Potentially complex fandoms brainstorming post

[worldbuildingmod]

Some AO3 fandom tags are unfortunately not particularly useful for our purposes, in terms of making the scope of the material to be considered clear.

Tags for one of the prime examples of this have in fact already been nominated, in the shape of Harry Potter.

The canonical "Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling" tag is not, to my way of thinking, clear enough, as there are many sources of information that might be extrapolated from, including:

• The original seven Harry Potter books
  
• The eight films adapted from them
  
• Information from the Pottermore website
  
• The Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them film
  
• The Cursed Child play/script
  

Last year, we had three categories: "Harry Potter - Books Only", being the first bullet point above and only the first; "Harry Potter - Wizarding World", meaning all possible sources; and also "Harry Potter - Wizarding Schools Around The World", which was based on a specific extra piece which people may or may not still be interested in. It does seem to me that both Fantastic Beasts and Cursed Child have gained much wider currency in fandom since the last round, so it may be worth having a different set of subdivisions.

Please use the comments of this post to discuss how Harry Potter should be split up, and then make/adjust nominations as necessary.

ETA: Thanks for the Harry Potter replies so far. I'm still thinking about the best way to deal with this particular fandom.

(Please note that I have approved "Middle Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien", taking this, as last year, to be construed as broadly as possible - i.e. all Tolkien's various works set in Middle Earth. I am in the process of adjusting these tags so that they can be distinguished from film-based ones if we end up with "Middle Earth - Peter Jackson Movies" as well, as we did last year. I am also open to the idea of more restricted Tolkien tags running alongside the broad Middle Earth one, if people want them.)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think it might be useful to make distinctions such as "Harry Potter - Wizarding Britain" (which many tags related to the original 7 books would fall under, as might the 7 films and Cursed Child) and "Harry Potter - Wizarding World" (which deals with Wizarding societies/communities outside of Britain, in other parts of the word, and would cover Pottermore, FBAWTFT and everything else)?

[worldbuildingmod]

I think that might be useful, but "Wizarding Britain" or equivalent would need splitting further into books, books + play, etc.

[gehayi]

I would suggest, for nomination purposes:

1) Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
2) Harry Potter (Films) (not a canonical tag, though it should be)
3) Pottermore (the canonical tag is "Freeform: Pottermore")
4) Not Pottermore Compliant (again, a canonical tag on AO3; Pottermore got a LOT of things wrong, and some who might want to worldbuild will need to fix those errors)
5) Wizarding Schools (not a common tag yet, but an AO3 tag, just the same)
6) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies) (a canonical tag)
7) Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling (a canonical tag)
8) Not Cursed Child Compliant (a canonical tag--again, for those who want to write fix-it fic)
9) Wizarding Britain
10) Wizarding Europe (or Asia, Africa, South America, South America, or North America; "Wizarding World" and "Wizarding Britain" have been used interchangeably for too long, unfortunately)

[worldbuildingmod]

Thanks for being so thorough. I can see the usefulness of some of the distinctions here.

I'm reluctant to use the canonical "Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling" fandom as I think it could be all things to all people and lead to a mismatch of expectations between recipient and creator. It's in the "Books and Literature" category, so it could be reasonably taken to mean the books, but it's also widely used to mean "everything HP related in all media".

Once they exist in one category (even non-canonically), tags can't ever be used in a different category, so a canonical freeform can't also be a fandom tag for our purposes.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the "Harry Potter - Books Only" and "Harry Potter - Wizarding World" setup worked well last year, so I suggest keeping that with the addition of "Harry Potter - Cursed Child" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (though I think this would be more a division of era than a division of information to draw on, since most of the information in Fantastic Beasts, like the setup of US magical society and some of the creatures, originated from Pottermore or the spinoff book of the same name.)

[worldbuildingmod]

Would I be right in thinking that the Cursed Child category would implicitly include the books in terms of material to be drawn on?

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Yes, the Cursed Child category would implicitly include the books (mostly in terms of backstory material to be drawn on since it's in a different era).

[(Anonymous)]

I'd personally prefer something along the lines of:
1) Harry Potter - Books 1-7 (possibly with the epilogue bundled in to CC rather than here)
2) Cursed Child (with the books implicit which is why I wonder if the epilogue might be better here)
3) Wizarding World - Pottermore
4) Wizarding World - no Pottermore

I've not seen either the original films or Fantastic Beasts, so can't comment on where they would belong.

[worldbuildingmod]

I can see the benefits of most of that, but I think epilogue-compliance or not would be something for the optional details if people were requesting Just The Books (whatever we end up calling that).

That is, requesting Cursed Child implies accepting the books and the epilogue, requesting Books Only is agnostic about the epilogue without further clarification.

Would your Wizarding Worlds incorporate Fantastic Beasts implicitly?

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

The reason I was looking to separate out CC and books 1-7 is CC contains a lot of stuff from Pottermore that's controversial as well as the controversy about the content of CC itself. The epilogue implicitly contains some of that Pottermore stuff but none of it explicitly.

I've never seen Fantastic Beasts, but given what's been said elsewhere I'd impliclty throw it in with Wizarding World - Pottermore becuase it's not really adding worldbuilding that wasn't in Pottermore.

[shopfront]

I have a question about Star Trek, assuming you separate the canons the same as last years tagset. One of my requests last year was ripple effects of the AOS verse for Trill, specifically requesting Emony Dax (as the Dax known to be from the same time period as Kirk and McCoy and who presumably also exists somewhere in the AOS universe as well.)

If I also wanted to widen the scope of that request to AOS timeline ripple effects worldbuilding in their future drawing on eg. DS9 era canon, I suppose I want to check:

1. is this within scope of the challenge or am I stretching the prompt too far into AU territory?

2. this feels a bit crossover-y in the sense that anyone offering would need knowledge of two fandoms according to the tagset, but it's not actually a crossover how you've described canonical crossovers that count - am I interpreting that correctly or should I nom it as a crossover anyway?

3. if not a crossover, would you prefer I nominate it in AOS (as it's an AOS verse prompt), or DS9 with maybe an AOS-universe specific tag as I'd be asking for DS9 characters (eg. AOS!Bashir, WB: AOS verse medical advances; AOS!Garak, WB: AOS verse Cardassian-Federation relations, etc.)?

[worldbuildingmod]

I think nominating it as an AOS/DS9 crossover would probably be best for the specific type of thing you're describing here, as the creator would need to draw on both canons, and defining the scope of that is what the fandom tags are supposed to help with.

[shopfront]

Awesome, thank you! That felt right to me from a matching point of view, but it isn't a canonical crossover (or rather, it is for Spock but not really for anyone else) so I wasn't sure.

[shopfront]

I've updated my nominations with Star Trek AOS/Star Trek DS9 as the fandom, as per this page, but if I've mucked anything up just let me know and I can edit my noms form for you to streamline wrangling.

[worldbuildingmod]

I've approved all those, they're perfectly clear as is to my way of thinking. (It's an Uncategorized Fandom, of course.)