crossovering | Tagset is open!

Entry tags:

2017,
nominations

Tagset is open!

This year's tagset is now visible. (Alphabetical view.)

We approved 534 nominations this year. That's 329 more than last year! Please check the list even if your fandom was rejected, as it may have been approved under a related tag.

For those who like to keep track year-to-year, this year's most nominated exchange was Leverage with 9 nominations.

We rejected only 3 fandoms:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Star Trek Beyond — As they're installments in a series. We view these like nominating one book in the Harry Potter series. However, we're open to accepting installments next year.

The Hunger Games - All Media Types — As we've approved The Hunger Games films and novels separately. Because participants can choose both in a request or offer, we felt All Media Types was superfluous. Again, we're absolutely open to discussion on this next year.

Signups open Tuesday, July 18th @ 8:00 AM PDT. (Compare to your time. See the current time in Los Angeles.)

If you have any questions or concerns about the tagset, please comment here or email crossoveringmods@gmail.com.

Otherwise, we'll see you at signups! We look forward to taking advantage of all the changes to this year's exchange—and we hope you are, too!

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Not asking for changes, but the situation with Hunger Games & Pokemon will be interesting for me. It seems likely that trying to work with the current set-up will furnish me with opinions in time for next year.

I'm not sure whether to ask for Pokemon (All Media Types) since I'd be open to receiving fic with anime & movie characters & fic about Pokemon Go, or Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), which is possibly safer - even though I don't know all the games. (Does anyone who might offer or request those have any suggestions, please?)

And it doesn't seem like a good idea to put both versions of Hunger Games, or both versions of Pokemon, in a request or offer, since I could match to someone also requesting/offering both (while not matching to anything else), which would not produce an actual crossover.

Hm. Curious!

Thanks for all your work approving the nominations so quickly.

That does sound like it requires some thought! It's funny ("funny"), because I think simplicity on one side (nominations) often leads to complexities on the other side (requests) and vice versa. I JUST WANT EVERYONE TO HAVE FUN.

Let me know if you want to brainstorm some ideas?

Thanks! I think Hunger Games will be easy for me: I have read all the books but not seen all the movies, so I'll request books only, and - okay, sorry to de-anon an offer, but I've offered it in the past so it isn't completely secret - I'll offer movies only if I see a request I think I could fill with the canon knowledge I have. But Pokemon is more complicated and I think it would help to hear from other people interested in requesting and offering it. I should probably also submit my requests early so people who want to avoid matching to me on that, can, easily.

I think the matching style in this exchange that suits ME best is umbrella fandoms where people offering and requesting them have knowledge of more than one tiny part but are willing to be flexible. But that's a discussion for next year. This year will definitely be interesting.

I am amused too. Still on track to have fun!!

See, I find I'm always torn on this. Previously, we've just let the nominations decide whether it's umbrella or sub, and it's made that easier. But now, less so.

Generally, I've been pro-umbrella fandoms because (again!) I like the simplicity. But the larger the MCU gets, the less I can afford to leave it up to chance.

"Avengers Movies", "Captain America Movies", "Thor Movies", "Guardians of the Galaxy Movies", and "Marvel Cinematic Universe" are all in the tagset.

On the one hand, having the sub-franchises separate is nice because it helps people match on the characters they actually care about in this sprawling universe (assuming you delete the MCU tag, which is completely redundant if you have the individual franchises). But on the other hand, if people request the individual ones together, that's not actually a crossover, as the characters all overlap. (Most of the Avengers cast was in the latest Captain America movie, and there is less than six degrees of separation between anyone in the entire MCU.)

I think either we need only Marvel Cinematic Universe OR all the different franchises, but it doesn't make sense to have both.

Also! What about people who like characters from different franchises? For example Sam Wilson appears in both the Captain America and Avengers movies. I also like Sif, who is only in the Thor movies. If we keep all the separate franchises, I will have to request both the Cap and the Thor movies to be able to get those characters. But if those two fandoms are what my writer matched on, and they wrote me a Sam/Sif fic in a crossover exchange, I would be really disappointed.

We planned to address this at signups, but since you've brought it up:

We accepted nominations for both the sub and the main franchises because we know we have participants who want one or the other. Like you said, some participants will want only a certain subset of characters. However, other participants won't want to limit their gifts to a particular sub-franchise.

Additionally, participants might want to request a fusion between an umbrella franchise and an unrelated fandom. While a participant might request a fusion using one of the sub-franchises, the more general and broad umbrella franchise generally works best.

As for signups, we planned to explain that participants should choose 2+ canons per request/offer. That is, we discourage offering Captain America (Movies) and Thor (Movies) alone, but offering those plus another fandom (like Wonder Woman (2017)).

We realize, of course, that this should have been explained in the FAQ/rules post, and we apologize for that oversight.

Honestly, we feel confident that our participants enjoy this exchange because of its focus. We believe that everyone will genuinely want to receive/create crossovers/fusions, and we want to offer everyone as much free reign in combining fandoms as we can.

