Board Thread:Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20170306172600/@comment-6032121-20200603162219

Shambala108 wrote: And I still don't get how a sequel (or prequel) to an invalid story can be considered valid? By definition, sequels and prequels are continuations or parts of a story. …not really? You're thinking of "Part 2". But that's not what a "sequel" is, or at least it's not the definition we've been using when calling Fixing a Hole a "sequel".

But a sequel in the sense this thread is talking about is just a story whose events refeference something that happened in an earlier one. Which happens all the time — as I've pointed out before, Vampire Science is as much a "sequel" to the unlicensed fanfilm Time Rift as Storm in a Tikka is a sequel to Dimensions in Time.

A sequel, as understood on this thread, can be, and is often read without any knowledge of the original. In other words, it passes Rule 1, if that's what you were worried about.

(An alternative title for the stories this thread is about might be Stories which reference invalid stories, if you're going to be a stickler on the sense of "sequel" you're using.)

As for Rule 4, the point made over and over again in this thread is that writers of stories which reference invalid ones don't have to know that we, on the Wiki, with our arbitrary Wiki-focused rules, have declared the invalid story outside the DWU. When Vampire Science references Time Rift, it's not setting itself outside the DWU, it's seeking to "canonize" the earlier fanfilm. So in most cases it also passes Rule 4, though certainly a story can be a sequel to an invalid story and also fail Rule 4 on its own terms.

Let's just await SOTO's response and (hopefully) closing argument.