What is canon and is it directly related to yaoi fics and doujinshis?

Question

I usually see this in fanfiction and doujinshi threads. What does it mean?

Answer 1

Wikipedia has a pretty good artcle that I link in the source, but in summary, canon is made up of all works that are official to a universe. For most anime, this means the anime itself - the characterizations, plot and world shown in the anime is canon. When fans like ourselves write fiction or draw doujinshi, those are non-canon.

Sometimes, when a particular piece of fan work is sufficiently different, people will say it goes against canon or is non-canonical. For instance, if Suzy Q and John Doe are very clearly girlfriend and boyfriend in an anime, but someone writes a fic where John Doe and Joe Schmoe because boyfriends, someone may complain that it goes against canon.

While like I said before, all fan works are non-canon, some people feel are more in line with canon (the original) than others. This is probably where you're seeing it pop up in relation to yaoi fics and doujinshi.

Also, some works have multiple canon. For instance, a fic might be written with the manga canon in mind and not the anime canon. (Sometimes this will be labeled as "manga universe" or "anime universe.")

Some really large fictional universes like LOST have multiple works under them - for instance the TV series, the web game, the video game, the novels... but only consider the TV series canon. The producers/creators in this case may say whether the 'extended universe' (with the video game, websites, etc) is canon or not. In the case of LOST, they have been clear that only the episodes are considered canon.

Answer 2

The word canon itself? Well, it generally means if a different media belongs to the actual storyline or relates to the actual storyline. So no, it's not directly related to yaoi fics and doujinshis. If you saw the word canon with those type of media, most likely they were NOT canon since they were not written by the creators of the original stories.

Here is an easy example to follow:The Naruto movies are not canon since they do not exist in the original storyline. They are their own fabricated stories.What is canon is the manga and the anime since they contribute to the original storyline.

Answer 3

When fan girls use the word cannon, like some are saying that the couple Itachi and Sasuke  from Naruto is 'canon' they mean that there is evidence in the story line of a manga or anime that supports that that couple could possibaly get together, or they had a crush on one another at some point in time.

The fan definition is diffrent form the real one. Usually what people see as 'canon' is actually just fan serves. Which is somthing that some authors of manga or anime do, just to please fans of a popular couple. So they'll through in little hints of yaoi yuri or hintai even though in truth that couple probably won't get together.