Quote:Fnord, how'd you make the story-crossover-map? Would something like a mind-mapping program work, or would I need to break out the GIMP? Speaking of the map, I don't quite understand the "indirect links," except that LQ1 is effectively an Undocumented Features fanfic.
I did all the heavy lifting in Illustrator, because I don't have any decent flowchart-creation programs (nor was I really willing to warez one *just* to put together the map). If you've got the latest edition of CS I could probably hunt down & send the .ai file to you if you're obsessed enough to take up the banner.
As for indirect links, those are for linking stories that have certain story-crossover elements show up but don't seem to take place in the same "universe" as the stories which are directly linked.
For example: The Revenge Wars section of the map has three elements, the Revenge Wars cycle proper, Zen's (AFAIK) untitled Revenge Wars stories featuring the Dirty Pair, and Sean Gaffney's story "Won't Get Fooled Again." Legion's Quest links directly to Zen's stories, so it gets a hub link, and a direct link back to the full Revenge Wars. "Won't Get Fooled Again" is a Dirty Pair/World-As-Myth crossover which wouldn't rate placing on the map *except* that it has a nontrivial appearance by Zen! There's no indication in the text that says the world Legion's Quest intersects with is the same one as "WGFA," so it gets an indirect link.
Some of this is speculative. The Eyrieverse section is made up of Eyrie writers or people who were inspired by UF back in the dawn ages of net fanfic (this explains why Otaku Rising and Serendipity are on the list, frex, and where the hard link to LQ comes from). Based on my own inferences there's a hard link between UF and The Iron Age, because a) it's obviously a reboot of Hopelessly Lost so it merits an indirect link to begin with, and b) there's a passage in the first episode that hints at a more direct connection. Now, it's possible that I could be wrong, and that part of the map is invalid. But it'll be a long while before I find out. (And no, I'm not going to ask Gryph. That would be cheating.)
The only indirect hub link - between Legion's Quest and American Kitsune - is more out of a sense of decorum than honesty. Ed Becerra *did* work with David Gonterman on that abortion of a story, and Legion *does* make an appearance as it goes along. I can prove it if I have to, but that'd require reading that goddamn thing again, and I just can't muster up the hate or self-loathing necessary to do something that damaging.
That's all a bit teal deer, but it should give you the data you need.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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