Fic-Privileging on Fanlore and Limitations to Fannish Diversity

[kylara]

Following a discussion in Talk:Tentaclefic, RatCreature suggested bringing the topic up in the community to raise awareness of the issue and hopefully get some more input on what to do about it. The topic began with the suggestion that the "Tentaclefic" article, which address tentacles in fandom and fanworks more broadly than just fic, be renamed to incorporate other mediums of fanwork. This expanded into a broader discussion on what to do about other such named articles and fic-privileging on Fanlore.

I'm mostly from anime/manga fandom. From the discussion it seems that fic is the core of many Western-sourced fandoms which would explain the fic-centricism on Fanlore. Fic is also important in anime/manga fandom, but quite a lot of activity is also focused on visual mediums such as fanart, webcomics, and manga-style doujinshi. Tropes aren't limited to written fiction, and fic-centered terms are not as prevalent.

I'm concerned that when topics (such as tentacles) have articles with fic-centered instead of inclusive names, that this works at the exclusion of other mediums of fanworks. I would like to see more anime/manga information brought into Fanlore, and so far the inclusion has been rather limited (which could be for a number of reasons besides). Still, I would like to see Fanlore remain welcoming to expansion.

So how about it? Ideas on how to be more mindful to non-fic fanworks? RatCreature's also looking for ideas on how to rename topics like "wingfic," "apocafic," and others which are not inherently fic-centric.

Comments

[cesperanza]

Adding to this that I personally would rather see the addition of pages rather than the changing/renaming of other pages to these pages. So one could totally add a [[Wings]] page that linked to a [[wingfic]] page and also to pages on--whatever, wing art, things with wings' vids, fandoms known for the wing fetish, etc. whatever. I feel like with a wiki you always want to add more and link madly, rather than try to consolidate. Because the same material might be relevant to different contexts as time goes on, so you never want to limit the context in which information is presented, if you ask me! So art featuring wings might to go tropes, might go to kink, might go to transformation, might go to angels and religion, might go to cosplay... I'd say you want to keep the information low and discrete rather than big and broad!