Hello everyone, I know I haven't used this site in a while but for the upcoming things that I'm going to be doing (i.e. some power scaling and respect threads), I thought I'd use this blog to post them.
So Gmod Canon is one of the most convoluted, confusing and elusive cannons in all of fiction, The Gmod cannon is hard to really define.
So hard that some would argue that it technically doesn't exist, which is understandable but personally, I can definitely see one existing although very loosely and quite confusing.
Ultimately, from my perspective the Gmod Canon consists of three major layers of sorts.
The foundational layer which is the game itself, gameplay elements, maps, features, functions, menu screen backgrounds and so on.
The playerbase layer, which is everything The playerbase adds, develops or does in Garry's mod, ranging from things like add-ons, let's play videos and even Just players playing the game in whatever game mode they play the game in.
And then finally the creative layer, which consists of various creative works that spawned from GMod, particularly of a narrative nature, This includes movies, shows and series, standalone videos, comics and the like.
Now the thing is, each of these layers kind of form and ouroboros with each other, The gameplay informs how the players play, How the players play often inspires elements of the creative works (or the creative works as a whole), the creative works inspire the developers of the game to include nods, homages and/or changes to the game in updates which reference these creative works, and round and round it goes.
Granted it's not always in that order but a lot of the time it is, and there's plenty of examples of this happening.
Like how the original gameplay of Gmod led to the rise and existence of the Mingebags due to how certain players would play the game paired with a specific glitch that existed early on, specifically for people using the Dr kleiner player model,
which eventually inspired the creative work War Of The Servers,
which then rounded back and has been repeatedly homaged and reference by the official GMod development team through menu screen backgrounds and in-game elements.
This on top of the community or playerbase consistently homaging War of the Servers and the Mingebags through add-ons, language and even a new series taking place during The War Of The Servers, The Survivor of All.
So basically gmod's canon is a very very loose one, that is informed mainly by the original, foundational game, and it's developers and what they add to the game, as well as the community around the game that can be split up into two different although interconnected sections, (The playerbase and the creative works respectively).
And ultimately this is just the way I interpret it and see the continuity, especially since there's so much overlap between The three layers I mentioned before.
I can understand why some may disagree with this interpretation and I'm not entirely sure in it myself, but there is evidence of something like this existing for Gmod and this is the best way I can explain it at the current moment.
Now why did I decide to explain this, Well because it informs how I am probably going to be doing an upcoming project.
That of course being a series of "respect threads" where I do my best to scale various Gmod characters, And how I interpret how the continuity of Gmod works will inform how I scale some of these characters (to a degree).
This is especially since there are some characters who appear in videos, comics etc, with these works oftentimes all being made by multiple different creators, with all of these appearances being considered canon by a lot of fans.
For example, Dr Hax who although originally created an only appearing in videos by dasboschit, has appeared In videos not made by him (Like some videos from kitty0706 and even a few official Gmod main menu backgrounds), but these appearances are still considered canonical by fans and the community/playerbase, despite again the original creator of Dr Hax not being involved in some, if not quite a few of these projects.
And even though I feel this way, that the Gmod Canon is fast and loose, I will do my best in these threads to start out with material made by the original creator of a character (If there is one) before going into "expanded media" made by others, But in my scaling I will be including expanded media due to again how loose and fluidic gmod's overall Canon is in my opinion, Also it's a bit more fun.
I'm hoping the next time I post will be my first respect thread which was decided by the folks on Twitter to be none other than be protagonist of the popular half-life fan comic in Gmod comic Concerned, none other than the shovel wielding chaos causing idiot of dubious morality, Gordon Frohmen
(I do not own any of the images presented here and they belong to their respective creators/owners)
