Fandoms for works that have no "fandom"

[elf]

I've recently uploaded a handful of filksongs to AO3, in light of franzeska's clarification of the TOS FAQ saying that the important measure of "fanworks" is that they were "created in a fandom context for a fandom audience." Yay!

Um. So... how do I tag them? I wrote filk for kink_bingo. Is kink_bingo the *fandom?* That seems... wrong. Is the original tune the "fandom," which would mean adding half a dozen new single-work fandoms? I wrote filk about coffee. Not about sentient coffee (in which case, it could go under "anthropomorphic"), but about coffee. No fandom. No characters. No pairings. It's to the tune of & in the style of a popular Pagan song, which is probably unknown outside of Pagan circles. (The Pagan song is ttto a traditional tune, but it doesn't match the original tone or style.)

I'm not posting to say "help me figure out how to tag my weird fanworks!" They can remain under "no fandom" for all I care; I'm happy to have them all in one place next to my (tiny selection of) fic. But AO3 is eventually going to host art and vids and maybe other stuff, and SSBB fic, and other things that don't easily fit in the category of "what movie, book, game or TV show inspired this?" (*Ponders some of the multi-fandom vids being tagged with every fandom. Shudders.*)

I could put "filk" in the fandom field, potentially along with other fandoms (I have Harry Potter filk), and let that wind up with a category in "Other Media." (That's kinda what I'm leaning toward, actually.) But I'd love to see other people's ideas... what would you like AO3 to do with fanworks that don't fit in the traditional categories? Can you think of other fanworks that don't fit well in the current system?

Comments

[lannamichaels]

s the original tune the "fandom," which would mean adding half a dozen new single-work fandoms?

Speaking for myself, when I've remixed poems, I've listed the poem as the fandom. And I think music video fandoms are the same. They're small or non-existent, but there's transformative fanwork about them. So, I'd think that the fandom is what's being transformed. But, yeah, this is something to think about.


(*Ponders some of the multi-fandom vids being tagged with every fandom. Shudders.*)

I would actually love that, if that happened, so then I would find it under the fandom's tags. And also in terms of figuring out which clip came from which fandom, sometimes I'll see a clip and wonder which fandom it's from, but not really know where to start because I don't know all the fandoms that are in the vid.

[elf]

Oh, I like the idea of the fandoms being listed for vids--I'm just twitchy at the idea of scrolling past the fandom list for "One Night Fandoms." And the idea of going to the fandom - movies page, and seeing 75 movies with 1 work each--and it's the same work. (Hm, should send in a note that it'd be nice if the fandom lists were sortable by number-of-works, not just alpha, and *really* nice if they could sort crossovers together somehow.)

And while I could see a remix of a poem as the poem's fandom, I'm less sure about a straight-up "to the tune of" with a different topic. The original's being transformed, but people who are fans of the original song aren't necessarily going to be interested in the filk.

[hl]

Also useful would be to brainstorm what sort of things you would put in a filk header/blurb -- it does seem like the current form wouldn't fit necessarily well nor would be natural for the fanwork. But you had a post about it already, no? *goes off to find it*

[hl]

Er, this was meant to go as a comment to the post. Sorry. -_-

[elf]

Yep; Filk & the AO3, Part 2: How the AO3 Could Be The Awesomest Filk Archive Ever. I'm now pondering "so, how do I use the current archive setup for filk?" on the theory that having filk available will be more likely to encourage the header etc. changes necessary to support it well.

I wanna drag filky friends over to AO3, and need suggestions to give them that work now, rather than "... and someday, the archive will sort by tune and genre!"

[hl]

Right, I know! Solutions to make the archive work now make sense.

[ruuger]

Ultimately, I think what works best is how people interested in your works are going to be looking for it, and I think using 'filk' as fandom is the best is the best solution at least for now - I'd say it's the equivalent of using RPF as a fandom tag.

From a reader's perspective, I think using the original song as fandom would be just confusing because IMO the filks aren't really about the song.

