Ambiguous Name: Fetish

I've dreaded the day I opened this can of worms back up, but this one has been a long time coming. Fetish Fuel was nothing but a bad Snow Clone of Nightmare Fuel, a preexisting term that makes sense. Shortening it to just Fetish doesn't fix anything at all.

A fetish isn't inherently sexual, as this page tries to make you believe. A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers. A sexual fetish is something unrelated to sex whose absence prevents a person from becoming aroused.

This isn't the place to lecture people on their perceptions of normality. Anything not required for intercourse, including female human breasts, can be a sexual fetish(some people think human breasts developed for missionary, but most people interested in breasts don't actually need their presence to become aroused, the Audio Erotica concept for one example).

Now simply getting turned on by something not necessarily related to sex, like say, two different people wearing the same outfit, is not a sexual fetish if arousal is still possible in it's absence. If you have an outfit kink but can get sexed up without it, then it is just that, a kink. A sexual fetish is incredibly rare, hence its association with objects possessing supernatural powers. Kinks are so common they are almost universal among people with sex drives. Even some asexual people otherwise nonplussed by sexual organs and gestures can get turned on by things like cooking dinner for someone they think is interesting. Yeah, "Kink Fuel" doesn't have Added Alliterative Appeal going for it, nor does it even make sense as a title, but naming a page Fetish and then not only focusing entirely on sexual fetishes but doing so incorrectly doesn't make much sense either.

To that end I suggest the page be renamed to Kinky As Hell, a preexisting term, or Kink Appeal, as an Audience Reaction counterpart to Author Appeal (that would be a good Snow Clone, I could stand to see more of those) or maybe "Kinks And Fetishes"(Fetishes And Kinks?) since both should probably be described anyway, with maybe a short paragraph on paraphilia and encouragement to get help at the end. The latter name could be the precursor to an index, but even if we're not ready to go that far the page's name should change. We can work out everything else later.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Jan 29th 2019 at 10:28:15 AM

Based on a brief exchange with other staff, we'll need more evidence of an actual problem - which is far from clear here - before we can open a TRS on a trope with almost 7,000 inbounds.