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

[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.