Nominations Guidelines 2022

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

This post is about nominations for tags that will be used in the fandom and relationship slots of your requests/tags. For opt-in medium nominations go to this post (link).

Before nominating, please read the "Nominations Guidelines" section of this post, even if you also read it last year. After you nominate, please keep an eye on the comm in case we need clarification from you before accepting a nomination.

How To Nominate

There are three methods of relationship nominations this year!

1) Fandom Transfer

Since the format of relationship nominations are not changing, we've been transferring the relationships/characters in fandoms from last year's tagset to this year's tagset upon request. Just head over to the Fandom Transfer Post and follow the instructions there!

Fandom Transfer Post: https://ficinabox.dreamwidth.org/27546.html

2) Google form

All instructions are provided as you nominate, so you can look at our guidelines while inputting relationships! Go to the google form and follow the instructions provided to submit your nominations, filling the form out as many times as you want. (You don't need to disambiguate nominations when using the form; our spreadsheet will do that for you!) Your nominations will eventually either wind up in the tagset or show up in a nominations clarification post — please check back at this comm in case we have questions about your nominations. The google doc is anonymous. You don't have to read the rest of this post.

Nomination Google Form: https://forms.gle/m9cxg6P2cKemY8RV7

3) AO3 tagset nomination

This is how most people are used to nominating! If you're confident that you understand the nominations guidelines (provided below!) Then proceed to the tagset and input your nominations as directed. You will have 10 fandoms with 12 relationship slots. We will automatically reject anything that doesn't follow the guidelines below, but will query for other problems/questions. Check your nominations page and this comm to keep up to date on the status of your nominations.

Tagset: https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/12306

Nomination Guidelines

All nominations should be correctly spelled and punctuated. If you are disambiguating (especially on AO3) then make sure your disambigs are correctly capitalized, too. We prefer Original Works and Original Characters be in title case ("A Really Hot Vampire/A Wizard" not "a really hot vampire/a wizard") but we will accept sentence case as well ("A really hot vampire/A wizard").

Fandoms:

• All fandoms are allowed, including RPF, as long as all real people nominated are famous in their own right and over the age of 18.
• Crossovers: Should be nominated under Crossover Fandom
• Original Works: Should be nominated under Original Work
• Megafandoms, franchises, etc: See below.
• Recursive fandoms: You will need permission from the fanwork creator to nominate unless the work was already nominated as a fandom in a past round. If the work does not have an established fandom you'll need at least two people who intend to request and/or offer it.
• Fandoms with - All Media Types, fandoms with & Related Fandoms, and fandoms that function as such: We prefer specific, clear fandoms that cover a concrete canon or section of canon because this both makes it easier to mod and makes it easier to offer/pinch hit. As a general rule, if your fandom already has subfandoms nominated, please contact us before nominating a AMT type fandom and expect to be queried if you nominate an AMT type fandom without talking to us first. (Which you can do! We don't mind querying you.).
• "Creator's Choice of Fandom" will not be accepted in this exchange.

Relationships field:

"/", "&", and "Solo:" relationship types are allowed, as well as worldbuilding tags, which begin with "WB:"

• / relationships are sexual and/or romantic.
• & relationships are platonic.
• Solo: tags are for single characters and groups.
• WB: tags are for non-ship/character/group worldbuilding concepts.

If nominating via AO3, please disambiguate your nominations. Your nominations should look like one of the following:

• Character A/Character B (Fandom)
• Character A & Character B (Fandom)
• Solo: Character A (Fandom)
• Solo: Group (Fandom)
• WB: Worldbuilding Topic (Fandom)
• Character A (Fandom A) / Character B (Fandom B)
• Character A (Fandom A) & Character B (Fandom B)
• Character A (Fandom A) in Fandom B

Tag examples:

• Elmo/Big Bird (Sesame Street) — these characters will be dating, having sex, etc.
• Elmo & Big Bird (Sesame Street) — these characters will be friends, neighbors, family, acquaintances, enemies, strangers, etc.
• Solo: Elmo (Sesame Street) — you will receive a work about/centered around Elmo, but other characters can appear.
• Solo: Muppets (Sesame Street) — you will receive a work about/centered around one of literally any Muppet, but potentially more than one.
• WB: Sesame Street City Planning & Zoning Ordinances (Sesame Street) — you will receive a work about city planning and zoning on Sesame Street, which could include any or no characters

Group tag and "Any" or "Creator's Choice" guidelines:

• Just to reiterate above, Solo: Group tags mean "One or more of this group" whether or not they have "Any" or "Creator's Choice of" in front of them.
• If you request an ambiguous group (eg: Solo: The [fandom] ensemble or Solo: The Avengers) we will assume that any possible member(s) of that group fulfill that request.
• You may request "Any" of a character type. For example, "Mikhaila Ilyushin/Any Female Talos I Employee". Similar to original works, please make sure any important information is within the Any character tag.
• Where there is ambiguity created by a nomination, we will likely side with the creator. If you want to be sure that you'll get specific characters, please nominate them by name.

