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.

[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?

[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.

[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?