Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-31479849-20170309060007/@comment-29845234-20170503063306

Further to what Sothas is saying, there doesn't need to be a single canon overall, people can (and do!) pick and choose which parts of the official story to use in their own ideas about the TES universe, and that's fine. That's where we get different "alternate universes" for Tamriel from, as Sothas said. Of course, given that the games serve as a common base for everyone, there is only so far your ideas can be different before people don't accept them, but that's up to the individual.

To take an example from pen-and-paper roleplaying, there are numerous "setting hacks" for various roleplaying games I take part in. People freely discuss "what if" certain things get changed and what their consequences would be to the overall setting storyline. And these are thoroughly accepted by the community and their implications discussed. That's basically what C0DA and its associated viewpoint promote; change things in the setting, experiment with ideas. There is nothing that you have to hold onto as a core part of the setting if you don't want to. It's your head the world is happening in, after all.