Nominations are open!

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If you haven't already please read the rules before you start nominating. The nomination guidelines are the same as last year but there have been other small changes to the rules and guidelines for this round.

In short:

• You may nominate up to ten fandoms with up to ten relationships in each.


• All nominated characters must be female or genderqueer characters you'd be comfortable writing about in a femslash challenge

• Please nominate crossovers as under the fandom: Crossovers - Fandom, and list the characters with their fandom after the character name (Example: Pepper Potts (MCU)/Seven of Nine (Star Trek: Voyager)


• [Canonical Character]/Original Female Character is allowed. [Canonical Character]/Any is not allowed. The Character(s) version of OFC tags will no longer be used and any canonical nominations using this format will be approved without the plural. If nominating poly ships with original characters, please indicate the specific number of characters you would like included, eg. [Canonical Character]/Original Female Character/Original Female Character.


• [Canonical Character]/[Unnamed Character] is allowed in cases where they were most likely a woman or genderqueer character, but we don't know exactly who they were, for example: Galadriel/Legolas' Mother in The Hobbit fandom.


• There will be one category for Original Work, in which you may nominate things such as Princess/Handmaiden, Mermaid/Ship Captain, or Starship Captain/Chief Engineer.


• You may wish to drop down into the comments below to see what fandoms and pairings others are nominating, and how to nominate large/complicated fandoms. We will be continuing to wrangle most shared universe fandoms in the same manner as previous years, please check the list below before nominating.

Please nominate shared universe fandoms using the following fandom tags:

Arrowverse
Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Constantine, and Legends of Tomorrow tv shows will be nominated together as "DC's Arrowverse"

Buffy
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: The Series and assorted spinoffs will go together under "Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Related Fandoms"

Dangan
Combine all nominations under "Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types"

DC Comics
Main-continuity DC comics, including pre-Flashpoint and New 52, will be under "DCU (Comics)". Other DC universes such as Bombshells will be separate by universe

DC Movies
"DC Extended Universe" includes Man of Steel, Batman vs Superman, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Aquaman, and Suicide Squad

Doctor Who
Everything set in the Doctor Who universe can be nominated under "Doctor Who" (including Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood)

Disney
Disney Descendents, Maleficent (2014), and Ducktales (2017) should be nominated separately. "Disney - All Media Types" is to be used for all other Disney pairings, including Disney Princesses and pre-2017 Ducktales.

Dragon Age
All of Dragon Age goes together under "Dragon Age - All Media Types"

Neon Genesis Evangelion
"Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition" should be nominated separately to Neon Genesis Evangelion. If nominating other parts of the franchise with significant story or character differences to the original canon, please comment first to discuss whether to split or combine fandom tags.

Fallen London
Fallon London should be combined with Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies nominations under "Fallen London | Echo Bazaar"

Fallout
All games should be combined under "Fallout (Video Games)", including Fallout: New Vegas

Fate/stay night Fandoms
Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night should be nominated under "Fate/stay night - All Media Types"

Final Fantasy
FF X and FF X-2 will be nominated as "Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2"

Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones (TV) and A Song of Ice and Fire should be treated as separate fandoms

Harry Potter
Both the Harry Potter books and movies and Fantastic Beasts should be combined under "Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling". All associated tie-in media including games should be included under this tag.

Kamen Rider
Kamen Rider variations go together under "Kamen Rider - All Media Types"

Law and Order
Law and Order series will be nominated separately by series name.

Les Miserables
The Les Mis tag will be "Les Miserables (All Media Types)"

Life on Mars
Ashes to Ashes and Life on Mars go together under "Life on Mars & Related Fandoms"

Madoka Magica
The Magia Record side game should be nominated separately to Madoka Magia.

Marvel Cinematic Universe
All of the MCU movies, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Agent Carter will be listed under "Marvel Cinematic Universe"

Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics will be nominated by universe, for example: Marvel 616, Marvel Adventures, etc.

Marvel Netflix TV shows
Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, The Punisher, and Iron Fist will be listed together under "The Defenders (Marvel TV)"

Mass Effect
Mass Effect will be "Mass Affect - All Media Types" and will include Mass Effect Andromeda

Once Upon A Time
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland will be included with Once Upon A Time (TV)

Pokemon
Pokemon Games should be combined under "Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)", while "Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures" should be nominated separately.

Power Rangers
Power Rangers will be split into the movie tag "Power Rangers (2017)", and all shows will be combined under "Power Rangers (TV)"

Pretty Cure
All Pretty Cure series will be nominated together

Rune Factory
All Rune Factory series will be nominated together

Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon should nominated under:
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Manga/Crystal)
Sailor Moon (1992 Anime)
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Live Action TV)

She-Ra
Nominate the original series and the 2018 reboot separately.

