Nominations Open for Round 4 + Group Label Question

[modzilla]

Here we are again! Time is truly the most fearsome kaiju of all. I will have the sticky post & the full collection rules up soon.

For now:

Nominations

Nominations are open! See the tag set. Nominations close at 11:59pm EDT on July 21.

Everyone starts with 8 fandoms to nominate and 5 characters or relationships per fandom. You can ask me to make a limited number of additions to the tag set during sign-ups. (Note: If you find it helpful to keep a record of your own nominations, I recommend noting your initial nominations elsewhere, because personal nominations will be cleared early in the sign-up period.)

Please check this community before nominations end, because I'm bound to have questions about the nominations. If I don't get answers, I may mess up and approve them wrong.


FFFX uses the Fandom and the Relationship tag slots for nominations. Relationships, single characters, and a worldbuilding option can be nominated in the Relationship slot - please read further for how to format each of these.

In the Fandom field, you can enter a canonical or non-canonical fandom (yes, it's okay if there's no work for it yet on AO3). There are tips on labelling new fandoms here.

If you want to nominate a relationship, please enter it as Character/Character (Fandom) (for romantic or sexual relationships) or Character & Character (Fandom) (for platonic relationships).

Do NOT put "Group" or another prefix in front of a relationship nomination.

The punctuation / and & is very important to indicate what sort of relationship it is.

Putting the fandom at the end of the nomination is really helpful to stop the tags misbehaving.

Larger groups of names are OK - ie, "Character/Character & Character/Character" means you're asking for two sets of pairings who are doing something together or otherwise relate to each other. Please also see discussion question at the bottom of this post for larger groups*.

If you want to nominate a character, enter them in the format "Char: Name (Fandom)" - that is, actually type out "Char: ", but swap in the appropriate name and fandom, such as "Char: Lucy Pevensie (Narnia - Lewis)". Nominated characters should explicitly exist in the fandom where they're nominated. Original characters are also OK as long as you describe a character who could have existed in canon, such as "Char: Original Force-sensitive Character (Star Wars Original Trilogy)".

If you want to nominate Worldbuilding for a canon, to offer or request it, please nominate it as "Oth: Worldbuilding (Fandom)" (filling in the relevant fandom). Not "Other".


Some fandom notes:
Please separate out Marvel movies and separate TV shows - ie, Iron Man (Movies) rather than MCU.

I will not approve "Star Wars (All Media Types)". Trilogies are fine. Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types is fine.

Arrowverse TV shows and DCU and Marvel comics will be approved as discussed in a previous post.

"All Media Types" fandoms will probably be approved last, overall, because I'll want to see if there's a more specific version of the fandom that's in conflict. And I don't know many fandoms. So if you already know that All Media Types is what's right for your fandom, consider dropping me a comment to clarify so that I can confidently approve it faster. For example, I'm happy to approve Assassin's Creed - All Media types.

I'd prefer not to approve both a larger set of fandom and a subset that is covered by the larger set, but am open to discussing specific examples.

Where you want to nominate a relationship between characters who appear in different fandoms, please nominate them under Crossover Fandom and include the fandom for each. For example: Arya Stark (ASoIF)/Elsa (Frozen - Movies). Please be specific if the fandom name could refer to different versions and adaptations. You can ask for general crossovers between fandoms by nominating "Oth: Worldbuilding (Fandom 1 & Fandom 2)"

You can also nominate characters and groups under Original Work. Please indicate the genders of the characters if that is important to you. If someone requests Original Work characters or relationships with ambiguous genders, the preference of the person requesting takes precedence over the preference of the person offering. (But you can ask to add a more specific version to the tag set during sign-ups if that is an issue.)


When it comes time for the offers and requests of sign-ups, the following factors may be relevant to how you plan your nominations:

-You need to request at least 4 separate fandoms with at least 1 relationship in each - so every nominated fandom needs at least one character, or one relationship, or one worldbuilding tag nominated underneath it

-There is no minimum requirement on what you have to offer, you just have to be able to offer for someone else's request

-It's fine to request or offer a fandom more than once using different tags.


