Talk:Alien

Do we want to have a general Aliens in Fanworks type article? I think it would mostly link to more specific or related tropes, but it might be good to have a landing page for it since there are so many wikilinks.

"Alien" could also be a glossary term. SF Citations has one example as early as 1820.--aethel (talk) 03:15, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

I was thinking of asking the exact same question. JKFAN (talk) 22:39, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

We have pages like Ghost (trope) so I'm not sure that I'd vote for Aliens in Fanworks over Alien (trope) (or maybe they'd be different pages with different topics? Like... is there such a thing as an Alien AU?) but some kind of page about aliens in general (or several pages) is definitely needed, whatever we call it/them. - Hoopla (talk) 22:51, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

The subject seems like it'll end up looking like Demons in Fanworks, so I agree with choosing Aliens in Fanworks. –caes (talk) 23:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I guess I thought we were having a discussion that'd be slower than this, but thank you for making the page! Since we have decided to go with Aliens in Fanworks should we change Ghost (trope) to Ghosts in Fanworks, and are there any other pages of this sort whose names we might want to change for consistency?

(Obviously changing Ghost (trope) should be brought up on Talk:Ghost (trope) so that everyone can voice their opinion on the matter, but I think I'll make a note asking people to discuss it here to keep everything in one place.) - Hoopla (talk) 04:36, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Sorry if I was too quick to make the page. Ofc it can be changed if we decide that's not the right title for it. I thought identifying aliens specifically in fanworks would be better than following a model like the Vampire, which goes into how vampires function as plot elements in canon works, so it wouldn't be right to change it to Vampires in Fanworks, and there's not enough to make a separate Vampire AU page. I think that kind of discussion regarding aliens would be stuff that would fit better on a general Science Fiction page, so there's not a need for a page on just Aliens as a trope? And Aliens in Fanworks has a lot of well-developed subsections, like Vulcan, Klingon (both pages with more about fanon than canon), Alien Kink, etc. – caes (talk) 04:50, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

I think the Aliens page will be similar to the Demons page bc, in the same way there's nothing about all the non-fandom religious and cultural context about demons, this isn't the place to get into what the possibility of and search for ET life means for human society and so on. – caes (talk) 05:09, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm, uh, confused? What does "identifying aliens specifically in fanworks" mean? What do you mean by "Aliens in Fanworks already has a lot of well-developed subsections" — it's a stub right now? Are you saying it's bad that Vulcan and Klingon are mostly about fanon, or that they should be subsections of Aliens in Fanworks, or that they shouldn't be? Why did you come back to edit this talk page again just to make sure to tell me that "this isn't the place to get into what the possibility of and search for ET life means for human society and so on."? Did... I imply somehow that it was going to try and get into that? Because I really wasn't.

Also I was asking about the Ghost (trope) page which is about ghosts showing up in fanworks ie ghosts as a trope in a very broad sense? A sort of ghost genre, with ghostly subtropes? I thought maybe we should rename it to Ghosts in Fanworks. You brought up the Vampire page instead, but I didn't mention that page or say I thought the Aliens in Fanworks page should have that kind of/that much canon information on it. I don't think it should. I don't even think the Vampire page should have that much canon information, to be honest, because we aren't TVTropes. Were you just saying that you don't think Vampire should be changed to Vampires in Fanworks because... I'm not sure I agree but I'm also not sure I understand what you were trying to say? - Hoopla (talk) 05:44, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Hoopla, really sorry to be unclear about this. I don't mean that pages such as Vulcan and Klingon need to change in any way, I mean that the Aliens in Fanworks page should have a subcategory like, "In Star Trek Fandom, exploring Vulcan and Klingon culture is popular, as well as other species such as...." with summaries about the the fandom and links the main articles of each. I saw on Talk:Ghost (trope) that you said "Are there any other pages that might need to be changed to ____ in Fanworks?" and to keep that discussion on this page, so I brought up Vampire as a page that I think doesn't need to be renamed to try to establish the difference between a (trope) page and _ in Fanworks page. I went back and edited the page just because I wanted to clarify what I was saying about the difference between documenting a trope and all its context vs the trope's fandom activity. I didn't comment on Talk:Ghost (trope) because I'm not familiar with the subject and thus didn't have any input. I don't know if the amount of canon in the Vampire page is a problem, but if other people decide it should be changed it's not like I'd stop them.

I think we're miscommunicating because I'm very open to people undoing my edits in major ways, because if that happens I just try to understand why they did it and may find an in-between, and I can always still find my past edits in the history. I don't mind if a page I made gets blanked and moved to a different page title - if it's decided that Alien (trope) should be the page, I don't mind if someone blanks Aliens in Fanworks and uses pieces of it for the new page. But I understand that other people don't feel the same way about major edits, so if I do something you disagree with, know that I'm fine with you undoing it or telling me what's wrong in a talk page. I'm sorry for the confusion. – caes (talk) 13:46, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

I think it's fine to rename Ghost (trope) to Ghosts in Fanworks. I think we might have used the parenthetical "(trope)" sometimes when the trope was also a fannish term, but that is not the case with ghosts.--aethel (talk) 01:14, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

I know Hoopla asked that if any other pages needed to be changed to ____ in Fanworks, to have the conversation here, so I hope that's okay. I came across the page Spies. It's currently a small page with not a lot of links but the name just doesn't sit right with me. Maybe Spies in Fanworks? I was brought there while editing Assassin AU works. --Auntags (talk) 20:03, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

The Spies page also talks about fannish interest in spy canons, so renaming it to Spies in Fanworks would be misleading.--aethel (talk) 15:17, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

That's cool. Thanks for checking. --Auntags (talk) 23:10, 10 March 2019 (UTC)