Mapping

Mapping is a type of film, almost exclusively produced as a YouTube video, in where a series of still images depicting political maps creates a narrative. People who create mapping content are self-dubbed Mappers. Most commonly, characters are displayed as political or corporate entities, such as countries, states, parties, or companies, yet individual fictional people occasionally are portrayed as characters. As opposed to simply the names of the countries, many mapping videos use countryballs to depict countries. Many mappers also use countryballs as public personas.

Mapping can be further divided into two branches; Historical Mapping and Fictional Mapping. Historical Mapping is a visual representation of a prior event, usually a war. Fictional Mapping is where a narrative is created, mainly by alternate history or future scenarios. However, Historical Mappers and Fictional Mappers tend not to be classified in the same community. For this reason, Fictional Mappers are often dubbed "Mapperdonians", after the name Mapperdonia which refers to the collective community of Fictional Mappers.

Mapping is typically comprised of geographic and oceanic cartography, with a section of the screen being set off to give information about a country, such as its official name and flag. It is also used for dialogue. A mapper will create a video by animating characters interacting frame by frame in programs such as Paint.net or Photoshop, then by compiling them in an editing software, often adding music and other animation to increase the entertainment.

Etymology

The term "Mapping", used as a substituting word for alternate future, is based off of the fanbase of alternative future, alternate history, history, etc. In a certain context, it refers to any mapping video with characterization or personification of countries and their interactions starting with MervueMeringue. It comprised of maps of Europe, which lead to a person, called TheJarJar99, to create the term Mapping. It was later popularized and made official by 99batran whom coined the term for the fanbase called "Mappers". The term had later been officially used by MervueMeringue.