Nothing Is Canon

This article is an editorial.

See alsoː Who Made the Shining Series?

An unnamed fictional elf attempts to reconcile the discrepancies in wildly differing accounts of her fictional world's canonically legendary history, but the coffee is just not strong enough. Artwork by Yoshitaka Tamaki.

The Shining Lore & Translation Wiki acknowledges that the Shining series has at all times been the creative work of many authors. This wiki is an effort to document and explore the stories found in these games and their associated media as they are presented in their original contexts. The constraints of the world presented by one work should not be imposed onto another where it would pose a clear violation of authorial intent.

The attempt to manufacture a consistent fictional world, timeline, or history out of the series' many contradictions can only muddle the clarity that might otherwise be found if each piece of media were held accountable only to itself.

The notion of a monolithic canon is pernicious in that it separates the art from its creators. The fiction is not real, but the ideas that its authors attempt to express through their work are. It is better to examine the ideas found in each text as they are than it is to reject or distort the ones that cannot be enmeshed in a larger world that does not exist.

To fully illuminate the problem in establishing and upholding canon, an exploration of the series' history is required.

Creative Differences

Yoshitaka Tamaki was the original Shining series illustrator. He is credited with the outline and storyboards for Shining and the Darkness and scenario, character design, graphics direction, and graphics design for Shining Force. Although he was principally an artist, his input helped shape the world of the early series. Shining Force director and writer Kenji Orimo placed particular value on the ideas expressed by artists during development. Between 1992 and 1993, Tamaki wrote and illustrated the serial comic Doom Blade: Shining and the Darkness Gaiden to bridge the stories of Shining Force and Shining and the Darkness.

Although their studio, Climax Entertainment, was removed from the Shining series following those two games, Tamaki, Orimo, and other members of the original team would work together at Climax and Max Entertainment to create Land Stalker: The Emperor's Treasure and FEDA using ideas that were originally planned for the Shining series.

Magazine articles and design documents held by programmer Kan Naito confirm that Landstalker was conceived as a Shining game with the same setting as Shining and the Darkness. Tamaki has also stated that he considered the FEDA series to be a continuation set in the same world as the Shining series.

Shining Force Central poster Babel1027 had the following conversation with Tamaki in 2018.

[Babel1027] You made a gaiden manga for shining and the darkness (Doom Blade) was it ever supposed to be part of the shining games?

[Tamaki] That's right. However, time has passed, I will try to make up for the missing parts. I could not do it for games.

[Babel1027] Was FEDA a result of the DOOMBLADE gaiden manga?

[Tamaki] I am no longer official, but I think that I think that it is a story in the same world.

After an absence from the series that started in 1992 when he was replaced by animator SUEZEN on Shining Force II: The Ancient Seal and illustrators Hiroshi Kajiyama and Shin Yamanouchi on other Shining projects starting with the first Gaiden, Yoshitaka Tamaki returned to the Shining series in 2002, working with Nextech and Grasshopper Manufacture on Shining Soul and Shining Soul II. Tamaki also collaborated with Amusement Vision on Shining Forceː Resurrection of the Black Dragon with original series writer Masaki Wachi and Kan Naito as a producer. Tamaki also provided monster artwork for Shining Tears, Shining Force Neo (for which Wachi served as supervising editor, and for which he wrote the graphic novel), and Shining Force EXA. In a 2001 interview with French publication Animeland, Tamaki was asked the following questions.

[Animeland] You left Enix to work for Climax quite quickly, didn't you?

[Tamaki] [. . .] The reason I went to work for Climax was that a certain Mr TAKAHASHI asked me to do monster design and character design for his new company: he was assistant director on a game in the Dragon Quest series and knew me, having been a member of the jury at the competition where I won a prize. I later found out that he had contacted several well-known character-designers but that they had turned him down, because it was a new company.

[Animeland] You now have your own company. Why did you set it up?

[Tamaki] When I was working at Climax, there were various incidents that I don't want to talk about too much. I can't say that I'm particularly capricious, but I want to make games that players like, and it just so happened that the other members of the company and I didn't always see eye to eye, and in the end I couldn't do what I wanted at all. And when I was told: "TAMAKI, be patient", I could only do what I was told, because I wasn't the one making the decisions, nor was I the one taking responsibility in the company. So I thought I'd just set up my own company, Salamander.

