Updates

[worldbuildingmod]

Original Works

I'm still holding off on making a final decision about this for another day or so, but it seems that most people are in favour of subdividing into different fandom tags that give more specificity about genre.

It was (very sensibly) suggested that it might help nominators to know what subdivisions there were. I am very much in favour of nominators choosing for themselves rather than me dictating anything, but it obviously doesn't make sense to have a situation where people have to use multiple fandom slots for the exact same ideas under marginally different names.

So far in the tag set I have seen the following used, as further clarification within the disambiguations in the main Original Works fandom and/or as separate fandoms:

(in alphabetical order)
Alpha/Beta/Omega
Fantasy
Fantasy/Sci-Fi
High Fantasy
Low Fantasy
Omegaverse
Post-Apocalyptic
Superheroes
Supernatural
Urban Fantasy

This is definitely not an exhaustive list, just what's currently been put forward by nominators, and if people do want to preserve fine distinctions then that's absolutely fine. The most obvious example of things that could come together are "Alpha/Beta/Omega" and "Omegaverse", unless I'm missing something?

Silmarillion

I have now approved this! Nominators, please take a look to make sure it's come through OK and I didn't mess anything up, whether calling a character by the wrong name or just misspelling Silmarillion in a disambiguation. (I took screen shots of everything before I hit submit, so I should be able to reconstruct anything that did go awry.)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Not either nominator, but: I don't know what Omegaverse could mean if not Alpha/Beta/Omega.

I hope the nominators of Fantasy and Fantasy/Sci-Fi specify subgenres. Because "Fantasy" might not encompass the whole rest of the list (depends what approaches people take with A/B/O, Superheroes, and Post-Apocalyptic), but "Fantasy/Sci-Fi" certainly does!

[hebethen]

As someone who went back and added a genre to their OW nominations after seeing the mod posts about it, I would just say that I deliberately chose F/SF because I wanted to leave the subgenre open.

[fadeaccompli]

"Supernatural" and "Urban Fantasy" are probably the same thing, but it would depend on what the person who nominated Supernatural meant exactly. I do think that having Fantasy, High Fantasy, and Low Fantasy as separate categories is going to lead to difficulties, even aside from the Fantasy/Sci-Fi one. I'd rather lump than split--I feel like getting really specific on setting is what prompts and chosen WB tags are for, in original works--but I may be an outlier there.

[sheliak]

Although I'm not one of the nominators, I do think that there's likely to be some confusion around High Fantasy and Low Fantasy as options--I've heard at least two wildly different sets of definitions for those terms.

ETA: I definitely think of both as subsets of secondary world fantasy, myself.

[alexseanchai]

I definitely have to redo my noms, then, created-world stuff is not what I want out of my Low Fantasy requests

…okay so what subgenre name do I want then

[sheliak]

I keep wanting to call it primary world fantasy, but I don't know if that's a term that means anything outside my own head.

[alexseanchai]

not a term that means anything to me, certainly 🙁

[ashling]

Would rather not have the fantasy stuff all split up

[tentacledicks]

Omegaverse and Alpha/Beta/Omega can certainly be combined (I know I used Omegaverse because it's the 'verse tag I see most often applied to it, even if Alpha/Beta/Omega is the functional tag for the trope/universe) but if Fantasy is going to be combined, Urban Fantasy needs to be its own distinct genre. I think Supernatural will probably cover similar ground, but it might not.

Fantasy, Fantasy/SciFi might be easily combined into a single grouping (or split solidly into Fantasy and SciFi), but the High Fantasy/Low Fantasy split is a bit more difficult. I know there's some contention about what either genre consists of with a lot of 'I know it when I see it' but I also know that contention means that someone requesting one might be pretty unhappy to receive the other. So... maybe further clarification needed on that specific pairing?

[alexseanchai]

What I mean by "low fantasy" is something historical or contemporary with some small but significant fantastic elements in; in a city setting, confusion with "urban fantasy" is kind of to be expected. I would expect "high fantasy" to have far more prominent fantastic elements, and likely to involve a created world instead of what purports to be, or is very obviously modeled on, our own. (And while I do like both, if I were expecting the former, I would definitely be annoyed to receive the latter!)

I'm happy to redo my noms if anyone can suggest a more universally understood term than "low fantasy" for me to use here.

[fadeaccompli]

"Historic Fantasy" would exclude modern low fantasy, but might be more easily understood as "Queen Elizabeth has a secret deal with the hidden fairy world" and not "Every child is assigned a dragon at the age of ten, to help fight the vampire squid invasion." I admit I haven't read much that I would call 'low fantasy' that includes a modern setting, so I automatically associate that term with low-magic second world or historical fantasy already.

[sheliak]

Original Fantasy - Our World Setting? Something purely descriptive like that?

[alexseanchai]

hmmm maybe? should work, I think, but I don't know if it'd convey the thing right to anyone else?

(if I could get it into eleven characters tops counting spaces, that'd rock; "low fantasy" is eleven characters and if it's that length or shorter then I don't have to rephrase any of my WB tags!)

[bunn]

Silmarillion tags look OK to me, though it seems to have slipped into Movies as well as Books, and although I can only applaud such an epic idea, sadly it is only a book.

LOTR tags, you have a typo on Gandalf | Mirthrandir - should be Mithrandir. He has SO MANY other names though, that although it's possible the nominator intended it to suggest 'Gandalf in an Elvish context' I don't think that would be clear unless it was in the optional details too. I would just call him Gandalf.

'Adventures of Tom Bombadil' is currently in Uncategorised: I nominated that, and it's a book.

[worldbuildingmod]

Thanks, I'll add "Mithrandir" to the corrections list for after the tag set's closed. (I had to stare at that for about a minute before I could see the difference!)

On the other hand, the issues about where fandoms appear in the tag set categories (Silm appearing in Movies as well as Books, Tom Bombadil being Uncategorzied) are to do with AO3 tag wrangling, over which I have no power whatsoever.

[bunn]

Oh, it's a tag wrangling thing? Thanks for the info, I guess that does make sense now I think about it! :-D