User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-121.45.54.78-20130925110520/@comment-24048868-20200602013542

Ah, thanks for bring that up. When I was writing it up I did have vague notions of what you're talking about here, but wasn't able to substantiate it, and it slipped my mind in the end.

I'd argue that if a story is being told about the character, then it's an appearance; if it's just a mention that Rassilon did something, then it's a reference. I feel like there is a reasonably clear divide between these two. For example (or examples), in one case you might have the Doctor telling a long story about Rassilon stretching on for paragraphs, while in the second case you'd have the Doctor mention that Rassilon built the Great Tower of Tecteun, and maybe say one or two sentences about it.

There will be edge cases, where the Doctor goes beyond a few sentences, without stretching into paragraphs, but those could perhaps be judged by tone or whether it's more conversation-based or story, and discussed on the talk page if required. it's entirely possible I've unreasonably simplified this, but one thing I know we should not do is attempt to impose the idea of a straight forward flashback on to this case, and we should respect prose as its own method of storytelling, separate from video, audio, and comics.

Anyway, I've added that point as 2.6 on the table, I hope you think that's a fair description? In either case, I've referenced your next post in the examples column.