ATTN: ALL - MOD POST

[milliways-mods.livejournal.com]

Canon Puncturing - for lack of a better term, this is what we're going to call it. We're referring to the practice of sending your character up to another and saying, in essence, 'OMG u r not reel, u r a fictional character!' There's been a lot of this going on recently, on all sides, and we have this to say: STOP.

Don't ret-con any previous plotlines - what's done is done - but please, no more. It has the potential to create some very sticky meta situations which will only end up messing with everybody's heads.

If you want to create some existential angst for your own character by, say, having them find a copy of their canon lying around the bar, that's fine. BUT, before you do so, you will need to check for permission with every other character from that canon in the bar.

Likewise, if you should decide that another character is fictional in your world (and please, please, don't), before mentioning it in any way, shape, or form in the bar, you will need to receive consent from:

a) Every character from the canon you decide is fictional, and

b) Every character from your own canon.

For example, if Snow White-mun wanted to bring a volume of 'Revolutionary Girl Utena' into the bar, before they did so, they'd have to check with Bigby-mun (from their own canon), Anthy-mun, A-ko-mun, B-ko-mun, Akio-mun, and Utena-mun (from Utena-canon), even if the only person they intended to show it to was, say, Anthy.

In conclusion: every character in Milliway's is created equal. Everybody is real, so, unless you receive specific permission to do otherwise, please treat them as such.

Comments

[moroccofor1year.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU!!!
I have been really annoyed by this whole you're not real thing. It seems like grasping for a plot. Thank you for an mod decision cause I was trying to say OH I don't mind. I think knowing who someone is cause they are a superhero in someones world is one thing BUT I don't think one can make an issue of real or not real. Its not fun.

[weallscream.livejournal.com]

>>Don't ret-con any previous plotlines<<

What about current plotlines though?

[milliways-mods.livejournal.com]

Um... I suppose it depends on the plotlines in question, really. What's currently going on that's impacted by this?

[stilljustandrew]

Hmmm. Guilty as charged, here, but --

well, because of the way characters on Buffy talk in pop-culture references, the existence of a lot of Milliways-regulars' canons as fiction in my canon is pretty well established. I can't really decide that (say) Spiderman isn't fictional in Andrew's world, because the show's already referenced him as such.

In terms of personal plot arc, Andrew's not going to be doing a whole lot more IC canon puncturing -- but this is because it has been pointed out to him that this is Rude Behavior, not because he's going to stop recognizing people he's seen/read about.

...I guess I'm asking: if Spiderman walks into the bar next week, what am I-the-player supposed to do? or, not-do?

[milliways-mods.livejournal.com]

I suppose that'd be one of the cases in which I'd call for a little bit of overruling of your personal canon for the sake of in-game courtesy.

There is, of course, another theory, which is that the boundaries between universes are not entirely solid. It's usually impossible for characters to travel between them, but stories... stories leak. A lot of authors in potentia are picking up resonances of stories that happened/are happening in other universes. What they think is personal inspiration is the... ripples, shall we say, of actual events elsewhere in the multiverse. That'd go some way towards explaining the presence of Spiderman comics in the Buffyverse when Spiderman is quite clearly a real person.

[tropes.livejournal.com]

Ugh, thank you. >:D

[ari-o.livejournal.com]

I blame Holden. Damn him!

[balletrat]

Well - while I can't say my character has been doing much fictional recognizing - mostly because she's too far behind to recognize anyone anyways - Meg has been from a very early point fully aware that she appears in several works of fiction, and in fact rather enjoys pointing her own fictional fame out to people.

Basically, yes, I'm not going to run around pointing out other characters' reality or lack thereof - but am I allowed to mention my own character's?

[milliways-mods.livejournal.com]

Well, you'd need to check with any other characters from your canon - we do have a Phantom in the bar. If you really feel you want to bring it up, try and use something like the theory mentioned here (http://www.livejournal.com/community/ways_back_room/363329.html?thread=3794497#t3794497) to explain it.

[rabidfangurl.livejournal.com]

Bruce thanks you rather a lot. Jenny laughs and mumbles somthung about the Multiverse. Megwyn knows nothing about this and goes back to playing with Ingress. And Anakin has a question.

Since just about *everyone* in the bar knows that they have movies made about them, due to Luke's rather spectacular entrance, what should they do?

[mnt_raph]

*smirk*
have another Movie Night?

[toddbaby.livejournal.com]

Man, there's a lot I could say about this, but...

I think Todd's been a victim of this problem more than just about anyone else. Yet I still have sort of mixed feelings about this decision.

That is all. I'm not really making an argument, just stating an opinion.

[anthy-rosebride.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. (Also, saves me from the meta of DOOM.) Thanks!

Um. And also: is there an Utena-mun?