Worldbuilding tag guidelines:

Worldbuilding nominations are for reasonably broad worldbuilding topics for elements of canon you would like worldbuilding about.

• What "reasonably broad" means will vary somewhat by canon, but in general worldbuilding tags should be applicable or related to more than one character.
• Worldbuilding topics should be concrete facets of the canon world (so, not fanon, not a trope, not a plot or conflict, not a mood or vague concept) that cannot be covered under a relationship, character, or group nomination.
• If you nominate something like "WB: Council of Mages" we will tell you to either switch it to a group nomination ("Solo: Council of Mages") or ask you to help us refine it to point more at the worldbuilding you actually want (WB: Council of Mages International Politics, say, or WB: Public Opinion & Rumor About The Council of Mages)
• Don't nominate "WB: Any". We'll be adding this tag to every fandom after nominations close, so any early nominations of this tag will be rejected to avoid duplicates.

Original works:

• Ships in Original Works should be nominated as Character Type/Character Type, with any additional details you see as essential for the ship included. If the gender of the characters is important to you, for example, please include it in the character tags.
• You may nominate other kinds of tags in Original Works, for example ambiguous groups like "Solo: Cute Forest Animal(s) (Original Works)"
• Where there is ambiguity created by a nomination, we will likely side with the creator. If you want to be sure that you'll get specific characters, please nominate them by name.
• We prefer Original Works and Original Characters be in title case ("A Really Hot Vampire/A Wizard" not "a really hot vampire/a wizard") but we will accept sentence case as well ("A really hot vampire/A wizard").

Crossovers

• For crossovers, please disambiguate on the characters and nominate them within Crossover Fandom. For example: "Varric Tethras (Dragon Age)/Nick Valentine (Fallout 4)"
• Crossovers where a character from fandom A visit canon B should be nominated like this: "Solo: Shang Qinghua (SVSSS) in Lord of the Rings"
• If there's more than one version of the canon and you care about which version you receive, specify that version in parentheses, for example "Solo: Shang Qinghua (SVSSS) in Lord of the Rings (Movies)."
• We know the actual AO3 nom page says you can put crossover tags in either fandom but please don't!

Nomination info for specific fandoms:

• As a general rule, if your fandom/subfandom is already in the 2021 tagset please nominate in the fandom as it appears there.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe nominations may be nominated under the appropriate movie subfranchise (Thor, GotG, etc) or in Avengers. If nominating in a subfranchise (for example, Thor (Movies)), all characters in the nom should have appeared in a movie from that subfranchise. Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, Wandavision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and the Marvel Netflix universe of shows are also all separate fandoms. The Marvel Netflix shows should be nommed together under The Defenders (Marvel TV).
• Marvel comics may be nominated by title or under the name of the appropriate Marvel universe (Marvel 616, Marvel Ultimates, etc). Nominations for “Marvel (Comics)” will not be accepted.
• Star Wars nominations may be nominated under the appropriate movie, trilogy, TV show, etc (eg, Rogue One, Sequel Trilogy). “Crossover” noms between different parts of the Star Wars universe may be nominated under “Star Wars - All Media Types.”
• Star Wars Old EU: Books should go under "Star Wars: Legends Books" and be disambiguated with (SWL Books). Comics should go under "Star Wars: Legends Comics" and be disambiguated with (SWL Comics). Games should go into their individual games either combined or split depending on what is normal for that fandom.
• Naruto, Boruto, and Dreaming of Sunshine should be nominated separately. Please nominate Dreaming of Sunshine as "Dreaming of Sunshine (Fanfic Disambiguation)". Relationship nominations that involve one or more DoS character and one or more Naruto/Boruto character should be nominated under the fandom "Crossover Fandom".
• Harry Potter, Rigel Black Chronicles, and Revolutionary Arc should be nominated separately. Please nominate Rigel Black Chronicles as "Rigel Black Chronicles - murkybluebatter (Exchange Disambiguation)", and nominate Revolutionary Arc as "Revolutionary Arc - kitsunerei88 (Fanfic Disambiguation)".
• Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series will both be nommed together under “Buffyverse (TV).”
• Buffy comics: Nominate this separately from the TV shows.
• Star Trek is divided by show and the Alternate Original Series is alone. Movie characters from the Original Series or Next Gen movies may be nominated under the respective shows.
• DC Comics: All DC Comics nominations can go under that fandom, but please disambiguate which version of the character you want in parenthesis after each character.
• DC's Arrowverse: Please nominate characters from Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, Superman & Lois, and Black Lightning (plus the webseries tie-ins) under "DC's Arrowverse".
• Dragon Age: Please nominate under "Dragon Age (Video Games)"
• Final Fantasy VII: The original game and the remake should be nominated separately.
• Stargate: Please nominate under "Stargate - All Media Types"
• DC Extended Universe: DCEU movies should be nominated under "DC Extended Universe"
• Assassin's Creed: Please nominate Assassin's Creed under "Assassin's Creed - All Media Types"
• X-men Movies: Please nominate OTM and ATM under "X-men (Movieverse)(OTM)" and "X-men (Movieverse)(ATM)". The other X-men movies should be nominated under their own series/movie title.
• Legend of Zelda: These should be nominated in their separate games, but please make sure that the disambiguation is unique to that game!
• The Witcher: Please nominate these in their individual fandoms, not AMT
• The Mechanisms: Please nominate under "The Mechanisms (Band)" with a disambiguation of either (The Mechanisms) or the specific album.
• Historical RPF: Please split these into subfandoms that indicates what timeperiod the nominated people are in. If there may be confusion about the identity of a nominated person, please be as specific as is reasonable.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Because I don't want to get my noms automatically rejected, when you say disambiguate correctly, do you mean we have to put the full media's title in it?

