What Is Canon & Should We Care About It? Fting. Author Alex White - AvP Galaxy Podcast

We have just uploaded the 184th episode of the Alien vs. Predator Galaxy Podcast! In our latest episode Alex White, the author of Alien: The Cold Forge and Alien: Into Charybdis joins regular hosts Corporal Hicks, RidgeTop and Xenomorphine to discuss the topic of canon.
We discuss the interpretations of canon, whether it matters to us as fans, whether it should matter to us as fans, working within the franchises and how canon affects the people who do, and plenty more!

[@jamesw7746]

Thank You for all of your great content!

[@gorvarhadgarson5227]

Loved Into Charybdis! Up there with Phalanx!

[@brians4016]

Love Alex White's Aliens books, they get Aliens!

[@TheMotionComic.]

Let's go!

[@dmitrymalinowski8101]

I've read almost all of the Alien novels but in my opinion, none of them were better than books written by Alex.

[@alistairrae9807]

My personal canon as it stands for the moment is the 4 original movies yes resurrection is not good but I love the other 3 I also consider Isolation and the trilogy of Out of the Shadows, River of Pain and Sea of Sorrows canon as well at least the full cast audiobooks

[@mikerude5073]

For me, canon is what holds 'Predictive Power' over what comes next or that is likely to end up being in a movie. Otherwise, what's the point of arguing it? Are we more likely to see Pretorian guard aliens and Queen Mothers from the old Dark Horse comics in a movie? OR more likely to see new variants of the alien? I could see a movie reveal that there are limitless amounts of variants to the Alien lifecycle, independent of host, and that it is not a completely predictable lifecycle or social structure. The Queen we saw in A2 might be one of a million possibly egg laying types, for an example of this fan theory. Let me put it like this, what allows directors to do more with a story and would allow the IP owner to sell more licenses for makers of merch? Well, the theory that what we have already seen are just part of many potential variants. But, the Autistic part of the fan base would lose our minds because we cannot line up our toys neatly. Too bad for us, we need to get used to the idea that we can't ever know everything about these things. It could easily become canon that this species is impossible to properly categorize or to predict the abilities and limitations. - now, that fan theory isn't canon, not yet, but my point doesn't matter what the fans think, that would give directors the most room in dealing with the creatures and making new variants to show the audience something new. It is a stronger prediction that new types of xenomorph show up that don't fit the previous fan categorizations than than to predict castes specifically from the DH comics would show up.

[@byrdface94]

Canon to me is all the movies and all the games from AvP 1-3 and the books

[@real_Greys0n]

It's kind of depressing to hear it so direct that they care zero about the canon of the universe.

[@jez49647]

Haven't watched yet, but in answer to the question: For me the movies are canon and that's about it. It doesn't really matter to me what is officially declared canon or not. If it's in the films, it happened, otherwise...

[@bobilly]

Alex is a legend, certainly one of the greats when it comes to EU material 👍

[@ADistantImage]

It's all some level of canon, so it's all canon. Campfire stories or whatever, Alex's imagination when writing Cold Forge is more authentic than his imagination would be reading it now, and way more accurate than mine or anyone who read his books. Fiction is always just a somewhat amorphous tale.

[@danb7903]

Can always trust Xenomorphine to keep it real and stick to his guns. Helps the discussions have balance. The Cold Forge was maybe top tier for an Alien book, but it is overrated IMO. I wonder how much other heavyweight sf the crew has read. For example, Hyperion

[@Xenosaurian]

Prey definitely should have left the flintlock pistol alone, as it is definitely the space jockey of the Predator series! Also, everything is canon, and fandoms are trash, and franchises are messy (especially nowadays when everything is descending into trash).

[@ozymandias9149]

None of the novels are canon. Cold Forge is mediocre at best. Alex White is overrated.

[@th3lonef0x4]

1:08:28 This was also how the novelisation of Alien handled the chestburster.