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

[copracat]

What about the term 'fan works' because it's open to anything made by a fan and so doesn't future limit? It could refer to anything fans think up.

[kylara]

Adding suggestions to my own post in a comment~

For article names, I'd prefer general/simple terminology, e.g. Tentacles, Apocalypse, Wings. This can include information on canon sources, links to resources, document a wider breadth of history (including fannish history and attitudes), as well as include an expanse of fanworks. If anything gets too big, like the fic section, give it a subpage to expand.

[copracat]

I abandon my suggestion and embrace yours!

Seconded!

[elke_tanzer]

:-D

[kass]

This was going to be my suggestion too, since I can't think of another graceful way to create a page which could include, say, tentaclefic, tentacle-related fanart, tentacle vids, etc. :-)

[anatsuno]

I think this is the best, inclusive and graceful solution.

Looking at Fanlore also as a vocabulary repository, as long as a search on 'apocafic' brings up an explanation of the term, be in as a subset of a page about Apocalypse Fanworks / the trope of the apocalypse or as a short terminology page linking to the broader one, I think every worry on the 'apocafic' angle would be easily covered.

[ratcreature]

I think there are more questions about some of the others, because some elements exist in all media, but I'm not sure they are really genres in all. On the talk page when I brought "Deathfic" up as an other example kylara sensibly suggested calling the page "Character Death" (which hadn't really occurred to me, as I associate that with the warning, not the genre), which is more inclusive, but I'm not actually sure it means the same to show a dead character in fanart, and that it is a genre there as it is in fic.

In general the articles many of the tropes called such-and-such AU are very fanfic focused even if it is also an art trope (Elf AU comes to mind, there's certainly plenty of fanart drawing characters as elves), but is art "AU"? The AU page itself is very fanfic-centric. And calling the page "Elves" is really not the same, as the trope is elf-ication of non-elf characters, not fictional elves in general.

Actually that the trope page itself is called Story Tropes is rather telling, even though a ton of these tropes listed actually are visual as well as plotty, and some even at present have art as well as fic examples on their stubby pages, for example the "Noir Detective AU" article, also the not yet created Regency AU trope page comes to mind for another quite visual one, with the love of period costumes and dressing characters up.

[torachan]

I think this is the best solution. And apocafic can redirect to Apocalypse, tentaclefic can redirect to Tentacles, etc. so that if fans type in those terms they still get to the right place.

[aethel]

This is an excellent point!

In the case of wingfic, however, it looks like it could be split into two articles: one on wingfic and one on wing art or "wings" generally. The history section seems to veer between wingfic specifically and wings in art, and the definition in the first section is more narrative-focused. Or, at least, it should be rewritten with general information separated from format-specific information.

[facetofcathy]

I rather liked the phraseology you used in your comment on the tentaclefic page, Tentacles in Fanworks.

If we take ratcreature's point about the Story Tropes page, could we start there, change that page to Tropes in Fanworks, use the terminology above so we'd have a directory of things like Wings in Fanworks, Elves in Fanworks, etc.

(That page has a section on story lengths that just doesn't really need to be there in my opinion.)

The benefit of this approach as I see it is it gives a place to start on dealing with the issue of all fic-centric pages. It allows fic or art or vid centric tropes to stay connected to all the others. It allows tropes that are mostly based in one type of fanwork to still have discussion about other uses of the trope (I know of a couple Highschool AU vids even though that is usually a fic trope only.) It allows the individual trope pages that cover similar territory to have sections for each sub-element of the trope (there's a conversation on the Pastfic page about whether to make a separate Backstory page or merely make it a section on what we might chose to rename Pre-Canon in Fanworks). It creates trope pages that cannot be confused with discussion of that element in canon sources (The Elves issue.) and centres the page topic firmly on fandom ground.

The main downside to this is that we'd be using some clunky names in places, but the redirects would help with that somewhat.

[briar_pipe]

Jumping in here (sorry!)...

Based on several AU and other multi-media challenges I've run and participated in, there is little difference between a D&D AU fic and a D&D AU fanart in terms of tropes, at least not on a broad level. They are both different from a D&D canon fic or artwork, though. I could see creating subpages or subsections within an article to deal with this issue, or simply incorporating the term "AU" that works so well in your Noir and Regency examples.

Maybe this comes from starting in anime/manga fandom, but I don't disassociate the visual from the textual, and I've heard several fanartists express dissatisfaction or irritation at fic-centric language in media fandom. If other communities are making the effort to use inclusive language, Fanlore really should be at the forefront of that, shouldn't it?

[yue_ix]

I really like this suggestion of redirecting and referring. As someone who's as interested in visual art as she is in fics, I've noticed that a lot of artists themselves describe their works with "wingfic" and "babyfic" even if their mediums aren't fic, because that was the only term at their disposition. This leads to a lot of things being miscategorized, especially if new catgories are being created without being linked to. A redirection to the most generic term would allow everyone to have a global idea and then refine their searches to any of the sub-categories.

[franzeska]

Wait, people actually think that's a fic trope? I've always thought of it as more "Hilarious in hentai; twice as hilarious in fic!"

[kylara]

I'm so with you on that thought. XD

[ratcreature]

Well, as the person who initially made the page as tentaclefic, while I know of hentai, I've always thought that an original thing, and not really connected to fandom output in any close way, except that there are tentacles in both. But then the same can be said about lots of stuff. I never watched hentai and I don't follow any anime or manga fandoms. And the only fandom output with tentacles I could think of were stories. So yeah, in a fandom context I foremost thought of it as a fic thing.

Also because I think of tentacles as kink and that in my mind as far as fandom kinks go those are primarily something written not anything visual, probably because don't use pictures as porn myself. So while of course I know intellectually that a ton of people make use of visual porn, if I don't think it through deliberately any tropes I think of as kinks I think of as "such-and-such-fic" like slavefic, hookerfic, rapefic, etc. unless I keep in mind deliberately to be inclusive. And that is even though I don't write fic myself, but only draw fanart (if not often).

[kylara]

That's really interesting, because it's entirely the other way around for me. It's really strange for me to think of tentacles in fic without other fanworks, hentai, and anime fandom; in fact, I think of tentacles as a predominantly visual form, with fic secondary. And up until this discussion began, I mostly figured the tentacles used in fic and other fanworks, including those outside anime/manga fandom, were directly influenced by hentai. This might be from my exposure to hentai, as well as fanworks with tentacle monsters, and being from general anime/manga fandom where the tentacle monster is legendary. Right now I'm reading the SGA fic listed on the page, and at least that one seems to be influenced by the hentai-based tentacle monster.

I was rather surprised to see tentacles applied to alien genitalia, e.g. Spock, as described on the article page. That was an aspect of "tentacle" usage I was not aware of, and I haven't seen it in general anime/manga fandom. In anime, it's mostly in the form of the tentacle monster. (Admittedly my exposure to hentai has been limited, and tentacle-genitalia is probably out there somewhere.) But it's not all hentai-derived, and there are portions which developed separately.

This entire discussion has me wanting to read more tentaclefic now. I'm happy some are linked on the page.

[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!