Discussion FanficRecs / Zootopia

It looks like it and a couple others were deleted on Mar 5th 2019 with no explanation. I don't see why you couldn't add it back.

I don't have any objection to putting it back to Ongoing, if we're listing it by the series and not any specific fic.

That might be a reasonable way to distinguish between recommendations for the series as a whole (in the Ongoing section) and recommendations for specific stories within the series (in the Completed section).

No problem.

Hmm... I agree that the redundancy is a problem, but it's hard to figure out how to resolve it.

• First, there's the "Thanks for the Fox" recommendation originally by you and then seconded by me, which is from before the series even had a name.
• Then, the Season 1 recommendation which was made by me, retracted by me, and then restored by rva98014.
• Finally, a recommendation for the whole series by Kalmbach, who seems to think of it purely as a shipping fic. Kalmbach isn't one of the regulars around here, and may not even be aware that there are already recommendations listed for the same series (maybe they only read the shipping section, and/or didn't check if it was elsewhere because they didn't think it could be construed any other way?)

I don't really know what to do about this. I've PM'd Kalmbach and rva98014 in hopes that if we can get everyone who recommended parts of this into the discussion something will ultimately be figured out.

It does seem really strange Kalmbach tagged it as a Fix Fic, though. I only read to about halfway through season 1, but from what I remember of it I don't recall anything about it that would match that trope; it didn't seem like it was trying to "repair" things that were "wrong" about the canon.

Edited by BURGINABC

Also, Season 1 is still listed as ongoing even though Season 2 has started. I don't see much point in moving it until we figure out what we're going to do about this, though.

Oh, yeah, Season 1 is complete. We should change that too.

And no, I don't think Fix Fic fits either. I've read the whole series, and I can't think of anything that "fixes" the movie's canon. It certainly expands upon the movie's canon in a fanfic sequel sort of way. And there are a few places where it "fixes" itself, most notably where the author deleted a few chapters and restarted the story from a previous point, ignoring everything that had been in the deleted chapters. But that doesn't fit the Fix Fic trope.

I agree that labeling the Guardian Blue series as a Fix Fic doesn't fit. I don't have a clear answer for what to do with Zootopia fan-fic series in general, but for the Guardian Blue series, I think it would be best to have a recommendation for each installment rather than a blanket recommendation for the entire series because each installment (so far) while having overlap in themes and a sense of continuity, also has different areas that it is exploring and different tones and each one should be recommended and reviewed on it's own merits.

So now I'm really wondering how to best handle series vs separate. Sarsis's installments (Thanks for the fox, Season 1 and Season 2 ) feel like they should be addressed as individual entities, but something like Kittah 4's partner series (a large collection of one-chapter stories under a common theme with continuity between stories) would be better addressed as a collective recommendation. Hm.... for me, it needs more thought I think.

Complicating this is that Guardian Blue: Season 1 and Guardian Blue: Season 2 have titles which imply that they are divisions of the same entity and not independent of each other. The earlier stories, while in the same continuity, do not have this distinction, as they were written as standalone fics before it was decided to turn this continuity into a long-running series.

As I stopped reading midway through season 1, I may be wrong about this, but I got the impresion that this transition also included a transition towards plot arcs that flow together like those of a TV series, rather than the previous model of having semi-standalone plots like those of a movie or book series; hence the adoption of the "season" metaphor.

I think it's fairly reasonable to regard Thanks for the Fox and Who Writes This? as standalone fics, but I'm not sure whether it makes sense to separate Season 1 and Season 2.

Edited by BURGINABC

The author recommends that readers start with GBS1, because GBS2 assumes a lot of context that was developed in the 26 chapters of GBS1. Then the author suggests possibly starting with TftF, for even more context. But I think GBS2 is more dependent on GBS1 than GBS1 is on TftF.

But regardless, what would we do if we had a recommendation for The Fellowship of the Ring and someone else posted a recommendation for The Lord of the Rings? Or if we had a recommendation for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and someone else posted a recommendation for the entire Hitchhiker's Guide series?

Edited by mcgrew

To extend your metaphor, I think GBS1 is The Fellowship of the Ring, GBS2 is The Two Towers, and TftF is The Hobbit.

It's more feasible to skip reading The Hobbit and go straight to the LotR trilogy, than to skip to the second or third book in that trilogy. LotR and The Hobbit are related but separate stories, but the LotR books are just different chunks of the same story.