That is, we discourage offering Captain America (Movies) and Thor (Movies) alone, but offering those plus another fandom (like Wonder Woman (2017)).

Will you then manually check matches to ensure someone offering Cap, Thor, and WW doesn't match on someone asking for Cap, Thor, and X, so that Cap & Thor are the only two canons the recipient & author/artist have in common?

Edited (made-up example) 2017-07-17 04:19 (UTC)

I'll be honest: This hadn't occurred to us.

Let me revise my statement then!

My co-mods and I will discuss this further, but for the time being let's say this:

A participant may list as many sub-franchise fandoms as they desire in a request or offer. However, if a participant does that, they should be okay with matching on two sub-franchises.

Of course, we personally would love to see more matching outside of franchises rather than within, but we don't want to take away choices from our participants.

Another option (and we're aware this requires some decisiveness with only 10 requests/offers): participants may put one sub-franchise fandom in one request/offer and another in a different request/offer.

We want this exchange to suit as many of our participants as possible, but with all of this year's changes, we're bound to hit a few bumps. Hopefully, everyone's willing to work through those with us, and then give us feedback next year.

Thanks for answering!

I am sure we can work with however it shakes out. I think personally I'll be careful not to put any related canons in the same offer or requests, because accidentally matching on that would take a lot of the fun away from me. But I (personally) ought to be able to fit in different versions of a canon I like with slight variations in offers and requests, so that's OK.

There are always snags when people "can" do something in a challenge that isn't necessarily part of a strategy that would occur to them. Ah well.

See, I started a reply to this... and then I realized that I've thrown all the Stargate franchise shows into one request/offer in the past. So obviously, I like to live dangerously.

I will work with whatever you decide, but personally would prefer to have only GotG and MCU (defined as non-GotG). GotG is the only one that's still quite separate. I don't know anymore where I would draw the line between the Cap movies and the Avengers movies. The casts have become the same. Which one should I offer if I want to write about Steve? Does a request for Cap movies mean something different from a request for Steve in Avengers or MCU? Should I ignore Clint's Cap canon if I match on a request for Avengers? I already am nervous to offer it because of the uncertainty, in a way I wouldn't be nervous or uncertain if I got an MCU request asking me to ignore Civil War.

In order to guarantee that I wouldn't match on the Thor/Cap potion of a Thor/Cap/WW request, I would have to double the number of requests I'm making. One whole set only using Thor, and then a duplicate set only using Cap. I don't think AO3 allows that many requests. (I have a lot of fandoms already.)

This is minor, but... Having separate franchise tags would make it nigh impossible to fairly request the gift I got last year (one of the very best gifts I have ever gotten, in many years of doing exchanges): Bucky and Loki kicking ass in Westeros. They are my #2 MCU OTP, but have never appeared in the same movie or even shared a franchise. While I wouldn't want a Sif/Sam crossover, as in the example above, I'd hate to not be able to get the Bucky/Loki+Westeros story.

Before I get into my response, let me say: I do not want to be dismissive of your concerns. I hope that comes across.

First, on the subject of the MCU: I don't know if we would be comfortable defining what's separate and what's not with MCU. Stephen Strange has yet to have a significant role in any film except Doctor Strange. In that sense, that film stands almost as separate from the rest of the MCU as Guardians. (Although not quite.) By the time we open nominations next year, we'll have Infinity War, and Guardians will connect fully to the MCU.

In short, I'm not certain where would draw the lines with such a shifting canon; and I imagine some might see it as favoritism toward a sub-franchise if it's allowed to be on its own but others aren't.

Second, on the subject of your requests/offers: We still have Marvel Cinematic Universe as a tag. So if you have a request that fits that better than a sub-franchise, you can still do that. You wouldn't necessarily need to duplicate your requests, since you could just use MCU instead of a sub-franchise tag.

Beyond that, I'm genuinely sorry the sub-franchises worry you. Personally, and obviously I don't speak for everyone here, the appeal of the sub-franchise is it limits characters. If I request Captain America, Doctor Strange and Star-lord aren't going to show up. (Yet.)

Believe me, whatever doesn't work this year, we'll adjust for next year. We appreciate everyone's patience this year, since it's something of an experimental year.

I hope I've read your comment correctly. But it's late and I'm running on not a ton of sleep, so let me know if I didn't.

oh, two notes of insignificance:

1. No offense, Star-lord. Love ya.

2. In my opinion, Civil War should've been an Avengers movie. That'd solve some of our issues here. (Not that I don't get why it was a CA movie. I just... liked the smaller scale of the CA movies.)

I just want to second what Jess is saying here and really direct it at everyone concerned about this post. No matter how you request something, you are always going to run the risk of not getting exactly what you want. HOWEVER, that's why we're offering optional details fields and an optional character field this year. (And you can always write a letter.) The majority of writers and artists are going to want to create what YOU want. Yes, there are occasionally some people who don't do that, but for the most part, whoever gets matched to you is going to want to make you happy.