Star Trek
"Star Trek: Classic Timeline (All Series)" should be used to nominate all original continuity Star Trek properties including books and other media, Mirror Universe characters, and Star Trek: Discovery. The 2009 movies and any associated media should be nominated under "Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)‎". AOS characters can be inferred to also exist in the Classic universe or vice versa even if they don't appear in canon, nominate as Prime [Character] under AOS or AOS [Character] under Classic as needed. Mirror Universe characters should be listed as Mirror [Character]. Classic/AOS crossover ships should be nominated under Crossovers - Fandom

Star Wars
Star Wars will go under "Star Wars - All Media Types"

Stargate
Stargate fandoms will all be grouped together under "Stargate - All Series"

Super Sentai
Various Sentai properties go together under "Super Sentai Series"

Tolkien Fandoms
Tolkien nominations should be split into Silmarillion, books, or movies, as follows::
The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Middle Earth - Peter Jackson Movies

Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider nominations should be split into the following tags. Any books, comics, and other media should be nominated under the appropriate timeline, and the Angelina Jolie movies should be combined under Original Timeline:
Tomb Raider - Original Timeline
Tomb Raider - Legend Timeline
Tomb Raider - 2013 Timeline
Tomb Raider (Movie 2018)

Vampire Diaries
The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, and Legacies go together as "The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms". The Vampire Diaries books should be nominated separately as "The Vampire Diaries - L. J. Smith (books)"

Worst Witch
The Worst Witch (1998 TV), The Worst Witch (TV 2017), and the books should be nominated separately

X-Men Movies
X-Men (Movies) will now be divided into X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies) and Deadpool (2016). Wolverine movies go in Original Timeline






If you believe the best fandom tag to combine a shared universe under has changed or there are other new developments in your fandom we should be aware of that might affect the shared universe list, please let us know! Or if you spot any doubles, misfiled fandoms, random pairings popping up under other fandoms or pairings that don't qualify, comment here. We're going to do our best to wrangle as we go.

Click here to nominate some femslash.

Nominations will remain open until 9pm EDT, 11 September, 2019.

Comments

[cat_i_th_adage]

Hi - just wanted to clarify my picks for Good Omens (TV).

While all the supernatural entities are canonically agender ( https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/185890709621/critical-gemini-hero-you-know-what-good-omens ), some skew more to the feminine or the androgynous than others: pronouns (eg. Pollution), female-bodied actor (eg. Michael, Uriel), or presentation (eg. Crowley), which is why I nominated them in particular.

[(Anonymous)]

Crowley is a canonically male character in drag. He's played by a male actor and referred to with "he" pronouns.

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I'm not familiar with Good Omens beyond seeing Crowley/Aziraphale promoted as a m/m pairing (though I realise that wasn't one of the pairings you nominated cat_i_th_adage, it's just my primary osmosis exposure to Crowley as a character.) Based on Neil's post linked above it sounds like Crowley may fall under the genderqueer rule irrespective of pronouns, and a male actor certainly doesn't automatically confirm or deny the character's gender as male so if there's disagreement it would be helpful if we could get some more information from Good Omens fans about supernatural entities being agender in canon. We do consider Word of God when determining eligibility, but we defer primarily to canon where possible if we can't be sure how widely Word of God is known or consistent with canon.

Also, while we're here, should we be combining Good Omens TV and books if both are nominated or are there significant differences to the new show?

[(Anonymous)]

That post linked above isn't Word of God that Crowely is agender or genderqueer. It's word of god that Crowley has "pure, unfiltered non-binary/gender-fluid energy in general". Crowley and Aziraphale are both men. Crowley dressed up as woman and his behavior is gender nonconforming to the traditional masculine stereotype, but the character is not genderqueer. As noted in that post, there was one character who had used they pronouns, and it wasn't Crowley.

[cat_i_th_adage]

That post has Neil Gaiman, the writer and showrunner, replying:

Thank you! That was definitely what we were going for...

I'm not sure how much more in agreement he could be?

[cat_i_th_adage]

Hang on, I didn't read through your comment carefully enough.

It's word of god that Crowley has "pure, unfiltered non-binary/gender-fluid energy in general"... but the character is not genderqueer

For the purposes of a fic exchange, I feel that splitting hairs between "non-binary", "genderfluid", and "genderqueer" is counterproductive.

The character is canonically agender. The character canonically uses feminine presentation on more than one occasion, when said character has freedom to choose. Isn't that feminine enough?

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that all the angel and demon characters are canonically agender. However, Aziraphale presents as male throughout the series; Crowley presents as male on some occasions and female on others.

I'm not sure if "agender but presents solely as male (without being under coercive circumstances)" is appropriate for this fest in particular but that's up to the mod not me!

[cat_i_th_adage]

Also, while we're here, should we be combining Good Omens TV and books if both are nominated or are there significant differences to the new show?