Fun fact, when LotR was written it was supposed to be six books. The publisher later decided to publish it in three volumes instead of six, IIRC because there was at that time a shortage of materials for manufacturing books. All reprints since then have followed that precedent, Peter Jackson's film adaptation was likewise done as a trilogy,^note (though due to the length constraints of feature film, it probably could have been more faithful to the source and/or had less excessively long installments if it had been done as a series of six) and today everyone just thinks of it as three books. It doesn't really make a difference because they're really just one long story chunked up into parts, anyway.

I was uncertain before, but the more I think about it, the more I think I'm going to have to vote for GBS1 and GBS2 to be listed as a single entity.

Notably, This Very Wiki treats The Lord of the Rings as a single entity when analyzing it, rather than giving separate works pages to the individual parts, even though its trope list needs more than half a dozen subpages due to length. The Hobbit, on the other hand, gets its own page.

Edited by BURGINABC

I have gone ahead and taken the liberty of merging the entries for GBS1 and GB.

It is now listed as an ongoing gen fic recommended by both rva98014 and Kalmbach, with the entry simply saying "Guardian Blue", but with the link pointing directly to Season 1 rather than to the series page which includes the earlier fics.

I chose a concise synopsis adapted from the Season 1 synopis on AO3, and acknowledged its connection to TftF via an aside note. I also migrated the pairing tags from Kalmbach's entry, but not the other tags as they seemed spurious.

The review page won't be a problem as the Season 1 review page only had an "intentionally left blank" review on it where I had retracted my own review.

Does this seem like a good solution?

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EDIT: I just took a cursory look at the opening chapters of season 2, and I'm wondering if Kalmbach wasn't right about putting it in the Shipping section.

Especially now that this listing is specific to the stories that have "Guardian Blue" in the title, rather than to the whole continuity, thus negating the concern about lumping the more ambiguous portrayal of their relationship in TftF into the shipping section.

GB may not focus 100% on shipping, but it looks to be a very prominent (i.e, not just incidental) part of it. It may actually belong in that list. It may warrant being moved back down, possibly tagged as "slow burn" or something.

Granted, by that standard probably a few other fics currently listed as Gen might also warrant a move.

Such as A Bitter Pill, which initially seemed like a gen fic early on but in hindsight could easily be argued to be a slow-burn romance, due to how their relationship was developed throughout Judy's recovery and how their Relationship Upgrade tied into the completion of her recovery and the ultimate resolution of the plot.

Also Water Under the Bridge was largely an action thriller but also gave quite substantial emphasis to its romantic subplot.^note (To its detriment in my opinion, though rva98014 and many others seem to disagree about that)

Any thoughts?

Edited by BURGINABC

Thanks for merging GBS1 and GB into a single GB entry. I think your approach works nicely.

As far as where it should live, I'm not sure. I'm still a bit unclear on where the line is between a "shipping fic" and a "general fic" that features a romantic pairing. And wherever the line is, GB probably dances back and forth repeatedly. Some chapters/episodes focus on the romantic relationship(s). Others focus on the drama/adventure.

Edited by mcgrew

Yeah, I'm not sure where the line should be drawn either.

• The most extreme position, which is probably wrong, would be to classify any fic which contains a pairing which isn't strictly canonical as shipping. This would be a huge change from the current setup and probably require probably around half of the gen fics to be moved to shipping.
• The second most extreme position would be to consider fics which portray pairings as pre-established relationships incidental to the plot^note generally this requires a large Time Skip for the relationship to develop offscreen, though in Zootopia's case it can simply interpret the Maybe Ever After as a Relationship Upgrade as gen fics, but anything which gives significant attention to developing their relationship throughout the story is a shipping fic. This would require GB, A Bitter Pill, Water Under the Bridge, etc. to move as I said earlier.
• The middle position is to have fics which focus primarily on the relationship as the main focus as shipping fics. I think this is how we're currently operating, but as we just discovered, it can make fics that are divided more-or-less evenly between romance and other plot threads very hard to classify. Such as "slow burn" fics which have a romantic subplot that slowly advances in parallel with another plot but is still very prominent. Or fics with a romantic subplot that starts out small but gradually grows in significance until it envelops the entire story.
• At the other extreme is to only label something a shipping fic if there are no significant plot threads not focused on a romantic relationship. This is probably wrong too, and might even require, e.g., "The Meetings" to be moved to Gen due to its emphasis on background events.