[. . .]

[Animeland] Why didn't you work on the other Shining Force episodes?

[Tamaki] There were various problems in society, different points of view, etc. I didn't work on all of them.

[Animeland] Is it for the same reasons that you didn't take part in Alundra 2?

[Tamaki] No comment . . .

It may never be known what led to the split between Climax and the Shining series and then Tamaki from Climax, but the knowledge that Tamaki was actually Hiroyuki Takahashi's last choice to hire as an artist may be telling. But whether the move to use more well-known artists in the 1990s came down to producers at Sega, Takahashi at Sonic, or Tamaki himself is uncertain. Whether Climax left the series due to the decisions of producers at Sega, Sonic, or Climax has likewise never been revealed. Although 2000s Shining series producer Tsuyoshi Sawada at Sega is often held responsible for Tamaki's second exit from the series around 2006, Sawada quotes Tamaki as saying that he wished to leave the series to a successor, and Tamaki himself had expressed uncertainty as to his own feelings about his return.

In 2002, Shining Force Central's Moogie sent an e-mail to Camelot Software Planning with a question about the series canon and received a reply from Shining series programmer and sometimes director Yasuhiro Taguchi. Taguchi first worked on the Shining series alongside Tamaki at Climax Entertainment, but moved to Sonicǃ Software Planning with producer Hiroyuki Takahashi to continue working on the series. Both Taguchi and Takahashi would move to Camelot to wrap up Shining Force III with the closure of Sonic around 1997.

The following English text of Taguchi's statement is available on Shining Force Central, where it was translated from Japanese by users Aspartate and Landius.

SFC: I'm sure you are familiar with the "Stalker" series: Landstalker, Ladystalker, Dark Saviour, Climax Landers (Time Stalkers). Well, because of the appearance of Pyra Myst (S&TD) and Jogurt (SF1) in the game, some fans are saying they are part of the Shining series. Many Shining fans won't accept this information in our quest to uncover Shining History, because the games are not "Shining" games.

What we are wondering, is whether the Stalker series should be considered part of the Shining series? If they do belong together, then we must investigate much more for the Shining History. Unless we have an official answer from Camelot, I can only see more arguments happening as a result of this conflict of ideas :(

If you can spare a couple of minutes just to give us an answer - "yes, it's part of the series"; "no, it's not part of the series". Perhaps the relationship is just because Climax wanted to continue the series, even though it was no longer their job... and so there may be connections, but the information should not be considered accurate for Shining History.

YT: Stalker Series, as well as Shining Soul, should be separated from the Shining Series.

Wouldn't it be better to consider them as a game with Shining characters making an appearance? You know, like how all Disney characters star in one special movie? It's the same in this case.

No matter what Sega or Climax say, our answer is NO.

By the way, isn't "Stalker Series" an impressive name? In Japan, "stalker" is about the same as criminals.

Ultimately, neither Taguchi nor Tamaki are currently assigned to the Shining series, which is owned by Sega and has had entries developed by countless other individuals at numerous studios over the years. But both had deep involvement in the series' history, so whose perspective holds the most authority? With so many different creators over the years and with such clearly contradictory creative intents, it is better to take the games as they are and view them through the lens of the artists who worked on them rather than the distorted lenses of disparate works.

Localization Differences and Player Perception

Illustration for the 2004 remake of Shining Force. Artwork by Yoshitaka Tamaki.

When Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon, the remake of Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention, was released by Sega in 2004, over a decade had passed since the release of the original game. Since 1993, and after the course of many sequels, fans had had years to piece together the world presented by the games. The characters and stories in these games were a defining part of many people's lives. It is unsurprising that players would be critical of any changes. The English localizers of Resurrection were sensitive to this, and so they deferred to decisions made by the localizers of Legacy when it came to the names of the characters, even where they differed from the original Japanese. The localizers also did not change the text in the pre–title screen introduction of the game, despite the contradictions it contained to the Japanese text.

However, this is in contrast to the rest of the script, which, having been largely rewritten for the remake, required a new translation. The writer of the Japanese script for Resurrection was Masaki Wachi, who had also been hired in 1991 as a writer for Legacy. Most English-speaking fans would have been unaware of this. The Shining games never received much advertising or media coverage in the West, in contrast to months of promotional articles and interviews with the developers published in Japanese magazines leading up to each classic release. The development history of the series was not very well documented in English, and to most fans, two men and one software company had become the face of the series: Hiroyuki Takahashi, his brother Shugo Takahashi, and their independent studio, Camelot Software Planning.

