Nominations - queries post #1

[worldbuildingmod]

Here are the things that have arisen in the first day-and-a-bit of sorting through the tag set.

Missing character tags

All fandoms must have the two character tags "Any or No Characters (Name of Fandom)" and "Original Character(s) (Name of Fandom)" nominated in order for them to be approved, in addition to any other characters the nominator is interested in being able to request/offer. The following fandoms currently lack them:

• Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
  
• Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
  
• Ever After Academy (Visual Novel)
  
• Fate/Grand Order
  
• RWBY
  
• The Elementalists (Visual Novel)
  

Disambiguations

Many tags still awaiting approval for other reasons are also missing disambiguations (the name of fandom in parentheses after the tag). I am able to add these as I approve, but it does slow me down significantly (especially if AO3 starts putting drop down menus in my way), so if nominators are able to add them on their end it would be much appreciated.

Crossovers

Crossovers are not on topic for worldbuildingex, unless the crossover exists in canon. If the crossover does exist in canon, or two canons are part of the same universe, please nominate under a fandom tag that encompasses all the relevant source material for worldbuilding that you want to be included. There are currently two worldbuilding tags that talk about crossovers (I suspect from the same nominator?):

• Star Trek - TV Shows - WB: Crossovers Between Shows Welcome
  the idea that creators might draw on more than one show is already implicit in the fandom tag; perhaps a tag like "Interactions between different crews" would achieve the desired effect?
  
• Middle-Earth - J.R.R. Tolkien - WB: Crossovers with Other Tolkien Welcome
  this one I am less clear about; "Middle-Earth" as a fandom tag already encompasses all the different Middle-Earth source material (see also the following section), but if the intention is to encourage crossovers with non-Middle-Earth works like Farmer Giles of Ham then I'm afraid that would not be on topic for worldbuildingex unless a convincing argument can be presented for shared worldbuilding.
  

Tolkien

Currently nominated Tolkien fandoms are:

• Middle-earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
  
• Middle-Earth - J.R.R. Tolkien
  
• The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien
  
• The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
  
• The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
  
• The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
  

I am planning to approve all of these (merging the first two by making the capitalisation and spacing of the initials consistent) but I did just want to ask about the final one - so far, there are four nominators for this fandom, using slightly different disambiguations. Some tags are disambiguated as "Silmarillion" and some as "Silmarillion/HoME" - my instinct is to adjust things so that they're all to "Silmarillion/HoME" on the off-chance someone later comes along and wants to nominate just-the-Silmarillion, but I would be interested from hearing the views of nominators on this.

Specific queries

In these cases, I have approved the fandom overall but have questions about individual tags:

• The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco - WB: Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics (Name of the Rose)
  As best I can tell, this is a real thing which is now lost and, while it clearly plays a key role in the novel, I'm not sure that this worldbuilding tag doesn't stray into requesting real world research (in this case, trying to reconstruct it), rather than fictional worldbuilding (which is the reason RPF is not on-topic for this exchange) - however, I am open to persuasion on this point. How much fictional(ised) information is given about it within the novel?
  
• Granblue Fantasy (Video Game) - WB: Astral Society (Final Fantasy XIV)
  this looks like it's probably a tag that accidentally went in under the wrong fandom, but there seem to be "Astral" things in both games so I'm wondering if it's a mistake in the disambiguation.
  

Comments

[raininshadows]

On the Granblue Fantasy thing: I don't know anything about Granblue Fantasy but I do know FF14. There is no "Astral Society" in FF14. "Astral" is a part of FF14's magical element system, and it's rarely if ever used to refer to people. So my money's on "disambiguation error".

[(Anonymous)]

Am the Granblue Fantasy nominator, the disambiguation was indeed just a brainfart on my end. Sorry about that, I changed it to say Granblue Fantasy now.

[worldbuildingmod]

Thanks (and to raininshadows for the extra info); now approved!

[fawatson]

Not the original nominator but I've added the Any or No Characters and Original Characters to my own nomination for Black Jewels. Can that now please be approved as then I can check the other characters who have already been nominated and amend my nominations form to add in more if the ones I want are not already in the tagset?

[worldbuildingmod]

It should be going through shortly; however, that's a stroke of good fortune as at present it is lucky dip which fandoms I see on any given refresh as there are significantly more awaiting approval than the 30 that AO3 is willing to show at once.

[fawatson]

Thanks very much.

