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ALIEN — Parodies involving an extraterrestrial.
ANIMAL — Parodies involving non-human, non-mythological creatures.
BAWDY — Humorously indecent songs dealing with sexual matters in a comical way.
BOOK — Parody refers to a novel or story.
CLICHES — Parodies deriving humor mostly by commenting on well-known cliches.
COMICS — Parody refers to a comic book or comic strip or graphic novel character or trope.
COVID19 — Songs about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic of 2020 and the responses to it (e.g. quarantine) and the knock-on effects of those (e.g. remote filk circles)
DISCOGRAPHY — Songs listing the works of a particular filker
ENVIRONMENT — Parodies about pollution, overpopulation, and other environmental issues.
FANDOM — Topics known to fannish culture or filk culture. May be inside jokes or specific events that won't make sense to outsiders.
FILKER — Songs about a particular invidual member of the filk community
FOLK — Parodies of traditional or contempory songs that might be called “folk” songs.
FOOD — Parodies involving food, beverages, etc. — not necessarily in a good way.
GAME — Parody refers to a game of some kind.
GAY — Parodies involving gay or lesbian topics. See also SLASH.
GEEK — Subject matter might be called geeky, even by filk standards.
GHOST — Parodies involving a ghost.
HOLIDAY — Comments on Christmas, usually. For someone who’d prefer to sit out this Christian/pagan tradition, which is impossible, I’ve written s surprisingly large number of songs on the topic.
HORROR — Subject matter involves the horror genre.
INDEPENDENT — Parodies of non-filk songs that are not widely known.
LEARNED-AS-KID — Songs that either parody or refer to some work that I (like many people, at least those born after me) first encountered during childhood, but that I now have a new take on as a grownup.
LOCAL — Generally depends on an inside joke, like the FANDOM tag but even more so.
MASHUP — While all of my parodies use the tune of one other song and follow its rhyme scheme and structure to tell some related or unrelated story, sometimes the unrelated story is taken from another song. I find the term “mash-up” “mashup,” suggested by Tony Fabris in 2007, handy to describe this technique. (The usualy definition of “mash-up” is something done with two recordings, whereas this is something done in songwriting.
MEDIA — Parody refers to a movie or TV show.
META — Parodies about parody writing.
MONSTER — Parodies involving some kind of monster (other than a ghost).
MORBID — Songs treating the subject of death lightly.
MUSIC — Parodies about the making of music (except META parodies).
MYTHOLOGY — Subject matter involvese mythological creatures or events.
PAGAN — Subject matter involves Neo-Pagan religious practices.
POLITICS — Political satire/comedy/commentary
POP — Parodies of popular songs that might be played on typical radio stations in the U.S.
SCATOLOGICAL — Songs deriving humor by refering to excretion or urination.
SCIENCE — Subject matter involves science
SERIOUS — Parodies intended to have little or no humor value.
SILLY — Songs that are not very clever and are not supposed to be the least bit thought-provoking.
SLASH — A parody that comments on slash (homoerotic fan fiction) or constitutes slash itself.
SOCIETY — Parodies commenting on social policies, culture, etc.
SPACE — Parodies involving space exploration, generally past, present, or near future. (Hard to draw the line here — I don't consider songs casually mentioning spaceport bars to be space songs.
TECH — Subject matter involves computers or other relatively new consumer technology.