Talk:Gundam

Canon/Fandom balance of the page

I know I was the one who added the "Needs More Fandom" flag to this page and then promptly failed to add anything to the Talk page about this or what could be done to address it, so apologies for that. I mentioned some concerns in the Featured Article Nominations discussion for this page in 2020, but that venue doesn't allow a whole lot of opportunity for back and forth and won't be seen by others who are coming directly to the page.

flyingthesky made a suggestion elsewhere that the History section could be renamed as a Fandom section, and initially I was going to make some minor edits to the page separating out the first few paragraphs of the current History section into an Origins and Influence section and then turn the rest into a Fandom section, before adding thoughts here. However, I'm not sure whether that makes sense with the current subheaders for that section (Universal Century Continuity, Introduction of Alternate Timelines, etc.) as these are subsections that would make sense for a timeline of the Gundam franchise, and aren't (I think) sub-fandoms of the overall Gundam fandom.

The issue that I have with this section is that it still reads to me like a timeline of what happened in the canon rather than what fans did, although there's information on the reception by fans to each part of the franchise (as well as fan comments), but I don't come away from the page with a sense of how fans engage with the franchise. I'm struggling to articulate this a bit because I know I'm not well-versed in Gundam fandom, and I don't want to try and impose thinking that doesn't apply to this type of fandom. But is there a way to talk about how fans organise, gather, share their thoughts about the franchise? Given that this is a franchise with a long history, it would also be really interesting to know how and if fans today engage with earlier instalments of the franchise - do they go back and watch them, are there certain instalments that are considered to be the best entry point for newcomers? I noticed one of the sources cited is titled 'If You Are New To 'Gundam' Then Start Here' and there are also fan primers collected in the External Links, but it would be great to see that talked about in the page content.

These are just a couple of examples/suggestions I can think of that would foreground the fandom/fan interaction more in this page. I also think some parts of the page (and a couple of the reviews/comments) are more about Gundam's overall impact on/influence on anime and the content of the shows, rather than their fan reception. I'm thinking specifically of the 'Ask John: Which Gundam Series Have Had the Most Impact on Anime?' quotation, but also the quote about Gundam AGE, though the end part of that quote relates to fandom.

I like the parts of the page that draw distinctions between Japanese and English fandom reception of/interaction with the different instalments, although some of these summaries allude to info I think would be really interesting to explore more fully, such as:

A large part of the reason Gundam 00 became so popular with English fandom (aside from the slash potential) was the fact that it resonated with a post-9/11 audience due to the politics involved.

What is the "slash potential" of this fandom and how did that manifest? It seems as though there could be a whole page devoted to Gundam 00 which would give more breathing room to explore the fandom aspect. Maybe that's true for some of the other sections as well - I know that there was a specific reason that these ones were grouped together on this page, as explained in the intro to the History section, but in many instances it feels like fandom aspects are glossed over or summarised in passing when there is a lot more that could be said.

Final thought: I know that Gunpla merits a page of its own, but would it also make sense to have a Gunpla section of this page that talks a bit about how the culture came about, as it's a major fan activity relevant to the Gundam franchise/fandom? Maybe it would also be relevant to group the Gunpla-oriented releases like Gunpla Builders and Build Fighters together to talk about the tie-in instalments alongside the activity? --enchantedsleeper (talk) 22:02, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it looks like most of the present History section is off-topic for Fanlore and should be removed, since it's all canon history. The SF and Starship Troopers connection is interesting, and there is some fan opinion interspersed throughout the canon stuff, but it would probably have to be completely rewritten from a fandom-centric rather than canon-centric POV. I ran into a similar problem on the Panic! at the Disco page. One approach I've tried for documenting the history of large-scale fandoms is to start with a timeline and just list out various fannish milestones (fansites, archives, zines, doujinshi, conventions, forums, first fic for a pairing, LJ comm creation dates, big bangs, that wank over X everyone still remembers, etc.) with very sparse canon info as needed to explain fanactivity (e.g. 1985: series XYZ starts and fandom hates it because...). Then maybe turn it into paragraphs. Timeline of Gundam Fandom?--aethel (talk) 02:42, 30 May 2022 (UTC)