To use a math metaphor, I think this is a rounding problem — do we treat 0.5 as 0 or 1? I know in actual math, they always round up rather than down when it's exactly in the middle, but AFAIK that's an arbitrary convention purely for the sake of consistency.

Edited by BURGINABC

Actually, there are multiple rounding conventions.The "round .5 up" convention is the one I learned in grade school, but there are others.

Not that that helps make the line between a gen fic and a ship fic any clearer. But thanks for sharing your thoughts so well.

Well, I didn't realize when I made this suggestion that it would have such a result. I am a bit new to this of it, having spent all my time since joining up just troping off in a corner by myself.

I just made this recommendation as a favor to the author, to increase his exposure (he's rather good at this, I think). Certainly didn't want to cause any fuss. At the same time, I do think that the recommendation should be for the entire series, if only because all of his stories over there are integrated together, through interlocking characters and plot elements, so that I believe the reading experience is enhanced by taking all the elements together as part of a larger whole, rather than focusing on any individual elements in isolation.

Hi Kalmback, don't worry about the "fuss". Some of us just care about keeping the fanfic recommendations as current and accurate and organized as possible. We're the same people who move entries from the Ongoing section to the Completed section when the author marks the story completed.

It's great to have recommendations for the Guardian Blue series. And it's great to have recommendations for specific stories within the Guardian Blue series. We're just trying to figure out the best way to present both.

Not 100% certain if it's correctly, but that was my understanding when I applied the tag:

Create a blended setting that merges both worlds, and/or recast characters from one work into another work's plot.

I think yours might actually do both.

What about my fic rehashing Zootopia's plot (with some alterations) in the Hc Svnt Dracones setting? https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12260639/2/Judy-Hopps-Corporate-Cop

Sounds like it.

You know, I have a feeling that this isn't what this discussion page is for; I thought it was supposed to be for discussing editorial actions for the page.

Then again, the rules about how talk pages are supposed to be used might be a bit laxer here than on Wikipedia...

I know TVTropes has an actual forum for general discussion, but I'd feel like a hypocrite saying to use that instead, because I almost never do.

Edited by BURGINABC

I guess I wanted to understand the distinction between a Fusion Fic and some other crossover that isn't a Fusion Fic. When I first read the Fusion Fic trope page, it seemed to me that it would apply to most (if not all) crossovers. But I've thought more about it and realized that I have read crossovers that don't fit the Fusion Fic trope. Some borrow plot elements from one story while leaving the setting and characters firmly in another. Some mix characters from two or more settings, without trying to justify the coexistence of the settings the characters come from. And so on.

Anyway, thanks for letting me think out loud. (Oops, I guess I continued this possibly off-topic thread.)

Despite protocol, and even despite me being the one to point out this is somewhat off-topic ^note I'm a total hypocrite :), I have a response for that.

Honestly, it's (slightly) possible that this could end up being relevant to the page anyway, so for now I'll continue here rather than responding in private messages.

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When most people think crossover, they think either

A) Crossover between multiple works in a Shared Universe, where it's already canon^note or else retconned into being canon that the characters from other works exist in the same world. Marvel and DC are especially known for this. Particularly large-scale examples of this fall under Crisis Crossover.

B) The fantastical form of Intercontinuity Crossover that brings together characters from multiple incompatible settings, either handwaving it with an explanation involving interdimensional portals and talk of a multiverse, or simply using Rule of Cool to sidestep the obligation to make any sense whatsoever. I think a well-known example of the former might be Kingdom Hearts. The latter is especially common in fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom or Super Smash Bros..

C) The simple, mundane form of Intercontinuity Crossover that relies on both settings being mostly realistic to the point that they don't have mutually incompatible fantastical elements, to make it plausible that they would exist in the same setting without the need for any heavy-duty Canon Welding. Like when Ray Barone showed up in a few episodes of The King of Queens.

The common thread here, is that for some reason or another you have one work's characters showing up alongside another work's characters. The crossover can be its own work, or one work can be the host while the other is the guest, or it can be mutual, but that's usually what a crossover means.

Fusion Fic is actually unusual among crossovers, in that it blends the very premises of the works rather than merely putting their characters together. Either it puts the characters from work A into work B, but with A's characters replacing rather than appearing alongside B's, or it blends together two distinctive worlds, or both.

