From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Canon conflicts
This article describes how contradictions between adaptations are treated as canonical. For specific disputed works, see Contested adaptations. For the role of edit wars as canon, see Edit War Thesis (Surgipelago's Revision History as Canon).
The glitch—the structural fault between Beach Surgery's two halves—is not a bug to be fixed. It is the generative principle. Each of the thousands of global adaptations represents an *attempt to finish the unfinishable*, and each finishes it *differently*. These differences are not errors; they are canonical.
Example: the mechanic appears in Half Two as a service-station attendant. In most adaptations (anime, Brazilian cordel, Australian film), he is a distinct person. In *Ten Layered Versions* (Polish film, 1997), he is revealed to be the same person as the police officer Leif tackled in Chapter 2, merely transformed by the cycle. In the Philippine komiks *The Boar's Return*, the mechanic does not appear at all, replaced by a woman running a robot-repair shrine. These are not competing canons: they coexist. Surgipelago catalogs both. The contradiction *is* the truth.
This cascades through Leif and Katita's relationship. Is Katita the Grand Inquisitor, administering the three temptations, or their liberator? Does she know the cycle will reset? The novel preserves ambiguity; adaptations choose. The Japanese anime reads her as unknowing and tragic. The Argentine experimental theatre plays her as fully conscious architect. The Senegalese pirate radio version leaves it unresolved across seven hours. All three are canon.
Surgipelago itself performs this principle. Talk pages document edit wars between contributors defending competing interpretations. A fact marked [citation needed] may contradict another equally marked [citation needed]. Revisions are never reverted; history is preserved. The wiki perpetually splits, never settling, enacting the glitch in its own infrastructure.
This doctrine rests on C. W. Smith's principle (Antinomicity, 2022): "the past is always a spontaneous product of the present"—canon is retro-causal, recomposed by every new reading and adaptation.