Update on Guardian Six Degrees suggestion

[glymr]

I put up a poll and invited discussion a couple of days ago with the question "What would be a good tag for non-Guardian fics featuring Guardian actors?" Specifically, I was thinking of something like the C6D (Canadian 6 Degrees) or Hannibal Extended Universe tags, which are used for Due South and Hannibal, respectively.

naye  suggested "衍生", which means "derivative", and I'm afraid I jumped to conclusions at this point and assumed that "Guardian Derivative" was already in use in Chinese fandom, along the lines of: "镇魂衍生 : Guardian Derivative". A lot of people expressed support for this option, but it's not currently widely used.

What is being used (thank you to lannamichaels and others for pointing it out) is "WeiLan Derivative", also known as "Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations".  According to AO3: "巍澜衍生 - Freeform has been made a synonym of Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations. Works and bookmarks tagged with 巍澜衍生 - Freeform will show up in Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations's filter" (and vice versa). Click that link for a list of the parent tags and other synonyms, most of which are some variation of "WeiLan Derivative". The parent tags don't currently include Time Engraver or Detective L, but I'm sure that can be remedied. 

As you can see, there are already 496 works tagged "Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations", most of which are in Chinese.

My initial, knee-jerk reaction to this tag was, "But that's not quite what I meant!" I was envisioning something broader, something that could be used for all those silly KFC and L'Oreal commercials, even if they didn't necessarily pair ZYL and BY. I love the idea of growing an even wider mythology surrounding Guardian, with all of these other characters becoming part of a fandom multiverse.

But let's be real. If we're writing crossovers/fusions/etc between properties that Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong have been in, mostly we're going to be pairing them with each other.

As much as I love the idea of a more general "Guardian Wider Universe" type tag, the more I think about it, the more I feel like the existing Character Combinations tag fits the bill in a lot of ways. Also, if we feel like that English tag is too long, we can start using a shorter version and ask AO3 to make it another synonym - ie if we wanted to standardize the use of "WeiLan Derivative" in English, we could do that. BUT, it would obviously have to be used ONLY on stories with some kind of pairing between a Zhu Yilong and Bai Yu character. That's the main drawback I can see, and it's not a small one. You couldn't use it to tag, for example, a character played by Zhu Yilong crossed over with a non-Bai Yu character.

It would, of course, still be possible to see about making our own freeform, or even fandom!, tag for a Guardian Wider Universe. Unless we start coming out with a LOT more microfandom crossover stories, though, I'm not sure it's worth it. I'd like to get others' input. I'm not going to put up another poll, but I'd like to invite comments one more time. What do you think of making the "Character Combinations" tag something that the English speaking community uses as a standard? Do you feel like we need a broader tag or a fandom tag to cover these types of crossovers/microfandom stories that might be of interest to the Guardian community?

Comments

[duckwhatduck]

If you make "WeiLan Derivative" or similar the standard, it will almost certainly get made a synonym of "Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations" without having to ask.

So will anything that expresses the same sentiment, tbh. "Guardian Wider Universe" might not, but IMO going for that would only be worth doing if the extended universe isn't exclusively pivoting off Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong characters and would include shows that other Guardian cast members appeared in but those two didn't.

-

Also my ex-tagwrangler instincts are apparently still active enough to give me a flinch reaction: please stick to freeforms and don't make a fandom tag for this.

[glymr]

If you make "WeiLan Derivative" or similar the standard, it will almost certainly get made a synonym of "Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations" without having to ask.

AO3 tag wranglers are so great. <3


So will anything that expresses the same sentiment, tbh. "Guardian Wider Universe" might not, but IMO going for that would only be worth doing if the extended universe isn't exclusively pivoting off Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong characters and would include shows that other Guardian cast members appeared in but those two didn't.

That's my feeling, too. This is all a bit pre-emptive anyway - in the case of C6D and Hannibal Extended Universe, the stories already existed and the tag was created to identify them/separate them out. Though there are lots of Chinese fics that make use of Zhu Yilong and Bai Yu characters, I doubt we'll ever have a huge number in English.

It still makes me a little sad to be "stuck" with a tag that pairs them and only them. I'd like to be able to have something we could have used to tag something that slashed, say, Zhu Yilong and someone else. But needs must!

Also my ex-tagwrangler instincts are apparently still active enough to give me a flinch reaction: please stick to freeforms and don't make a fandom tag for this.

