The tag alias #64684 fan-character -> fan_character has been approved.

Reason: duplicate tag with emdash instead of underscore

EDIT: The tag alias fan-character -> fan_character (forum #380951) has been approved by @slyroon.

They should probably both be invalidated, and a better tag used for what the tag is wanted for. As it is, things like pokemon are flooded with the tag to the point of uselessness because any non-canon pokemon character is saddled with it (even in their own story/setting), while other things like sergal are devoid of the tag despite also being non-canon characters to the Vilous universe that they're from, making it inconsistent.

watsit said:
They should probably both be invalidated, and a better tag used for what the tag is wanted for. As it is, things like pokemon are flooded with the tag to the point of uselessness because any non-canon pokemon character is saddled with it (even in their own story/setting), while other things like sergal are devoid of the tag despite also being non-canon characters to the Vilous universe that they're from, making it inconsistent.

It sounds more like the sergal tag needs to implicate the vilous copyright tag than anything to due with the fan_character tag. I presume most people myself included who never looked up sergals think sergals are generic fictional species or an obscure real species instead of tied to a specific series. Created characters using species from established properties are fan characters. You can't separate those character's from the property unless you change that character's species. It's not as nebulous as like a Sonic or MLP fan character where the only tie to series could just be the art style which isn't enough to be considered a fan_character. If I made a character and one time I drew them in the style of a Sonic character does that make them a Sonic fan character? If you make a lucario character in a different art style and in a alt universe from Pokemon it's still a Pokemon character due to being a pokemon.

bill_furray said:
Created characters using species from established properties are fan characters. You can't separate those character's from the property unless you change that character's species.

Which begs the question if such a tag would be useful. Basically every pokemon that's not directly from official media is a fan_character, every digimon that's not directly from official media is a fan_character. I wonder how many people with Sergal characters even know anything about Vilous, yet fan_character would/should be carpet bombed on all of them. I too didn't know Sergals were from a series and weren't a generic fictional species, until I happened to stumble across that info one day, and I'm sure there are still other fictional species I don't realize are actually from something and aren't just a generic fictional species. As such, I just don't see this being useful, as it would be applied to so many different things, including plenty of things people don't realize it should. It seems like an extraneous tag that would apply to most copytags:>0 posts.

Then you get into cases of fan-ception, where a fanwork establishes its own world and setting within the larger canon, and people make fan characters of that world/setting, creating fan_characters of fanworks. A character that's canon to a fanwork is both an official character (to the work they're made for) and fan character (for the larger setting the fanwork is built on). Or fan character crossovers, where a fan character for one setting ends up in a different setting, making it a fan character of two settings at once. A generic fan_character tag doesn't indicate anything useful for this.

The tag alias fan-character -> fan_character (forum #380951) has been approved by @slyroon.