Validity: The Book of the Enemy's Biographies of Authors

Opening Post

So. Historical background. When The Book of the Enemy was first being covered on this wiki there was some confusion on how to cover it, as there's a fair bit of linking material aside from just the short stories therein. User:NateBumber and User:Shambala108 have a small discussion about how to deal with this at Talk:The Book of the Enemy (anthology), and as an afterthought Nate decides to cite the author biographies as part of this linking material.

I end up doing my summaries for this anthology two years later, and find that this decision was made, technically validating these biographies, specifically on a page created by Nate, Wilhelm Liebknecht, who is listed as an author for one of the stories in the anthology but has an in-universe page, treating his author biography as a valid source. I mention how Biographies of Authors was treated as valid on Talk:Doctor Who (N-Space) during the time period when we were still having massive expansion of our coverage of the in-universe franchise. Nate noticed this and said that in no uncertain terms he did not intend for his own biography to be valid, and that until the forums were back we should cite the in-universe character biographies to their places in Prenarrative Briefings (more on that later). I was ambivalent, but he went ahead and did so during my absence. (Which is fair enough - I was gone. If you want to read more on the discussion, it can be found at User talk:NateBumber/Archive 3#Against Nature and User talk:Najawin/Archive 3#Sandbox4. Ultimately I don't think this has any real influence on the rest of this discussion, but I include it for completeness' sake.)

So, what exactly is the issue here? Well, if you want to read TBotE completely unspoiled, turn back now.

TBotE as a whole is a fairly ambiguous piece of work, in the grand tradition of Faction Paradox. What isn't ambiguous is that at least one person is recuperating from an encounter with The Enemy and is going through, effectively, debriefing, viewing memories of their encounter with The Enemy and/or other's encounters with The Enemy. (These constitute the short stories.) In between these psychologically harrowing experiences, there are briefings given that are relevant to the topic of The Enemy, to greater or lesser extent, often from characters or entities that are entirely fictional. (I believe all but two of them are written by Simon Bucher-Jones given comments in his biography. The other two are clearly indicated as such, and will be the topic of discussion.)

These biographies, those for clearly fictional authors of briefings, are at times the only context that can exist for these characters outside of simply saying that they authored a biography, see, for instance, the biography of "Irma Ebbinghaus", which discusses a human inductee into the culture of the Great Houses, or often provides crucial context to the stories in which they already exist, such as Malachi Yarrow's history with the Mal'akh, or Robert Scarratt's defection to Faction Paradox.

In the briefing authors there are two who aren't clearly fictional. (Well, three, but Alain Chartier is explicitly stated to be a pseudonym for the poem in the book.) "Lesley Drakken" and "Michael Simpson". Of these I think a case can be made that we might treat Michael Simpson's biography as valid as well, as it includes the section:

"The entity that later emerged from the library still called itself Michael Simpson (though whether you should believe it is up for debate) and declared itself a War historian and potential author to any sapient creature that would listen (which certainly brings the entity’s honesty into question)."

But this isn't necessary.

Okay, more weirdness. Back to Wilhelm Liebknecht. Who is Wilhelm Liebknecht? Well, he was a German politician. He did not write the story attributed to him in this anthology. Who did? I assume Simon Bucher-Jones, both due to him stating that anything not written by the others in the anthology was by him in his author bio, as well as its specific identity of The Enemy.

This leaves us with, roughly, five questions.

How do we treat biographies of authors who wrote narratives who aren't Wilhelm Liebknecht? Nate has stated that his biography wasn't intended to be a valid source, but there's some biographies in here where it's not trivial to me that their authors aren't trying to do a Contributors (short story) style thing. (I lean towards ruling all of these invalid, in spite of the blatant violation of T:NO SELF REF. I think the rule 4 statement is as unambiguous as we're going to get unless one of the others says they did intend their bio to be valid, and that's just going to be an even bigger headache.)

How do we treat "Wilhelm Liebknecht", given that his author biography is a very real, "in character" biography of the actual person that simply didn't write the story in question? (Is there precedent for this? I honestly don't know.) Do we keep saying he wrote the story in question? Do we treat him like a fictional character? I'm pretty sure this is Bucher-Jones, but this is inference, not explicitly stated.

How do we treat the biographies of authors of briefings aside from Drakken, Simpson, and Chartier, given that all of them are fictional. Do we treat them as individual short stories? Eg, "Scarratt defected to Faction Paradox. (PROSE: Captain Robert Scarratt (TBotE Short Story))"? Do we then attribute the briefings in question to these fictional authors? (I would hope not, but, you know, it could happen. Especially if we attribute The Map and the Spiders to "Liebknecht".) (I think I'm gonna say these should be valid but the precise way in which we implement this is up for debate.)

How do we treat the biography of Chartier? Pretty easy, just valid/invalid. Chartier didn't actually write the poem so it's an explicitly fictional biography (involving references to "time active powers") that explicitly didn't write anything in the book. imo this depends on how we treat the above category.

Finally, how do we treat the biographies of Drakken and Simpson? Drakken writes a poem in her briefing, and her biography makes no reference to any suggestion that she's an in-universe character. Simpson's biography contains the section I referenced above, and his briefing, one I deeply dislike, is completely consistent with the in-universe characterization given in that biography, treating himself as a historian of The War. I'm.... Not sure about how to handle these two. I think I lean towards invalidity here as well, just because of Drakken's, and the fact that it's a bit of a mess otherwise. But I think Simpson intended for his to be in-universe, tbh. Do we treat Simpson as being a solely out of universe author, or give him pages for both his in-universe and out of universe versions? This is a somewhat relevant question, because while I haven't fully wikified TBotE, in part due to these issues, the page Whig should probably include the section:

Michael Simpson compared the Great Houses to the Whig Party. (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings)

Or similar. Hopefully that would redirect to an in-universe version of Simpson, and if so, without his biography, we're left with something like:

Michael Simpson wrote a briefing comparing the Great Houses to the Whig Party. (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings)

As his in-universe page. Which, again, I don't think his is intent. So this one is a bit messy. Though, again, I think I lean towards invalidity.

I hope you all can understand why this is an issue that required the forums to resolve it. It's thorny enough that there needs to be serious discussion, but I'm bullish on it getting done in 3 weeks. Najawin ☎ 05:43, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I personally think all of the biographies that are up for debate should be considered valid, just because it makes coverage easier, but I understand why others might disagree. But consider me a vote for validity. Pluto2☎ 21:16, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Forcing Nate to be a DWU character by hook or by crook, nice. Najawin ☎ 22:03, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I have read the anthology cover to cover, and while I'm not in a position to say one way or the other on Nate's thing, I have been in contact with SBJ and we have discussed his work on Faction Paradox numerous times. I may be able to get more information on the subjects in question. Fingers crossed there's a way to figure this out that doesn't violate T:NO SELF REF or T:WIKIFY OWN. LilPotato ☎ 04:41, 25 April 2023 (UTC)