Topic: "Fan characters" who have since become Original?

What would one do tag-wise in the case of a "fancharacter" that has long since been divorced from its original inspired media? In this case I'm talking about my friend's OC agoti, and others related to him, who became well known through friday_night_funkin' but has been repurposed into his own original media, ENTITY. Sugarratio specifically did not change the design of Agoti for the new media because it is his OC and has nothing to do, design-wise, with FNF.

FNF fancharacters specifically are in a strange situation where, outside the context of FNF[microphone, singing, etc], you absolutely would not be able to know from a glance that they are FNF characters; and a lot of people just put their already existing OCs into the game as a mod, and then these characters are then on known as FNF characters.

Would you keep the media tag even if the character is divorced from its original "fan" media? Would you keep it even if it's an OC that just got put into the setting? I'm not sure if there's ever been discussion on this so I'm asking here.

Another example: Chibineco’s Zangoose characters kinda developed into its own worldbuilding entirely divorced from any hints of Pokémon settings at all whatsoever.

I still think fan_character should be done away with. It's too nebulous a concept, and lacks nuance when it comes to species (e.g. simply being a lucario, even when in a completely original setting that's nothing like the Pokemon world) or original stories in pre-existing settings (distinguishing characters made for some original story, which takes place in some pre-existing setting, from fan characters made by fans of that original story; fan works of fan works, basically). Any unnamed generic character in a pre-established setting is technically a fan character, meaning fan_character would apply any time a copyright is utilized and the post depicts a character that's not identifiable from official canon.

moonlit-comet said:
Would you keep the media tag even if the character is divorced from its original "fan" media?

Fan characters should not automatically be tagged with media tag they're a fan character for, only when something identifiable from the media's canon is visible. e.g. simply being a generic looking elf in a generic looking forest shouldn't be tagged the_legend_of_zelda, even if the character is conceived as and intended to be a hylian/TLoZ fan character. However, if they are wearing gerudo clothing or are a rito, or something like that that's identifiable from the franchise, then the_legend_of_zelda should be tagged.

fan character is still appropriate when they're drawn within the context of the media they were based on. Otherwise, it can be fairly done away with.

watsit said:
Fan characters should not automatically be tagged with media tag they're a fan character for, only when something identifiable from the media's canon is visible. e.g. simply being a generic looking elf in a generic looking forest shouldn't be tagged the_legend_of_zelda, even if the character is conceived as and intended to be a hylian/TLoZ fan character. However, if they are wearing gerudo clothing or are a rito, or something like that that's identifiable from the franchise, then the_legend_of_zelda should be tagged.

heartstoppa said:
fan character is still appropriate when they're drawn within the context of the media they were based on. Otherwise, it can be fairly done away with.

So with that in mind, friday_night_funkin' shouldn't be tagged on most of the posts in it that don't contain the canon characters or elements of the game? A lot of characters made well-known from mods of the game should probably be aliased to more suitable names indicating their owners - whitty_(fnf), tabi_(fnf), sarvente_(fnf_mod) and ruvyzvat_(fnf_mod) for example belong to sock.clip, homskiy [at least formerly, idk what the situation is with tabi anymore], and Dokki.doodlez.
That, and FNF didn't exactly introduce a new species that can have distinct fancharacters made from it. Most of the characters there are just human or demon which are generic enough already.
[There's also people who think my digidevil fluxios is a FNF fancharacter, despite him never being officially/canonically associated with the game outside of some jokes and a cancelled project. He was always meant for my original setting and is a member of a species I created.]

watsit said:
I still think fan_character should be done away with. It's too nebulous a concept, and lacks nuance when it comes to species (e.g. simply being a lucario, even when in a completely original setting that's nothing like the Pokemon world) or original stories in pre-existing settings (distinguishing characters made for some original story, which takes place in some pre-existing setting, from fan characters made by fans of that original story; fan works of fan works, basically). Any unnamed generic character in a pre-established setting is technically a fan character, meaning fan_character would apply any time a copyright is utilized and the post depicts a character that's not identifiable from official canon.

Yeah, I think the fan_character tag is a giant mess. Afaik the only reason it exists is so people can filter out "non-canon" characters when searching for media properties, but such as in your example it gets a lot more nebulous with media properties like Pokemon. Things like avali and sergal OCs are technically fancharacters and the vast majority of those certainly don't exist in the "canon" setting.

moonlit-comet said:
So with that in mind, friday_night_funkin' shouldn't be tagged on most of the posts in it that don't contain the canon characters or elements of the game? A lot of characters made well-known from mods of the game should probably be aliased to more suitable names indicating their owners - whitty_(fnf), tabi_(fnf), sarvente_(fnf_mod) and ruvyzvat_(fnf_mod) for example belong to sock.clip, homskiy [at least formerly, idk what the situation is with tabi anymore], and Dokki.doodlez.

Right. MLP:FiM fan characters have/had a similar issue, having _(mlp) suffixes and/or implying my_little_pony despite being non-canon fan characters, some of which have been fixed. Fan characters that need a suffix should be suffixed to their owner.

watsit said:
Right. MLP:FiM fan characters have/had a similar issue, having _(mlp) suffixes and/or implying my_little_pony despite being non-canon fan characters, some of which have been fixed. Fan characters that need a suffix should be suffixed to their owner.

I suppose while we're on this topic I'll get to work on that! I'll make a BUR to update all these character names but it might take a bit due to finding all the owners of these characters.
Edit: Went and made a BUR

watsit said:
Right. MLP:FiM fan characters have/had a similar issue, having _(mlp) suffixes and/or implying my_little_pony despite being non-canon fan characters, some of which have been fixed. Fan characters that need a suffix should be suffixed to their owner.

some of these were finally fixed earlier today, not sure which remain. _{we also still have the issue of official FiM characters using the _(mlp) suffix, but that's unrelated to this discussion.}

Been digging back through these [and BUR #11951] and contemplating cleaning up the friday_night_funkin' tag tree to remove it from modded/fangame posts as directed. Just to be extra clear, so I don't mess anything up and make trouble, it SHOULD be ok to remove friday_night_funkin' from any post that does not contain or reference canon FNF media? A canon character, gameplay_mechanics etc.