Please don't worry that this post is going up if you still have unapproved noms. There are a number of fandoms still awaiting attention, but they all at least look fairly straightforward. I have to go offline for a while now, so I have deliberately focused on the complicated bits:
Harry Potter
- Everything that was previously in "Harry Potter (book series)" has been moved to "Harry Potter - Books Only" and "Harry Potter (book series)" removed. Please check that your nominations have survived this process unscathed! If you have incorrectly rejected nominations still outstanding, please get in touch.
- Very minor, but "No Character" was rejected under Wizarding World because "No Characters" was already in. (Similar things have also happened in a few other fandoms, for what it's worth.)
- I really can't decide what's the best thing to do with nominations under "Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling". That's a fandom in AO3's "Books and Literature" category, which would argue for the intention being to nominate for the books, but my take on HP fandom in general (which is possibly limited by the bits of it I know, I admit) is that it accepts everything as part of the same universe, so people nominating under this tag might well be meaning that everything is in scope, including Pottermore, the new play, the new film, etc. Anyone with a view as to which way I should jump, please do chime in. Better yet, if you're the original nominator, make your intentions clear by switching your nominations to either "Harry Potter - Books Only" (the limited version) or "Harry Potter - Wizarding World" (the every-napkin-JKR's-ever-scribbled-on version), depending on what you intended.
GundamI have accepted the proposed divisions as nominated ("Gundam 00 & Anno Domini Gundam" and "Gundam SEED & Cosmic Era Gundam") because they seem sensible and fit with what the fandom's wiki tells me are essentially completely different timelines, but I am happy to rename them if there are strong arguments for it. These seem to have been sorted into sensible-looking places in the tag set, which to be honest I'm a bit confused by; I'm nowhere near as fandom-adjacent to Gundam as I am to Tolkien, but it has tagging issues visible from space. Have they recently been resolved?
Uncategorized FandomsBecause of the way we're trying to organise things, many
very popular fandoms are ending up in this "category" because we're not using AO3 canonical names for them (most often because the same worldbuilding spans what AO3 would consider multiple fandoms). Unfortunately, these fandoms will be stuck there permanently; putting these bespoke fandom tags into categories is not something I have the ability to do.
A bit more on AUsThe terminology around AUs seems to get more confusing all the time. To clarify:
This exchange is for worldbuilding based on the information available in canon. As such, setting change AUs/fusions/magical realism/etc. (where the main worldbuilding going on is about how the new element(s) involved affect the canon, not exploring the worldbuilding of the canon setting) are out of scope, though popular tropes for them can be nominated in the Original Work category - there's already a lot of soulmate stuff in there, for example - and popular targets for fusions such as His Dark Materials and Pacific Rim are in the tag set in their own rights.
On the other hand, some canons have AUs within them, most often canon-divergent (aka "What if?"/Elseworlds/etc.) but also sometimes other types (e.g. Xena's Uberverse). These are absolutely fine, and indeed can be nominated as their own fandoms if there is sufficient information provided about them to extrapolate worldbuilding from. (Examples already in the tag set include the Star Trek mirrorverse and Marvel Secret Wars Battleworlds.) They can also be nominated as worldbuilding tags (see, e.g. Shadowhunters (TV)).
Creating canon-divergent AUs in your fanworks for this exchange is absolutely fine, so long as your recipient hasn't DNW-ed them; I can easily imagine how this would be an interesting way to explore worldbuilding ideas. However, please don't use "what if?" type ideas for canon-divergent AUs as worldbuilding tags, unless that AU exists within the canon.
I hope that all makes sense but please do ask for further clarification if desired.
#FindTheGirlsOnTheNegatives... And following on from
that, given the nature of the "canon" here, I have in fact erred on the side of allowing in worldbuilding tags for this that could be construed as exactly the sort of AU I'm disallowing elsewhere (specifically: "fairy tale setting", "mermaids" and "underwater aliens"). If you're unhappy with any or all of those, please feel free to argue against them in the comments and if I'm convinced I'll take them back out again (and if they all go, the fandom will too); the one I'm least certain about is "fairy tale setting", for what it's worth.
General cleanupThanks for all the useful feedback so far. Please continue to keep an eye out for any issues in the tag set, such as duplicated or near-duplicated tags, dodgy-looking worldbuilding tags, fandoms which are missing "No Characters" and "Original Character(s)", or fandoms where your nominations have mysteriously disappeared.
Also, with the close of nominations imminent, please consider this a last call for responses to all previous clarification requests. Once we're into the final day of nominations (about 11 hours from now), I will start making my own judgement calls about whether or not to accept or reject the tags I'm currently uncertain about.