no, REALLY, everything is contextual
My latest Micfic is up. The theme was "cat", and I've gone all fairy tale. This last is predictable, but in fact this time I've gone so specifically fairy tale that the story is not going to make any sense at all unless you've read Mme D'Aulnoy's "The White Cat". This is actually a serious drawback, it's a moderately obscure tale which I doubt will be familiar to a lot of people.
I'm all torn about this. The story said exactly what I wanted to say about the tale, which revolves around my fascination with the obsessive relationship the prince has with the cat when she's still a cat - it's weird and significant, and has to be accounted for. I have no idea if my personal theory about it is going to be clearly readable from the story. I'm coming to regard this word limit as a nasty, iron-clad personal nemesis who fortnightly dings me over the head with his giant steel club of word-crushing doom. I swear this story could have made sense without the necessity of reading the original tale if I'd had more space.
But the overall question is more philosophical. Postmodernism and intertextuality and all that guff cheerfully assumes that you have to know other texts before you can fully understand the new one that's commenting on them. Is this a legitimate way of adding layering and density and implication? is it cheating? is it elitist? is it pretentious beyond belief? do I worry too much?
The picture, incidentally, is an illustration to the tale by children's illustrators Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone, who also did The Hundred and One Dalmations. I've always loved those illustrations. This one is gorgeous - White Cat and prince and random courtier watch impressionistic fireworks.