ABED wrote:First, what would it mean for a story to not be its own canon?
Second, look back at where the term originates. There's Biblical canon and from my research, the first time it was applied to a work of fiction was Sherlock Holmes. SAC Doyle never used the term. It was applied after the fact. It's safe to say that canon doesn't have to be explicit.
Because a canon doesn't exist simply because a fictional universe does. It is not an intrinsic property of the fictional work. It exists outside of the work. Part of the traditional definition of canon is that it is a grouping defined by a criteria (originally an itemized list). For example, in the religious application of the word, the books of the Bible are not a canon in themselves: They belong
to the canon. The canon is something that existed separately from them, and was created long after they were written.
Similarly, if your claim about Sherlock Holmes is true, then Doyle estate created the canon after Doyle was dead. It did not exist until that point in time, even if the works that belong to it did. It's the same situation with DB: The works exist. The canon does not.
sintzu wrote:So you want us to prove there's a canon even though you've admitted above that Toriyama didn't take anything outside of his material into account while writing ? if you know that then what else do you want ? The original author doesn't take them into account and his stories never mention any of their events so what's there to prove ?
I'm going to quote the part of my post that you conveniently left out, because it answers your question: "That Super is canon to the exclusion of other works, that Toriyama is the sole arbiter of the canon, and that a canon as such even exists are all assumptions that you're making with no concrete basis, and you're saying that we are fundamentally wrong if we disagree with those assumptions."
To a strong man, the end justifies the means. To a stronger man, the means justify the end.