[aj_crawley]

la_calice

:)

[timsbooks.livejournal.com]

Yeh, i've done this quite abiut, but I'm still unsure why this is a bad thing?

I mean, yeh, in one reality, people from other realities are seen as ficitonal because they have stories about them. A lot of our realities are set in ones that are based pretty closely on the real world. Like, if say neo walked through the door, the majority of modern charachters would recognise him. Why is this bad?

I'm sorry, maybe I'm just confused, but i don't see why theres a problem with recognising what amounts to famous people....

[aj_crawley]

* Everyone in Milliways is a fictional character, played as real. That's kind of the point of the RP. Kind of messes with that, if you suddenly decide a character actually is fictional.

* Simply deciding something like that without checking with everybody involved is godding, which is Not Allowed.

* It creates messy meta situations, in which nobody's sure what's real and what's not.

* It's just plain annoying.

[timsbooks.livejournal.com]

Hate to seem like an ass, but something IC just brought up a point.

Things like valkeries, the grecian gods, etc, things that are even more common knowledge then just fandoms.... Are those allowed to be recognised? Like, y'know, we;ve got Jesus Christ wandering around the joint.....

Again, sorry for bringing ti up....

[aj_crawley]

Yes, public domain characters can be recognised, as well as, say, people like Trotsky, Rasputin, or Alexander the Great. Not because you've seen the movies/read the books they're from, but because they're also famous historical characters.

[sign-seeker.livejournal.com]

I'm certainly not going to fight the mods on this, and I'll abide by the rule. (It's fairly easy for me, anyway, because my character predates a lot of Milliways canons.) But I do have to admit to wondering how exactly this will work.

I mean, for any character coming from a modern Earth, there are some characters that one simply can't avoid knowing, IC. Some are even part of common parlance -- if my character asks a super-powered character "So what are you, some kind of Superman?", then what happens when Superman walks in the door? A character from modern America who didn't recognize Batman or Superman or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or at least a few characters from current tv shows would... well, not be from modern America. To change a character's cultural context changes the character, and the world they come from. In some cases, it would greatly impoverish the character, IMO, making them into a much flatter character, and not the same one that the person signed on to play.

I understand the common courtesy of asking before springing that sort of revelation on a character, just as one would ask before any other major plot points. And if the other mun didn't want that revelation, I would be careful to have my character avoid the other, or think "I should know that name... Arg, I can't place it" if that were a viable IC option. But to change a character's established knowledge base... well, it makes me fairly determined to never take on a character who would know any other canons, rather than having to push them that far OOC.

I just don't see how this will work without really limiting our RPing and/or our character selection.

[aj_crawley]

*points again to the Leakage Theory*

If you really need to recognise a character as featuring in a fictional work, something like that is your best bet.

[kimpire.livejournal.com]

Though I'm not actually participating in the bar at the moment due to time-zone and schedule issues (I hope to in the near future), I'd just like the following public.

Every single one of my characters - this includes Crichton, Ella, and Carmen Sandiego, and any characters I choose to bring into the bar in the future -- has my full permission to be recognized by anybody, and I mean anybody, who has a legimitate reason to recognize them.

If people don't want Crichton to recognize them, I'm fine with that (Crichton would only really recognize public-domain characters like ninja turtles and Dana Scully, anyway -- he recognized Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the canon, after Andrew mentioned it, but didn't recognize Andrew by face). None of my other characters have that problem as of yet.

I'm a firm believer in the anything-goes school of RP, though. I believe in doing everything that a character would do, regardless of its effects on that character; if, to use an extreme example, somebody decides to try and kill one of my characters, I will not do anything OOC to stop them. Of course, Crichton would try and stay alive, but if he gets into a situation where he's Very Likely to Die, I'm not going to engage in convoluted plot-mutilation in order to save him. I'm not uptight about my RP, and I'm not so sensitive that I don't have a problem when people change things for my characters that I didn't expect.

The only time I *do* get upset is when somebody uses OOC knowledge to ruin something I had been planning; this happened once. But if, for example, somebody had come up with a perfectly legitimate deus ex machina that would have saved Crichton from Scorpius way back when we had that huge thread, I wouldn't have told them not to do it just to "save the plot". If it's within the realm of probability for the character to do, then that's what the character should do.

To bring this back to the topic at hand, I don't have any problem at all with people recognizing my characters as fictional. It's all part of the game. I can understand that people might not like their characters to be recognized... but this is RP, and if it's natural to happen, it *should* happen. I just think that to complain about this is being somewhat oversensitive. Why should angst about existing be any different from angst about relationships, death, being Bound, or anything else that happens in the bar? :)

I do, however, want to apologize to the people who *don't* like this situation, because this is mostly my fault; I sort-of started the whole unreality thing the day I shouted across the bar to Raph, "You're a ninja turtle, aren't you."

