Nomination Clarifications #1

[withinadream]

A note on Character/Reader ships - they're eligible for the exchange, but please specify gender of the reader in your nomination. We've been changing any nominated */Reader ships to */Female Reader.

The following fandom tags do not match the shared universe rules. These will not be approved until the fandoms are corrected, so please double check the nomination guidelines for the shared universe list and alter your nominations:

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)


• Dragon Age (Video Games)


• Marvel


• Persona 5


• Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions (we believe this should be included as part of the main games, but please comment if we’ve got that wrong)


• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine


• Star Trek: Discovery


• Supergirl (TV 2015)

We will be approving all crossover nominations this year without clarifying non-specific franchise fandoms. Please be aware that if you use a broad fandom tag like Character (Tomb Raider) or Character (Marvel), any optional details you give on which parts of the franchise you’d like to see in your gift will remain entirely optional for your creator. If anyone would like to make a broad approved nomination more specific, drop us a comment.

Baby-Sitters Club & California Diaries
The California Diaries appears to be a spinoff series of The Baby-Sitters Club. Do the two take place in the same universe, or should they be kept as separate fandoms?

Critical Role
Exandria Unlimited (Webseries) has been nominated separately, but it takes place in the same universe as Critical Role. Does the nominator/s have a reason why they should be kept separate? Otherwise we'll be combining them.

Doctor Who
Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswald was rejected when Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald was approved. If the nominator of the first was intending to nominate a specific Clara fragment, drop us a comment.

The DoctorDonna has been approved as a separate character to Donna Noble. We dropped the ‘Donna Noble component of the character tag to avoid confusion with Donna Noble (the original all human version), but if this is unclear or confusing to anyone please let us know.

Fire Emblem Awakening
We have approved My Unit | Reflet | Robin/Sallya | Tharja, and rejected Female Robin/Tharja as a duplicate. If we’ve misunderstood and these are actually different characters, please let us know.

Naruto
Emporio Ivanakov is listed on the wiki as a man, and the mods are both unfamiliar with the canon. Could the nominator or anyone else clarify that this character is female or genderqueer?

Comments

[settiai]

I'm not the one who nominated Exandria Unlimited (Webseries), but - as someone familiar with both it and the main Critical Role series - my recommendation would be to combine it with the other relationships listed under Critical Role (Web Series). There's already precedent since, in previous years, relationships from canons set in the main CR universe have all been nominated under Critical Role (Web Series) (such as Devan Bluebutton/Dren from last year's tagset, which is from a oneshot called "The Screw Job").

[fiachairecht]

Also not the EXU nominator, but as someone who always nominates it separately and was planning on nominating it separately here as well, hard disagree (and, honestly, I wish Campaigns 1 and 2, The Screw Job, etc were all separate). Longer post when I'm not on mobile, though.

[evilmuffins]

Sword and Shield is part of the Pokemon main game series :)

My Unit | Reflet | Robin and Female Robin are the same person, you got it right!

Re: Ivankov

[stanleyuris]

Not the nominator, but as someone familiar with the One Piece canon I would say that Ivankov is canonically genderqueer or genderfluid -- the character changes appearance to reflect their complex gender and seems to consider themself to have a 'female form'. The wiki listing them as a man is definitely an oversimplification and the OP wiki has a history of not treating canon trans characters very well.

It's all a bit fantastical and there is the language barrier of the original text being Japanese, but essentially Ivankov has the power to manipulate their physical form using hormones (in a way pretty clearly meant to reference RL gender transition) and just feels like being a woman sometimes; is sometimes referred to as the 'queen' of their kingdom, etc. (I'm using they/them for clarity here but the original text, in Japanese, essentially doesn't have gendered pronouns -- I think it would appropriate to use he/him or she/her for Ivankov depending on how they are presenting!)

TL;DR Ivankov's gender is definitely not just 'man', I think the closest English word would be 'genderfluid', she is a woman sometimes, basically!

Re: Ivankov

[withinadream]

Perfect, thank you! I was wondering if that was the case re: the wiki. I'll go ahead and approve the ship including them!

[mkrobinson]

I did not nominate BSC/CD, however my vote is for keeping them separate. They do share a handful of characters but the storylines are completely dissimilar. California Diaries can be read alone and it would not shock me if people picked that up who did not ever read a BSC book. There are characters in CD that do not exist in the BSC that would be impossible for people who nominate BSC characters to write. Same goes for those who only read CD if they are merged. Just my two cents.

[acequeenking]

Not the nominator but came here to say the same thing. They take place in completely different locations (BSC - East Coast, CD - West Coast). While they do share a couple of characters, the characters in Cali Diaries are older versions and don't share storylines with their younger selves.

[fiachairecht]

Not the Exandria Unlimited nominator, but I always nominate it as a separate fandom, and I was planning to do so here as well. I have a mix of reasons for this, some more personal and some more general, but I can't speak for the nominator's thought process. The tl;dr is: I view the relationship between CritRole and EXU more like the relationship between the Law & Orders and Chicago Fire/Med/PD than the relationship between Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.

* EXU is fully standalone, in a way that not all shared universe cases are. You can watch and understand it knowing absolutely nothing about previous campaigns. References to things from previous campaigns are fun in-jokes for the players and long-time viewers but they're just regular old history/worldbuilding for the characters in their own world and new viewers. There's almost no character overlap, and, when character overlap does exist, the characters are played by someone else (Aabira as opposed to Matt or their former player). It may not count as 'different versions' of the characters, but cast members have, in the past, talked (very politely!) about how they don't recognise certain elements of their characters when Matt has stepped in to play them.

* Critical Role in general is a weird case for shared universes, because it's a universe that's meant to be shared with, well, anyone, in a way that most pieces of media aren't. 'Takes place in the same universe as Critical Role' describes a huge amount of potential fandoms, and (this is admittedly thinking ahead a little bit) you'll eventually have to decide what makes something 'Critical Role'. That Matt is the DM? That Matt plays somehow? That an original cast member is involved somehow? That Matt said it was canon? That it takes place in Exandria? Etc.

* I prefer it as a requester: I straight-up DNW campaign 2 characters or canon in my EXU requests. While I feel very comfortable doing that in an EXU request that signals its narrowness from the start, I feel like I'm being a bit of an arse to potential creators to request EXU characters under Critical Role and then DNWing references to more than half of Critical Role. Requesting EXU characters under EXU also is a very clear signal as to the time period I'm interested in (e.g. these characters at this point in time 30 years post-campaign 1) without me having to write even more DNWs/optional details.

* Very personally, EXU is way shorter and has way fewer characters. It can get lost in tagsets and requests when it's dropped in with the main campaign.

Sorry for the wall of text!

[withinadream]

While I sympathize with your desire to keep them separated, Femslashex has a very broad fandom combination policy - we separate related fandoms if the person requesting Jane Doe in Critical Role would mean a completely different person than Jane in Exandria Unlimited. Given our prior policy, we're going to combine Exandria Unlimited with Critical Role. You're welcome to DNW various campaigns in your Critical Role request! It's definitely not rude given how Femslashex combines fandoms, and we'll enforce it.

[fiachairecht]

Thanks for the explanation. I do consider them potentially different characters because of EXU's standalone status and don't request it when they're combined, though.

[(Anonymous)]

regarding Fire Emblem Awakening, technically robin has two forms, male and female, which the player selects at the start of the game, however for this exchange naturally only female is an option for nomination so the clarification isn't needed unless someone was going for a "robin is always robin" non-binary interpretation of the character, which I think is a matter for the request description rather than the tag itself