Nominations Clarification 2

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Links: Nominations Form | Tagset | Relationship Field Nominations Guidelines | New Mediums Nomination Post

Nomination clarifications are queries and updates about tags we find confusing. The goal of nominations is to create a tagset of unambiguous, easy to understand tags that will be useful to participants and solidly within the scope of the exchange.

Tags are separated by query vs rejection notice, form vs AO3 nomination, and then by fandom. You can respond anonymously to this post or logged in. If you are not the nominator but have relevant fandom knowledge about something, please speak up! If you have questions about nominations not covered in this post, please ask!

Special reminder: Please check that your nominations are properly capitalized. For google form nominators, please double check going forward. For AO3 nominators, please literally go check your nominations page right now. Some of your tags (if they've been approved into a tagset or used on the archive with incorrect capitalization before) will automatically revert to the incorrect capitalization, but if they're new tags we would like the capitalization to be correct.

Queries

Google Forms nominations

• Charmin "Bears" Commercials: Red bears & Blue bears (Charmin) — Are these original bears, or unnamed canon bears? We would like to approve as either "Original Red Bear(s) & Original Blue Bear(s) (Charmin)" or "Creator's Choice of Red Bear(s) & Creator's Choice of Blue Bear(s) (Charmin)"
• Charmin "Bears" Commercials: WB: History of bears (Charmin) — This is definitely broad enough but we wondered if it might be a little ambiguous...the commercials are, as far as I remember, just about various bears thinking their new toilet paper is super great compared to the other stuff. Are you interested specifically in how bears came to have a modern society with toilets and plush toilet paper, or would you be satisfied with a fanwork exploring the way bears have historically lived in the past (eg, shitting in the woods, stealing honey through the ages presumably) with no reference to the toilet paper that most of the canon revolves around?
• Humans Are Space Orcs (Meme) : all tags — We would like to accept your nominations as "Original Human(s)" and "Original Alien(s)" rather than just "Humans" and "Aliens" to make it clear to anyone who hasn't run into Humans Are Space Orcs before that there's no canon characters to catch up on. We would also like to remind you that you can be more descriptive if you want (eg, we would accept "Original Male Human Space Marine & Original Alien") and to say that we would love to see a promo post for this canon, if you have the time!
• Vampire Academy Series - Richelle Mead: WB: Feeders (Vampire Academy Series) — Like "Guardian Council", this seems like it probably refers to a group of people. Are you looking for worldbuilding about feeders as individuals (eg, how they became feeders) or are you looking for more general worldbuilding about the group as a whole (eg, how feeders are percieved/treated by non-feeders)?
• Vampire Academy Series - Richelle Mead: WB: Guardian Council (Vampire Academy Series) — This seems like it could also be an ambiguous group. Are you interested in the personal backstories of the characters on the Guardian Council, or more interested in the group's history/function in society/something else?

Ao3 tagset nominations

• A Circlet of Oak Leaves - Rosemary Sutcliff: Ships involving Young Dacian Medic and Young Sensitive Auxiliary Cavalryman — We googled around a little but can't tell if these are canonical but unnamed characters or if they're original characters. If they're OCs we'd like that reflected in the tag somehow, if not we'll accept as-is!
• Crossover Fandom: Creator’s Choice of Character(s) or Ship(s) (Beyond Evil) & CCoCoS (Law School) & CCoCoS (Stranger) — We appreciate this attempt at our preferred phrasing, but gosh it's hard to read. How about "Any Character(s) (Beyond Evil) & Any Character(s) (Law School) & Any Character(s) (Stranger)"? Assuming you want to primarily request this, you can just opt into also recieving any ships in your optional details.
• Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff: WB: Emperor Constans' historically accurate sexy barbarian bodyguards (Frontier Wolf) — We love this nomination but feel it would be best as an ambiguous group Solo: tag unless there's some specific facet of the sexy but historically accurate bodyguards you feel you need a WB tag for, in which case we would like the tag to be rephrased to focus on that thing. If we don't hear from you we will accept as "Solo: Emperor Constans' historically accurate sexy barbarian bodyguards (Frontier Wolf)"
• Miraculous Ladybug: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir (Miraculous Ladybug) — It's our understanding that the only canonical alternate universe version of Adrien Agreste is the one that got akumatized into Chat Blanc in season 3 episode 22. Did you mean to nominate "Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Adrien Agreste | Chat Blanc"? This is the only Adrien self-cest ship we will accept.
• Only Ever Yours - Louise O'Neill: all tags — Thank you for disambiguating! You haven't capitalized any of the character names or given them last names. Unless there's some reason related to the canon that the names need to be all lower case, please properly capitalize all of your submissions and please add last names if the characters have them. (We know they might not, but without reading the book ourselves we can't be totally sure.)
• Original Work: Male Warlord & His Bastard Half-Brother/Female Rival Warlord He Gifted Him To As A Concubine (OW) — We have two issues to clear up with this nomination. The first is that we're unsure if you mean both male characters should be shipped romantically/sexually with the female character, and the second is that because of pronoun ambiguity we're not sure which of the brothers gave the female character as a gift. Generally speaking, mixed nominations (ones with both / and &) have the romantic ships first and then the platonic ships. Usually this is where I would suggest one or several tag rephrasing but without knowing what you want I'm really not sure, so please let us know!
• 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game): Morax/Zhongli (Genshin Impact) — AO3 thinks that this ship is the same as Zhongli/Zhongli (Genshin Impact). Are Zhonjli and Morax the same character?
• 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù: Jiang Cheng & Wen Ning & Jin Ling/Lan Sizhui & Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian (MDZS) — Do you mean for JC, WN, and JL to all be shipped with Lan Sizhui, or only Jin Ling? Generally speaking, mixed nominations (ones with both / and &) have the romantic ships first and then the platonic ships, so if you don't want three people all shipped with Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng and Wen Ning should be moved to the end of the ship. (If you do want all of them shipped with Lan Sizhui but not with each other then...I dunno! We'll have to ponder it together.)

