¶
¶ The Canon is Dead, Long Live the Canon
¶ Authors: 15 September 2024
¶ The Story Thus Far
In April of the far off, distant year of 2021, GlitchyRobo posted the first parts of Human Domestication Guide to ReadOnlyMind as a standalone sci-fi horror kink story. In the following months, a handful of stories expanding on the setting of the original appeared on ROM, notably Fluxom’s Abscission and Wayril’s Hospitable Takeover being the earliest. Behind the scenes, these and more early authors were talking to each other, and, as more stories got published, more folks got interested in writing in and contributing to the development of the setting.
Eventually, the HDG wiki was created, primarily as a resource for authors to check established conventions and setting information, lest various details be lost to the sands of Discord conversation backlogs and the ever-growing number of published stories (before long there were dozens of them!). On the wiki, a page was created to gather and list all the stories and other media created for the setting - if someone made something, it got linked there.
This worked fine for a while, but as the community of authors continued to grow and more and more works began to be created, some did not mesh with the setting as well as others did. So, the list of stories was tweaked to become what is now known as the Verified Canon Works page – a list of the stories which the early authors considered to be part of the setting and generally, well, part of the canon of the setting. Works already on the list were generally grandfathered in, but new works were first discussed among the early authors (a group which eventually became the Lorets) to see if they fit within the larger body of work in the setting before being added as a canon work.
¶ The Issues
Those of you who have been around for a little bit have probably noticed that the Verified Canon Works page has been fairly… stagnant for well over a year now, apart from the occasional addition, which have been the exception rather than the rule. Originally, every work which was written was reviewed and discussed, but as the setting and the community continued ever more to grow and grow, that task quickly outstripped the scope of what the Lorets could handle.
Even beyond the difficulty of reading dozens of new stories every month, the very concept of a cohesive “canon”, where all the stories are being written individually aware of each other and the authors are all closely collaborating their ideas to work together, is an all-but-impossible task in a community of dozens of writers, much less the hundreds who have written in the setting in the past three years.
We have known this to be an issue for quite some time now, with various proposals for how to proceed being tossed around, but at long last we are feeling comfortable moving forward with what we have in mind.
¶ The Change
First and foremost - the Verified Canon Works page is being retired. It will remain on this site as a historical document, but is otherwise frozen and is considered to have no bearing on what the “canon” of the setting is. We want to stress that this is not reflective of our opinions on any of the stories presently on this list and rather a direction being taken due to the issues with the list as a whole.
Going forward, when we refer to the “canon” of the setting, we are speaking of the setting as the world of florets and affini as it exists in the understanding of the authors and surrounding community. Every story is its own window in the setting, revealing its own interpretation of this communal work we’ve been building for the past three years, and in turn informs how the setting continues to evolve. It is true that some works provide a clearer and more accurate view than others, and others still have their own flaws in their depiction of the setting, but ultimately we want to encourage a more nuanced view at how each story fits into the larger picture we are all painting.
¶ What Does This Mean?
Ultimately, nothing is changing about the setting from this. HDG is still based on the established rules, axioms, and lore, and the beloved stories considered to be at the setting’s heart continue to be as they are. We, the Lorets and the rest of the staff, are altering our approach as to how best to continue to foster and support this community as it continues to grow and evolve. To be candid, we are still trying to figure this out - how does one guide and cultivate a shared setting, told across hundreds of stories and countless authors?
To that end, we have several plans ongoing. Firstly, is the fabled Wiki Rework. While the heart of the setting is and always will be in its stories, we are working to build a modernized reference for creators in the community, standardizing and cleaning up the information already there and filling out the numerous gaps. Additionally, we want to have the site as a hub for resources on the setting which aren’t hidden away on a chat server. We have started this with our prototype for the official blog, and want to use that as a platform for all manner of essays and articles on the setting from the lorets, the clerks, and eventually members of the wider community.
While we are no longer designating stories as “canon” anymore, we want to use these places we’re working on to highlight stories we love in the setting. Throughout this site, we’re working to include pointers to stories relating to the topics at hand and pulling excerpts in order to contextualize information. Additionally, we want to use the blog to recommend new stories that have caught our eye as well as old gems which newcomers might easily miss, not to mention the many amazing non-writing projects in the setting which are often overlooked by the spotlight.
¶ Foundational Works
The first of these efforts to call attention to stories we find important to the setting is the new Foundational Works page. These seven stories were chosen by the Lorets due to their representation of the setting, as well as their role in forming what HDG has become today.
This is not meant to be a collection of “the most important stories” - we’re not doing away with the Canon Works page only to introduce a “super canon” list. Rather, this is meant as a selection of early stories which together provide a solid understanding of what the setting is. Similarly, this isn’t meant as a guide for introducing someone to HDG (although it absolutely could be!), but rather as a reading guide for someone who wants to elevate their understanding of the setting and where many elements came from. We strongly recommend folks who want to write their own stories to read these first to gain a good grasp of the setting and its themes which the community have been building for the past three years.
¶ So, What's Next?
Like mentioned before, this is the next step of many we have in the works for updating and standardizing this site as a resource for folks creating in the setting. We’re still working through some of the foundations and logistics of how we want everything to come together, but once we’ve gotten that settled, we’re hoping to start showing off what we’ve been working on at a brisker pace than we have been of late.
On that note, we would like to thank everyone for their patience on these fronts. As I noted in jest earlier, it is true that widespread improvements to this site have been a long time coming now, and it has been taking us a bit to get to this point. We want to make sure we do it well and that we do it right. As things progress, we want to reach out to members of the community, as a fair few have expressed desires to help things on that front, which we will gladly welcome once the systems and procedures have been laid in place to coordinate a project of this scope and importance to the community.
As always, thank you to all of you who make the Human Domestication Guide setting the absolute best writing community about kinky space plants we’ve ever been the curators of the lore for. c:
With all the love of the Everbloom,
teagan & the rest of the Lorets
art by me c: