Franchise wrangling and pre-nomination questions.

[casemod]

Hello fellow nosy neighbours and private investigators (and everyone else with a magnifying glass)! In anticipation for nominations, I wanted to get your thoughts on a few things!

1. Large franchise wrangling

I anticipate there will be a large franchises nominated as part of this exchange, so I'd like to get your thoughts before finalising the nominations guidelines on how some of these should be handled. I'd prefer to split up large franchises like Marvel Comics, MCU, and Marvel TV (same goes with DCU, DCEU, and DCTV), but I know there are other fandoms that this may not be the best approach for.

Please comment below to let me know how you'd prefer your franchise to appear in the tagset. Please assume I am canon blind and provide any fandom splits, if you feel that it's necessary. If you agree with someone's suggestion, please comment on the thread as it's very helpful to know.

Please note there's no guarantee that how you want your franchise to appear in the tagset will be how it appears in its final form. I would prefer most large franchises to be split and not nominated under "All Media Types" or "& Related Fandoms".

2. Nominating groups/ensemble casts

Since we allow nominations of romantic relationships ("/"), platonic relationships ("&"), and solo characters ("solo"), I wanted to know if potential participants had any desire to nominate ensemble casts without specifying the exact characters in that ensemble.

I was anticipating that any groups would be identified as "Character A & Character B & Character C (Canon)"; however, I'm open to allowing ensembles to be nominated as long as there's an interest in it from participants!

If we use The Muppets as an example, the way I would anticipate this working would be "The Muppets (Sesame Street)" would be nominated, and creators are allowed to create a work about literally any Muppet and any number of muppets. Taking into account we have a rule about not blocking a creator in, participants who select the Muppets group would ideally not be allowed to list characters they do not want included in the work as part of their "DNWs".

If you're interested in nominating a group like this, please let me know your thoughts.

3. "Any" nominations

Is there interest in "Any" nominations, i.e., "Lottie Matthews/Any Yellowjacket (Yellowjackets)", "Any Yellowjacket/Any Yellowjacket (Yellowjackets)"? The same rules would apply regarding not blocking in creators to create a very specific work.

*

I'll be taking suggestions for these until Thursday 3 April [ In your timezone ] so I can finalise the nomination guidelines. Thank you for your time!

Comments

[fencesit]

Franchises: this is only barely related to what you asked but I wanted to note that it's helpful to have a tag specified for the recursive Naruto fandom Dreaming of Sunshine so that people nominate it under the right fandom tag. It's had a lot of fics written for it so most of the normal variations of the tag are already synned to the canonical "Naruto (Anime & Manga)" and that can cause a big ol' tagset mess. "Dreaming of Sunshine - SilverQueen (DFE)" is currently unsynned.

Ensemble/Any: I would really love to have some kind of allowance for this, would definitely use it, and I like your proposed rules for it...but I don't think you should/can have people nominate group tags like that in the relationship slot without some kind of prefix or something because:

• if someone tries to nominate an ensemble or group tag that already exists on the archive, like Batfamily Members (DCU), they're going to get "Batfamily Members (DCU) - Relationship" in the tagset
  
• if they nominate an ensemble or group tag that doesn't already exist on the archive, then they're going to doom anyone who actually wants to use that tag on a work in the character slot to having "[x] Ensemble - Character" on their fic.

FIAB makes people nominate groups like this with "Solo:" in front, and guarantees "a work about/centered around one of literally any Muppet, but potentially more than one." but you could also go with something like "The Muppets & None (Sesame Street)" or a different prefix? (but I would advise against "Group: The Muppets (Sesame Street)" because the Group: prefix is usually used for character slot nominations...)

I do think it's important to not allow people to DNW specific members of the group their nominating with ensemble or Any tags, since creators should have a reasonable expectation that they can write anyone in the nominated group when they match with someone. In the FIAB nom guidelines we also explicitly say that where groups are ambiguous, we'll probably side with a creator's reasonable interpretation of who counts as part of the nominated group — to avoid having to seek replacement gifts because the recip disagrees about which Gotham vigilantes are members of the Batfamily, for instance. Please feel free to lift phrasing from the FIAB nominations guidelines if that's helpful.

Surprise third section about crossover tags: Since we're discussing possible additional nomination formats, would you be open to allowing Solo: nominations under Crossover Fandom under the format "Solo: Elmo (Sesame Street) in Home Alone (Movies)"? Arguably this could be covered with "Elmo (Sesame Street) & Home Alone Ensemble (Home Alone Movies)" as long as one didn't feel strongly about which setting characters were in, so I understand if not.

[casemod]

Franchises: Thanks for flagging this!

Ensemble/Any: Thank you for all this info! I will lovingly lift from the FIAB nominations guidelines regarding nominating ensemble/any and how to best enforce it because how you guys tackle it is how I want to tackle it, especially with those ambiguous groups. (If someone wants a specific set of characters, I feel they can nominate those rather than rely on a group tag and optional details.)

I also really appreciate your modly knowledge as I was considering using the "Group" prefix in the Relationships field in nominations. Good to know to avoid this!

