Picture two friends arguing about a game. One says the hero's father died in the second game. The other says that was only a dream. Neither friend can settle it. The answer is not in either head. It is in a list: which stories count, and which do not.
On the listcounts
vsvs
Off the listdoes not count
People call that list the canon. The word is old. One of its old meanings was the list of books a church said were truly holy. In a franchise it means the stories the owner says really happened. A film, a game, a book can be on the list or off it.
A fanwrote it
++
Millionsread it
++
The ownersaid nothing
A fan writes a story in which two characters from a game get married. Millions of people read it and love it. Is it canon?
Yes, if it is written well enough.
Not yet. Quality is not the test. A badly written official story is canon; a beautiful fan story is not. The test is who published it and what the owner said.
No. The owner never said it counts.
Right. Canon is the owner's list. A story can be read by millions and loved by all of them and still be off it, because being on it is not a vote.
Yes. Millions of readers make it count.
Not yet. Readers decide what they enjoy, not what counts. If a story could vote itself onto the list, the list would change every week.
Lucasfilmowned Star Wars
↓→
$4.05 billion2012
↓→
Disneynow decides
The owner of the name decides. In 2012 the Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm, the owner of Star Wars, for about $4.05 billion. From that day, the company that could say which Star Wars stories counted was a different company. The stories had not changed. The owner had.
Each card is a story. Is it on the owner's list, or off it?
One card at a time. Tap the pile it belongs to.
Card 1 of 5
The main story of a game, published by the company that owns the name
A side game the owner has put on its official timeline
A fan's theory that two games happen in the same world
An old comic the owner has said no longer counts
A television show the owner made with another company and lists as part of the story
The main story of a game, published by the company that owns the name → On the list
Not yet. On the list. The owner made it and sold it as the story. That is the plainest case there is.
A side game the owner has put on its official timeline → On the list
Not yet. On the list. A side game can count; the owner said so by placing it on the timeline.
A fan's theory that two games happen in the same world → Off the list
Not yet. Off the list. A theory is what a reader believes. The owner has not said it, so it does not count, however good it is.
An old comic the owner has said no longer counts → Off the list
Not yet. Off the list, and it was once on. The owner can take a story off the list; lesson 12 is about that.
A television show the owner made with another company and lists as part of the story → On the list
Not yet. On the list. Who made it is not the test; two companies did. It carries the owner's name and the owner's word that it counts.
3On the list
vsvs
2Off the list
Right. Three on, two off. The test is never how good the story is or how many people know it. It is whether the owner of the name has said it counts.
First Zelda1986
↓→
Official orderpublished at last
A company bothers to say which stories count because the list is a promise to buyers: the next story will fit the ones before it. Nintendo took decades to say so. It did not put out an official order for the Zelda games until a book it supervised, Hyrule Historia. Fans argued for most of those years.
Slide the marker to the year Nintendo first published an official order for the Zelda games.
Slide the marker to where you think the answer is, then press Lock. Nothing is scored.
123
your guess · 1,986
the answer · 2,011
1,9862,0062,026
119861,986
220062,006
320262,026
Your guess: —
Twenty-five years after the first game. Guesses land early, because a series that big feels as if it must have had a plan from the start. For most of its life it had games, fans and arguments, and no list.
The mangaended 1995
↓→
GT1996, not by Toriyama
↓→
A 2015 seriesset before GT
The owner can also leave a story behind. Dragon Ball GT was an anime made by the studio Toei in 1996, after the manga ended, without its author, Akira Toriyama, writing it. The author and publisher own the story; the studio makes the show. Toriyama later called GT a grand side-story, and a 2015 series was set before it.
The authorthe new book
vsvs
The TV companyits own season
A television company turns a series of novels into a hit show, then writes a fifth season of its own after the books run out. Years later the author publishes a new book that contradicts that season. Which will later books and shows follow?
The television season. It was broadcast first, and first counts.
Not yet. Order of release is not the test. The list belongs to the owner, and the owner here is the author and publisher, not the company that made one season.
Both. A broadcast story can never be left behind.
Not yet. Stories are left behind all the time; that is the owner's power. Dragon Ball GT was broadcast for nearly two years and then written around.
The author's new book. The invented season was never the author's, and the owner of the story will follow the author.
Right. That is the Dragon Ball shape on a different screen. The invented season stays watchable, and the author's own story is the one later stories follow.
Lesson complete
Canon is the list of stories the owner says really happened. Only the owner can change it.