While I wouldn't be fussed either way, I only picked the TV version because gender-presentation-and-play is a lot more present in the show. It's not uncanonical in the book? But the book has Crowley has Crowley briefly disguised as a nanny and a passing comment that angels are agender and not much more. In the TV show it's all over the place in the visual language.

Here's an article discussing, among other things, design choices regarding gender presentation:

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/good-omens-costume-designer-claire-anderson-interview

... By this time, both Aziraphale and Crawley — now Crowley — are wearing turbans and head wraps, which Anderson attributes to “a bit of vanity.” Plus the wrap helps Crowley conceal his snake-like eyes (it’s too soon for glasses). Aziraphale dons a soft leather coat over his tunic, while Crowley wears female attire of the region — an abaya...

Fans who know more about modern fashion than I do, have pointed out that it's a woman's scarf that he has slung around his neck for most of the modern sequences, and women's dark glasses.

And - as of the time I write this comment, there are 162 works in the Genderfluid Crowley tag. (https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Genderfluid%20Crowley%20(Good%20Omens)/works) Which isn't Word of God (some of these might be AUs), but is at least indicative of fan interest.

Any other GO fans want to weigh in?

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It's quite late for me now so I won't have a chance to check out the article until tomorrow, but thanks for popping back! The tweet linked below you looks like it'll be the most useful so far, if there's anything else declarative like that which you'd like us to consider feel free to throw other info at us. If other fans are weighing in anonymously, there might be a delay in discussion as things get unscreened - but unless my co-mod is more familiar with the fandom than I am we usually leave discussions going for a bit so there's no rush and you might want to check back over the course of the next day or two.

For anyone else chiming in it would be helpful to distinguish between canon that leads you to reasonably infer characters as [gender - be it male or agender or otherwise] or canon where a character specifically claims an identity in canon, and whether either confirms or runs counter to Word of God like that linked below on Twitter.

[(Anonymous)]

Crowley clearly falls foul of the rule prohibiting characters who are male-identified in canon. He's referred to as "he" throughout and is played by a cis man in every appearance. Even if the content of Gaiman's statement were otherwise sufficient, it is not "canonical." I don't know what's so complicated about this.

[cat_i_th_adage]

No worries.

Here's another Word of God declaration from Neil Gaiman:

"Happy International Non-Binary People’s Day! Love from me, And from all the angels and demons in Good Omens and one of the Horsepeople of the Apocalypse."

https://mobile.twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1150428978475409408?lang=en

Hope that helps, and have a good night.

[(Anonymous)]

Neil's stated that neither Crowley or Aziraphale identify as male: https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1149047702837239814?lang=en

In the tweet he's replying to he also states angels and demons are sexless and don't have genders.

[(Anonymous)]

Also, while we're here, should we be combining Good Omens TV and books if both are nominated or are there significant differences to the new show?

As someone who has only read the book and listened to the BBC radio show, from osmosis there are enough differences between the book and the show that I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing for someone who wants the TV show.

Also in the book, angels not having a gender is far more word of god. Azirphale and Crowley use male pronouns throughout even when we get a glimpse in to their heads and while they may take female form that doesn’t change the pronouns used.

[shopfront]

Thanks for weighing in! I understand at this point that the books definitive gender statement is "angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort", does that sound like correct canon to you or is it less specific/more word-of-god than that?

It would be helpful to know what you think the differences are between the book and show. I've done some googling, and the stance from the creators and many viewers appears to lean more heavily towards it being the same - just that tv shows focuses on or elaborates on slightly different things at some points. Does that sound incorrect to you? Are there canon contradictions between them that you're aware of and think we should consider?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not the user you're replying to, but I think "physically sexless by default, but chooses to present and identify as male" makes the character male by the standards of this exchange, which do not prioritize assigned sex.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

In the book, if I didn’t know the Word of God statement that angels are sexless unless they put conscious effort into being otherwise I would have read Crowley as Male but there is no definitive statement of masculinity or gender fluidity in the book.

Like the anon below said, some of my favourite characters are missing from the TV show and the depictions of Heaven and Hell are new.

[(Anonymous)]

Also, while we're here, should we be combining Good Omens TV and books if both are nominated or are there significant differences to the new show?

I don't think they should be combined. The endings are very different, there are a number of characters who appear in the book but not in the show and vice versa, some of the characterizations for the characters who do appear in both are pretty divergent, and most of the show's worldbuilding re: Heaven and Hell is completely absent from the book.

[withinadream]

Thank you and everyone else for your clarifications and discussion! We are going to approve Crowley ships for this round (assuming the other characters in the ship qualify for femslashex as well, of course). Given Crowley's presentation at various points in the show, there's a strong argument that ships including him and other characters could be read as femslash-adjacent. (Because Crowley is somewhat of an edge case, I'd like to clarify that we're considering the characters he's shipped with as well, and won't be approving any ships such as Aziraphale/Crowley where the other party has an exclusively masculine presentation/etc.)

