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.

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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.