Blow off those cartridges!

[press_start_mod]

I decided to open nominations early because SE announced a release date for the Final Fantasy VII remake. Who knew we would live in a time when we are getting the FFVII remake within the next year?

EDIT: And the first tag I have to approve is Final Fantasy VII. I love you guys!

You may find the tagset here!

Before we start nominating, some preliminary information.

Character Nominations
You are able to nominate characters and character combinations! This means the following:

• Character A (video game title) - A fanwork where Character A must be the focus;
• group: Character A & Character B - A fanwork where the gen relationship of Character A and Character B is the focus;
• group: Character A/Character B - a fanwork where the shippy relationship of Character A and Character B is the focus. You are also free to nominate group: Character A/Original Male Character or group: Character A/Original Female Character.
• group: Character A/Character B & Character C - a fanwork where the shippy relationship between Character A and B, as well as their gen relationships with Character C are the focus.

The above examples are for two-three characters, but there is no maximum for how many characters can fit into a relationship tag (outside of the character limit in the nomination form itself).

Matching is "OR", meaning that you match on a tag. If you want Character A and Character B in your gift, nominate them as a group. If you nominate each of them separately your creator only has to include one of them. Please keep that in mind when nominating!

Crossover Fandoms
Crossover character combinations are eligible.

There are some basic rules though so that I don't cry a lot.

• When nominating a crossover, the fandom is Crossover Fandoms. I have already nominated Crossover Fandoms into the tag set so please use that spelling. Not nominating a crossover into this fandom will mean that nomination will be rejected;
• Nominations can be for gen fic or ship fic;
• Nominations are to be written like this: Group: Character A (Video Game 1) & Character B (Video Game 2) (or group: Character A (Video Game)/Character B (Video Game 2);
• There is no limit of the number of characters that are in a tag set, short of AO3's character limit;
• All characters in the crossover combination must be video game characters.

Series of Games
The test for whether a game is part of a series and should be nominated as one is as follows:

1. Is the game marketed as being part of a series (i.e. a trilogy, games set in the same world etc etc);
2. Are the games that make up the series part of the same continuity or different continuity;
3. Is there a significant crossover of major characters between the games?

At the moment:

• Dragon Age (Video Games) is the correct tag for any nomination for Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, and Dragon Age Inquisition;
• Mass Effect Andromeda is a separate game to the Mass Effect Trilogy;
• Final Fantasy games are separate to one another, except for the ones that are explicitly in continuity with each other;
• Kingdom Hearts is a separate continuity to Final Fantasy;
• The Star Ocean games can be nominated separately;
• The Kiseki/Trails series can be nominated as individual series (i.e. Sora, Sen etc etc)
• Fallout can be nominated separately.

If you are considering nominating a game that could be a series, or could be a tie-in, please drop a comment below so that I can hash it out with you first.

Eligibility of Games
For a game to be eligible it must:

• Be released by the time that signups close; and
• Not be heavily dependent on another, non-video game canon.
• If it is a game that is coming out in instalments, one instalment must be released.

Finally, a reminder: if you defaulted after the no-penalty default deadline in previous years, you remain ineligible to participate in this round until you complete your penalty gift. If you don't remember what you need to do, please email me and I will let you know what you need to do!

Otherwise, happy nominations! Noms close 11:59pm on 29 June 2019.

Comments

some questions

[lemniskath]

How would one nominate a game that doesn't have characters? Or request a story about the game without specifying a character?

Re: some questions

[press_start_mod]

If you want to nominate a game without characters, you can just nominate the game in the Fandom section and leave the character section blank. If we have any games without nominated characters I'll adjust the matching to allow that to happen on my end.

If you want to request a story without specifying a character you can choose "Any" to have it be any character or relationship in the tagset.

[thedevilchicken]

Would you have any preference about how Assassin's Creed is nominated? The modern day storyline (a tiny percentage of each game) is present in all games to an extent so they're technically the same continuity, but there are distinct character sets and time periods in the main storylines (except 2, Brotherhood and Revelations are their own trilogy with the same main character). They get lumped together by AO3 as "Assassin's Creed - All Media Types" (including the comics, books, etc.).

[press_start_mod]

I know that in the past it has been under one fandom, but I'm happy to open it up to the exchange for comment.

[thedevilchicken]

Thanks! I'd be interested to know what any other potential nominators think - I'm fine with it either way, personally (it's pretty easy to just request and offer the bits you know), but I know there's some differing opinions since it's so "this part's in Ancient Greece and this part's in renaissance Italy and this part's in Victorian London"...

[person4]

God I would love it if the different games (minus the Ezio trilogy) were broken up. It always drives me nuts how they're constantly lumped together.

But I'm not sure yet if I'll be doing any nomming or requesting for any of the games, so I'll bow to popular demand if most people like it as it is.

[thedevilchicken]

I see Assassin's Creed - All Media Types is in the tagset - should I take it that's what was decided for all AC nominations? I just want to check before I nominate anything myself!

[press_start_mod]

No, I just sent those through so that when I put up the discussion post over the weekend people know what tags are already in the tagset.

[thedevilchicken]

Awesome, just thought I'd check!

[gamerfic]

How do you want to handle the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games? In past years, KOTOR I and II have been considered separate fandoms for purposes of this exchange, but it appears that AO3 has synned them to the same tag since last year.

[press_start_mod]

I thought about it, and I think that if you use the individual titles and be very certain to use disambiguation tags then either it will work, or I will know what characters to separate out if I need to rename the fandom tags.

[crantz]

I'm nominating City of Heroes, an mmorpg. I plan to nominate enemy gangs/units as my characters and was wondering if Group: The Lost (City of Heroes) works or should I restrict it to things like Headman Rifleman (City of Heroes) as a single character?

[press_start_mod]

That would work!

[laughingpineapple]

Just a heads up, I'm the Unlimited:SaGa nominator and while I can see it got approved, it's not showing up in the tagset...

[press_start_mod]

You'll find it in Uncategorized Fandoms. I'm not a tag wrangler for AO3, so I'm not able to wrangle that tag to categorize it to be a video game.

[laughingpineapple]

Oh, sorry, that's where it was! Thank you!

[press_start_mod]

No problem! It's a fairly common query.

[tigerlily]

How do I nominate Breath of Fire? The game I want is Breath of Fire II. It is part of a series, being a direct sequel to the first game; however, there is name sharing across games for the two main characters, Ryu and Nina. I was thinking, can the games be nominated as a series, with the characters disambiguated by the specific game in parenthesis after after their names?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breath_of_Fire

[press_start_mod]

I'm not familiar with the series, but from that wiki page it looks like each game stands alone and not explicitly in continuity with one another. Unless I've missed something (which is possible!) I think they'd have to be nominated separately.

[tigerlily]

Thank you!

[xenoglossy]

So I see above that nominating in the form of "group: [collective canon term for group of characters]" is kosher, but is "group: Character A & [collective term for group]" also cool (where A is not a member of the latter group), or would I have to name each character in the group?

[press_start_mod]

A nomination of "group: Character A & [collective term for group]" would be fine!