Needs Help: Intellectual Property Religion

What is this page? Is it a trope, a Just for Fun page, an Audience Reaction, or something else?

It's for organisations that operate like the group that inspired the Church of Happyology trope, but because most groups in fiction that work that way are pretty blatant parodies of said group, most fit under that trope.

Short version, You Know Who (no, not Voldemort) has their sacred texts copy-righted and part of the reason they gained their hyper-litigious nature was by going after people who revealed said texts with out authorisation. And they did so using intellectual property law.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, because the page doesn't remotely match your description. And if you are, I don't think the name is the problem.

The definition in my mind is "a work spawns its own religion". Compare The Bible and Christianity. This is technically an Audience Reaction.

The examples contain a little of that and a lot of what appears to be tropers making up what a religion based on a certain work or character would be like, and it's not always clear which is which.

I think you're right, that's what it looks like to me to.

I think that it supposed to be "A work of fiction spawns a religion in Real Life" but it's decayed into a game of "let's make up a religion based on this work".

We can leave it like that, mark it clearly as being a game, move it to Just for Fun and clean the wicks of instances where it's being used as a trope. Or we can try to clean it back up to being its original description, and mark it as an Audience Reaction or Trivia.

I don't know which would be easier or which would be more effective.

The trick would figuring out which ones were real examples and not something the editor just made up.

We could do a soft split and have both a serious and "just for fun" folder, but that would en-tale the same problem.

I don't see any reason to do a soft split without doing a hard split. We'd still have to figure out which were serious and which weren't, though.

edited 24th Nov '13 1:41:26 PM by MorganWick

I do not like the split idea, largely because I question whether "one person" vs. "many people" is an important difference here - and any differentiation between "serious" and "not serious" would necessarily become that.

If something one person made up counts, I could go right now and flood the page with work I could think of a religious/philosophical viewpoint after.

That's the problem. It needs to be something that's somewhat well established as a thing among the fans.

That doesn't happen. Ever. Hence, I do not see a problem with that.

I was just thinking ahead. I'm seen the messes that get made on this wiki to many times to assume "it hasn't happened, so it won't"

If by "that" you mean "something one person made up", there's a ton of it right there on the page.

If by "that" you mean "flooding the page with work I can think of a philosophical/religious viewpoint after", well, it's pretty much already flooded like that, even if spread among multiple people.

If by "that" you mean "something that's somewhat well established as a thing among the fans", well, there's plenty of that on the page too, including, arguably, the page image.

Worth noting: This appears to have originated as a JFF page.

edited 24th Nov '13 3:17:29 PM by MorganWick

... How in the heck did we end up with this, then? If this was supposed to be a joke page from the beginning, I vote chuck it into Just for Fun and forget the whole thing.

I have no issue with having this as either a JFF page or just put under a YMMV banner - it's an opinion, anyhow.

Well, there really are things like the "Jedi census phenomenon" (although that's more of a protest than anything else), so I can see how "actual" examples might have wound up being added even if it was originally meant as a joke.

Someone did actually form "The Church of All Worlds" based on Heinlein's Stranger In a Strange Land. It never became mainstream, and I don't know if it's still around, but it was a real thing. So there's that and the Jedi as for real examples, at least.

The YKTTW suggested splitting it into three categories:

1. Religions created in fiction (totally fictional religions)
2. Religions created in Real Life based on fictional religions
3. Make up a religion based on a work of fiction.

I think going that route would be a good idea, with categories 1 and 2 soft split on the Fictive Religion page and category 3 moved to Just for Fun with a name like "Make a Religion based on a work." (only less clunky. But something that makes it clear this is a game, not a trope, and that it should not be wicked anywhere else.)

edited 26th Nov '13 4:33:59 AM by Madrugada

I like that idea

I like Maddy's idea. And Fictional Relgion is a good high level trope.

I am OK with @18, providing that manpower is available for that.

EDIT: NVM, that's exactly what Madrugada came up with. I've had too much wine.

edited 26th Nov '13 7:20:28 PM by StarSword

@20: If we make a trope/audience reaction for "real life religion based on a work of fiction", we'll need a better title than "Fictional Religion", which sounds like a trope for religions that only exists in a work of fiction. My suggestions for a better title are "Church Of The Show" or "Work Worship".

If we make that it won't be an Audience Reaction. Those are by definition subjective, and may be different from person to person. A real-life religion based on one from fiction either exists or it doesn't. There's nothing subjective about it. It would probably be better as Trivia rather than a trope, though.

And "Fictional Religion" would be the name for the trope for "religions that don't exist that were created for or in a work of fiction."

edited 27th Nov '13 9:59:36 AM by Madrugada

Clock is set.