Category talk:Fictional continuities

Notes about media clusters

• Previously had a separate category, Category:Media clusters, to provide some way to assign a "media" to works that crossed media. Now seems unnecessary. Here are the notes from that category, and that category's talk page.

Category:Media clusters

See also Fictional continuities

A media cluster is a type of work which has crossed over multiple formats and genres. They often start with popular TV or film works. For example: Buffy, which began as a movie, probably created a novelization, generated a popular TV series, generated a spin-off TV series in the same universe, comic books, novelizations of the TV episodes, additional novels not in the TV series, action figures, probably video games, and other authorized or canonical representations. (And that doesn't even include the unauthorized representations, like satires, fanfiction, and fanvideos; or other unauthorized uses and explorations of the work, such as scholarship, trivia books, fan websites.)

A media cluster is distinguished from the BuffyVerse, which is a fictional continuity. The "'verse" would describe the rules of that universe. In the Buffyverse, for instance, demons, vampires, and magic exist. A fictional continuity can be in all one media genre, such as the Ekumen, which is only in text form for now. Every work is part of a fictional continuity.

A media cluster is instead a description of a type of work; the work consisting of all those authorized or canonical works within the media cluster. A series of novels consists of all the novels within the series. A media cluster consists of all the works within the cluster. The distinguishing feature would be that the media cluster crosses media and formats to include literary works (short stories, novels), media works (films, TV, cartoons), interactive media works (video games), graphic works (comic books, graphic novels), art works (dolls), musical works (soundtracks), etc.

Talk page

"Media clusters" is basically a neologism that I made up, to capture fictional continuities that span multiple forms of media -- e.g., print, film, games, etc. Some fictional continuities are in print only. Others span.

Better terms might be:

• Franchises. But implies commerciality which is not always present in all aspects of most franchises.
• Media franchises. Same as above, but maybe emphasis on media softens "franchise" aspect.
• Cross-media works.

Alternatively maybe it's not needed. Maybe any set of related works that include enough works to have their own category in Category:Fictional continuities should be assumed to be in multiple media, and if it's not, that's okay; the individual categories work as tags and need not be linked in to particular media. The works within the categories will be tagged with appropriate media -- e.g., TV series, games, etc.

--LQ 21:59, 14 February 2007 (PST)