Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Let's say, Myau, that George Lucas said that Darth Vader was not Luke Skywalker's real father. He just said that to make his opponent feel blamed for killing him. Do you think he has the right to do that?

Or if Sega & Square said Nei and Aerith revived after the respective games because of fans' insistence, do you think the stories would have the same value?

Your story is your own while you haven't released it. After it has been released, it is not your own anymore. If you have to change what you have just said, add or explain things about your finished story, it puts both the story and your reputation as a writer under a bad light.

Ah, I understand now. Thanks for explaining tili.

A lot of exposure to ongoing fiction has given me a different view, I suppose. I agree that each work should stand on it's own and contain everything needed for the story to be understood, but expanding on past stories by adding new details is very common in some mediums. My opinion is that the story always belongs to the author, even after it is released. If the author wants to go back and reveal a new detail or expand on a story, they have that right. Sometimes it does backfire on them and result in fan uproar, so it should not be done lightly. George Lucas has taken a lot of flak for making changes in Star Wars, but ultimately those were his stories to tell. At other times, fans embrace changes like this as a way to tell new stories.

Of course, I'm also conditioned to sometimes think of "the author" as a corporation rather than an individual. Like for Phantasy Star, I think of the story author as Sega and not Ozaki, Kodama or the other individuals who worked on the games. Sega is the one with the ultimate authority to choose what is or isn't canon to the story. Ozaki wouldn't have the authority to say a particular branch of PSIII is more canon than another, unless Sega made a game that said the same thing first. Likewise I wouldn't consider Chaz's son canon, that's just fun speculation on what might have happened later.

Reviving Nei is a bad example for your point, though. Sega has already done that twice, in the Drama CD and Generation:2. Neither changed the value of the original PSII story. The original is always still there and can be considered on its own merits.

Generation 2 is like a trophy. You can still play Nei, but she doesn't interact with the rest. As for the drama CD, I don't know its contents (I own it, but can't understand). However, it doesn't impact on the story because, as far as I know, hardly anybody is aware about the resurrection, and most who know still consider her dead. If it was well-known, it would surely make her existence in PSII pointless. What would be the significance of her sacrifice?

For me, any author who kills a character, repents (or complies with the cries of the immature audience who demand the character revived), and revives it shows he/she lacks professionalism. If one wants to play with death, he/she must be aware of its consequences.

There is a bit of misunderstanding in your point about the "ownership" (and that is probably because I didn't state my POV on this issue earlier, so you have no way of knowing it) because I know that Sega, and not Ozaki is owner of PSIII, therefore her book is unofficial. However, what I meant is that even she said that in a Sega-endorsed channel, she had no rights in doing that and saying "everyone who believes otherwise is wrong". If Sega said "Sean branch is canon", what about the theorical 75% of the audience that prefers the others? They would be contradicting their own concept for PSIII, and they would only be doing a disservice to their own property.