)
Too Many Sparks (pretty sure it isn't canon, maybe put the non-canon stuff in a separate section and not worry about chronological order)

Wait: are you saying there are canon fanfics, and non-canon fanfics?

Well, there's the Wapsiverse that Pablo writes, and then there's the Extended Wapsiverse which is based on it and has a bunch of additional authors. And then there's Too Many Sparks, which is based on the Extended Wapsiverse, Girl Genius, and a few other things. It doesn't fit in the Extended Wapsiverse - doesn't even try.

But that's just my point: Paul writes Wapsiverse canon stories, all fanfics are Extended Wapsiverse non-canon stories. So how could anyone even speak of "canon" fanfic, vs non-canon fanfic? Aren't all fanfics, by definition, non-canon?

[Warrl]

You may note that I said "Extended Wapsiverse canon".

(I do know of a fanfic that became canon, to some degree at least. But it's for a different webcomic, and the fanfic is not set on the same planet as the comic. It got incorporated via a name reference.)

[Dave]

I don't think I'd call them "canon". That's really a term best reserved for those stories and characters that are either created by, adopted by, or explicitly approved/sanctioned by the original author of the fictional universe. In this case, that's Pablo, and he has not (to my knowledge) done any of those things with respect to any of the fanfic stories or characters. (Nor has he rejected, renounced, forbade, or anathematized them or their authors, for which we can all be thankful!)

Calling them "extended Wapsiverse canon" is sorta questionable, because there isn't a definitive authority for the "extended Wapsiverse". It's not any one person's creation.

I would rather say that these stories are a corpus of "mutually consistent extensions" to canon. Thanks to the hard work and communications of this gang of fanfic writers, the stories share a set of characters and plot assumptions that do not conflict with or contradict each other (or anything substantial in canon, I think).

They aren't quite like the Bordertown or Thieves' World stories, as these are set in fictional worlds that were explicitly intended to be shared by multiple authors (and so all of the stories by those authors can reasonably be considered to be canon). Nor are they like those in Laumer's fascinating "Five Fates" collection, in which five authors all start from the same short introductory chapter and write five wildly different stories based on the same starting premise.

They're a shared-world effort for sure, and they're amazing, but I don't think the word "canon" is appropriate for them.

[jwhouk]

There has been exactly one canon novel written in the Wapsiverse. And that would be my "adaptation" of Katherine Gilchrist and the Lost Dolls of the Anasazi. The only non-canonical part is my epilogue where I pretend that the story was written by Atsali for a writing assignment.

[GlytchMeister]

There is CANON - stuff written/drawn/created by Paul. And then that novelization jwhouk did, which was authorized as canon by Paul.

Then there is FANON - stuff written and approved by the group of Fanfic authors.

There are some stories that have been written which are not covered by the main "fanon" designation - they occur in a different offshoot universe. So, still fanfic, but not part of the universe the Wapsi Writer's Guild has created.

And then, at the bottom rung in terms of how closely-tied to Wapsi something is, is "Too Many Sparks," which honestly is just a few authors screwing around with characters in a fun environment for shits-n'-giggles. It's anarchy. It's also a testing ground for characters, and could conceivably be a proving ground for authors who may wish so join, I guess. I chose Girl Genius as a host universe because, in that universe, it seems pretty much anything goes, and there's a whole lotta stuff happening everywhere, so it isn't boring.

I think Atomic wrote something about Calvin Hobbes, Interior Designer, or something like that. As far as I can tell, that is pretty much on the same level as "Too Many Sparks" in this context: it's just a story, it's not really connected to Wapsi.

[Atomic]

I think Atomic wrote something about Calvin Hobbes, Interior Designer, or something like that. As far as I can tell, that is pretty much on the same level as "Too Many Sparks" in this context: it's just a story, it's not really connected to Wapsi.

"The Ticket" was written as a silly take on the Calvin and Hobbes universe. It was a writing exercise and not cannon in any way. "The End" was an extension of the Wapsi universe, following the consequence of Pratt and McBride's nature and duties. In that sense, I follow cannon, but parallel Wapsi. Of course, if PW wants to illustrate that tale as part of his ongoing adventures, he's welcome to do so and make it cannon!

[lake_wrangler]

I think this thread should be made into a sticky. Not only that, but maybe even a separate thread that would include the ordered and linked post that appears further down the first page. That separate thread would not include any comments (they would be included here, I guess, just like some fanfics have their own comment thread), so as to keep it clear, and would be kept up to date by whoever took the time to post it to begin with (hence the need for comments here, if a fanfic needs to be inserted between two others, for instance, it would be specified here, and the other thread author would then do the actual insertion into his post.)