One note on some of the discussion below - we don't consider fandom presence and trends in our approval or rejection of tags, just canonical gender and/or presentation (and occasionally Word of God as supplementary information if canon is vague).

Thanks again for the discussion, all of you were very helpful! We will be opening a discussion at the end of the round regarding our current ship and character eligibility if anyone would like to make a case for changing the rules as they stand now, so please hold onto your comments on that until after the round concludes.

[cat_i_th_adage]

Thank you!

I deeply appreciate the care you showed in giving everyone a chance to explain their thoughts and feelings on the matter - it's lovely when everyone gets a voice.

Cheers, and I hope the exchange goes well.

[shopfront]

You're welcome! If you have any questions about your sign-up and the canon gender identity/pronoun rule, feel free to shoot us an email at femslashexmod@gmail.com during sign-ups. We apply a stricter canon requirement there and word of god is not an in-canon statement of gender identity (so you can certainly request an agender identity, but others might approach a Crowley femslash ship differently if they don't follow Neil's social media), but if you're unsure while writing your sign-up you're welcome to run specifics past us for assistance before posting.

[cat_i_th_adage]

Thank you - I appreciate your help :-)

[hibernate]

I'm not going to continue to argue this issue, but I hope you don't mind me asking a question about it. If Word of God is that all angels and demons are nb or genderless and Crowley is accepted on those terms, why wouldn't Aziraphale be included too? I certainly feel Aziraphale is more feminine in general than Crowley, so I was curious what you meant by their masc/fem presentations. Is it because of Crowley taking on the guise of Nanny Ashtoreth? Sorry if I'm slow in understanding the thinking here; I'm bowing out now, just wondered this last thing.

[shopfront]

Totally! We're always willing to elaborate if needed, we just don't want to re-adjudicate our decisions over and over. Word of god may inform our decision but isn't considered to be canon evidence purely on its own (probably for obvious reasons?) This is a more simplistic version of all the things we considered, but what it came to when we boiled it down was:

Book Crowley has a canon sex (or lack of) but no gender declared, can only be inferred as male presenting or identified, so as one of the people in this thread said and we agreed - he is ineligible.

Show Aziraphale has neither canon sex or gender declared, can only be inferred as male (albeit, perhaps a feminine male) presenting or identified therefore also ineligible. It's purely word of god here for the purposes of our criteria, basically.

Show Crowley has neither canon sex or gender declared, but presents mostly as male and sometimes as female. Once we examined everything, we decided he can be reasonably inferred as male (so we do understand your concerns) or genderqueer identified, and word of god further inclines us to think genderqueer is indeed a valid interpretation of canon despite female presentation* being rare/only happening twice. Essentially we can't rule him solely in or out based on canon (this is what withinadream meant by edge case and why we're paying particular attention to the other people in those nominations, in case there are specific relationships we feel somehow cross back out of scope), so he falls within the scope of the genderqueer rule and our stance of 'we're not interested in defining gender for participants'. We're assuming good faith that anyone nominating Crowley wants to explore a genderqueer interpretation, and that his relationships with other female or genderqueer characters feel somehow sapphic/femslashy to them (I haven't looked at the tagset yet today so possibly GO has been approved in my absence, but so far I feel like what I've seen in the queue matches with that assumption, for what that's worth.)

*Obviously not everyone interprets those scenes the same way as they're brief, and a reasonably inferred male character wearing female clothes twice isn't often going to be criteria for eligibility in this exchange, if that's concerning anyone. But we looked at some of the range of how people were interpreting those scenes, how word of god interprets those scenes, and things people said about tone and seriousness and influences from the wider context of the book's definition of sex, and we think it's reasonable to consider them important in this case without reading Neil's twitter.

Hopefully that at least explains it further and maybe also addresses some of your concerns, and we totally understand why people who lean towards a male interpretation of Crowley won't be wanting to nominate/request/offer him for this exchange. We just ask them to let people who do see genuine femslash interpretations there get on with doing so. And while we stand by this as an application of the current rules, people are always welcome to give us feedback or suggest tweaks post-round if they think this highlights a gap in the rules that we might (or might not, obviously, but we're always happy to listen) address in the rules of future rounds.

[hibernate]

Thanks for explaining to me in so much detail. I really appreciate you taking the time to lay out your reasoning to me. I don't go on twitter but I've always been in favour of a genderqueer reading of these characters, it was just the idea of seeing either of them in the context of femslash that didn't sit right with me. I'm still not sure it does, but your reasoning about Crowley makes a lot of sense and does make me less uncomfortable. Thank you very much for getting back to me! :)

[shopfront]

You're very welcome, happy to help and I'm really glad you feel less uncomfortable now!