Please feel free to use the comments to ask questions or brainstorm with others.

*Character group handling

In previous rounds, there has been enthusiasm and interest for nominations that describe sets of characters rather than naming individuals. I'm talking about "[W] Siblings", "Crew of [X]", "[Y] Gang", etc. Those nominations have also engendered creative requests and fills.

I can see benefit where:
-you don't have strong preferences about the internal relationships within a group, or just want canon-typical
-you want to include a lot of characters who are a recognizable unit, but you don't want to type them all out or they won't fit
-you want to combine two such groups in a flexible way
-you want one specific character interacting with some or all members of a group (often in a crossover)
-you want one member of the group to be the focus but for the rest of their crowd/family/colleagues/?? to be involved
-you want to ship a character with any [character who is part of X category].

I want:
-to enable people to make & match on requests that inspire them
-to have a clear idea of what each tag covers, first so that different people selecting a tag are likely to be on the same page about what is meant, and second so that I can adjudicate fairly and constructively if there's a misunderstanding
-to make it easy for myself to check tags, while not putting unreasonable limits on people's fun
-to deal with tags in a consistent way.

Some questions that have arisen for me in the past:

-Does [random set label] have an agreed-on meaning within the fandom?
-If you're asking for X Group & Y Group & Z Group, would one person from each suffice? Or do you mean all characters in each of those groups?


Some possible ideas:
-If you nominate a group that has 6+ members, I could ask you to also comment to say who those members are
-Use Creator's Choice of... labels where those suit your needs. Ie, "Tom Riddle (HP books)/Creator's Choice of Pevensie Sibling (Narnia books)" or "Falkor (Neverending Story movie) & Creator's Choice from the Gaang (Avatar)"
-Potentially use something like "ALL: " when you really want all members of the set to appear
-Something else?


I'd love to hear from people who might request or offer nominations of this type. I see it as my job to remove unnecessary ambiguity from tags, because tags set the requirements for gifts. But I also don't want to make unnecessary rules.

Comments

[daxs10thhost]

if we wanted to request a character who has appeared in very different capacities across different iterations of a franchise (say, for example, Worf, who has appeared in Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: DS9, and Star Trek: Picard - the equivalent of 30+ years of canon) for the purpose of exploring their character development-- would it be acceptable to nominate "Char: Worf (ST: TNG/ST: DS9/ST: PIC)" under "Crossover Fandom"? or would we just need to pick one and opt into the expanded canon in optional details?

[(Anonymous)]

If I were to nominate solo characters, would I be allowed to opt into ships I like (involving those characters) in my sign-up?

[miss_ingno]

When I request Groups, I don't expect every character from that group to have an equal part within the narrative. I'd be happy if 2-3 of the group's members were the focus with (some of) the rest showing up in the background, although the concrete details depend on the size of the group.

For those of us who don't care if all members show up and just want to avoid nominating every possible combination of Character A & Group Member(s), the Creator's Choice of Member variant seems like a good compromise to me!

[zabbers]

I'll add to the above that I have groups like that too, but also when I do have groups I want every member of, those are small enough that if it's clearer, it would work for me to write out all their names.

[thracedt]

Do you want the DCEU movies grouped together?

[erlkonig_gheyn]

Creator's Choice sounds good to me! And if a different number is wanted, maybe the number could be included too - "Creator's choice of 2 Hogwarts Professors"? (But then, it's unknown whether that's Dumbledore & Flitwick or Dumbledore/Flitwick, so maybe they're better listed one by one? "Creator's Choice of Professor/Creator's Choice of Professor")

And "All" would be interpreted as platonic, e.g. "All Marauders" = "James & Remus & Sirius & Peter".

I think asking people to list specific group members might be tricky for large groups, for example "Ash & Any Pokemon". That sounds like a fair request to me, and it's clear as-is. That said, I think listing members is crucial for an "All" nomination if there's any ambiguity.

One thing I'm a bit worried about is whether "All" will be used to get around the OR matching. If I request "All Weasley siblings", now the creator is required to include all 7 of them, while if they were requested individually, the creator would only have to include one.