You have 48 hours to respond/edit your nominations.

Rejected Tags

Google Forms nominations

• N/A

Ao3 nominations

• Crossover Fandom: HanJoonhwi&SeoJiho&JinHyungwoo&YangJonghoon(Law School) & HanYeojin&HwangSimok&SeoDongjae(Stranger) — We can't accept this tag because it lacks spaces, but since you disambiguated we will give you 24 hours before we reject so you have a chance to use the slot for something else.
• Fruits Basket: all tags — We didn't hear from you so we've rejected your tags. However, the google form nominator got back to us and 2/3 tags are now in the tagset under the 2019 anime. We will add your third tag, "WB: Post-curse-breaking (Fruits Basket)", under the 2019 anime for you as well if you would like.

Comments

[azurrys]

Hi! Thanks for the response and for letting me know.

I'll admit this is a really disappointing answer to receive, because as the anon above me mentioned, I don't believe most people offer a Solo: Character tag with any kind of expectation of creating self-cest.

I also don't really understand where mods are coming from in terms of interpreting self-cest as necessarily 'including prompts within relationship-field tags outside of WB tags'; how is it any more of a prompt than any other ship tag? Some ships are more difficult to achieve than others, but I don't really see how a selfcest ship is any different from, say, any rare pair ship who may not have met canonically and don't really have a canonical reason to meet? Both types would probably require either a certain amount of buildup or setting/background changes. In that way I view selfcest ships as pretty much the same as other "arguably illogical" rare pairs, so it just seems like an odd distinction to draw if rare pairs are generally allowed.

Also, why is there a 'must canonically exist' policy for self-cest only when the tagset allows Original Characters, which obviously don't canonically exist?

I really hope that mods can reconsider this policy - I'm not really following the justification for banning it, since I don't see how it includes a prompt, and unless I was also interested in the actual Solo part of a Solo character tag, it would be extremely bad faith of me to request the Solo tag for self-cest only.

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

We aren't making the judgement based on how difficult they are to achieve for the creator, but more on how difficult to verify they are for the mods. We ran into issues last year where we needed to read through some works to verify the relationship tag was hit since it wasn't tagged as it appeared in the nominations. Because of this we want all of the characters within a tag to be different characters (or canonical different versions of a character). We're aware that might seem unfair if your fandom is one where self-cest is always tagged how it appears in the tagset, but that's not the case with all of them.

Solo: requests are for people who want to create a work focused on a specific character and are not strictly for gen creators, however you're right that it would probably be a bad idea to request a Solo: tag with optional details that prompt for self-cest only if that's the only thing you're interested in with these two characters. It might just be that this just isn't the exchange for these specific requests.

This isn't an attempt to softban or pass judgement on self-cest, there's self-cest in the tagset and one of the mods requests it pretty frequently for one of her fandoms, it's just the modding requirements of this exchange mean that we sometimes need to take a second look at things that most exchanges might not be concerned with.

[azurrys]

Sorry, I'm still confused. Anyone could tag their work differently than it was nominated or fail to tag something. It's not limited to self-cest. In terms of making sure the requested relationship tag is being hit, how is it any more difficult to check than a Character/OC work? I don't really understand what's meant by the first paragraph.

If the problem is checking a work to make sure both names in the tag appear, isn't specifically nominating a character with a second name (such as the Morax/Zhongli nomination), which asks the creator to use those names, solve the problem?

Plus, even if the intention is that Solo requests aren't strictly for gen creators, that's what the tag ends up being used for in practice, unfortunately.

Also, apologies, but it does feel like a judgment, especially with the goalpost moving from 'we don't want prompts in relationship tags' in the first reply to 'it's a matter of mod verification' in the second - and it's a really strange line to draw. I don't understand what's the problem with, specifically, self-cest, as compared to any other ship.