Like, if I nominated "Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh" does that have to be "Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh (The Magicians TV)" or can it be "Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh (Magicians TV)"? (Already in the tagset ik, just an example!) Or, Marvel 616. Can I just use "616" as a disambig? Can I do "GOT" for Game of Thrones noms?

Stuff like that.

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Abbreviations are fine! We'll want acronyms to have capitalization that makes it clear they're acronyms (such as your example of GOT) but otherwise they're great!

Correctly just means that disambiguation shouldn't be something like "Quentin Coldwater (Magicians TV)/Eliot Waugh", which sometimes pops up in cases where a character's canonical has a disambiguation. Technically that nomination contains a disambiguation but since it's not correctly formatted at the end of the nomination it would still be rejected.

[(Anonymous)]

Is it okay to nominate Characer & Group? e.g, Mokey Fraggle & Group: Doozers?

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Yes but don't use the "Group:" prefix. So nominate it as "Monkey Fraggle & Doozers (Fandom)" but otherwise that's fine! Do be aware that you are only guaranteed to get one Doozer when requesting anything containing a group, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Two questions:

1. Is it alright to nominate groups that contain both / and &? For example, Peter Parker & Ben Parker/May Parker, if I want a fic that contains all three of them but with only two in a romantic relationship.

2. As far as recursive fandoms go, how do fandoms fit in that are more distant but could still be considered fanworks? I’m thinking of things like fan musicals or fan films that present professionally and may have their own social media promoting it or sell tickets/merchandise, but don’t have official approval from the copyright holder and could still fit under a broad definition of fanwork.

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

1. Yes that's fine! For clarity, we'd prefer the ship to come before the & relationship (so "Ben Parker/May Parker & Peter Parker")

2. For more professional technically-recursive fandoms it's fine to nominate them normally, though it might still be a good idea to check in with us so we can make sure the tag doesn't get eaten by the source fandom!

[(Anonymous)]

How would you suggest disambiguating Peter Parker & Peter Parker & Peter Parker? /o\ Freaking No Way Home.

[(Anonymous)]

Never mind, mod! I figured it out! There's a canonical tag- Peter Parker & Peter-Two (Spider-Man: No Way Home) & Peter-Three (Spider-Man: No Way Home).

[avandrathemarysueslayer]

I have a doubt. I have nominated a couple character relationships on the Google form from a fandom that was in last year's exchange. It's Critical Role - Web Series. But since there are new campaigns that launched this year that are obviously not in last year's tagset, how should I proceed with that? Do I nominate directly on this year's tagset? Sorry if this is a bit confusing, I was waiting for the nomination guidelines to come through to nominate!

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Ohhh you're totally right, we did miss saying anything about Critical Role in the guidelines, which is ridiculous because I watch Critical Role whoops. It looks like last year we had all the campaigns in the main "Critical Role (Web Series)" tag (I see both the first and section campaign in there) but we'd definitely be open to splitting the campaigns out if people would prefer.