To this day, Camelot takes credit on their website for the development of every Shining game from the '90s, including those that were developed before the studio was founded in 1994. Hiroyuki Takahashi may feel that Camelot grew out of Climax and Sonic, as he did head all three studios at different points in time. Shugo Takahashi founded Camelot, and Hiroyuki was involved in the founding of both Climax and Sonic. But the three studios were separate from each other, and each have distinct libraries of work. Sonic, founded in 1991, was a subsidiary of Sega before its apparent dissolution around 1997, and Climax continuing to make its own games until it closed around 2014. By the time Shining Force III was in development in 1997, Camelot only retained three of the people who had worked on Shining and the Darkness and the first Shining Force—Hiroyuki Takahashi, and two programmers, Yasuhiro Taguchi and Haruki Kodera. Although Hiroyuki Takahashi can take personal credit for his contributions to the games that he worked on, which does include games that precede the founding of Camelot, Takahashi is not Climax or Sonic, and he is not Camelot.

Something of Takahashi's attitude toward these games may be glimpsed by a statement made in a 2009 interview with GamesTM.

Because we were on such a tight budget, apart from the programming and graphics, I did nearly all the work on Shining In The Darkness.

Takahashi has a writer and producer credit on the game. Of all the staff who worked on the game, it is difficult to imagine what Takahashi might have done that would constitute "nearly all the work", but if that is how he wishes to present himself in his image as series auteur, then it is easy to imagine how Takahashi might feel as if he was Climax and Sonic, and these games are his to the extent that whatever studio he runs should benefit from the credit of his catalogue of work. Crediting Camelot with Shining and the Darkness and Shining Force due to Takahashi's involvement would not be very different from suggesting that Camelot developed Dragon Quest IV because Takahashi had been an assistant producer on the project.

So what does this have to do with the Shining Force remake?

A comparison of the staff between Climax and Sonic who created Shining and the Darkness, Shining Force, Landstalker, and other early sequels.

It should have come as no surprise that Sega began to produce action RPGs in the Shining series without the involvement of Camelot in the 2000s, but most of the English-speaking fanbase lacked the knowledge of the situation in Japan that was necessary to see it coming. To Western fans, Takahashi and Camelot were the Shining series. In reality, it was Sonic! Software Planning that had become the principal developer of the series after Shining Force, following the departure of Climax. Sega had funded the establishment of Sonic so that the Shining series would be helmed by a Sega subsidiary. Camelot, on the other hand, was an independent studio that Shugo Takahashi had founded to create games for the PlayStation like Beyond the Beyond and Everybody's Golf. Camelot was a supporting studio to Sonic during the development of Shining Wisdom and Shining the Holy Ark, and Camelot only became responsible for Shining Force III when Sega withdrew its investment in Sonic.

It was due to the financial realities of the second half of the '90s that the Shining series ceased to be a Sega flagship. Shining and the Darkness and Shining Force were released for the Mega Drive between 1991 and 1993 when Sega was beginning to enjoy the success brought on by the worldwide popularity of the Mega Drive and the hype of system sellers like Sonic the Hedgehog. But Sega was counting on the Shining series to be its next big RPG series to match or even surpass Phantasy Star. Sonic! Software Planning and Shining Force saturated Sega's Japanese publications at the time, with constant coverage in Beep! MegaDrive and Mega Drive FAN. During this part of the early '90s, Sonic had a full page promoting the studio in every issue of Beep!, and Sega serialized nearly two years of the Shining comic Doom Blade: Shining and the Darkness Gaiden in Mega Drive FAN.

When the Saturn released in 1994, there was a critical window for Sega to repeat the success of the Mega Drive. Sonic's 1995 Shining Wisdom, the first action-adventure game in the series, was a domestic sales success and among the best-selling Shining games to date. Though the game saw poor international performance, figures from Famitsu indicate that Shining Wisdom sold either 301,242 or 315,579 units in Japan.

