Talk:Meta

Muse Stories?

Do the old Muse Stories fit under the meta category? I know they were written in HL and XFiles, but I don't know of any fandoms more recent than that. --rache 05:51, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

What are Muse Stories? Please describe. Diurnal Lee 01:54, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Muse stories started in Highlander (Methos) or XFiles (Ratboy) with and were stories about fans interacting with the characters--sort of a proto-RPS only using the character names. They were big on ROG for a while (I think it still may be referenced in the FAQ), and Suze wrote several stories around the conceit such as "Please don't pet the Methos". (Here's a link to "So you have a Methos Muse", which was a later muse story, listed as 12/98 on my site): http://wordsmiths.net/ROG-L/muse23.htm) It spread out into an entire community (mailing list based) focused on the interactions between the muse characters and the fans, and the muse characters with each other. --rache 14:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I have the idea they might have remained popular in anime fandoms for a bit longer, but I'd hate to be quoted on that. --Betty 05:23, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Archive Fic

There's a form of meta fic we called archive fic, used on fic-only communities, where the only permissible way to communicate necessary info to the list membership was by posting a story in which one or more canon characters deliver the info as exposition. The list I remember this from was a large BtVS list, or maybe a newsgroup, round about '98. I seem to remember that they even archived the archive fic. Sound familiar to anyone? Diurnal Lee 01:54, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Poolboys, Towel Boys, Clones

I've been in several communities with traditions like this, only I don't know what to call it. The community would be partly populated with canon or fanon characters, whom members would post about (or post as). Some communities have complex permission rules regarding which members can use these characters, and how.

Does anybody have terminology to describe this phenomenon?

Does it belong more properly in the Meta page, or somewhere in the communities area? Diurnal Lee 01:54, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with this, but the way you describe it it sounds like some kind of RPGing? because fans are playing characters I mean.--Ratcreature 12:26, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like the old muse stories to me. *g* And modern-day RPGs, as well as some RPS communities. --rache 14:48, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The Fanfic Symposium

Did I put this is the right place? Maybe it should go under communities? Mrs. Potato Head 20:42, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Group-Created Meta

A lot of the links on here seem to focus on essays, but a common form of meta appears in discussion or contributive form, in which multiple people participate in creating a piece of meta. I've seen these in comments on DW/LJ/JF, and now increasingly on Tumblr, since the reblog structure often doesn't allow for direct conversation but does support additive creation. For example, this post pokes fun at Tumblr's own fannish community and its predictable reactions to certain types of posts. What would be the best way to add these to the page? --the old briar pipe (talk) 05:02, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Meta Date Category

I'd like to add categories for meta by date. Should it be called, for example, "2016 Meta" or "Meta 2016"? --MPH (talk) 03:47, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be a little redundant though? Meta essays already get categorized by year they were published in... Unless you remove the year category, but make sure the meta category is subcategorized within the year... in that case I'd say "2016 Meta" fits better for me. --Alex (talk) 11:26, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I want there to be an easy way to find all the meta within a given year. Like we can for "Slash Meta" or "Fanfiction Meta" or "RPF Meta." --MPH (talk) 13:17, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

As long as we prevent redunduncy by structuring it well, I think it could be done. Say: Meta -- Meta by Year -- 2016 Meta and at the same time 2016 -- 2016 Meta. What do you think? --Alex (talk) 13:54, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

If someone sets it up, I don't mind going through and adding the date category to them all. Maybe User:aethel has some thoughts on this? --MPH (talk) 13:55, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia has this faceted structure somewhat like Getty's art thesaurus, but Fanlore does not; all existing Fanlore categories should contain content unless someone is planning a radical change in the category structure (which we could do, but current practice is to change the alphabetization on similar subcategories to group them together, so we'd have to add a lot more layers of categories--see Category:Relationships for example). I think something to easily group meta essays by year would be very helpful; I'm in favor of categories formatted like Category:2016 Meta with parent cats Category:Meta Essays and Category:2016. --aethel (talk) 18:31, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Am I doing this correctly? Category:2006 Meta --MPH (talk) 20:54, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Looks good. Although I would suggest making a Category:Meta by Year with the parent cat Category:Meta Essays and putting all the date meta cats there to not overwhelm the main meta cat. --Doro (talk) 10:12, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

"Recursive fanfic may also be called metafic"?

I adore any mention of recursive fic, but I've never seen recursive fic be called meta fic. I obviously do not know all things everywhere, but do we have a source on that/any example uses/can anyone speak up who uses metafic to mean recursive fic? Because I don't know where to start looking but if recursive fic is sometimes called meta fic then details about that would help me edit Recursive Fanfiction to include the term. - Hoopla (talk) 23:08, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

I've never seen the two terms equated and a quick google didn't bring anything up. BUT the Ao3 tag "Fan fiction about fan fiction" redirects to "Metafiction" so there must be something to it. That might also explain why there seems to be so few fics in the "Recursive fanfiction" tag on Ao3. And you've probably spotted this already, but the wiki's Metafic page makes no reference to recursive fic except for one example that is both recursive and meta --Auntags (talk) 14:43, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

I actually hadn't seen that example! I went and read it and it wasn't recursive in the way that the recursive fanfiction page means the term, though? Also, the term "recursive fanfiction" wasn't coined/broadly used until mid-2011 as far as I was able to tell, while the "meta and recursive, both!" comment was added to the wiki sometime before May 2010, so I wonder if it was an older/different usage of the term "recursive"?

And like... "fanfiction about fanfiction" is different from "fanfiction of fanfiction", which is why Fanfiction of Fanfiction is its own AO3 canonical. For whatever reason the AO3 tag "recursive fanfiction" isn't synned to the fic of fic tag, but they're definitely synonyms. Fanfiction about fanfiction is different, though.

My understanding of the terms metafic and recursive fic would lead to these understandings:

1. A fic about Harry Potter characters reading the Harry Potter books: metafic of the "fic about canon" variety
2. A fic about characters from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality reading regular Hogwarts library books: recursive fic, aka "fic of fic"
3. A Harry Potter character writes any fanfic, including some kind of Canon-Hermione-Wrote-HPMOR plot: metafic, of the "fic about fic" variety
4. HPMOR characters reading HPMOR: both recursive fic (fic of fic) and metafic (fic about canon)
5. HPMOR characters read the regular Harry Potter books, which as far as the HPMOR characters know is actually RPF written by HPMOR!Dumbledore: recursive fic (fic of fic) and both kids of metafic (both "fic about fic" and "fic about canon")

As far as I can tell, the Psych example on the metafic page is of the #3 variety — it's just Gus writing fic and Gus and Shawn talking about Yuletide. No part of it makes any mention of being based off of or inspired by another fic. So, whatever the "recursive" part of the "meta and recursive, both!" comment means, I think it's something different than what the recursive fanfiction page means by it? - Hoopla (talk) 16:43, 8 June 2019 (UTC)