You can nominate directly to the tagset or you can use the google form! The transfer post from last year is just helpful for people who want things that were nominated last year, but people can add new stuff to any fandom.

However, before you nominate, we should probably decide if the campaigns should be split out! Do you have a preference?

[(Anonymous)]

I mentioned this on Discord, but could I nom something like 'A/B & A/C'? I don't want to nominate A/B/C because that'd be logistically different/impossible but I understand if you don't want to repeat the same character within a tag.

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

We'd prefer to limit it to one ship per tag, sorry!

[annathecrow]

What is the difference between "Any" characters and "Creator's Choice of" characters? The nomination guidelines use e.g. "Any Female Character", but I see "Creator's Choice of [xy]" in the tagset. (Specifically Finn (SWST) & Creator's Choice of Clone Trooper(s) (SWTCW)) Is there a difference? Is one of them preferred?

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

We like "Creator's Choice of" because it's clearer to newbies and/or to people who don't read rules that it means "if you request this, your creator is going to pick the character!" but "Any" means the same thing and is helpfully shorter.

[welsper]

Are Canon Characters/Original Characters and Canon Characters & Original Characters type noms allowed?

Like:

Canon Character A/Original Male Gang Of Ruffians
or
Canon Character A/Canon Character B & Original Children of A/B

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Mostly, yes! The same rules for Original Works apply (eg, if you nominated just "Character A/Original Gang of Ruffians" you could get ruffians of any gender) but otherwise you can just go for it :D

[(Anonymous)]

I nominated some Moon Knight comics characters and went with civilian names to match with the other Marvel nominations so far. But Greer Nelson and Jeff Hagees are better known as Tigra and 8-Ball respectively if other people want to weigh in on which names are clearer.

[fayharley]

Are fandoms that aren't narratives/are static images allowed? I mean along the lines of things that were in Multifandom Doodle like "Paintings - Hieronymus Bosch" and "Weird Medieval Guys - Twitter Account."

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Yes that's fine! The important thing is that it's something you'd want a 10k narrative fanfic about, regardless of the source medium.

[grayswandir]

Hello! I nominated via the Google form, but I seem to have made some mistakes, for which I apologize very much. Two of my fandoms have canonical names, but it didn't occur to me to go find them and copy them exactly from AO3, and the way I (mis)wrote the titles means they're showing up in "Uncategorized" instead of the correct sections. The (correct) fandom names are these:

神鵰俠侶 | The Return of the Condor Heroes (TV 1983)

- I nominated it without the word "the," so the version in the tagset currently just says "神鵰俠侶 | Return of the Condor Heroes (TV 1983)" and is uncategorized, whereas the canonical should show up under TV.

盗墓笔记重启 | The Lost Tomb Reboot (TV)

- The show has two titles, and I apparently picked the wrong one! I nominated it as "重啟之極海聽雷 | The Lost Tomb Reboot," but it seems the other title is the canonical on AO3.

I also chose the wrong name for one of the characters in the above (Lost Tomb Reboot) fandom. I used the name Xiaoge, which is what the other characters call him, but AO3 uses the name Zhang Qiling. So my three mistaken relationship nominations should have been:

"Wang Pangzi & Wu Xie & Zhang Qiling" (not "Wang Pangzi & Wu Xie & Xiaoge")
"Wang Pangzi/Wu Xie/Zhang Qiling" (not "Wang Pangzi/Wu Xie/Xiaoge")
"Wu Xie/Zhang Qiling" (not "Wu Xie/Xiaoge")

I'm very sorry for messing these up! Next time I'll either use the AO3 form with drop-down options or copy everything from AO3 first before using the Google form. (The Google form is great! It's very convenient. I just didn't think about the fact that I might mess up the titles and names. :/)

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

That should all be fixed now!

Recursive

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! I'd like to nom When Harry Met Tom by The Carnivorous Muffin, here is a general permissions statement:
https://theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin.tumblr.com/post/645311510038626304/forgive-me-if-youve-already-answered-this-but

Re: Recursive

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Thank you, we will accept this nomination! Please be aware when making your requests that recursive fandoms count as fandoms from the same lore as their parent fandoms, so if you request Harry Potter, When Harry Met Tom, and one more unrelated fandom (say, Original Works or Lord of the Rings) you won't have cleared the "three fandoms" rule for a guaranteed gift. Please take this into consideration for your nominations/requests!