[narya_flame]

On the Tolkien ones:

- Crossover point: I'm not the nominator for this tag, but I would argue there is at least some shared worldbuilding implicit across many of Tolkien's works. For example, Ilbereth, the Elf in The Father Christmas Letters, signs his name in Tengwar at one point, which is the script used by the Elves of Middle-earth; Roverandom is taken to the edge of the world to see a land heavily implied to be Valinor from the Middle-earth legendarium; The Adventures of Tom Bombadil contains some poems that are explicitly set in Middle-earth and some that are not. I would have taken this tag to be an invitation to explore these connections, some of which are more obvious than others.

Tolkien's view on The Hobbit, LOTR and the Silm was that they represented a lost historical period for our own Earth, so theoretically any of his fictional works set in our world or a version of it (which is most of the smaller canons) could be linked to Middle-earth.

- Silmarillion disambiguations - no strong feelings either way. HoME technically also includes The Book of Lost Tales, but I deliberately nominated BoLT separately, because that version of "canon" is so wildly different from the drafts that followed and many of the characters never appear again. (ETA - it technically also includes early drafts of LOTR, but realistically I think most LOTR fans would just look to the LOTR tag set for prompts.)

[worldbuildingmod]

Thanks!

I'm not sure "Middle-Earth is a fictional backstory for the real world" is sufficient grounds to bring all Tolkien set on our Earth into the same scope in and of itself, but the other details you supply are much more persuasive.

However, I think that if that is what the nominator intends we need an even broader fandom tag rather than trying to request it from within the Middle-Earth section of the tag set, and with some worldbuilding tags that are much more specific on what sort of points the nominator is interested in exploring. I'm almost wondering whether the canonical "J. R. R. Tolkien - WORKS" would be the best (or least worse) choice in this particular instance. (Again, if that is what the nominator is angling for with that tag.)

[(Anonymous)]

There is a canonical J. R. R. Tolkien - Works and Related Fandoms tag, which could maybe be used instead?

[worldbuildingmod]

That probably is best if we do end up in that situation, thanks. (We're getting to the point where I really need to hear from that particular nominator how they actually want things handled. I'll have to dust off the "how to show me your nominations page" instructions for the next queries post ...)

[jane_ways]

I'm the nominator--I sent you a message to avoid clogging up the replies! Hope that's OK.

[worldbuildingmod]

Thanks - as you've probably seen, I've replied.

[reconditarmonia]

I think it could be reasonable to have separate "fandoms" for all drafts (or Silm + drafts) and the Silm on its own. Even in the non-Lost Tales HoME there are some wild variations from the easily-accessible Silmarillion and, especially in an exchange like this one, one wants to avoid mismatch. On the other hand, I feel like it might be fine to put Hobbit, LOTR, and Silm in one category since it seems unlikely for there to be conflicting understandings of the same character/request, even if people might just be interested in one chunk of it.

[worldbuildingmod]

it might be fine to put Hobbit, LOTR, and Silm in one category

My understanding has always been that that's how the general "Middle-earth" tag is usually used by participants, and it sits alongside the more specific ones for each part of that.

In general, I'm very comfortable with overlapping fandoms in worldbuildingex because of the existence of canons with lots of different source material with different levels of ease of access (to take a non-Tolkien example, I don't want people being put off creating works for Star Wars because they haven't played every computer game and aren't on top of however many different comics titles Marvel are pumping out every month).

So far for Tolkien this year we have general "Middle-earth", Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion+HoME tag we're discussing here, and a separate "Book of Lost Tales" one. In principle, though, if there are distinct chunks of draft material that are coherent within themselves and people want to separate them out into their own "fandom" within the tag set, I'm fine with that as well. That siad, if that were the case I would appreciate a heads-up as to exactly what material is included so that we can try to make sure everyone's on the same page.

[(Anonymous)]

As another Tolkien nominator, I would probably not read the disambiguation “Silmarillion” as just including the book unless it was explicitly included in the tag as something like “Silmarillion (single book only)”. I would catch it after reading the post here, but I don’t think it’s an obvious difference at first glance.

Trying to avoid becoming overwhelming with details, but Silmarillion as a term in both the books and scholarship often refers to both Silm and HoMe (along with other books like Unfinished Tales), outside of other context. The same has been true in many parts of fandom I’ve been in. I would worry that someone not reading back to this post would miss that it’s being used that way in this exchange.

[narya_flame]

That's a good point, actually - especially if the nominated fandom is the canonical "Silmarillion and Other Histories of Middle-earth". I think if anyone really wanted *just* the Silmarillion as in the single book, with no referral at all to HoME, they would nominate it as "Silmarillion (single book only)" or "The Silmarillion (1977)".

[worldbuildingmod]

Thanks to both of you for the extra input; I'm going to go for "(Silmarillion)" as the disambiguation for the current set of nominations and if someone does come along wanting just-the-one-book "Silmarillion (1977)" is probably the best tag, though I do think that's pretty unlikely.