Crossover tags: I'm good with this! I think this kind of crossover tag would be very cute and hopefully encourage some interesting works!

[fencesit]

So glad I was helpful!!! Oh I forgot to mention this but you might also get crossover nominations in the format A/B (Fandom 1) in Fandom 2, like Bert/Ernie (Sesame Street) in Home Alone (Movies)! We allowed these in FIAB because...I couldn't think of a reason not to, haha.

[casemod]

I've got that in my nomination guidelines! Fingers crossed we get some of these—they seem like cool concepts.

[xenoglossy]

I can definitely see the utility of group noms if someone wanted canon-typical gen casefic for a canon with an ensemble cast. I agree that people requesting this shouldn't be allowed to DNW members of the group. But I do wonder a little bit about practical aspects of how this would be defined and what the expectations would be.

Like, personally, my ideal use case for this would be stuff like Persona 3 through 5 where there's a central group with fairly unambiguous membership, and I would request it because I would want something roughly as ensemble-cast-y as canon, or at least not narrowly focused on one or two characters. And in that type of situation, it would be reasonably enforceable to say "every character in this clearly defined canon group has to appear". But that doesn't work for your Muppets example, where the core group is a little less clear-cut, so how many Muppets need to show up for a request for "Group: The Muppets" or what have you to be considered fulfilled? Two? Three? Does it depend on how big the group is? (If you're construing this as a separate thing from "Any", I assume the minimum isn't one, because then nominations/requests for "Group: The Muppets" and "Any Muppet" would be functionally identical.)

I do like "Any" nominations - I'm not totally sure if I'd use them in this exchange, but I've used them before - and those I don't think I have any particular quibbles about.

[casemod]

Thank you for your comment and feedback!

I plan to follow in the footsteps of ficinabox when it comes to enforcing more ambiguous groups like The Muppets, where it'll be up to the creator to decide how many Muppets they include in the work. Regarding enforcing, I'll most likely side with the creator's interpretation of who counts as part of the nominated group. I feel that if someone wants Elmo, Snuffleupagus, Oscar, and Big Bird, they can nominate those characters specifically as an "Elmo & Snuffleupagus & Oscar & Big Bird" tag.

You bring up a good point re: "Group: The Muppets" and "Any Muppet", and I'll be going with "Solo: The Muppets" to mean one or more Muppet can appear in the work. I'll keep the "Any" tag for "Big Bird & Any Muppet" or "Bruce Wayne/Any Batman Rogue" kind of nominations. (Please let me know if you have any further thoughts! I'm happy to take all feedback on board regarding this.)

[xenoglossy]

Thanks, that makes sense! Since you say "more ambiguous groups", does that mean that a "Group: Mysteries Inc (Scooby-Doo)" nom would still be on the table (or whatever nomination format, but basically a proper ensemble cast nom as opposed to a "one or more"), or would that have to go in as "Fred Jones & Daphne Blake & Velma Dinkley & Shaggy Rogers & Scooby-Doo (Scooby-Doo)" (and if the full set of group members + the disambig doesn't fit the character limit then the nominator just has to start dropping whatever group members they care about least)?

[casemod]

It'll have to go in as "Fred Jones & Daphne Blake & Velma Dinkley & Shaggy Rogers & Scooby-Doo (Scooby-Doo)". (If the disambig doesn't fit but the rest do, I'll let it slide as long as it's under the correct fandom in the tagset/the nominator flags if it needs to be forced into its correct fandom.) If all the character names don't fit, then we'll have to look at why (is it because the names are too long and we can shorten it or is it because there are more than a few?) and the nominator will need to consider dropping the characters they'd like least to appear or consider the "Solo: [Group]" nomination format instead if they have no opinions on which characters potentially don't heavily feature.

(Thanks for your question! I had to take a day or so to think about this one.)

[alchemise]

For MCU stuff, I always thinks it makes the most sense to split between MCU movies, Defenders (TV), and the other shows on their own (with maybe WandaVision and Agatha All Along combined?). However it's split works for me, so long as there's a way to nominate crossovers between the different parts.

[casemod]

I was drafting the nomination guidelines last night and have approached the Marvel juggernaut the way you outlined. If someone wants Wanda from WandaVision with Kamala Khan from Ms Marvel, they'd nominate that under "Crossover Fandom".

[alchemise]

Thanks, that works great!

[hekateras]

1. No opinion on large franchise wrangling/not affected by it.

2. I am interested in ensemble nominations, yes. I have at least one fandom with an ensemble cast.

3. I would love Any X nominations, yes.

[casemod]

Thanks for your feedback!

[hekateras]

> We have a minimum of 3,000 words (or work equivalent) and allow fic, comics, and podfic.

Probably too late, but it just occurred to me Interactive Fiction might be super fun. Maybe something where you actually interactively solve a case and have to gather evidence?

[casemod]

A very cool idea! If someone wants interactive fiction (which will need to meet the fiction guidelines), they can include it as a prompt/like in their sign-up. c: