I fully agree, but I also think that there’s too much focus these days on official canon. Copyright might mean that only one big giant corporation is allowed to make stories “set” in a particular universe, but that shouldn’t mean that fans can’t decide for themselves “nope, that was lame, I reject that particular bit.” And if enough fans share that opinion the big giant corporation might want to listen to them.
Would love if multiple authors could create a shared open IP, where anyone can create commercial works derived from it (as long as they dont copy and re-publish the work itself), without needing permission from an IP holder for every work. And canon and fanon is the same thing, if an author writes a plot, that work would gets rejected or included by other authors opinion of it.
1632 series did kindof that, I think, in that they publish fan-fiction and refer to it in main stories. But thats just through one publisher. And did the fan-authors get royalties for that book sale? Idk.