For example, I've written a filk about Babylon 5 to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", and I think that it would be of more interest to fans of babylon 5 than to fans of Queen, and might even irritate people who click on the link expecting to find works about the characters in "Bohemian Rhapsody". Does that make sense?

[elf]

That's what I'm leaning toward... tag the fandom as "filk," and potentially another fandom if one's identifiable. Less sure about filks that mention several fandoms. (Although that one could mention the original song as the fandom.)

Wow, just had thoughts about comment fics... I haven't looked at the comment-fic features yet; not sure how those get tagged for fandom if it changes from the original. (Gah. Am getting distracted.)

I have tagged all my filk in the tags field, but being listed as "no fandom" means they vanish from a substantial section of the archive's nav system. I think eventually AO3 is planning on a "type of fanwork" field, or a whole structure around different types--vids will want to list song title & artist in addition to fandom; art may want to list medium; podfics will want original author & performer, and so on.

(And I think ALL THESE THINGS should be archived at AO3 as much as possible, so the coders & wranglers have content to work with to figure out how to build a structure that works for it.)

Tagging the filks as "Filk" in the fandom field would make them easy to find later for re-sorting if the structure changes for different kinds of fanworks, possibly easier than in the tags field, which could include fanfic that mentions filk.

[risha]

I think that my definition of fanworks follows that old saw about pornography, where I know it when I see it. Not hearing your song, going strictly by your description, I would be comfortable if I saw it listed as a fanwork. Filks seem inherently transformative of the song to me.

And it being about coffee doesn't seem like an uncrossable hurdle to me, even if it's a fandom of one - I've seen enough fanworks to inanimate objects to be ok with it, anthropomorphic or not. And I'm not comfortable deciding a minimum number of people/works to define a fandom, media based or not.

(And I, personally, am a big fan of coffee!)

ETA: Not that I would necessarily define coffee as a media fandom if pressed, but the filk part covers that for me.

[elf]

I think that my definition of fanworks follows that old saw about pornography, where I know it when I see it.

Yep; that's about how I feel. (That's pretty much how I define "filk," too. There's no nice sharp line that distinguishes "filksongs" from "folk music on maybe-fannish themes.")

Being about coffee just means there's no pairing or characters. It feels weird to leave a third of the info fields empty.

I could list "coffee" as the fandom. I could list the Pagan song I based it on. (The Question Song) Or I could list the original tune *that* was based on--Twa Corbies. Except that people looking for Twa Corbies fics-and-fanworks would likely be disappointed by my song.

I don't mind fandoms-of-one, if people who are interested in those fandoms are going to be (potentially) be interested in what's listed under them. IMHO, it'd make more sense to list this one under "coffee" as a fandom than either of the origin tune songs. I've been putting the to-the-tune-of song in the summaries. (I'm probably going to start listing "Filk" as the fandom, and it can get wrangled into "other media.")

[risha]

I think that plan works best for the vast majority of browsers, yes. Though if other people suddenly start tagging by song someday I'd go back and add it.

[yourlibrarian]

Well, there's a "multifandom" tag which might be applicable for things that crossover numerous fandoms or are applicable to numerous fandoms. Also, I'd guess that as the archive begins to host more than text there will be growing use of format tags so that a post of filk lyrics would be different from a filk recording. But one could simply label it as Filk. And wouldn't kink_bingo be the Collection? I'm not that familiar with it but I gathered it's a sort of ongoing challenge community?

[elf]

There's no kink_bingo Collection, but there is a tag for "community: kink_bingo" and I've used that. (It's a semi-ongoing challenge community; it has a month or so of inactivity every year.)

I'd forgotten the Multifandom tag--but that still doesn't go in the "Fandom" field, the one that sorts it into one (or more) of the fandom page categories.

Eventually, I expect that media type will be a strong sorting criterion. I expect to be able to sort by fic, art, vid, podfic, music recording, etc. Right now, there's no system at all for sorting those, because everything other than text is hosted elsewhere, and sorting out how to organize different media is big enough that they don't want to come up with some stopgap method that everyone will have to unlearn when they can do their own hosting.