Referring to references · 9:20pm Jun 21st, 2014
It is pretty much de rigueur these days for the storyteller to throw in an occasional literary or pop-culture reference. (One could argue, I suppose, that the ultimate crossover story would be nothing but references, but if that's been written, I missed it.) Authors, I suspect, are delighted when a reader picks up on a relatively obscure reference, and perhaps are disappointed when it goes unnoticed. I recall one particular incident when an author did the equivalent of Marv Albert's "Yes!" when I noticed a chapter title had been borrowed from an alt-rock number from the middle of last decade and posted the chorus in comments; I'd link it here, but it appears the story's been pulled.
Me, I've probably thrown in more references than I need to, from Shakespeare to Rebecca Black. As a general rule, I expect them to be either (1) so obvious as to be not worth mentioning or (2) so obscure that no one ever notices. If you do things differently -- or even if you don't -- I'd be interested to hear your viewpoint.
I will occasionally borrow verbiage from movies or maybe poems/songs that made an impression on me and caused me to remember them. As far as references, either they're so obvious it's painful, or it fits like a puzzle piece into the story and thus isn't much of a reference. I don't do shout-outs unless I'm writing a comedy, like Wherein the Main Character is an Alicorn OC. That story is supposed to be so self-referential and gimmicky it hurts.
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"Self-referential and gimmicky" describes rather a lot of comedies, and not just in the ponyverse.
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At that point, it's really in what kind of taste the comedy is done in. Some, like Epic Movie, are so awful that I cringe whenever they try to make a joke, whereas others, like South Park, induce large amounts of laughter.
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Not that anyone would accuse South Park of excessive tastefulness or anything.
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And Epic Movie, along with the other movies in its series, plus the Scary Movie series, and several others that I find to be awful, are wildly popular. I am not the only viewing audience, to be sure.