I think there's also sort of a lightweight intermediary between Fusion Fic and traditional Intercontinuity Crossover, where work A keeps its setting and premise 100% intact (aka "canon compliant" in fanfic terminology), while guest characters from work B^note who appear in their own right, rather than replacing existing characters as in a Fusion Fic have their backstories altered (sometimes massively) to be compatible. I think I've seen some of these for Zootopia.

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EDIT: I just wrote something ridiculously in-depth and now I think it might be useful to post it somewhere besides here.

I'm not sure where, though. I don't think it would quite fit in the Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions, so probably somewhere in the Analysis namespace. Maybe Fusion Fic or Crossover?

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EDIT 2: I went ahead and created an analysis page for Fusion Fic, based on my above reply but cleaned up a bit. So now we can say that this discussion actually did end up pertaining to the wiki content (albeit in a roundabout way, on a different page, in a different namespace) ;P

Edited by BURGINABC

I think it's better to keep them in the same page since both stories' tropes aren't actually that long on their own. You can put the two sections into their own folder for easier navigating. If there's any overlapping trope, maybe you can put them into a general section before the two folders?

After thinking about it, I think the best way to migrate review-style comments will be to add a temporary "unmigrated reviews" section after the reviews link. Then those who posted those reviews will be given time to migrate them to the review pages used by the new format. Any that aren't migrated after a reasonable period will be deleted.

This may be a good source of tags, for any fic that doesn't already have tags: Fanfic Tropes

Tada! All the entries have been migrated to the required format. The tags are still pretty rough, and the reviews still need to be migrated (by the authors of those reviews).

I'm not sure how you can completely remove a review, but you can certainly edit it and remove the incorrect content. But the system won't let you save an empty review, so you'll need to include dummy "left intentionally blank" content.

not an actual answer but... removing recs is kind of not a thing I've ever seen happening? A troper recced those 3 chapters, neither the last update date nor someone else's opinion on the fic changes that it was recommended. In older fandoms you'll find ficrecs that have been abandoned for half a decade and they're still there. Unfinished stuff can still be worth reading.

You can add a Status: Dead/Abandoned (although 3 months is not long enough for that status, fanfic writers have lifes too, you know?) or "Last Updated: Date" or something if that makes you happy?

I think the rule for marking a fic dormant instead of ongoing is a whole year without an update, or an explicitly announced indefinite hiatus. To declare it dead, I think requires multiple years without an update, or an explicit notice from the author that they are quitting on it.

Personally, though, I think 1 year seems too long a requirement to call it dormant, since "ongoing" carries the expectation that it's being updated with some degree of frequency.

Edited by BURGINABC

Yep, according to Fanfic Recommendations, the definition of "Dormant" is at least a year without an update, and the definition of "Dead" is years without an update (or specifically killed by the author).

This is all opinion, AFAIK there is no qualification or special requirement to be on the list except that at least one troper likes the fic and is willing to recommend it.

Sorry, but I don't think there's a process for removing entries.

(Well, you could just unilaterally remove it anyway, but I don't think you're supposed to.)

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EDIT: Here are the rules about what can be on a fanfic recs page. I'll admit I wasn't even aware of that page until I just now looked it up, but it seems most relevant to your issue.

It doesn't seem to say anything about removing a fic because you disagree with the characterization, though.

To summarize, the rules seem to be limited to:

• No underage sex
• No porn
• No recommending a fic you wrote yourself
• No making an entry without signing your username to it as the one making the recommendation
• No deviating too far from the standard entry formatting template

I don't think you can remove something if it complies with all those rules.

Edited by BURGINABC

Can I at least post a warning? Given the description says that non-canon interpretations should be labelled, I think the non-canon interpretation of Judy should be at least mentioned.

Hmph.

I don't think questionable characterization is what it meant by non-canon interpretations; I think that's more about making sure AUs are labeled as such.

You could post a negative review though. Unfortunately it seems like we don't have the proper reviewing mechanisms set up on this page, but it looks like people are posting reviews using signed sub-bullets on the "comments" heading.

If I were you, though, I would just let it go. There's a lot of these I don't like, and one of the most common reasons is that their characterization of Judy is irreconcilable with my own interpretation of her personality, but I don't bother complaining.

