owlmoose | Picking the collective brain

I sort of dithered over the 'which fandoms do you consider yourself to be part of?' question. I've played VII, X, X-2 and XII, and I've enjoyed them all, and I talk about them in my journal, but I rarely seek out or write fanfiction for them. I'd say that they are fandoms of mine, but that I don't feel I'm really part of the fandom.

Which, of course, makes no sense whatsoever.

Erm.

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! :)

For questions 2-4, I would also make good use of summaries. I mean, if the category only said FFX but I wanted to do a post-FFX-2 good ending fic, I'd warn for X-2 spoilers.

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.

HA HA HA I will now run my mouth forever.

My opinion on FFX and FFX-2 is the same as my opinion on FFXII and FFXII RW: the first game I listed in each case is the "primary fandom" and the second game is "canon extension," but they are still THE SAME FANDOM.

Additionally, this is more or less my opinion on FF7 Complication. FF7 is the main canon; AC, BC, CC, and DoC are all extensions of the canon, making it one giant-ass fandom that hopefully people will tag with whatever specific canon extension they are wanking on this week. (Yeah, my opinion of FF7 Complication, not high.)

That being said! While Vagrant Story, FF Tactics, Tactics Advance, and TA2 are all part of the "Ivalice Alliance," I consider each and every one of them to be SEPARATE FANDOMS, as they have few to no characters in common with FFXII/RW (TA2 has some cameos, but it's kind of like how I don't consider FF Tactics part of the FF7 canon despite cameos by Cloud and Aeris, you know?)

This disjointed commentary brought to you by someone who plays WAY TOO FUCKING MANY of these games.

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

I think you definitely have something there, about how sharing characters makes different games into a single fandom, but just sharing a world does not.

It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out with FF13. I think you're likely right, assuming the games are as unrelated as the advance publicity has made them out to be.

^ What she said.

I am probably still going to put FFVII under the "Compilation" umbrella title. I think it makes more sense since there are so many canons and people have a terrible habit of tagging with "ffvii" for ALL of them, so maybe having the compilation term will help them...focus?

(I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT TO DO WITH TACTICS, HOSHIT.)

THAT'S OKAY I obsess about Tactics. ♥ Happy to yammer about them.

I think, also, since the FFVII games are all bunched neatly in a small timeline (what, under 20 years?) with the same characters and settings - i.e., there's continuity - that it's fair to have an FF7 Compilation fandom with tags for the individual Complications.

However, just to break out the Ivalice Alliance a little further, you've got:

Vagrant Story which despite taking place in Ivalice has pretty much zero explicit links to the other games (a few name-references pop up in FFXII, like Drace's last name and the Leamonde Entites in the Nabreus Deadlands, but otherwise, totally independent.)

Final Fantasy XII

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings which is an explicit sequel to FFXII, featuring many of the main cast, and therefore in my head goes in an umbrella with FFXII proper

Final Fantasy Tactics/Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions (same game, latter is a re-release) which takes place in Ivalice about 500 years after FFXII, but does not share any settings with FFXII. Also, the only character it shares with FFXII is Balthier and he's a cameo. (Other cameos include Cloud and Aeris, and I refuse to countenance any argument that says this makes Tactics part of the FF7 Complication, as well as Luso, the hero of FFTA2 (which makes no sense as he should've been dead 500 years by TA2 chronology--but again, cameo.) Many of the Espers that appear in other Ivalice Alliance games make appearances in FFT.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has few links to the rest of Ivalice beyond taking place "in Ivalice;" those links consist of the names of Espers (which link up to those in FFT/FFXII) and Montblanc the Moogle (I'm guessing Moogles just live a really long time.)

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, like TA, has only a few links to the rest of Ivalice. It has cameos from Al-Cid, Vaan, and Penelo (as well as Montblanc), and has a tenuous link to TA (via one character). Other than that...nothin'.

I like Lassarina's idea of "Primary canon" and "extensions". Except when they're hair extensions.

Also I don't know anything about FFXII tactics and little to nothing about RW. So I'm not qualified to judge. Except from what I gather, RW is a sequel, so I think of it like X-2 and AC.

