Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1916997-20150922152953/@comment-2153169-20150922154928

CoolDudeAl wrote: It still doesn't seem to be the same level of canon as the comics. Those had direct participation from a writer on the show, this does not. The author even stated that she had free reign when writing the story in an interview: http://www.onceuponafans.com/interviews/from-screen-to-page-creating-reds-untold-tale

To me, that means that this is not true canon, and can be overruled by the show, should they decide to show anything with younger Red. She had free reign to decide the story she wanted to write. But still, she had to tell them what she wanted to do, meaning they were checking what she was doing. Yeah, she had free reign for the first ideas. They asked her to do a backstory to Red, because they would never have the time to do it in the show. But still, she did not what she wanted. For exemple, I talked with her (a lovely woman btw!) and she told me that she was not able to decide Red's real name. She explained me that they had a consensus of not giving the real name, meaning they gave her some rules.

Then, she is a novel author. Ofc she had a free reign when she writes. That's not an interesting job as an author if you are in this situation: "That's the story we decided, do a novel from it and follow it closely". What would have been the point, honestly? So yeah, that's normal that she had some liberties about it. Then, about comics, Kalinda did not write the comics. She wrote the general stories for the 4 stories, but the comic was written by Corinna.

I really don't think all script writers are able to write a whole novel, because it is totally different. They're good at writing scripts but writing a whole book and make it interesting? That's completely different.

Then, I don't think there is a "not true canon" x) It is canon or it is not. Ofc, all works do not have the same degree of canonicity, but still: canon means it happens, wheter we like it or not. Ofc, we're free to see it as canon or not, but our personnal point of view won't change the canonicity of a book.