Talk:Blank Slate

Relationship with other pages

Would Figwit also be an example of this or just a related phenomenon? --Baycitybomber (talk) 19:21, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Good question! I guess that depends on whether you determine that a character needs to be established as a character (i.e. have a name and at least some actions rather than just being a figure in the background) in order to be a Blank Slate. Part of me thinks that for a character to qualify as a Blank Slate there needs to be a slate, but on the other hand, these are still characters that fandom has created out of wholecloth, just with slightly different amounts of starting material. So, I'm on the fence but I think you could count it. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 10:47, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

That is a tough one. I agree that this character is somewhere between a blank slate and a Fanon Character. It's really subjective. The metas that coined this term point out that blank slates are created to facilitate a slash ship, of two white guys (but that wouldn't really apply here cos LOTR was already soooo white). The Figwit page doesn't specify how that character was used by fandom. If he was primarily there as one half of a slash ship, I'd lean towards his inclusion on this page. Because the character page does hint that he was more popular than female characters, so if Figwit's stories were given more prominence than stories featuring canon female characters, maybe... --Auntags (talk) 12:24, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I think Figwit qualifies as a blank slate. Although he's a rather unique example. He's a one-scene background extra that fans built into a character from the ground up. Other examples had some vague canon upon which fans built. It also seems somewhat reductive to me to treat this phenomemon as if it's limited to slash shipping. There's female characters on the list and blank slates seem pretty common phenomenon in video game fandoms. Night Rain (talk) 17:26, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree that it's not specific to slash, it just happens to be a common feature of slash shipping xD I used the example on the page of Michelle Jones (Spider-Man: Homecoming), who was definitely a blank slate for fans before Far From Home came out, but is neither white nor a man. (She should probably also go in the main examples list. I'll also add Figwit there while we're at it) --enchantedsleeper (talk) 20:52, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

"Blank Slate" as it's currently being used across fanlore (e.g. for Musichetta and Marlene McKinnon) is broader than -- ah yeah Nightrain and Auntags already hashed this out. I'll just say +1 to Nightrain's point then. I think the fact that the meta linked on this fanlore page is focused on slashfic is a weakness/bias of our page rather than an indication of how the term is generally used in fandom. -- Quaelegit (talk) 00:56, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Since the above conversation happened, we've created Category:Fanon Characters. Since there seems to be agreement above that there's some overlap in the terms (at least the boundary between them is very fuzzy) I've added this page to the category as a glossary/explanation term. I also want to ask whether people think having a Category:Blank Slate Characters would be useful? Since personally I've found myself trying to look for "characters like Musichetta". OTOH it might be too contested/lead to too many arguments. (There's already some entries in "Cat:Fanon Characters" such as Wes (Danny Phantom) that seem exactly as "blank slate"-ish as Figwit, for example).-- Quaelegit (talk) 00:56, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

"free real estate"

I have heard this phrase a lot (in 2023, especially about Marauders-era Harry Potter just-mentioned characters), and I'm not sure if it's a widely-used fandom term or not - or where to put it on the main page? - but I wanted to mention it here as a possibility for including in the page somewhere. Joanna R (talk) 05:00, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Added it as a synonym, though maybe it would be better in the "See Also" field, especially if we made a whole page about the term (considering that it's a broader meme that's been re-analyzed as applying to characters in this context). -- Quaelegit (talk) 00:46, 2 March 2025 (UTC)