[delphi]

Last year I nominated the comic series Something Is Killing the Children (SIKtC) and House of Slaughter (HoS) as two separate fandoms. (Or at least I'm 90% sure I was the one who nominated both of them.) HoS is a spin-off anthology series that at the time focused on original characters and backstory for minor SIKtC characters, so they seemed discrete enough to keep separate.

Over the last year, HoS has come to have more overlap with SIKtC in terms of timelines and now assumes some knowledge about what happened in the main series. There's also now another one-shot in the mix called Book of Slaughter that requires full knowledge of SIKtC and has two characters who've appeared in both. All three share a setting and involve characters who belong to the same organization and either know each other or have heard of each other.

Would it be okay to lump all three titles together into something like "Something Is Killing the Children | Slaughterverse" or is it preferable to keep them separate and nominate characters who primarily/exclusively appear in different books as crossovers?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi! I have a question about 2 nominating crossover groups where I would like character x from fandom a to interact with characters/world from fandom b, without preference for characters. Should I nominate it as "x(fandom a) & worldbuilding (fandom b)", oth: x(fandom a) & worldbuilding(fandom b) in some other way?
For reference, the characters I'd like to nominate in different canons are Goose from Untitled Goose Game and dog wih precognition powers from anime with a larger cast of characters.

[(Anonymous)]

I would definitely love to be able to nominate the Brooklyn Nine Nine squad and let my author pick the individual characters within it they like, up to small appearances from all of them if that's what they want.

Question: Across the Spider-Verse went all in on a canonical Spider-Man multiverse when it came out last month. It has appearances from Donald Glover as the Prowler from Spider-Man: Homecoming (he's live action in the animated universe, reverse Roger Rabbit-style) and Mrs. Chen from the Venom movies (also live action and interacting with the animated characters), uses clips of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man, and has Miguel O'Hara call out Spider-Man: No Way Home's events as "Don't even get me started on Dr. Strange and that little nerd." So in light of that, is the Spider-Verse something that can be nominated as its own thing?

[galaxyofroses]

Oh, I do like differentiating between "all" and "whoever you feel like mentioning from this group" (maybe "any"?)

[modzilla]

Thanks for the question! Yes, that seems like a good use of Crossover Fandom - go ahead.

[modzilla]

Absolutely!

[modzilla]

Thanks for the question! I accepted the movies under DC Extended Universe last year. However, I don't know that canon very well, so if you think the movies should be split up because of recent developments or some other reason, I'd be open to hearing those thoughts.

[modzilla]

Hello! Yes, I think you've been the most active person interested in this fandom/fandom cluster across fffx, so if you want to combine them, that sounds fine to me.

[modzilla]

Hi, thanks for the question! Yes, the way we've done that in the past is:

"Character (Fandom) & Oth: Worldbuilding (Other Fandom)"

Yanking some examples from last year's tag set:

Ellie Arroway (Contact 1997) & Oth: Worldbuilding (SGA)

(aka "Ellie Arroway is in a crossover with Stargate: Atlantis but it's the creator's choice who/what/? she interacts with")

Monica Rambeau & Talos's Daughter (Captain Marvel 2019) & Oth: Worldbuilding (LotR - Tolkien)

(aka Monica & Talos' Daughter, both from Captain Marvel, in a crossover with Lord of the Rings but it's the creator's choice which Lord of the Rings characters appear)

Hope that helps! Please feel free to ask further if I didn't cover the scenarios you were thinking of.

[modzilla]

That's good to know, thanks! Could you remind me please which characters are covered by the B99 squad?

Could you help me understand a bit more, please, what sorts of characters/relationships you'd be interested in for the Spider-Verse as its own thing?

[modzilla]

Thanks, and good! I have a strong preference for "Creator's Choice Of-" rather than Any, even though Any works better on a sentence level, because I think it helps a lot to bake into the tag who gets to choose the "any".

I'm leaning towards: unspecified group nominations means that 2+ members must be a focus of the work & which ones is up to the creator, while ALL makes it explicit that all must be significant characters, and Creator's Choice Of means any single one in the group.