However, the following year's Shining the Holy Ark did not perform domestically as well as Sega had expected, and Hiroyuki Takahashi relates that Sega nearly denied the game an English release. As Sega's financial stability worsened, the publisher could not afford to fund the development of games that were unlikely to be successful. The Saturn itself was becoming a commercial failure, and Sega had begun to withdraw investments in any subsidiaries that were not making them the money they needed to stay afloat. By the time Shining Force III was reaching store shelves in 1997 and 1998, the Saturn was already on the way out. The Dreamcast was already being sold in Japan just a few months after the release of Scenario 3. It is no wonder that the last two parts of Shining Force III never got an international release so late in the lifespan of the Saturn. Perhaps if Sonic had released Shining Force III earlier, its potential for commercial success under the different circumstances would have spelled a different direction for the series.

OK, so what about the Shining Force remake?

The first new Shining game that Sega produced after the failure of the Dreamcast and the company's withdrawal from the hardware market was Shining Soul, a relatively small-scale and low-budget title for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance. It was only natural that Sega would utilize one of their subsidiaries for its development. It was a tentative period for the company, and Sega did not want to take any risks. From their perspective, Camelot was no longer a known quantity. Camelot was an independent studio that was mostly staffed by the remnants of Sonic, who since Shining the Holy Ark had no longer had a track record of making widely successful games.

When Sega announced that Shining Soul was being developed by Nextech, at that time a Sega subsidiary, English-speaking fans saw the name of a studio that was not Camelot, and concluded that Shining Soul could not therefore possibly be a "real" Shining game. But with a clearer understanding of the series' history, fans should have seen that Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force, and Shining Force II: The Ancient Seal, some of the most beloved games in the series, had not been developed by Camelot either. But what all of these games did have in common was Hiroyuki Takahashi. Although Shugo Takahashi's first game in the series was Shining Force Gaiden, his association with his brother seemed to retroactively give him credit for Hiroyuki's games as well. Therefore, because the Takahashi brothers were not making Shining Soul, it could not be a real Shining game.

Recalling the quote from Yasuhiro Taguchi earlier in this article: "Stalker Series, as well as Shining Soul, should be separated from the Shining Series. [. . .] No matter what Sega or Climax say, our answer is NO."

This kind of sentiment soured a large portion of the fanbase of the early 2000s to any possible future Shining game. And while Shining Soul was certainly not a strategy RPG, neither were Shining in the Darkness, Shining Wisdom, or Shining the Holy Ark. It would seem that the greatest problem with the game was Sega's choice of developer. So narrow was the focus in the community that the returned involvement of original Shining series artist Yoshitaka Tamaki went largely overlooked. In this climate, it seems surprising that Shining Soul sold enough copies to warrant a sequel.

A final twist of fate to consider is the background that Nextech themselves almost had with the Shining series. The action-adventure Mega Drive game Ragnacënty (Crusader of Cënty / Soleil) had originally been planned as a Shining game with the working title Shining Rogue. Had Nextech developed Shining Rogue as intended, it might have lent their involvement with Shining Soul some perceived legitimacy.

Nextech was not the only studio in in the '90s to unexpectedly lose the Shining brand. The studio behind the first two Shining games, Climax Entertainment, had been tasked with the production of Shining Spirit, another action-adventure game for the Mega Drive. The game's staff included Shining Force director Kenji Orimo, programmer Kan Naito, artist Yoshitaka Tamaki, and a dozen other series veterans. In contrast, the next "real" Shining game made by Sonic, Shining Force Gaiden, only retained four developers from previous games—producer Hiroyuki Takahashi, programmers Yasuhiro Taguchi and Haruki Kodera, and sound effect designer Dogen Shibuya—and was otherwise created by entirely new staff. Of course, by the time Climax's Shining Spirit came out, it had become a game called Land Stalker: The Emperor's Treasure.

Excerpt from an early design document for Shining Spirit showing the game's relationship to Shining and the Darkness. The early working title shown here is Hero Lancelot: The Legend of Shining.

Other than the name on the front of the box, what makes Shining Force Gaiden or Shining Force II any more of a Shining game than Landstalker? It cannot be a matter of creative input or direction unless the series' identity is defined solely by the presence of Hiroyuki Takahashi. But to hold the name of one producer in higher regard than the whole of the efforts of an entire creative team is a denial of the actual artistic process by which these works are made. If the distinction between Landstalker and the rest of the Shining series is a matter of genre, then by what measure are Shining and the Darkness, Shining Wisdom, or Shining the Holy Ark considered Shining games?