When the sequel games first came out, I'd put the sequels in a separate category for all those folks who haven't played them or are of two minds about whether they fit. As time goes on and less is being written for older fandoms, I say fuse 'em, and just indicate in summary or characters whether it's "classic" mode (the original game) or "extended edition".

I've gotten more used to X2 as an extension of FFX. Originally I might've viewed them as separate fandoms.

Interesting point, for sure, that these things may change over time. I wonder, for example, if we see the FFVII fandom mellow out on this score once new material stops appearing. (If it ever does...)

Personally I have always thought of it as one canon, and I was surprised to find two separate categories on FF.net. I never cross-posted DSHnD to The Pit for a few reasons, but my major issue was having no idea where to put it.

I was naughty with LHAD for a while: I'd post it in FFX for a while, then switch it to FFX-2 to grab those fans when I started adding in the Crimson Squad, but now I've settled it in FFX for good. As time goes on, I'm starting to see more X-2 stuff appearing in the FFX category for the same reason.

I tried to make sure I mentioned Baralai in my summary to make it clear I've got a few X2 characters in secondary roles, but it's hard to cram in a cast list in a 240 char summary.

I think LHAD fits much more as FFX, given that it goes AU before most of the events of X-2, and the primary characters (Auron, Lulu, and Isaaru) are much more connected with FFX, and that's where I would have put it, based on the "main characters/pairings" rubric.

If you like the layered politics sort of thing in FFXII, you would very likely enjoy Final Fantasy Tactics: the War of the Lions, whose plot and characters were designed by the same guy (Matsuno, who also did Vagrant Story.) It's a grid-based strategic game (no button mashing whatsoever) and even if you suck at strategy like I do, it is totally possible to level grind until all the plot battles roll over and beg for mercy.

I was hoping you would weigh in, since you have played all (or nearly all) the games and have been at least peripherally involved in so many FF fandoms. :) I see your point about Tactics being different from the other compilation fandoms. Are they spread out over a long period of time? It might be somewhat analogous to the connection between FFVII and FFX, which is so tenuous and over such a huge time span that I don't think anyone would ever seriously argue that they could be the same fandom.

I think the only ones I'm missing at this point are Crisis Core (which is on the shelf waiting) and the various Crystal Chronicles, so...yeah. XD

Tactics Advance and TA2 both say they take place in Ivalice, but share no settting places at all with FFXII, FF Tactics, or Vagrant Story. (For that matter, no place-names in FFT match up to FFXII, and there are only the most tenuous of connections between the two; FFT is set 500 years after FFXII and has one character with the same surname as Balthier, and heavily features the Glabados Church which is only vaguely referenced in FFXII.) A few FF12 characters make cameos in FFTA2 (Vaan, Penelo, Montblanc, and Al-Cid), while two FFTA characters make cameos in FFTA2 (Montblanc and Mewt.) While the connections are definitely there, I'd say they're too tenuous to consider it even an umbrella fandom. (The main link between FFTA, FFTA2, and FFT is the battle system, anyway.)

I wasn't even aware there WAS a link between FF7 and FFX compilations. I know FFX is the only other game to feature the Magus Sisters from FF4, but I wouldn't say that connects the canons.

In X-2 Ultimania, Kazushige Nojima (writer of X-2) said that he intended the character of Shinra in FFX-2 to be the direct ancestor of the founder of the Shinra Electric Power Company. There are a few hints in X-2 that Shinra and Rin have been working together to tap the Farplane as a source of energy -- ie. mako energy. Here's the interview:

http://www.willamette.edu/~ejohnson/nojima.htm

It sounds like it's basically Nojima's headcanon, so it's not really official. But it's still interesting. The funny thing for me is that, the first time we played the game, T kept calling Shinra a spy. I hadn't played FFVII at that point, so I didn't get the reference to Reeve, but I kept insisting that it was just a in-joke name. But given this information, T may have been more right about that than I was! ;)

Edited 2009-10-18 15:54 (UTC)

Ahhhh, I see. XD Oh, Square. PUBLISH ULTIMANIA HERE. rar.

That's funny, that T kept calling him a spy. I approve. XD

I group fanfics the same way I group icons: FFX/X-2 are the same fandom, FFXII/RW are the same fandom, FFVII and all its Complicated children are the same fandom. The continuation of plot threads and characterizations seems to be the deciding factor for me, rather than simply character appearances or settings. I consider Dissidia separate from all the above, despite having the focal pro- and antagonists of the main series games; it comprises its own fandom based on the differences in gameplay, plot, and development of the characters.

