I was just chatting with lea_ndra on the contradictory readings of Supernatural canon when it comes to how long Sam's been at Stanford.

Four years:
- I believe at one point Sam talks about being gone for four years, yes?
- Which fits in with Stanford's program in which a bachelor degree can be obtained in four years.
- Which, ostensibly, means that Sam in November of 2005 is about to get in to the last semester, and is applying to move on to law school.

Two years:
- Dean says he hasn't spoken to Sam in 'almost two years'
- Not sure of the variations college-by-college and culture-by-culture - Sam could be halfway through his degree, shifting to focus his major on pre-law.
- Eric Kripke has admitted he made a 'mistake', that he meant two years when he scripted in Sam to say four.

So, which one is the 'right' one? Which one is 'canon'? Are these the questions we should be even asking?

My firmest belief of, and joy in, texts and fan/audience readings is that there is no one answer, and there is no one author. Texts take on lives of their own beyond the control of the creator, become fluid and organic.

So by Kripke allegedly slipping up and saying Sam has been at Stanford four years, he's adding an ingredient to the soup that changes the flavour of every spoonful you taste.

- Sam is 22. Four years means he left for college pretty much right after he finished high school.
- Dean hasn't spoken to him for 2 years. This means that Dean had contact with Sam at some time during his first two years of college.
- Four years of college means he's almost obtained a degree - is right no the cusp, nothing half-assed about it.

For me at least, suggesting that Sam has only been at college for two years throws askew a whole lot of elements that have become integral to Sam's characterisation (or at least, my understanding of it):

- Sam is 22. This means he would have left his family for college when he was 20.
- If he finished high school at age 18, this means there are two years there where he's still with his family and not yet at college. Why would Sam do this, especially scholarship-worthy as he is?
- What happens in those two years? Why does Sam decide not to go to college immediately after school? Why does he decide to go to college two years on?
- Sam is still Sammy, a child, when he leaves for college in the four-year slant. He comes back to John and Dean an adult. In the two-year slant, he leaves as an adult.

lea_ndra suggested that in her understanding, the two-year one, Sam's childhood meant he missed out on a lot of schooling and thus finished high school a little later than usual. With this slant, Sam can still move directly from high school to college, but still, Sam still being around with his family at age 20 (instead of age 17-18) is a somewhat different dynamic than teenage!Sammy running off to California. Was his resentment toward John stronger, their fights more bitter due to the fact that Sam wasn't finishing school at the same time 'normal' kids did? or that Sam felt John had even less of a right to treat him as he did given he was no longer a child?


Tiny, tiny things, maybe-mistakes, that make such a huge difference. Is canon something that's defined by what is aired, released into the ether, never to be withdrawn? *can* the creator of a text alter its canon post-release by saying things like "actually, I meant to say two years"?

These questions blur into the slightly problematic (or at least, complex and layered) issues of texts with multiple authors. Scripts have some direction, mainly dialogue; the way an actor performs a scene goes great lengths to establishing meaning and tone in a text, often far beyond what is written. And even what is directed. Eg. Kripke might say there's no sexual innuendo between Sam and Dean, but Jensen Ackles slapped Jared Padalecki's ass when they were filming a scene for 'Bugs' - the fact that Dean slapped Sam's ass is canon, now, it has been released into the ether and copies of the text have spread virus-like. Even if in the DVD Dean's slap had been digitally removed, the DVD would only be another *version* of the text - the 'original' would still exist, on my hard drive at least.

So which is the definitive 'canon'? The show as it was aired? the show as it was re-aired, with Dean calling "Jared!" taken out? The drafts of scripts, the final scripts, the remastered DVDs? the story as the creators tell it in interviews etc? Or is canon an overlap, layers, a veritable lasagne of all these tasty carbohydrate sheets of text? What happens, then, when they're contradictory?

How do you define what's canon when strictly, it's only what's given to you by the text itself? When Sam left for college, how old he was, etc - we can speculate, and make educated guesses, but essentially, whatever we come up with *isn't* going to be canon, because it is never mentioned in the text.