Recognize Backlinks from inside Embedded Notes as part of Main Note

Use case or problem

Building notes from blocks of other notes, that still connect to all the other notes in the graph

For example:
Say I create Note B about a movie, with each scene under different headings. This makes it easy to ![[embed]] each scene into notes about different themes, such as into Note A.
But if I go to look at the graph, the Note A is not linked to any other notes, despite it containing embedded blocks of Note B that does [[link]] to other notes

Proposed solution

Allow backlinks that are inside embedded notes (Note B#Heading 1) to be considered part of the backlinks of the note itself (Note A). This would now behave as a subset and allow notes to be built from other notes meaningfully.

Not suggesting this for simple [[backlinks]] themselves, but for ![[embeds]] where you can now see the written backlink inside the main note when in Preview. That suggests to me that there is a sufficient reason for that backlink to be treated as part of the main note, as it is obviously relevant.

Maybe a separate section for backlinks within embeds, that still links on the graph. Or maybe an option to set this on or off depending on your preference?

Hope this makes sense. Someone had the same problem they posted in Help, to no response, if this makes it clearer: Backlinks inside embedded blocks.

Current workaround (optional)

Related feature requests (optional)

2 Likes

There is a workaround for this that is fairly simple. Make a template with a link to the main topic (e.g. your movie). You could insert into every note you are making that relates to that movie.

This is a great idea and I can definitely see uses for it, but I think that if it gets implemented, it should be optional, since things could get cluttered very quickly. I can also see use cases where this would be counter-productive. For example, I use Obsidian to make study notes and use the same format you describe (creating one big note named after the module and inserting notes as blocks into it). However, often just because a certain topic is part of a module, it isn’t always linked to it. So linking the subnotes of a certain topic to a module would create useless links that only complicate everything.

For example, you may have a note on a scene in movie A that reminds you of a scene in an unrelated movie, B. You create a link to it in the note on that scene. If your proposed function is implemented, then movie A will be linked to movie B in graph view. But this would be a very loose link and would only cause confusion instead of adding clarity to your graph.