I grouped the non-XII Ivalice games together because I've never played them and don't know much about them, but after reading

lassarina's comment, I suppose they should be separated if I were to use my plot/characterization criteria.

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.

For me, part of it is (a) spoiler-related and (b) expectation -- can you reasonably expect, in general, that people who played the first central game might have played the second? Example: FFX and FFX-2 are on the same system; people who played X have a fairly good chance of being familiar with X-2. FFVII: OGC is in one format; its Compilation ingredients are in others (AC is a movie, there's that PSP game and that weird cell phone game and I just can't keep up with them but I hope I've explained it).

That being said, I actually do still think of X and X-2 as separate games, which is why I marked them as such in the poll. Probably because there was so much time in-between when I played them that I still mentally consider them separate entities.

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.

Nay and I were actually talking about the platform issue last night. It hadn't occurred to me that the disparity of platforms would leads to more people only playing one of the games, but of course it makes sense. This is definitely the case for Compilation and FFXII/RW, and I think to a certain extent for the Tactics games as well? There are people who have played X-2 and not FFX, but not nearly as many. Same platform, same genre, marketed as a direct sequel (which RW was not).

I wonder if there is a distinction to be made between separate fandoms and separate canons.

CURSE YOU KJ because in my tl;dr comment I have been picking away at for a while I was going to specifically bring up separate fandoms vs. separate canons GR GR GR it was going to sound so DEEP AND ORIGINAL and now you have STOLEN MY THUNDER

As one of those FFVIIers that actually likes bits of the Compilation, and goes willy nilly with canon because of that. I have a tendency of taking Compilation characters and sticking them under mostly OCG settings/rules/storylines.

Because of this, I sometimes write FFX canon rules stories and throw in a couple FFX-2ers I liked.

I think FFX/X-2 is closer to being just, well, one fandom, but FFVII hasn't been a single fandom since AC came out and didn't settle whether or not Cloud was supposed to be with Aeris, Tifa, Sephiroth, ~~Barret~~, or a chocobo. Plus there are a lot of kids that have seen the movie, or played Crisis Core, but know nothing about the original game.

Which means I have a lot of fun, basically. XD I really do like big fandoms mostly because I can have a little corner and write what I want.

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.)

It'd be a good category for those that like to pick-and-choose; then they could specify which parts they actually follow and which they don't (like using Shalua from DoC but not wanting to touch Hojo's 2-D characterization or the sheer comedy of the epic romance). Because there are old school fans that like bits and follow some things but not others but don't want to be arsed changing the timeline (BC is notorious for this; the timeline of that fucks will all other perceived timelines, but it also has some of the better consistent characterizations in reference to the original game).

However, that would only be a good category if there are separate ones, at the very least a separate OGC category, for those that just disregard anything new.

But a Compilation category without OGC at all would be silly, as despite the silliness or retcon or whatever of the other parts, they still reference this first canon. It's funny, the other parts of the Compilation are a bit like fanfiction--especially considering how late they were released after the first game and that the same writers/composers weren't on the team. Leaves a real unique situation.

My girlfriend runs her FFVII archive on sort of a "check as many Compilation ticky boxes as you feel it fits" method. Works pretty well.

Hope that was a good enough answer?

Haha, like for EVERY QUESTION here I wanted to pick of make an option saying "NO I WANT TO TL;DR INSTEAD".

(Disclaimer! In none of the following do I assert that no fans participate equally in all fandoms/canons; I'm just noting some trends.)

One point that I swear is 300% original and ALL MINE and I THOUGHT OF IT FIRST NYEH NYEH (except none of that is true) is speaking about separate fandoms as opposed to separate canons.

For example, X and X-2 scan for me as separate fandoms -- a lot of X fans seem to hate what they see as the much peppier X-2, and meanwhile a lot of X-2 fans seem to play there exclusively. They might know the X canon, they might actually like it, but they're only active in X-2. But X/X-2 scan for me as most definitely one canon.

