Stories, in Game and Not

Could we consider the "Cut Content" as in-game canon?

I think they are somewhere between out-of-game stuff and in-game stuff. Though they are more canon than not canon, because they were left there for some reason. Or just laziness.

If we had a pyramid (like Kelsen's) for TES Lore, i believe 'canon' would be at the top, with 'cut content' below, followed by 'devtalk' (Vekh being the usual douchebag), and finally 'spinoff material' (fluff not included in the main game series) a.k.a. ESO.

On another note, does anyone know a resurrection spell powerful enough to raise Zeph from his grave so he can start working on the 3rd edition of The Elder Scrolls Treasury?

This new section is a great idea ! Very interesting.

I really, really, really hate the word "canon". These materials were written by the developers with the intention of representing the world. For whatever reason (mistake, poor reception, lack of time, impossibility, better ideas, etc. etc.) they were not included. There is a decent chance that they will influence future content (or have ALREADY influenced existing content) - whether that means we'll see those same ideas later in the same context, or if they'll be recycled for other uses, or whether they'll just be referenced, we can't know until it's done. All that you (and each individual "reading" the universe, including the developers) has to decide is how well it fits into your version of Tamriel.

I'd add that TESO is not a spinoff, but fully an Elder Scrolls with its lore integreted in the chronology.

But everyone can choose whether they want to take it into account or not.

I'd argue that Lady N's perspective on canon at least partially invalidates any discussion of the lore, as without a common canon of any kind there can be no common basis upon which to found mutual discussion. We need to agree on some things before we can meaningfully disagree on how to interpret them.

Agreed.

When discussing lore you can't just pick and choose what parts you like and what parts you don't. There are things that are fact and if you disagree with those things then there's nothing to be done about it. Sure, you're entitled to your own "head-canon" but that doesn't change what is.

That being said, if there are two different sources/events/whatever in the lore that contradicts themselves then you can choose which one you prefer.

The existence of a mutual foundation between two people does not imply that the same foundation is used between all people or more importantly it does not imply that that specific foundation is authoritative or official.  Neither property is required for anything we talk about. As such canon is a useless concept.

If we're talking about coda or fan fiction, then yes, the idea of canon is useless. But there is still things that are fact and things that are not fact; for example: The Warp in the West is canon, MK's c0da is not canon. But this isn't the place for this sort of discussion.

> When discussing lore you can't just pick and choose what parts you like and what parts you don't.

Why not? People ignore gameplay. People ignore most of Arena and Daggerfall all the time. People ignore the games they haven't played. Nobody ever references the Daggerfall Chronicles (because hardly anybody has them anymore). Yet at the same time the Cosmology is one of the most cited pieces of lore.

But fuck the argument on details.

Seriously. N can probably explain it better because she's involved in it but the creative process isn't neat or tidy. Its a whirlpool you throw stuff into, only to fish it out with more ideas attached to it until it has the shape that is now seen a single immaculate work of fiction. In reality it is a bucket of junk, and if you look at the other bits of junk still left in the whirlpool you might learn to recognize the different ideas and where they came from.

To paraphrase Douglass Goodall: Tamriel is a plate of spaghetti.

Fair enough.

A canon, in the classical sense, is merely a collection of texts. We have plenty of that. We all have access to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Our experiences in the game, as well as our interpretations of its events and our opinions on its worth and execution, don't have to match. The games, their supplementary texts, and the rest of this random clutter that TIL collects in an effort to map the TES universe, is our common basis.

We all have access to the same stuff (that's what TIL, UESP, etc. are for). Canon is that body of stuff. Canon isn't our interpretation of the worth of that body of stuff. 

Like Proweler said, literally everybody does that all the time. I could provide examples, but instead let me quote the guy in charge of TES lore at the moment: 

Addendum. 

We don't need to agree on whether any of the worth of a class of texts or on any text in particular. All we need to do is cite our sources. If I say that my information on the geography of Alinor comes from cut ESO content, each reader can then decide if that content is part of their Tamriel or not. 

Well said.