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.

[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*

[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.

[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.

[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?)