I see what you're saying, totally -- I feel like that with the games I've played but not gotten as deeply into. I probably should have worded the question a little more loosely, although I was afraid of getting too vague.

Thanks for answering the poll! :)

Yeah -- summaries would be/are vital in all those situations. Good character tags, too.

I gather that FF.net used to have only one category, called FFX, when X-2 first came out. I don't know exactly when or why they were split; it would be interesting to find out. I only know about the change because I once read an older X-2 epic that made reference to being moved to the "new" X-2 category.

I agree with the above....and what you said about the Ivalice Alliance is also my basic feeling on the upcoming FFXIII compilation - while they all have the FFXIII name, the stories are completely different with dissimilar characters.

I guess it is the characters that really sell me on whether I consider something the "same" fandom or different ones...

tl;dr I agree with lassarina

Although I haven't played Dissidia, I assume that it would stand on its own canonically because the characters aren't in their usual contexts. I'd put that in the same bucket as Kingdom Hearts, which I don't think anyone would seriously argue is within the FFVII, FFVIII, or FFX/X-2 canons. An AU of them, perhaps, but that's not the same thing.

The more I hear about the Tactics games, the more I think they probably do stand alone.

Aha! You have hit upon one of the points I have been edging around but not sure how to articulate, and you said it exactly right -- it's about expectations. For sequels and compilations, can you expect people to have played/seen the original? How accessible are other parts of the compilation/umbrella fandom to people who've only had experience with one of its titles?

I think it's an important factor, though definitely not the only one. It's why I keep getting the feeling that, for example, X and X-2 are "closer together" than XII and XII:RW. The FFVII Compilation fandoms, though, jesus. The thing with those is that the overall fan following is so strong that people will GET the other (major) installments anyway.

Ooh, then I could totally ask you this and get a really good answer, I bet.

If an archive had an FFVII category called "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" with all the games, including Final Fantasy VII under it as subcategories, would that be okay? I pretty much agree with you about FFVII not exactly being the same fandom anymore depending on which fanbase you're talking about.

(Also, he should've ended up with Barret.)

I have little understanding of the FVII Compilation, as I have played/watched exactly none of it. But as an outside observer, a few factors seem to be in play there.

1) Platform smorgasbord. AND HOW. This seems to have a separating tendency, but this appears to be counteracted by...

2) Fan loyalty, a cohesive force. A hugely popular franchise, and people will go out of their way (and platform comfort zones) to get some of these installments. Cell phone games probably excepted. Except it seems to be that a large portion of the most loyal fans are people who joined fandom way after the original -- when AC was released, perhaps -- and it's these relatively new fans who seem to be driving the franchise now, which creates...

3) Divides with the oldest fans/OGC loyalists, who seem to regard a lot of the newer installments as needless retconning, angstifying, prettifying, and oh yeah, money-milking nonsense. So we have another separating force -- and one that kind of straddles the line between "separate fandoms" and "separate canons" -- because it seems arguable (again, outsider, outside) that the newer installments ARE separate canon. They're ostensibly about the same characters and all within a tight timeline, but the amount of retconning, judging from the complaints I see, is slowly approaching comic book proportions.

I'm a bit confused on this issue. X-2 certainly changed the world mechanic a lot compared to X, but we kind of knew that was coming based on X's ending, and no one's backstory was rewritten (well, except maybe Spira's, you know >.>). And while there is certainly a fair amount of grumbling about how X-2 can't be canonical, it seems like with only two installments and pretty tight links between the two games, the grumbling is not really as... prodigious as in the ever-expanding VII Compilation, where every new installment seems to tweak something from OGC and from whatever was released just before. The Ivalice games, meanwhile, reference each other quite a bit, but they are by and large separated by nice, safe, gulfs of time and distance and don't interfere with each other much (RW excepted). SO I am not sure what is going on canonicity-wise with FFVII Compilation. However, I do seem to see a fair number of...

4) Fans who seem to be part of the Compilation fandom as a whole rather than any specific entry's fandom. Another cohesive force! These people seem to pick and choose the bits of canon they find most awesome and make up a kind of personal synthesis-canon, and kudos to them.



... and those are my thoughts on yaoi.

Up next -- things that are actually relevant to fanwork-categorizing interests!

As far as how to archive fanworks, I tend to prefer having umbrella canons for EVERYTHING, where available, with the option to put a fanwork in any entry under that umbrella OR only in the umbrella itself and not in any specific subcategory. I always sorely miss this option in every archive ever. There are usually ONLY umbrella canons (how VII seems to be treated a lot of the time) or ONLY separate canons (X and X-2).

I think this would be pretty useful especially for VII and, to a lesser extent, for X/X-2. This is actually a point of... agreement/disagreement I have with how ff_press categorizes things. There is an "Unspecified FVII Compilation" category there (and same for all other multi-entry canons except X/X-2), and I like having that category as a home for all the "just FFVII" fanworks. But I don't see it as a "you didn't make a proper header!" category, which is kind of how it's presented in the newsletter. I would like a category just like that, but for stories that really AREN'T part of any specific VII canon, and just exist in the VII universe -- see those synthesizing fans from VII.

I think I might come to this idea because of my history in anime/manga canons like Trigun and FMA. I have a hard time explaining this to people who haven't experienced such canons, but the anime and manga are VASTLY different. Not like "added some filler" different, but more like they both start from the same premise/characters and then go in WILDLY different directions. And in those fandoms I have definitely found a lot of most excellent stories that explicitly remain neutral about which canon they are set in. They could be mangaverse, they could be animeverse, but really they are just stories that start with the same premise/characters and go somewhere, somewhere neutral. And in those fandoms fans often (or used to, back in the late 90s/early aughts when I hung about there) label for animeverse, managaverse, or neither. Some of that was surely sloppy/lazy labelling, but a lot of it was truly just neutral.

Likewise, I KNOW (haha, do I ever) that a lot of the "unspecified" stuff for VII and XII is really just sloppy/lazy labelling -- but for VII especially, some of it just seems to be canon-neutral. I know one usual rule for labelling VII works is to label it with the most-recently released canon that it draws on, and this makes sense for spoilers. I am not sure how to handle that!

So since I know this poll has to do with how to categorize fanworks, here is my ideal system!

Sets like X/X-2, VII Comp, and Ivalice should have umbrella labels and labels for each subcanon -- but also the option to tag for the umbrella only.

But again, there's no real way to prevent abuse of the umbrella tag.

And yet!

I feel like such a system would provide homes for, say, a story with both X and X-2 characters but isn't deeply related to the plot of either game. Like, say, a story about Rikku and Gippal growing up together on Bikanel. It's set in the X timeline, but an X-2 character, and isn't really deeply related to either X or X-2. It could be argued to be an X-2 story, since it that is the most-recently released canon it uses, or as a crossover -- but I just see it as a Spira-verse story. And I think it's fair to treat a lot of stories this way -- stories that combine bits and pieces of various canons to make something that definitely lives in that world but in no particular canon. And it feels kind of... unfair... to treat stories like that as, say X/X-2 "crossovers". There are cases where I think a story could be fairly balled as both X adn X-2 -- for example stories that deal explicitly with the transition between the two games. I think it might also help maybe with how X-2 sometimes gets relegated to some bastard AU instead of a sequel. Fans who want to integrate X and X-2 can play in the umbrella canon, and fans who want to keep them more separate can play in the individual canons.

Likewise I'm sure there are similar cases for VII. It doesn't seem as dire in the Ivalice games -- again, they are by and large comfortably separated -- but it might still be useful there.

Haha, I am so sorry KJ >.>