In the absence of detailed knowledge of the development of each game, for many fans, the qualification of what is considered a Shining game tends to come down to either a name (Camelot or Takahashi) or a "vibe"—generally expressed in terms of how Shiny a game feels to the player. Shininess comes down to a sort of analysis of a game's presentation, which includes aspects comprising artwork, music, interface design, and writing. But the series has rarely had consistent artists, composers, or writers. Masahiko Yoshimura, the series' original composer, only worked on Shining and the Darkness and the first Shining Force. Motoaki Takenouchi composed music for the Gaidens, Shining Force II, Shining Wisdom, and by what is probably not a coincidence, Landstalker. Motoi Sakuraba would write the music for Shining the Holy Ark and Shining Force III, after which he continued working with Camelot for Golden Sun. The consistency of composer Sakuraba and lead artist Shin Yamanouchi between Shining Force III and Golden Sun happen to give those games a kind of continuity in visuals and music that is ironically lacking between Shining Force III and earlier games in the series.

The Shining Force Remake

Around the same time that Shining Soul II was being distributed internationally in 2004, Sega's internal studio Amusement Vision was preparing for the release of Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon in the West. The Japanese release of Resurrection would not come until later that year, so in this moment, Sega's marketing team would have been playing close attention to the game's overseas performance.

Despite Sega's strong marketing push in the 1990s for Shining Force in Japan, the series was generally not as successful in Japan as it was in the West. Shining Force was the first strategy role-playing game that many English-speakers had seen, and players were charmed by the early series' Disney-esque art style. But in Japan, the titanic Fire Emblem was already just one series among an established genre of simulation RPGs, and the reputation that Shining Force had among Japanese critics and players was that it was just too easy to be engaging. The classic Shining Force series was well regarded among Genesis owners in North America, but not so much among Mega Drive owners in Japan. In the protracted period of uncertainty that Sega faced as a software publisher in the early 2000s, the success of the Shining Force remake would make or break the series as fans had known it.

After the Shining series' near cancellation during the death throes of the Saturn, Sega had no financial incentive to maintain a brand that did not have mass appeal. Already in the pipeline for a late 2004 release was Shining Tears, an action role-playing game for the PlayStation 2 that hoped to spark the success of the franchise in Japan with its inclusion of character designs from known pornographic artist Tony Taka. Sega was prepared to take the Shining series in a different direction if the classic formula failed.

The Amusement Vision team that worked on Shining Force: Resurrection included nine people who had worked for Climax, including five people who had helped create the original Shining Force. Of the returning staff, Yoshitaka Tamaki redesigned the characters for Resurrection and Masaki Wachi rewrote the story. Hirotada Kakusaka handled the design of some of the game's graphics, and Kiyoaki Matsumoto was among the programmers. Kan Naito, at that time the president of Climax, was brought in as an executive producer. Naito had been the director of Shining and the Darkness, and a programmer on the original Shining Force. Sega was serious about the success of this remake, and although they did not involve Hiroyuki Takahashi or his studio, they did hire key people from the series' history, including the original game's lead artist and writer, which should have gone a long way toward making the game feel Shiny.

An American print ad for the original Shining Force. The text "YOUR MUG HERE" pasted over Max's face encourages readers to imagine themselves in his role. It is unclear who "YOUR BABE?" is supposed to represent, but there is an obvious appeal to a type of player fantasy. Illustration by Tim Hildebrandt.

But among the most controversial changes made by the remake was the game's rewritten script. Without spoiling the plot for readers who may not have played the remake or the original game, it is possible to make an example in broad terms of Max, the game's protagonist. Max had been written in the original English release as the Kingdom of Guardiana's youngest swordsman. He was an everyman and an underdog, still in training to become a real knight. The character had no real connection to the events unfolding around him other than the implied motivation to prove himself and fight back against his kingdom's invaders. Max appealed to the game's generally younger audience who were able to imagine themselves in his place.

But in the remake, Max was a foreigner in Guardiana—a skilled swordsman from another land who had washed ashore with no memory of his past. Although this version of Max is an outsider to the kingdom, it becomes increasingly clear throughout the course of the story that his background is linked to the past of the antagonists and critical historical events. The character seemed more distant from the player because he had a more clearly defined role, and he was no longer a silent protagonist.