Oh, and please don't kill me. This is just my opinion. *hides*

[spectral-skin.livejournal.com]

This is why I'm glad my characters are less likely to be recognized than some. Ulfin's canon is somewhat obscure, and since he's a minor character within that canon, recognition by other characters is less than likely.

Angelo has already been recognized, by Andrew, which given that Andrew defines "loveable geek" is only to be expected. Anyone else whose character is likely to have read the Gen-X comics is welcome to know who he is, though.

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

Within the Fables cannon, Snow is entirely aware that the mundies have written about her and the other Fables (that is, the Brothers Grimm stories, derivations thereof, and predecessors for the stories). She is essentially public domain, and I have absolutely no problem with others recognizing her as such(though she's slightly annoyed when other characters make assumptions on her based on the stories, I feel that that works IC). Recognizing her from the Fables comic, however, is a bit more iffy. Fortunately, it's not as popular as many, so 99% of the characters wouldn't need excuses for not knowing of it.

[pjpettigrew.livejournal.com]

Peter's world is, essentially, a world indistinguishable from the real world, except that the wizarding world also exists there, albeit in hiding. Peter is a Muggleborn Anglo-Catholic, and was, as a boy, a bit of a sci-fi geek. He's most familiar with the science fiction writers who were popular in the 1960s and 1970s. He saw Star Wars over Christmas vacation in 1977 (he would have been in seventh-year, and going on eighteen at that point); he's mentioned seeing The Empire Strikes Back(1980) and Return of the Jedi(1983) as well. And I have a sneaking suspicion that when he was home from Hogwarts, Peter watched Doctor Who on television.

How does this affect Peter's interaction with, say, Luke and Anakin? It doesn't. First of all, Peter's been reading about parallel universes since he was nine or ten. Secondly, Peter knows that bits of their life stories have leaked through to his world, but he doesn't assume that what he knows is accurate or even true. Authors edit bits that don't fit the story the author wants to tell. Or they exaggerate. Or they omit things altogether.

Unless asked directly about the movies, Peter won't even mention them. He does not assume that he knows all the facts--and given his choice, he would accept Luke's and Anakin's versions of their lives over George Lucas's. Because they were there, and they are real.

Courtesy of Wensleydale and Andrew, Peter has heard about the Harry Potter books. Since Peter knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is real, any existential angst hasn't arisen. He regards the books--which he hasn't heard of, prior to Milliways--as unauthorised bios, not unlike the myriads of trashy books that were written up about Princess Diana--but marketed as fiction so as to reach a wider audience. There's little danger of lawsuits: since Harry is a minor, he would have trouble suing; the Dursleys wouldn't want anyone knowing that their nephew was THAT Harry Potter; and the wizarding world wouldn't risk exposure for the sake of a case of invasion of privacy.

Wensley's also mentioned the Harry Potter films, which Peter says doesn't exist. There's a reason for this--Wensley is from 2004, and Peter is from 1996. None of the films have been made in Peter's time.

Peter has read the first book, which Wensley loaned to him. He wasn't terribly impressed. It seems like a fairy tale version of Harry's life; Peter, having lived in the Gryffindor dorms for three years as Scabbers, knows much better than that. Given what he's read, I doubt if he'd even want to read the rest of the books.

Peter's perception, ultimately, is that he is real and, fictional works notwithstanding, everyone else is also real--unless they say that they aren't. Even so, he prefers to think of people as real; denying the reality of others seems like another way of saying that other people don't count--that they don't feel, or hurt, or die, and it doesn't really matter what you do to them. That way lies madness and damnation. Peter's not going NEAR that.

[muddypetticoats.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure I agree with this, as I think there are other matters disrupting the game that are more important, but as the mods have spoken, so shall I listen. :D

That said, here's where my characters stand. None of my characters have the capability to canon-puncture anyone, with the exception of Despair, who isn't going to, because she doesn't see anyone as fictional, and really couldn't care less about the idea. No potential character I could possibly bring in would be able to canon-puncture, either. I seem to have a fondness for Other World and AU characters, or characters far enough back in history to make canon-puncturing pointless.

Liz may recognise some characters or tales, such as when Ulfin mentioned King Arthur and Merlin. However, her take on them has always been, "They are real? And heretofore I had always been accustomed to view them as legend, for so they appear in my world. How wonderful!" or something to that effect. Everyone is always real to her. Hell, she's marrying someone from nearly 200 years in her future, and advancing into an entirely different time period. Anything is possible, as far as she's concerned. So if she recognises someone, that'll be the extent of it.

As for people recognising my characters... I would actually like for Liz to be canon-punctured. I have my own personal reasons for this, and I've done some preliminary plotting to manage it. So feel free to recognise her. Her canon's pretty well a staple of secondary school lit classes. It'd be more remarkable if no one recognised her.

Leave Mat alone. NO canon-puncturing of Mat. He's got enough to be going on with. Canon-puncture him, and he and I will both hurt you.

