crossovering | 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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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