The case for the Ivalice Alliance games feels very different to me, because some of the games have VASTLY different tones and, well, feels to them that has to do with the production teams behind them. The most relevant name here is, I think Yasumi Matsuno (I am not up on Squenix personnel lore, but

lassarina can probably correct me). Matsuno was behind Tactics, Vagrant Story, and XII, which is why those three installments all have a similar archaic-political feel to them. He was NOT involved in XII:RW, FFTA, or FFTA2, and each of those games (I haven't played all of them, some of this is hearsay, but I can 300% confirm for TA) feels like they're not really part of Ivalice, if Tactics and XII are your main exposure to Ivalice. They're brighter, less political, less archaic.

So in this sense, not only do the Ivalice Alliance games feel like largely separate fandoms, they also feel like separate canons to me. There's definitely a fair amount of intersection there, but again, I feel like more of that intersection happens down the Matsuno/not-Matsuno line. I know more people who are into both Tactics and XII (and sometimes poor neglected VS) but not the other Ivalice games, and (more rarely) I also bump into people who've played the Tactics Advance (and sometimes RW) games but not Tactics or VS.

This is where platform/availability issues come in for me, by the way, because the TA and RW games can all be played together, while Tactics requires either a PSP or a copy of the original (relatively rare), and VS is old and harder to find. So the divide in the Ivalice games works on both Matsuno and platform levels for me. XII tends to sit at the middle of this intersection, being by far and away the most major title, with a huge distribution and on a common platform, so a lot of people on both sides of the line seem to have played it.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

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 >.>

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.

This is exactly my problem with labeling FFVII fic sometimes. My favorite characters are Old Dudes, and one of them popped up in a Compilation game, and I thought he was awesome, but I have no desire to write him during his actual game timeline most of the time because it's too short, and well, it's pretty spelled out what's going on during that time. I'd rather write pre-BC for him, or during the OGC timeline, or post-OGC. Because that's when I can do fun tricksy stuff! But I always have to label the game he's from, because yeah.

That and there are stories that literally depend on nothing more than characterization and a passing plot point (...also a favorite, clearly I should just be writing original fiction).

I mean, that was my main problem with the Compilation--they did it like what you do for your first fanfiction. Throw in lots of OCs! A new threat! See how many times we can bring back Sephiroth!

So it gets to be a huge sprawl. I combat this by putting decent author notes on stuff to explain where the heck it comes from, generally.

Whenever I see anyone describing a fic including characters and elements from FFX and FFX-2 as a "crossover", it makes me twitch. How can a story based entirely in a single universe be a crossover? It makes me wonder about other metafandoms, like the Buffyverse -- would people describe a story containing Buffy characters and Angel characters as a crossover? Or different installments of Star Trek, or different seasons of the same TV show?

I have wished, both in my conversations with Nay and in general, that there could be some other name for "the Spiraverse" (which is a great expression that I am totally stealing) that doesn't exclude either of the games (as using FFX as an umbrella term would) but that also makes it clear that fans can ignore X-2 canon if they want to. Some sort of umbrella solution would be my favorite, especially if we can find a way to do it that doesn't marginalize X-2 into some sort of "secondary" canon or fandom.

I think I am in an unusual position, because I am so strongly tied to both games. I think what you say above is true of many people in X/X-2 fandom: they might play around with crossing that line, but most tend to gravitate toward one or the other. And on the surface, I probably appear to fit that mold: most of my fic explicitly references the X-2 canon, and if you asked other people what my primary fandom is, they'd likely say FFX-2. But really, I consider myself to be equally tied to both "sides". (FFX is actually my favorite game; Paine and Auron tie as my favorite characters.) I am in the Spiraverse fandom, whatever form that might happen to take at a given time. And that's why I take such a hard line on wanting to see them treated as a single fandom; when the division is forced, it's much harder to play in the Spiraverse as a whole. The dilemma you describe with that Rikku/Gippal story is exactly the problem. And I actually think that forced divisions, like the one on FF.net, exacerbate the tensions between the two "sides" of the fandom.

Picking the collective brain

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In which the comment limit dies a very slow death

In which I turn to the vexing problem of Compilation VII

In which I make slow luxurious love to umbrella tags

Re: In which I make slow luxurious love to umbrella tags

In which I pull out a tiny bit of your awesome epic comment and pick at it