Dinner and Despair, I'm ambivalent about. I'm fine if people canon-puncture them, but I'm not looking to have it happen, either. So take that as you will.

That's where I and my characters stand on the matter. As you were. :)

[OOC: My profound apologies to Peter-mun. That had to have been remarkably confusing. I meant to reply to the post as a whole, and apparently clicked the link to respond to the last comment. My brain is elsewhere today. So sorry! :)]

[ari-o.livejournal.com]

Wah! that is probably all Holden's fault - and his ANGST! He set a bad example.
woe.

[capt_angie]

For the record I have no problem with any of my characters being recognised- I've never found one with the fictional status at all. Thats Angie and Drusilla (if I ever get round to bringing Dru back into the bar that is) and it's already been stated that somewhere in the many dimensions both of these characters are fictional.

Angie's known for some time about the books she appears in and despite a few initial misgivings about her own reality and wether or not she was fictional, she has subscribed to the 'I feel therefore I am' school of coping with it, thanks to some well timed snogs [Crichton-mun, Angie thanks Crichton greatly :)]. She can't see why everyone else who finds out about fictionalisations of thier life doesn't see it the same way. She's spoken about this with Meg who has similar oppinions.

Despite being, in her Milliways canon at least, half muggle, it's been well established that TV and muggle literature don't appeal to her -she's the sporty type after all- and so she's unable to canon puncture. So far the only character that she's recognised of the bat is Snow White, who knows all about her own infamy.

Dru is of course from the same world as Andrew and he's been told by Tim (I believe) that in Tims world Andrew is in a TV series so it goes that the same will be true for Dru. But really Dru's not been around enough for any fictional predicaments to arise.

So anyway, thats where I stand on this :)

[bloody-tired.livejournal.com]

I would just like to say that if you want a Milliways-canon explaination of the Leakage Theory(tm), Jenny can provide one, in the form of the Multiverse that exists in the Authority. Since she has traveled the Multiverse, she can tell people that all of their universes *do* exists, just seperately.

Would you like this?

[blue_ajah]

Chalk up another vote in support of the Leakage Theory, where necessary. Key word necessary, of course.

FWIW, Moiraine has been collecting tales of similarities between the worlds that she encounters (e.g. comparing the Force to the One Power and various tales of great battles against evil/the Shadow to the one upcoming in her own world) and has decided as a result that stories cross over from place to place somehow. She's nearly convinced that it's a sign of some larger truth that every world -- and every world, to her, is equally real -- reflects in some fashion or another (with tons of variety in method, outcome, etc.).

Most of her work in this area is pretty abstract and/or philosophical; there hasn't been a person involved, other than an acknowledgement of similiar roles that may be played out (e.g. Rand in her world is similar in her mind to Harry Potter in the HP world, complete with prophecies for each). I hope this isn't any sort of problem, because it's rather core to her characterization. I don't think it would be, based on what you described in the original post, but if it is, please let me know -- in that case I'd like to discuss things further. :)

(Jack Sparrow, of course, has no clue and even if told would likely only blink and find it interesting. His life is surreal enough that he's just not bothered.)

[agent-dkscully.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Someone told Scully that she was a tv character and I've had her not believe him, but gah it is going to be something she will be angsting over...unless, whenever someone takes over spooky_mulder, the new Mulder!Mun and I can come up with something to combat that. It wasn't expected and although I went with it and had a good time, I would have prefered for it not to happen as that, IMO, is sort of Power Playing or God-Moding.

[testpilot-hal.livejournal.com]

The beautiful convenience of taking on the mantle of a comicbook character is that parallel earths with entirely different points of reality are just expected. DC Comics alone had multitudes of various Earths with all manner of storied outcomes. Admittedly, this was brought to a head and supposedly eliminated with Crisis on Infinite Earths, but that doesn't mean that all of those different realities no longer resonate.

So my Hal can have met the Golden Age Flash back home, have a conversation with Silver Age Flash here at Milliways and still recognize either of them from comic books I'd find on my 1959 newstand, just because that is the reality I recognize. Would I know Jack Sparrow or Agent Scully or any of the Potterites? Not likely. Jack is from an entirely different era. Scully hasn't even been born. The Rowling books haven't been written.

Basically, a line has to be drawn in a way that can't be defined exactly. The rule would go like this: "If you can't think of anything for your avatar to say to another avatar that goes beyond OMGWTF, yer rilly hear!11!!, then maybe you should rethink your approach." Come on, we're all remarkably intelligent people. If you want to give yourself an inner monologue of "Wow ... I never knew" -- fine, but if you're avatar really is so incredibly stoked to meet a long-time hero of legends past, let that manifest in your behavior. You say you're a big fan of ... um ... Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol? Great! When he walks in, go rattle his chains or call him a "Spot of bad potato!"