The change to the game's protagonist was one of many details that fans rejected, but it was emblematic of a larger picture. To Western fans of the classic series, Resurrection was already perceived as inauthentic due to its development by an unfamiliar studio staffed by names that people did not recognize despite their veteran status. It was natural that players would reject changes that deviated from the game's source material or that contradicted the stories of other games in the series that were considered more legitimate.

Up to this point, most English-speaker players had little idea of the nature of Legacy's Japanese script. Resources were scarce for players who did not speak Japanese to learn about the original Japanese games from which the English versions had been adapted. Fan efforts did exist to translate games in the series that had never received English releases, including Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict and the last two scenarios of Shining Force III. It would take years for players to revisit the original Japanese script of the first Shining Force and produce anything close to a full English translation.

When players were finally able to compare Resurrection to the original Japanese script of Legacy, it became apparent that many elements of Resurrection were actually more faithful to the original Japanese than was the English localization of Legacy from 1993. The backstory of the protagonist, Max, and his relationship to the story's antagonists and the history of Rune as it is presented in Resurrection, it turns out, was drawn from the game's original 1992 Japanese script. Writer Masaki Wachi had not forgotten his own story. Without the limitations posed by the Mega Drive original's 12-megabit cartridge and without the need to defer to other writers, Wachi was able to elaborate and embellish the ideas he had had for the original game to tell a story that no longer needed to be vague. The story told in Resurrection brings sharp focus to themes that are only hinted at in the original.

Regardless, some players may prefer the more open-ended story and less overt science fiction bent of the original English adaptation of Legacy or, for those who are able to play it, the Japanese original. But in spite of any preference, Resurrection is undeniably the realization of a concrete artistic vision.

Reflection

Manga artist Yuriko Nishiyama's redesign of Max for Shining Force Neo.

In the end, Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon was not successful enough for any more remakes or sequels in the classic continuity to be made, so it is impossible to know what a remake of Shining Force II or a sequel to Amusement Vision's version of Shining Force might have looked like. The world established by Shining Tears would become the new world of the Shining series. Neverland's Diablo-inspired Shining Force Neo, a spiritual successor to their Dreamcast classic, Record of Lodoss War, released less than a year later in 2005. Neo would once again retell the story of the first Shining Force, but it was a dramatic reimagining with Wachi serving only as supervising editor and, as was the case with Shining Tears, Tamaki provided monster designs, but no art for the principal cast. Neo's sequel, Shining Force EXA, was set in an unrelated world, and Flight-Plan's Shining Force Feather, the last game to target classic fans in Tsuyoshi Sawada's two-pronged approach to revitalize the series, released in 2009 in Japan with no English localization.

Although Sega would continue to publish Shining games in Japan, some of which actually were strategy games with thematic similarities and relationships to older titles, 2007's EXA was the last game to be released in the West until a version of the fighting game Blade Arcus from Shining in 2016 and an updated rerelease of Media.Vision's Shining Resonance in 2018. With the cancellation in 2022 of Hive's mobile strategy game, Shining Force: Heroes of Light and Darkness, the series remains on hiatus, giving English speaking fans plenty of time to reflect on the series' history and what might have been had that understanding come sooner.

The Question of Canon

Mae and Lowe (or is it May and Row?) have a heated discussion about whether or not Dark Sol is Darksol. Artwork by Yoshitaka Tamaki.

Players should not be indicted for becoming attached to the characters, settings, and narratives that resonate with them. It is all a fiction, and whichever artistic vision a person finds most appealing or most influential is just as real as any other. There is no one answer to the question of the shape of the Shining world. The original English translation of Legacy may not be all that accurate to the intent of the Japanese creators of the original, but the world that it does paint is a memorable picture that players continue to recall fondly decades later. If players identify with a particular line of dialogue, a character's name, or even the spelling of a certain fictional race, then this editor would not begrudge them their enjoyment in the name of authenticity. Nothing is canon, and although the wiki will continue to document as thoroughly as possible the most probable intent of the original authors of these works, we like to think that the artists would be happy to know that their work is still being appreciated in any form and that their ideas and efforts have affected the lives of so many to the extent that they would be willing to argue about it.