[skatzaa]

Quick question before I try to put noms in:

The Subnautica video games are based in two different regions of the same planet (crash zone crater in game one, arctic region in game two). Could I nominate worldbuilding tags for other regions of the planet that we don't see in canon? Such as "WB: Mangrove Forest-inspired region of 4546B (Subnautica)"? Or would that be too specific? I would definitely also be open to something more general like "WB: Other regions of 4546B (Subnautica)"?

Thank you! <3

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Hello! We would prefer to keep WB tags to things that are concretely confirmed to exist in each canon, so something like "WB: Other regions of 4546B (Subnautica)" would be best, since it's certainly reasonable to assume that other parts of the planet exist. Thanks for your question!

Recursive fandom request

[javert]

Hello! I would like to nominate jonphaedrus's "i could command you, be cruel to you, compel you" Pokémon X&Y fic series as a recursive fandom. You can see jonphaedrus's transformative works statement here. It's already been nominated in the past in Recursive Exchange and BDSM Exchange where multiple people (me included) offered/requested it. Thank you very much!

Re: Recursive fandom request

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Hello, thank you for the very neatly arranged links! We will accept this nomination. :)

陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) dupe relationship

[zvi]

I'm listing the AO3 preferred style first.

Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín/Niè Huáisāng (The Untamed) vs. Jiang Cheng/Nie Huaisang (The Untamed)

Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén/Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo (The Untamed) vs 9. Jin Guangyao/Lan Xichen (The Untamed)

Re: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) dupe relationship

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Thank you!

I removed the version with diacritics since we like to clean those up where possible in cases like the CNovel tags where they aren't part of the actual pinyin :) (I'll likely be going through and cleaning up the diacritics in a few fandoms including this one after noms finish since they can mess with spreadsheets sometimes)

[kryptontease]

I would like to nominate the Forsaken and Forsworn (fic series) by aliatori. It was nominated for Recursive Exchange, and it gets lots of works on tumblr!

Series link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2327717
Permission statement: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliatori/profile

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Thank you for the links! Since it's OW I'm not adding it to the recursive section of the google sheet but when you nominate it please use "The Forsaken and the Forsworn - aliatori (Exchange Disambiguation)"

[rubick]

Thor has moved into a couple of other categories in the tag set. It should be just in movies (I think), and so far it's listed in movies, plus these categories:

Cartoons & Comics & Graphic Novels
Other Media

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Oh those aren't something we can control! AO3 itself controls those. Signups will still treat it as just one fandom! The wandering we can do something about is if relationship tags are appearing in multiple fandoms (So like if a tag was appearing in Thor and Iron Man)

[almach]

In the tags for Modao Zushi, these two relationships are the same:

Jin Guangyao/Lan Xichen (MDZS)
Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén/Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo (MDZS)

Also, a bunch of the tags are disambiguated as "MDSZ" instead of "MDZS" -- probably not likely to cause any confusion, but I figured I might as well point it out.

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Thank you! I've removed the duplicate! I've also added that disambiguation to my list to clean up after noms close

[liryian]

two things!

1. Friends at the Table is already in the tagset, but, similar to Critical Role, there are multiple campaigns that to my knowledge are not connected; if I am only interested in one such campaign (the 3-episode minicampaign Fall of Magic) should I nom that separately, or together with the other FatT noms? The currently-nominated characters do not appear in Fall of Magic.

2. I am planning to nominate some of my own works, let me know if I should list them all but I have a blanket permission statement here so anything that comes in should be covered by it: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsin/profile

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

1. Since the Friends At The Table fandom is already in the tagset and also has tags waiting for approval, please nominate in the Friends At The Table main fandom for this round, and remind us to revisit the topic next year when tagset transfers open! If the Fall of Magic campaign has ambiguous characters or if you intend to request ambiguous groups from it, you can disambiguate by campaign while nominating in the Friends At The Table fandom. Eg, "Solo: Ensemble (Fall of Magic Campaign)"

2. Thank you! For recursive works without an established fandom or an exchange presence, we'll also need at least two people who are planning to request/offer them (you can be one of those people). (That didn't make it onto the guideline page this round until now but it is the standard we've been using so far!). Otherwise you can request the recursive medium tags or indicate in your optional details which works you're open to receiving recursive of when requesting the relevant fandoms.

[(Anonymous)]

For "Royals Having a Nice Time Series DFE - ba_lailah":

Series link
https://archiveofourown.org/series/2422957

Permission statement
https://archiveofourown.org/users/ba_lailah/profile

Evidence of interest in recursing it
https://ba-lailah.dreamwidth.org/2436.html

[fic_in_a_box_mod]

Thank you for the links! We'll accept this :)