[modzilla]

Thank you for weighing in, I appreciate it!

I'm leaning towards: unspecified group nominations means that 2+ members must be a focus of the work & which ones is up to the creator, while ALL makes it explicit that all must be significant characters, and Creator's Choice Of means any single one in the group.

[modzilla]

Thank you for adding your thoughts!

I'm leaning towards: unspecified group nominations means that 2+ members must be a focus of the work & which ones is up to the creator, while ALL makes it explicit that all must be significant characters, and Creator's Choice Of means any single one in the group.

I appreciate knowing that it's worth it to you to list out specific characters in cases where you really want all.

[(Anonymous)]

The B99 squad can include any of the following: Raymond Holt, Gina Linetti, Jake Peralta, Amy Santiago, Terry Jeffords, Rosa Diaz, Charles Boyle, Norm Scully, and/or Michael Hitchcock.

I would love to see interactions between the various Spider-People who were main characters (Hobie Brown, Miguel O'Hara, Gwen Stacy, Miles Morales, Pavitr Prabhakar, Peter Porker, Peni Parker, and six different Peter Parkers [including Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland]), their love interests (Mary Jane Watson, Mary Jane Parker, Michelle Jones-Watson, Gwen Stacy), their friends (I would commit murder to see Ned Leeds interact with Ganke Lee!), possibly aunts/uncles, villains. It's just kind of a bear of an interconnected universe at this point and it'd be nice now that there's a movie that tied them all together officially to not have to break it up into a bunch of different crossovers.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd just like to add! The Peters can be labeled by their universe's numerical designations if it makes nominating/matching easier. Like the movie designated Tom Holland's Peter Parker as from Earth-199999.

[modzilla]

Thank you! That sounds possible, I just want to mull it over another day as to the exact formatting. And yeah, universe-labelling sounds helpful.

[(Anonymous)]

Potential formatting (may not be what you end up going with, it's just a suggestion!) could look like:

Spider-Verse
Peter B. Parker (Earth-616), Peter Parker (Earth-19999), Peter Parker (Earth-120703), Peter Parker (Earth-96283), Gwen Stacy (Earth-65), Gwen Stacy (Earth-120703), Miles Morales (Earth-1610), Miles Morales (Earth-42), Pavitr Prabhakar (Earth-50101), Miguel O'Hara (Earth-928), Eddie Brock (Earth-96283), Eddie Brock (Earth-688)

And so on!

[(Anonymous)]

It helps and is exactlu what I was looking for, thank you very much :)

[modzilla]

Thank you for these thoughts! You've given me a lot to think about.

Hogwarts Professors is a category that would be comprehensible to different fans, but it wasn't what I initially had in mind because they aren't the kind of group who are known for acting as a group the way the Marauders are.

"& Hogwarts Professors" and "& Pokemon" strike me as plot suggestions more than relationship tags. If someone wants an interaction with a large canon group but isn't fussy about that interaction, that doesn't seem like a tag matter. (And you'd actively have to work at Ash not having interactions with Pokemon in even a shorter fffx work.)

I am not sure that ALL works platonically the way you're thinking - I was thinking more of using default relationships? So if a group included a romantic relationship, requesting the group with ALL wouldn't turn that relationship platonic.

I'm not sure I follow your concerns about OR matching, please expand? It wss already possible for someone to use a tag to request and require multiple characters.


I'm leaning towards: unspecified group nominations means that 2+ members must be a focus of the work & which ones is up to the creator, while ALL makes it explicit that all must be significant characters, and Creator's Choice Of means any single one in the group.

[delphi]

Thanks!

[galaxyofroses]

Those three options would definitely cover the possibilities for me! Thanks for breaking them down. :)

[thracedt]

All together is fine! They usually are, I just wanted to check because I didn't see it on the list.

(If someone nominates The Batman though, that should be it's own thing!)

