Post by Sarisa on Oct 28, 2013 2:02:41 GMT -5
I know I haven't been active on this board much - not much to say recently - but there is one subject I've thought about a little.
A lot of the arguing on this board revolves around information that is very useful, but comes from sources near the borderline between canon and non-canon - Mario's last name and where Mario grew up.
That came to mind when I wandered into parts of the Final Fantasy community that talk about the main villain of Final Fantasy 2. In all three games in which he officially appears, he is never named. Everyone addresses him as "Emperor". But every fan who did their background reading names him "Mateus". The name came from a Japanese novelization of the game that departs wildly from canon as presented in the game, to the point that the entire last act is different. FF12 has summoned monsters based on early FF final bosses, and the one whose history matches the Emperor’s best is Mateus. The mascot fighter spinoff has a weapon for him named "Mateus’s Malice". This is the sum total of the evidence over more than 20 years, and in Square fashion FF2 has been remade more than once with added content. I wouldn’t consider any of those sources more than marginally canonical.
So why do fans not even conceive of the character having a different name despite the weak support? In my opinion, the reason is that there are no forces pushing against it. The resistance to the Brooklyn Theory comes from it adding massive complexity to the Mario world for little gain in explanatory power, plus its early-'90s origin and lack of modern references to it in a universe whose creators have de-canonized elements of that age. The resistance to the surname Mario is that the people stating he has no last name are as authoritative as the sources stating he has one. Giving FF2's Emperor a name adds no complexity and contradicts nothing – early FF games gave characters a mix of real European names that sounded exotic in Japanese and fantasy names, with FF2 leaning strongly towards real names. So any fan who disputed the character's name would have the burden of proof since it's so widely accepted.
What does that mean for us? Not a lot, since the sheer amount of Mario material means that barely canonical material contradicts something else more often than not, but it's good to keep an open mind about these elements since they sometimes come back many years later (the ur-example being the Nintendo Power Link to the Past comic and manga that depicted Link turning into a wolf in the Dark World instead of the canonical rabbit, which reappeared 14 years later).
A lot of the arguing on this board revolves around information that is very useful, but comes from sources near the borderline between canon and non-canon - Mario's last name and where Mario grew up.
That came to mind when I wandered into parts of the Final Fantasy community that talk about the main villain of Final Fantasy 2. In all three games in which he officially appears, he is never named. Everyone addresses him as "Emperor". But every fan who did their background reading names him "Mateus". The name came from a Japanese novelization of the game that departs wildly from canon as presented in the game, to the point that the entire last act is different. FF12 has summoned monsters based on early FF final bosses, and the one whose history matches the Emperor’s best is Mateus. The mascot fighter spinoff has a weapon for him named "Mateus’s Malice". This is the sum total of the evidence over more than 20 years, and in Square fashion FF2 has been remade more than once with added content. I wouldn’t consider any of those sources more than marginally canonical.
So why do fans not even conceive of the character having a different name despite the weak support? In my opinion, the reason is that there are no forces pushing against it. The resistance to the Brooklyn Theory comes from it adding massive complexity to the Mario world for little gain in explanatory power, plus its early-'90s origin and lack of modern references to it in a universe whose creators have de-canonized elements of that age. The resistance to the surname Mario is that the people stating he has no last name are as authoritative as the sources stating he has one. Giving FF2's Emperor a name adds no complexity and contradicts nothing – early FF games gave characters a mix of real European names that sounded exotic in Japanese and fantasy names, with FF2 leaning strongly towards real names. So any fan who disputed the character's name would have the burden of proof since it's so widely accepted.
What does that mean for us? Not a lot, since the sheer amount of Mario material means that barely canonical material contradicts something else more often than not, but it's good to keep an open mind about these elements since they sometimes come back many years later (the ur-example being the Nintendo Power Link to the Past comic and manga that depicted Link turning into a wolf in the Dark World instead of the canonical rabbit, which reappeared 14 years later).
