Talk:You are the Absurd Hero (short story)

Rename

On Obverse's website for the anthology the story's title is written as the page is currently. Are there any other sources that suggest the the should be lower case? --Tangerineduel / talk 14:36, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Just got my copy. "Are" and "the" are lowercase. Najawin ☎ 08:25, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Validity

So we all agree that according to the current wiki rules this should be invalid, right? You're a character in the narrative and it's a branching path story. At the very least invalid until forums come back and we discuss it there, yes? (Also, dammit, it's similar enough in execution to a story I thought about writing that I'm not sure if I want to do that now. Ugh.) Najawin ☎ 08:19, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Not necessarily so; there is the Flip-Flop precedent to consider. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 05:48, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Which doesn't include you as a character. (Speaking of which, that's another thread we should have, discussing where the line between Flip Flop and branching path stories is. I agree with the change you made to T:VALID, I think the branching path decision was stupid in the first place, but it was never fully examined.) Again, fully willing to have a larger discussion when the forums are back. But prima facie it seems invalid. Najawin ☎ 05:54, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I've just a thought I'd like to highlight. While branching narratives are defacto invalid (barring Flip-Flop as this was an exception, and I don't agree with branching narratives being flat out invalid), I do not believe the "reader" is literally in this story. This sort of mindset of "here's a blank slate character for you to project yourself into" equalling "this is literally the DWU equivalent of every single person who has ever read this story simulataneously" is absurd. While us as readers can "insert" ourselves, no information about us is actually present within the narrative; T:NO RW even goes as far as to say...

"And don't go further than what the DWU source actually tells you."T:NO RW

...so while this source may be invalid due to the branching narrative, the idea that "you" are the character thus making the story unreliable makes no sense in policy. And while in this instance, we may not have a source like Companions and Allies to give us some juicy Wikifiable information, I would like to guide everyone here to look at Human (Attack of the Graske) for how an avatar-style character in a branching narrative can be handled on the Wiki.

Epsilon📯 📂

08:33, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

You mean the invalid story? I'm not trying to defend the wiki policy here, heaven forbid. Again, part of the reason I'd be so open to having an inclusion debate when the boards are up is to change it. But when it comes to "interactive stories" T:VALID explicitly calls out

Additionally, some of them will cast "you", the player, as a character, instead of having you play as an actual DWU characters.

It seems to me that the only thing this story has going for it is the fact that Flip-Flop is valid and Scrooge edited T:VALID to specifically include it when you were thinking about making a thread arguing that because of its validity we were being too quick to dismiss nonlinear stories generally. Hell, it doesn't even have a bionicle reference and that's just cardinal. (I mean, arguably it also has that it clearly doesn't violate rule 4 which the table says these stories do, but honestly I don't know why that was put into the table, it's far from clear that past interactive stories violate rule 4.)

IMO this is a story that should be invalid until proven otherwise and the forum to do that in doesn't currently exist. I just want to make sure we all agree to that before I put the invalid tag on it. Similar to Doctor Who Comes to MINECRAFT! (webcast). Najawin ☎ 17:53, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm still not sold, though I'd bow to a consensus against me. It just seems to me that "CYOA game" are a genre, and we have decided to exclude that genre, while still allowing in things from valid genres (e.g. short stories or Big Finish audio plays) that pastiche the style as a gimmick. Obverse didn't publish this as a CYOA game; they published it as a short story, in a short story collection. I think it would be unnecessarily pedantic of us to exclude it. (Compare Book of the War pastiching a reference book, or even a RPG sourcebook, but actually being in-universe and being marketed by Mad Norwegian as a novel!) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:10, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

From my perspective I don't think my ask would prompt as much discussion if the forums were with us and the actual inclusion debate could happen. idk, both this and the Minecraft thing seem like obvious cases of prima facie invalidity, we stick an invalid tag on them, then discuss them in the forums. It's just that because forums ded, we can't do that last part, so nobody wants to rule something as invalid for an arbitrarily long period of time and these cursory discussions turn into pseudo inclusion debates. Which I get. But it's frustrating, since I want to do coverage of this anthology and leaving this story unresolved is going to eat at me. And, fair warning, I'm absolutely not going to give a full summary for it. Najawin ☎ 18:57, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I actually did rule the Minecraft thing invalid — and I don't really think it's fair to compare something like that to a story in an an otherwise-kosher Obverse anthology! Very different burdens of proof, IMO.

I sympathise w/regards to Wikifying the whole collection, but then, would it really be so different even if You Are… were invalid? Invalid pages still are supposed to get full coverage! That being said, I'll be happy to Wikify it myself (valid or otherwise, depending on how this discussion goes). Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:06, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

That wasn't clear on the talk page Scrooge. You said you leaned invalid and then said "Still, as I said, this is all fairly academic since I agree Doctor Who Comes to MINECRAFT! should be invalid."

It's still marked valid.

More a mindset issue for me. Instead of covering each branching decision tree I'd feel comfortable giving a more high level overview if it's invalid. But that's just me! Other editors can do what they want and that's just my personal comfort and it shouldn't dictate invalid/valid. Just a bit of why I'm frustrated. Also that these discussions feel like they're far more tedious than they should be because, well, forums ded. Najawin ☎ 19:15, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Since this has attracted some twitter attention, let me just note that I think our validity rules concerning nonlinear stories are stupid as hell. I would love for this story to be valid - I just don't think according to our rules it is. My proposal is to note that it's probably currently invalid and then, whenever the forums are back, try to change the rules to make it valid based on Flip Flop, this, the idea that there's no real clear demarcation, and the specific note I left at Warring States in preparation for something like this. I think there's a good case to be made, especially if we also try to hitch together an argument that in-universe dictionaries and the like should be valid. But we can't do that just now. Which is a shame. Najawin ☎ 21:24, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I don't care at all about whether this is valid or not. I just want to know why people keep citing Twitter in their complaints about our policies??? Who on Twitter is actually helping to edit this site that we should care about their opinions? It's been pretty well-established in other non-DWU situations that many Twitter users attack whatever they don't like and don't seem to have any brains or thought processes. So please please please please stop citing Twitter as a reason for doing or not doing anything on this wiki. Shambala108 ☎ 22:58, 18 September 2022 (UTC)