Talk:Good dog! (short story)

Is this a story?!

Does this really need a page. It’s just a tweet. Does anytime any Doctor Who alumnus makes an in-character joke now need one too? NightmareofEden ☎ 14:22, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Calling this a short story does seem a tad overblown. -- Saxon (✉️) 14:27, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

It certainly doesn't set a precedent for covering "every in-character joke by a Doctor Who alumnus". The uniqueness of this is that short as it is, it was released on the official K9 blog, not on the personal blog of John Leeson or something.

Not only is it commercially licensed (unlike Sylvester McCoy answering a tweet as the Doctor, or what-have-you), but it wasn't released on a personal blog at all, but rather on the official online outlet of the K9 franchise, such as it is. It's also the first use of the independent Bob Baker license for writing K9 fiction in years, and notable on that basis. It's all in all a very unique situation.

I'd say it's a "(short story)" in about the same sense that Dr. Twelfth is a "(novel)" — a literary critic would look at us oddly, but we only have so many dab terms. And Vrs is a well-established precedent for even very very short prose fiction being called a "short story" on this Wiki.

All in all it doesn't, I think, set any dangerous precedent to cover this as a short story. My other option to note it on the Wiki (which it really should be in some shape or form for the aforementioned reasons — it's a licensed use of K9) was to create a page for the K9Official blog, but it seemed, if anything, a more dangerous precedent to create a page for a single Twitter page than it did to treat this as a short story. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:31, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

There’s no justifying this creation at all, Scrooge. I’m sure you’ve created this in good faith, but I think you need to be spoken to about what counts as a story - because it is getting absolutely ridiculous. Earlier in the year you created a story page for literally two words and a picture at Breaking Isolation - and now this. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 14:37, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

I've gotta agree with everyone else here, Scrooge. I really cannot see how this is a story in any way. It's an social media site, designed to PROMOTE a product (which would, even if this somehow was a story, classify it as invalid), and it's having fun with a fan.Never Forget The Day The 456 Arrived ☎ 14:41, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's promoting a particular story, as opposed to the K9 brand in general? Not that being a commercial prevents something from having a page. At any rate I don't disagree that this is clearly invalid, and I marked it as such upon creation.

Again, though, if not a story, what do we call this? Okay, so it's a blog post. So… would you be in favour of creating a page for the blog? How do we document this use of the K9 license in a bit of fiction? Because that is what this is. We will be failing as a Wiki if we fail to document, somewhere, that in 2018, and albeit for something we wouldn't call valid in a million years, Bob Baker and Paul Tams did use their ownership of K9 to do something. Such events are pretty thin-on-the-ground and the thing's existence is interesting in its own right to anyone following the K9 franchise. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:45, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

We call it nothing, it does not deserve a page. It was fan interaction - nothing more! DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 14:46, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Then where do we document it? I'm not saying it's valid. And I'm not against covering it as something else than a short story with its own page. But it's a licensed use of the character of K9 and its existence is an interesting footnote in the history of the solo K9 franchise. We should note it somewhere. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:48, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Why on Earth does it need documenting? It’s nothing of any importance, scrolling through the Twitter page there’s hundreds of similar in-character replies. It does not need documenting anywhere! DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 14:49, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with DiSoRiEnTeD1 here. Scrooge, I'm really not seeing what you see in this as a story. It's a manager of the account having fun with a fan. To an extent, I see where you're coming from, given your involvement in the 10,000 Dawns fandom and that Tweet story they did, but I'm 100% sure this was not the intention of the K9 Twitter account. Never Forget The Day The 456 Arrived ☎ 14:50, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

In-character ≠ narrative. This is not Martha Jones' MySpace blog; this is not even one of the "in-universe" BBC websites which we do not consider valid. There is no indication that those involved considered this a story, and nonetheless it is not a story. Vrs makes use of its few short words to tell a story, as a counterexample. This is a roleplaying interaction, even if you could say it's licensed, and nothing more.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 14:51, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough re: it not being a story. But as you say, it is licensed, and if as DisOrIeNTEd says there are "hundreds more", that's all the more reason this is extremely notable. K9 is a major DWU character, and a licensed piece of prose-slash-merchandise featuring him is surely relevant to this Wiki. Perhaps not each post individually, if there's more than one; but it does need documenting somewhere, somehow. If there are many such posts I would be in favour of creating the page for K9Official and merging this one into it, per the precedent of Martha Jones' MySpace blog, although unlike that one, it wouldn't be valid due to the fourth-wall-breaking.