[modzilla]

Thanks! We'd need something a bit more specific for the fandom, though, I think? So maybe more like

Sony's Spider Multi-Verse

Earth-616 Peter B. Parker (Spider Multi-Verse)
Earth-19999 Peter Parker (Spider Multi-Verse)

something like that?

To distinguish the specific universe concept where all Spider-people ever are assumed to exist, from the specific movies in which only certain characters appear.

[erlkonig_gheyn]

Re: "& Hogwarts Professors" - Ok, I think I'm understanding better. Groups are well-defined canonical groups, and not just broad categories of characters. That makes more sense, and it has smaller group sizes built in, in that nominators won't have to list out dozens of Hogwarts professors lol. (I think that was the root of my issue with OR matching too, the idea of "All Hogwarts Professors" including way more characters than would fit in a written-out nomination with a 100-char limit.)

It sounds like it might be tricky for tag modding though. It would require familiarity with the canon to rule that "The Marauders" acts as a group but "The Order of the Phoenix" does not.

Platonic vs. default ALL - I could see this getting tricky. The thing that comes to mind is "All Lannister Siblings" - people might have strong feelings about the canonical Cersei/Jaime. (Though I do think anyone requesting Cersei, Jamie, and Tyrion ought to spell out what relationships they want!) Another case that might get confusing is characters who are together and then break up, and what default means in that case.

These are all edge cases though. I think that your rules are both detailed and clear, and cover a vast majority of what will get requested, and that anything coming out of group requests will be one-off events.

"unspecified group nominations means that 2+ members must be a focus of the work & which ones is up to the creator, while ALL makes it explicit that all must be significant characters, and Creator's Choice Of means any single one in the group" - This sounds perfect! 👌

[(Anonymous)]

I tried nominating a group of four characters together from Top Gun and listed out all their full names including the fandom but ao3 said that took up too many characters so I took out their nicknames, is that alright?

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to indicate Creator's Choice of with some of my longer relationship tags with 3 characters or more but for some, I am exceeding ao3's character limit for tags - can I indicate Creator's Choice of for which tag in the notes of my sign up instead? Thank you!

[modzilla]

Yes, that sounds okay!

[(Anonymous)]

Ah I think I misunderstood what Creator's Choice of is supposed to used for - it's my first year, sorry about this!

[modzilla]

Potentially, but please could you let me know what you have in mind? I don't think I can give you a definite answer without the potential tags/chars in front of me, sorry.

[modzilla]

All good! Please let me know if I can help you refine your tags.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you mind clarifying what is meant by: ‘it is fine to request or offer a fandom more than once using different tags’? Does this mean I could list MCU and The Avengers as different fandoms, for example? Thank you :)

[ishipallthings]

Hi!

I would like to list Creator's Choice for these tags but it got too long for ao3 to accept:

- Creator's Choice of Bruce Banner & Clint Barton & Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark & Thor (Avengers MCU) - already approved in my nominations

- Creator's Choice of Clint Barton & Hulk & Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark & Thor (Avengers Assemble)

- Creator's Choice of Nick "Goose" Bradshaw & Tom "Iceman" Kazansky & Ron "Slider" Kerner & Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Top Gun)

Thanks!

[modzilla]

Not quite: that means you could request a fandom with relationships AxB and AxC and comics, and make another request for that fandom with relationships DxF and DxFxG and fanfic.

MCU is not an accepted fandom in this exchange, but you could potentially request both Avengers movies and Thor or Captain America movies (among others).

[(Anonymous)]

I see! Would it be possible to nominate one single MCU movie, ie Endgame, as its own fandom? Thanks :)

[modzilla]

Thank you for listing those out! I think there's some confusion - I'm a bit confused, anyway.

Are these specific teams? If so, please nominate the team name and I'll use this comment as helpful reference for who is included in the team.

Are these just your top fave characters? If so please nominate them individually as "Char: ...". If you don't have enough slots, please comment on a recent community post and someone may be willing to help you nominate them.

[modzilla]

Sorry for not seeing this question! Yes - I have approved a nomination for Endgame, so I hope that was yours, but if not, nominations will re-open during sign-ups with a smaller number of available slots.