Edited by BURGINABC

Maybe. But judging from the reviews of the story, I'm not the only one who came out of that story angry. I think it fair to warn away people who might be similarly affected.

Hmph.

It looks like the format specified in Fanfic Recommendations is required. I'm going to start converting entries to this format.

Unfortunately I have no idea what the rules are, or if there even are any.

I think whether or not a fanfic gets a trope page is simply a matter of whether or not someone bothers to make one, but I may be wrong about that.

In any case, if you like the fic then you should post it here on the Fanfic Recs page regardless of whether you make a trope page for it.

In the meantime, why don't you start by adding a normal entry to this page?

I've created pages for fanfics without asking permission. It's not necessary.

"But... nobody told me I needed a signature!"

Also, a story doesn't need to be "good enough to warrant a TV Tropes page"; it just needs to exist. Some pages feature works that are famous because they're terrible; for fanfic examples, go to the My Immortal page and check out the list of examples near the end of the main entry.

"But... nobody told me I needed a signature!"

Probably not; it's not a crossover with an external work, but just with a world based on early draft scripts for the same work.

I wouldn't put a crossover between "Final Version Zootopia" and "Shock Collar Zootopia" in the same category as a crossover beween Zootopia and Sly Cooper

Edited by BURGINABC

So, what sections should we really have? Right now, it's

• General (everything not in some other section)
• Shipping (focusing on romantic relationships)
• Crossover (Zootopia and something not Zootopia)

What about AU vs movie universe? (And where would "Through a Glass, Darkly" fit in that?) Or complete vs ongoing? Or rated mature vs general audiences? Or any of the other categorizations that show up on the list regularly?

Edited by mcgrew

I guess we could make some more categories.

If you wanted to make an AU section, then "Through a Glass, Darkly" would probably get lumped into that even though it technically also contains the standard universe.

EDIT: Also, the list is getting long enough that we might want to folderize the categories.

2ND EDIT: While the AU category would fit nicely into the current scheme of grouping by subject matter, grouping by content rating or by ongoing vs. complete would cut across that and require either a complicated multi-level categorization system (for example, the general section and shipping sections both being subdivided into family-friendly vs. mature, and those being subdivided into ongoing and complete), or else require everything be listed 2 or 3 times, once for each categorization scheme.

The AU group could be implemented easily, but the other grouping methods you mentioned would greatly complicate things.

Edited by BURGINABC

I went ahead and reorganized it.

Nice. Thanks!

I cleaned up a handful of wikiwords that weren't really wikiwords.

What do you think about alphabetizing the entries? By title? By author's name? Do we still need them alphabetized?

Thanks for fixing the bad links.

Probably should alphabetize by title, if at all. The question is, is there a real benefit to alphabetical order in this case?

Edited by BURGINABC

Given that the list is broken up into several smaller lists, I don't think alphabetizing helps find things (unless you already know which smaller list they're in). The main benefit would be that alphabetic order is a fairly neutral order. If we encounter someone who keeps rearranging the order to put their favorite entries on top, then maybe enforcing alphabetic order would be a neutral way to resolve that problem. But I don't think we have that problem yet.

Hmm... If you move an entry from one category to another (e.g., Ongoing to Completed, or General to Shipping), then where do you put it in the new category? For lack of a more obvious choice, I put the moved entry at the end of the new list. Alphabetizing the entries in each list would clear that up.

Yeah, I think previously it's always just been, whether adding or moving them, to put it at the end of the list. Alphabetizing, would, at least, create some form of order besides that.

I think alphabetizing them makes sense. They're in pretty random order right now, unless you're a historian who cares about the order in which entries were added.

Does it make sense to keep shipping and general stories separately organized? What about other categories (e.g., complete vs ongoing, alternate universe vs movie universe)?

Edited by mcgrew

Which reminds me, should we change the structure to better accommodate fanfics that are available from multiple sources? Right now, the "primary" source is linked from the title, and any "secondary" sources are listed in the comments.

Maybe it would be better to unlink the title of fanfics that are available from multiple sources, and to add a Sources: heading with links to the fanfic on each of the sources from which it is available. For example:

Sources: on FanFiction.NET, on Archive of Our Own

Edited by mcgrew

Just to wrap this up:

As mentioned on the main discussion page, the "shipping" section is for fanfics that focus on the shipping. The "general" section is for fanfics that focus on other plot points, even if they include some shipping elements as secondary plot points.