Sarcastic Fandom Definition: Canon Fodder

[azurelunatic]

Canon Fodder: character class. The rather-detailed characters who you are introduced to in a few paragraphs before they die, usually senselessly, randomly, messily and/or cruelly, often to establish some sense of connection to the individual casualties in a steadily-mounting body count. Often found in the horror genre. Canon fodder characters come in a few distinct types:

1. They Deserved It, Really -- Cosmic justice is visited upon these characters with a swift and often gory hand. They are the scum of the earth. They needed killin', and you might even be semi-glad they're dead, but the forces that got them will probably kill again, and this time it might be


2. Someone We Should Care About -- Often heroic, or too-good-to-be-true. Little girls, heroic emergency workers, good, decent people. They are often sacrificed so the readers will know that This Villain Is Hardcore Bad. (Cedric Diggory would be a prime example of this, but we're introduced to him well before he actually does die.)


3. Random Bystanders -- Wrong place, wrong time. Decent but flawed people die when hell-demons, crazed cults, Dark Lords, and other nasties decide to go on a killing spree.

Comments

[xwingace]

Here via friendsfriends, and getting confused.

Is the 'canon fodder' a clever pun, or is this intentional? Shouldn't it be cannon fodder?

XWA

[thette.livejournal.com]

It's a clever pun, no doubt born of a common error.

[azurelunatic]

People talking about "non-cannon" things in fanfiction set my teeth on edge. They probably don't need to specify that fic is "non-cannon" unless it's Hornblower slash...

canon ...

[p-o-u-n-c-e-r.livejournal.com]

I think it's correct as it stands.

Say you have a big book or a series of books--Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time et al, say, or Ringo's March to the Sea et al -- with background of a whole town full or battalion full of nameless faceless undescribed but enumerated-by-census characters.

The thousand pages of test implicitly creating such persons is the canon.

Some of them will necessarily, in service to the plot, die. Be consumed, as it were.

Thus the "fodder".

The surfer in Pournelle and Niven's Lucifer's Hammer who rides the tidal wave to a glorious uhm, whatever. There HAS to be tidal wave. People WILL be killed. One character personalizes the event.

Re: canon ...

[azurelunatic]

I'd been so busy thinking about monsters and serial killers that I'd forgotten about disasters both natural and unnatural.

[azurelunatic]

What they said. An intentional pun, from canon + cannon fodder.