What's the point of Fanfic and Webcomics?

I understand that Fanfic and Webcomic stuff has been around on TV Tropes since the beginning but why has it been around for this long already?

• Oftentimes they're made by one ameteur creator/hobbyist, which stands out from the rest of the media which is often made by a team of professions
• Most fanfic/webcomic pages are either made by their creators or made at the peak of their popularity (like who the fuck even remembers shit like my little unicorn now)
• Fanfics and webcomics also suffer from getting cancelled a lot since again, they're often made by one person who can most likely get exhausted from doing their work on a regular schedule
• Fanfics in particular are a dying art anyway, and webcomics are starting to go down this path as well
• Sturgeon's Law is a thing, and that makes a lot of potential to make Fanfic/Webcomic pages pointless because of that trope's black-and-white outlook on what makes a "good" fanwork, thus reducing the amount of fanworks that are allowed to have pages of their own
• I look at certain tropes that have an image from a webcomic and I often go "where does this come from"? At least most other pages have an image from a piece of media which I can recognize quickly

Indie games also sort of fall under these, but a lot of the time indie games are also marketed by Steam and are still popular to this day. Even freeware stuff (like cave story for example) have withstood the test of time because it eventually got released on many other systems. The fact that fanfics/webcomics are also a non-profit creation and doesn't extend to more stuff doesn't help its dying popularity either

Edited by SleepingPuppy on Jul 6th 2018 at 8:00:00 PM

Don't forget Art/; the majority of works in that category are also made by amateurs/hobbyists. Fortunately, There Is No Such Thing as Notability. Your Opinion Myopia is showing. Every work tends to be created around the peak of their popularity. When a work gains appreciation many years after the creation, it is often called a Cult Classic. Don't underestimate how much of an impact networks can have on cancellations. Right... Have you called Worldcon so they know the Graphic Story and Fan Writer categories can be removed since the medium is dying? Yes, one that affects every medium and genre. Someone like you asked a similar question about sci-fi, compared to "other things". Theodore Sturgeon explained that the question wasn't unique to one format, and the question is insulting by assuming it is unique. Every work, even bad works, are allowed pages on tvtropes. Opinion Myopia

Right... be sure to explain to Howard Taylor that he doesn't have an income next time you visit Worldcon, will you?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

We have no rules about notability, obscurity, or popularity when it comes to what types of works may have articles on TV Tropes. If it is a creative work and it uses tropes, we can have an article for it, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions mainly have to do with our Content Policy and our general principle that a work must exist, somewhere, in some format that could allow its use of tropes to be verified.

If the fact that we discuss certain kinds of works on our site bothers you, you are welcome to ignore them. If you think that you can provide a superior image for a trope article than what's already present, you are welcome to open an Image Pickin' topic. However, "I don't like the current image because I'm opposed to webcomics," is not a valid reason. Indeed, part of the fun of the wiki format is that you might see a trope example or an image that intrigues you, click on it, and discover a new work that you might not have known about.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 6th 2018 at 10:14:25 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Holy COW is the Opinion Myopia strong here.