Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual
| Tropes and genres | |
|---|---|
| Synonym(s) | Owner's Manual, User's Manual, Unit Manual, User Guide |
| Related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual trope was originated by Theresa Green's 2003 fanfic, Legolas: The Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual. Some pre-Internet examples exist with similar titles, such as 1976's The Tribble Owner's Guide and Manual and the 1992 Android Owner's Manual, but Legolas was the first to apply the format to a biological human character.
The format treats a character as if they were a household product in need of maintenance and troubleshooting. Early on, most fics rendered names in all-caps. Often the fic will comment both on canon and on common fandom tropes, as in Legolas:
The maintenance of a GIMLI as an attachment to a LEGOLAS is generally not problematic after the first few weeks. The LEGOLAS and GIMLI models have three modes of interaction:
(a) Hostile
(b) Friendly
(c) Slash
WARNING It is essential that both the LEGOLAS and GIMLI units be set to the same interaction mode. If the GIMLI model is set to ‘Hostile’ while the LEGOLAS is set to ‘Slash’, your wood-elf could be fatally damaged.
Q: I have read in some Fan Fiction that my LEGOLAS could become pregnant. Is this true?
A: Absolutely not! Nor can he be transformed into a woman or lose his elven powers of sight and hearing. Contrary to Fan Fiction lore, your LEGOLAS is unlikely to become injured at the drop of a hat or fall hopelessly in love with a teenage girl who has been miraculously transported from 21st Century America into Middle Earth.
By April 2004, Green's Owner's Guide fics had been removed from FanFiction.Net at the request of moderators, as they were considered non-stories.[1] The fics remained archived at the Henneth Annûn Story Archive and were imported to AO3 in 2015 with the rest of the archive. Many works in the same format still remain on FF.Net.
Many Owner's Guide fics follow the same format as Green's, down to beginning with "Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a(n) (Character) unit!" While rare, Owner's Guide fics have been published off and on in various fandoms since 2003. In the first few years after Legolas was published, many authors sought direct permission from Green to write their own versions[2] but eventually the concept became self-sustaining. The line of credit back to Green is sometimes lost due to the passage of time and the trope's spread through different fandoms, but others still retain a disclaimer listing her as the owner of the concept.[3]
Because the trope is known by many variations on "Owner's Guide", finding modern uses of the trope can be difficult on AO3, which has no umbrella tag for the trope. Maintenance Manual may be omitted, or the fic might be called Owner's Manual, User's Guide, User's Manual, or something else entirely. A few fics on AO3 use the tag "user guide", which is synned to the overall tag for any form of guide. The most reliable way to find them is by using the search function.
Notable Works
- By Theresa Green:
- The original Legolas: The Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual on The Trees Remember, and imported to AO3 from Henneth Annûn
- Gimli, Boromir, Hobbits and Aragorn on AO3
- Sharpe: An Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual, a Sharpe version from early 2004. According to the author, Green gave her direct approval for the homage.[4]
- HOTARU: The Owner’s Guide and Maintenance Manual, a 2007 Samurai Deeper Kyo version that credits "Hikari Hrair-rah's outtake of Theresa Green's series"
- The User’s Guide and Manual for Scott Lancer, for Lancer (TV series), 2010, which credits the first version the author saw and doesn't know where the format came from
- Loki Laufeyson : A User’s Maintenance Guide, 2012, which features a variation on the original title and credits only "another story".
- PUCK: The Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual, a 2014 Glee version still crediting Theresa Green for the idea
- Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual for My Hero Academia, published 2017, which retains the exact title format but doesn't mention Green
- STILES STILINSKI: The Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual, a 2018 Teen Wolf version still giving credit to Theresa Green
Links
- For all Unit Manuals community on FF.Net, using the Unit Manuals label
- FF.Net community using the User's Manual label
- Owner's Guide search on FF.Net
- Owner's manual and Owner's guide searches on AO3
References
- ^ "I went to Theresa Green's homepage at fanfiction.net and this is what she had to say: (...) Well, it has happened! I thought it might. I was asked to remove my Owner's Guides because they violate the 'non-story' rules of FF.Net."
- ^ A second Legolas iteration from 2005, whose summary states that Green gave permission
- ^ Fate: The Owner's Guide, a Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha fic from 2012 crediting Theresa Green with the idea
- ^ Theresa Green, the originator of the Lord of the Rings Owner's Guides, gave me enthusiastic permission to use her concept for Sharpe (she's a huge fan), for which I'm eternally grateful. :D Some slash references, none graphic, but mostly het. Enjoy!