See, now, this is really useful input! I've been meaning to talk to my tag-wrangler friend about it but haven't had a chance, so you're the first person afaik who actually has experience with it to weigh in, which makes your insight valuable. I suspect we'll mostly be agreed in the end on using the Character Combinations (or similar) freeform tag as the standard. If we had a huge community dedicated to writing crossovers like Hannibal does, maybe a fandom tag would be worth it, but obviously that's not happening. :)

[trobadora]

I think "Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations" is a good freeform tag, but I still wish we had something broader. I mean, this doesn't even cover FPF/RPF mashups like Time Engraver/Bai Yu. *g*

[glymr]

I don't think anyone would object to applying the Character Combinations tag to a situation like that, as long as we're still talking Zhu Yilong and Bai Yu (even the real ones). :)

I'm more concerned about situations where a Zhu Yilong or Bai Yu character might be slashed with someone else across fandoms. Like, I don't know, Time Engraver and...anyone who's not played by Bai Yu!

[ranalore]

As someone whose one nebulous Time Engraver story idea doesn't involve Bai Yu and doesn't really pair Zhu Yilong with anybody at all, I'd rather have a broader term. I mean, obviously my idea would simply be covered under Time Engraver itself, which I believe was nominated as its own fandom in Yuletide, unless people stuck to putting in optional details, in which case, you can nominate it as a fandom in future! I've nominated commercials in the past!

Anyway, for the recs comm in the works, my co-mod and I were intending to have a day a week when we allowed recs for what we initially intended to call "Guardian-adjacent" fanworks. I feel like this neatly covers not only fannish engagement with the work in question and any combination of characters, ships, or fandoms—without feeling like it's forcing any—but it also indicates these properties remain separate canons. My issue with something like "Guardian Wider Universe" or "Extended Universe" or, really, any use of "Guardian" and "Universe" is the implication that these other canons, and thus the fanworks, are perforce taking place in the same reality as Guardian itself, and any BY and ZYL characters might therefore be read as variations on Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei. I prefer a term without such implications.

And yeah, as a former tag wrangler, I'd agree the proper field for such a tag on AO3 is freeform.

[glymr]

These are some excellent points!

Yes, my one Time Engraver story is Time Engraver/OMC. The OMC is...loosely...based on Zhao Yunlan, but I don't want to claim that he *is* Zhao Yunlan, as which would be implied by the character combinations tag.

I really like the idea of "Guardian-adjacent" fanworks; that's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of in my initial post. There's no reason we can't have both tags (ie both the "Character Combinations" tag AND some tag to identify fics as "Guardian Adjacent"), either - a fic could potentially use both or either depending on content.

I agree that the "Guardian Wider Universe" etc could be confusing. Do you have any suggestions? I worry about tags being misused. Perhaps a more obscure tag like GD6D (for Guardian Drama Six Degrees) might make sense after all, as only people who understand the reference are likely to use it. But then again, tags should exist for clarity, so making it intentionally obscure could be bad. It's a dilemma!

Thank you for your input! Tag wranglers are awesome!

[sakana17]

I was also hoping for something broader and not specifically tied to pairing a Zhu Yilong character with a Bai Yu character.

both the "Character Combinations" tag AND some tag to identify fics as "Guardian Adjacent"

I like this idea, where both are possible.

[glymr]

Me too! I think I'm going to start using the Guardian Adjacent tag in the hopes of popularizing it.

[xparrot]

Would it be better if the main tag were "Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong Character Combinations"? So it could cover either them paired up or separated? As all the works I've heard of are for those actors' other work, not anyone else in Guardian.

You could ask the wranglers if they could change the canonical (I'm not wrangling any Chinese fandoms though and am not that familiar with how we're handling these tags that are majority Chinese-use anyway. It may also be possible to make an "and" tag like that a metatag of the BY/ZYL tag, though that can be a hard sell given we try hard to avoid unnecessary metatagging. With the Chinese fandom involvement though it might be the best choice?)

[glymr]

It's a good idea, but the problem is that the Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations tag is already a mirror of the Chinese versions of the tag. In fact, the Chinese version of the tag almost certainly came first. So when you click one version of the tag, you get anything tagged with any version of the tag like this. Which means we can't really significantly alter the tag from the original intent. :/

I think a Guardian Adjacent tag used in possible conjunction with the Character Combo tag may be the best bet.