In this exchange, even more than others, it has always been really useful to use those optional details and it's paid off pretty well even in years with less fandoms and less options for matching.

As for specific MCU and other franchise concerns, I look at it in a lot of different ways. For example, if I want a fic where Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes meet Diana Prince, then I'll request Captain America/Wonder Woman. If I request MCU, I run the risk of someone writing me Doctor Strange hanging out with Diana Prince which I definitely do not want. (I was going to use DCEU as an example, but no one nominated that. But conversely, if they had, I wouldn't give two figs about other DCEU characters in a fic, I ONLY want characters from Wonder Woman.) All that said, I still run the risk of someone writing me Red Skull/Ludendorf fic because that's how exchanges work. But I would put in my optional fields that I DNW that and what I do want instead.

We also allow fusions in this exchange, which I think makes the larger umbrella tags extremely useful. I might want to know what happens if the characters from Buffy were Avengers and ran SHIELD, but I don't want Tony Stark or Phil Coulson popping in. So I'd request an MCU/Buffy fusion, using MCU as a more generic tag.

And boy is this comment probably getting boring. I could give a MILLION examples if you gave me all night.

The important thing for everyone to remember is:

1) Use those optional details to your advantage! Write a letter if you can! Put things in your DNWs if they would truly ruin the exchange for you.

2) Requests are going to be visible all through the sign-up period this year. Tailor your offers to fit the requests of others to avoid things you don't want to write. And make your requests clear in your sign-up so that potential matches know what to expect from you.

We know there will ALWAYS be bumps in the road, particularly in this type of exchange with so many complexities, and we do work hard to make it fun for as many people as we can. We apologize that we can't always please 100% of you 100% of the time, nor can we always anticipate everyone's concerns, but know that we do listen to everything our participants have to say and make adjustments where we see fit. (This year in particular brought us several new changes, hence the several new bumps.)

Edited 2017-07-17 06:37 (UTC)

It didn't come across as dismissive, so don't worry! I'm probably the only other person who knows first-hand how thorny this issue can be. Hand-matching took the complication out of Buffy/Angel and Doctor Who/Torchwood types of things back when I ran this (before auto matching was even a thing!), but it used to take me 30 fully concentrated hours of work. I don't wish that on anyone who doesn't get the same weird OCD pleasure out of it that I did, so, as I said, I'll work with whatever you decide.

I already had my letter written, and I'm willing to bet it'll be one of the longest. So, my writer not knowing what I want was never going to be an issue. I was more worried as a writer, because not everyone leaves helpful details. But whatever. I'll figure it out. Visible requests and matching on crossovers vs fusions is already going to make this this infinitely less stressful (and more fun!) than in previous years; I'm too pleased about that to fuss too much about this one fandom.

Aww bummer. This is the nominator of Cap 1 and Cap 2 movies. To be honest, I was planning to request my Captain America: The First Avenger with non-Marvel XX-century-era canons and non-Marvel time travel canons (The Wave Rider meets with the Howling Commandos? :D Wonder Woman fights side by side with Steve Rogers? She finds him in the ice? :D); and Captain America: The Winter Soldier for my Spy/Political Conspiracy crossovers (Bourne and/or Commander Cap and/or Reese & the Machine!! \o/ ). I suppose I'll drop those crossover ideas now. :(

I understand your reasoning behind the rejection, but Civil War is my huge Marvel-DNW and totally different in tone, setting and cast from the former two installations, so, nope. I don't want a crossover being all about Peter Parker and Tony Stark when I'm trying to get original Captain America-specific characters crossovered with other non-Marvel canons.

I don't see how that breaks your requests - I would expect an author (or artist) would default to the time period favored by the other canon being crossed over with the Cap movies canon, since that gives the most material to work with.

We understand your disappointment. We—okay, fine, I—had a few nominations ideas that I had to drop.

Please know that you're free to request Captain America (Movies) with Wonder Woman (2017) and tell your artist/author all about your ideas for crossovers between these two! That's why we include optional details/letters in the exchange, and you're likely to match to someone who wants to give you what you want... Please consider it? You can also list Civil War as DNW, and it's common exchange etiquette to avoid your recipient's DNWs!

Thanks, I'll consider my options, if I'm allowed to DNW Civil War that's already a relief. :)

Like I said, most people who regularly participant in exchanges are incredibly mindful of DNWs. Also, because I have a few DNWs that would genuinely hurt for me to read, I care a lot about emphasizing that part of fulfilling assignments.

So yes! Please don't feel like you have to keep those requests, but there's a system in place in case you want to give it a try. :)

I nominated Marvel Cinematic Universe and if its deleted from the tag set at least one of the crossovers I was planning on requesting is no longer in the tag set.

The MCU tag is not going anywhere. :)

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