LNH/META: Legionnaires and the Authors Who Love Them

Saxon Brenton saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
Sat Jun 24 00:25:18 PDT 2006


On Friday 23 June 2006 Tom Russell <milos_parker at yahoo.com> wrote:

[...]

>This does remind me of something, though-- I remember a while back when
>someone bit someone else's head off for _mentioning_ a reserved
>character in a story.  The character didn't appear in the story-- and
>it wasn't the same as when I attributed some off-screen action to Kid
>Citrus, for which I should have asked permission-- but was only
>mentioned.  Now, I think that's a little _stringent_, and it seems
>antithetically opposed to the concept of a community/shared universe.

I would agree with the sentiment of the last sentance.

>I'd like to get the general consensus of the group on this, just so
>that it's clear: is it acceptable to merely mention a reserved
>character/recent event?  I'm not talking about stepping on someone's
>toes (say, someone discovering the truth about Ripping Dancer), but
>rather just acknowledging that a Ripping Dancer exists (though she's
>not reserved, anyway, but you get my drift), and thus cementing her
>further in continuity.
>
>Are there any authors with us who definitely, definitely, definitely
>NEVER want any events or characters from their stories even mentioned?

I would say that if you're partcipating in a shared writing universe, you
should be prepared to have your events at least acknowledged, if only
by the third-person omniscent narrator.  It's simply the nature of the 
beast.
Now, I'm prepared to entertain arguments for exceptions on a case-by-
case basis depending on the context of the story, but I'm having trouble
envisioning what those sort of exceptions might be.

---
Saxon Brenton     Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
     saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au

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