Star Trek

Sequel?? Hmmm.... What about the Prequel?

LOL And my ff career is off to a good start.

Ooh I like that. Could say the same about writing, art, music, chess, cricket, church service (Another "canonical" connection?), that little puppy that makes eyes at you in the pet shop, or any one of a vast number of things.

Weird since the first time I started writing Star Trek fanfic, it was because of a crazy dream that just wouldn't get out of my head until I wrote it down.

Who cares if its "canon"? ME! Alright, I can appreciate good and well written fan fiction/STNovels, but I do not pretend it happened in the real STU. I am very into continuity and knowing what did or didn't truely happen in this fictional universe of ours.
Not everyone cares about canon, but heaps of fans do (from my understanding), of which, I am one.

LOL So ff is like a Pokemon Trainer. Interesting concept.

I am too afraid of Star Trek Fan Fiction. Too many Kirk/Spock out there....

hehehe. It's pretty easy to spot what isn't K/S.

Not having watched much Pokemon I couldn't really say about the above.

I guess a similar comparison might be made with the flying mounts on Avatar?

As I mentioned, it's something you could say about a multitude of endeavours.

Canon -- My view on this matter is, acknowledge it, but don't treat it as the quasi-religious imperative that the word implies. As for minor continuity errors, the series itself is peppered with them.

Without the continuity of canon there is no structure.

I had a thought just then about Canon.

Essentially, it is like memory.

We have three different kinds of memory (according to psychologists) Long term, short term, and the most immediate memory which allows us to recall what happened two seconds ago.

Without memory, we would be living our lives in a state of total confusion. There would be no narrative, no connection between each moment of our perceptions.

In a story, "Canon" is similar. It is the memory of what has come before, which allows us to build on that and to understand the context of everything that follows. On the other hand, memory is not always entirely reliable -- it is open to perception, reworking, and is never fully set into the proverbial concrete.

So we allow ourselves the room to play within this framework; But on occasion, the framework itself is fallible. Just as are our long-term memories.

Did you ever hear of the guy who remembered everything? He was never named in literature (psychologists believe in anonymity, for the most part). But he could remember every single little fact that he ever learned. The trouble was, he could not forget, and thus had tremendous difficulty sorting through the mountain of facts to arrange them into some comprehensive shape.

The other trouble with smaller details of Canon in Star Trek is that it is all on record, thus enabling us to watch the same scenes multiple times and notice and confirm the small details. Not that I'd have it any other way! Mantaray is correct in that narrative would not work without a broad framework. Another point, however:

Nitpicking is fun.

I'll just ring in here and respond to the question of canon or no canon.

I'm all for canon, when a show any show establishes something and then later contradicts it I am not happy since it messes with my suspension of disbelief.

Not too mention it comes across as laziness on the part of the writers. Of course the prime timeline of Star Trek is not perfect canon wise kind of hard to be with 700 plus episodes over 5 series and 10 movies. However they did try for the most part.

Anyway I'm all for canon.