I wasn't really comparing it to the 10,000 Dawns thing or any such serious work of fiction released through Twitter — I simply saw this, reckoned it needed covering somehow, and concluded that "(short story)" would be the best dab term insofar as it's prose.

How would you feel about the suggestion to create an (invalid) page for the blog? --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:54, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

There’s no blog, it’s just someone replying to fans in the same way K9 would. That’s like saying any impression David Tennant or Matt Smith ever made was an in-universe appearance of their character. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 14:58, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Eh? No, I don't mean an in-universe blog. I mean the actual official K9 Twitter blog at K9Official. This would be a real-world page, to be clear, about the website as a piece of merchandise (both the "occasionally in-character" part and the "general place for Baker to officially promote K9 media" part).--Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:59, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

It’s not necessary at all. This is just someone replying to a fan. Nothing more, this will be my final comment on the subject as I don’t know what else to say. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 15:02, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Patrick Troughton would often take questions in-character at conventions. Is this a story? NightmareofEden ☎ 15:37, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Title

"Good dog!" is not given as a title for this story anywhere. Should this page be renamed? And if so, to what? Surely the TARDIS Data Core has a policy for untitled stories - this can't be the only one to exist in the DWU. PierreDelecto1 ☎ 14:40, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

It has no title, it was an in-character reply to a fan. Nothing more. It should be immediately deleted. DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 14:42, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Also, even if this were the title, why isn’t it in title case? Not that it really matters since I see the whole page as invalid to begin with... NightmareofEden ☎ 15:09, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Because that's how the source spells it. We spell titles exactly like they're spelled by the sources, rather than applying our own typographical standards. This is why two different stories with seemingly-identical titles are rendered as We Are The Daleks and We are the Daleks!, respectively. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:15, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

New proposals

After thinking on it for a while, it occurs to me that we could be able to cover these, and any interesting IRL information about the K9 franchise that they provide, on real world pages without setting the dubious precedent of a page about a Twitter blog (albeit an official, commercial Twitter page rather than a personal one). Could we not do so either in a new section in the BTS section of the K9 page, or on Bob Baker and Paul Tams's pages? User:SOTO, thoughts? --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:30, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

You keep calling this “interesting” information. How is this interesting? It reveals nothing, it isn’t a story - it is an extremely minor comment towards a fan, what is so interesting about it? DiSoRiEnTeD1 ☎ 15:32, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Good idea, but here’s a better one; we simply don’t cover it. At all. Really, it’s not necessary. NightmareofEden ☎ 15:38, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

@DiSoRieNTEd, you said yourself there were "hundreds more", and while I don't know about "hundreds", I did find several more after you words spurred me to go looking. At any rate, any licensed use of a DWU copyright is, I should imagine, tentatively relevant. This is especially true for K9 whose franchise has been in limbo since the cancellation of his TV series. Anything to show Baker & Tams keeping the brand alive in a tangible sense is interesting to K9 fans.

Additionally, some of these messages reveal the occasional interesting detail (from an IRL, histor-of-the-show point of view) about how his creators view K9 (for example, one features him referring to the Doctor as "the DoctorMaster", spelled without a hyphen or space). This is the sort of trivial we might want to be able to cite in a BTS section, and while we can always link offsit through "ref" tags, it's surely more in-keeping with how we usually do things that we have preexisting record of this stuff on the Wiki, if it's licensed.

Look, let's just wait for what User:SOTO has to say. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:40, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

I believe User:SOTO has already made quite clear their thoughts. NightmareofEden ☎ 15:44, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

They've made clear that this isn't a story, but they did agree with me this was licensed. I'm waiting for them to give their feedback on covering this stuff on K9#Behind the scenes and/or on the authors' pages as a solution to the problem they highlighted. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:46, July 26, 2020 (UTC)