Methodology

How the house is run — the editorial policies behind the velvet.

The premise

This site is an encyclopedia of a fictional venue and an original character. That combination needs strict honesty rules, because playful fiction is only fun when the reader always knows what’s invented. Four policies govern every page.

Policy 1 — Original lore is labeled as lore

The Gilded Footlight, its contracts, clauses, acts, regulars, rivals, Applause Meter, Wink taxonomy, and timeline are original fiction written in-house for this site. Lore pages end with source notes stating this; the timeline is badged “Fictional lore.” Nothing invented is presented as real.

Policy 2 — Real folklore is cited and separated

The imp-lore page covers genuine folklore — etymology, demonology, witch-trial familiars, the Lincoln Imp — with named sources (see sources). It opens with an explicit honesty statement: the Dapper Imp is an original Vizlings character, not a folklore figure. The real and the invented never mingle without a label.

Policy 3 — In-character voice is never quoted as real

The Imp’s spoken lines — the 24 sayings, the patter quoted on lore pages, the social-pack captions — are in-character dramatization: original lines written in the character’s voice. Every appearance carries the label (“as the Imp puts it,” “In-character line — dramatized character voice, not a quotation from any real person”). They are never presented as real-world quotations, and the build’s QA checks enforce the labeling.

Policy 4 — Generated art is labeled, never faked history

All imagery is AI-generated in-house in the spirit of the owner’s character art — which was used as a private style reference only and never displayed raw on public pages. Every image caption and every social-pack card carries “AI-generated dramatization art — not a historical depiction.” No real people are depicted; no historical photographs or artworks are faked or altered. Full provenance is in the image credits on this page.

Build and verification

• Content is written as Markdown with front matter (editorial/*.md) and built to static HTML by tools/build.py — one h1 per page, alt text on all images, meta descriptions, canonical and Open Graph tags on the site URL, absolute sitemap URLs, and robots.txt.
• tools/qa_check.py verifies every route (HTTP 200), image existence, link resolution, the in-character labeling counts, the verbatim public bio, the mockup-stream labeling, and the social-pack card requirements. The build ships only when all checks pass.

Source notes

• Character: original Vizlings character; public bio quoted verbatim from the Vizlings app (see sources).
• This methodology page describes the working rules used to produce the site on 2026-09-26.