Character Coordination

[aunt_zelda]

 Hi all!

This is a post I've been meaning to make for a few years now. Every year we have great challenges and collections, such as Misses Clause (promoting fics that pass the Bechdel Test) and collections for characters of color. However, the posts for those come during sign-ups, when people only have the tagset to work from. If nobody nominated any women or characters of color for your favorite small fandom, you're out of luck.

Look over your own nominations in these next three days. Look at the spreadsheet and the nomiations post on DW and LJ. Are these the characters you want to make requests for, write for, or both? Did you have a free slot and are you nominating them after looking at the requests tab on the spreadsheet? Are you already coordinating with a friend, or friends, to cover a big cast list?

Consider coordinating with fellow fans using the nomiantions posts and spreadsheet in these final days. Who is your cast list comprised of for your fandom? Are there women, are there characters of color, are there characters with disabilites? If someone who likes this fandom wants to participate in Misses Clause, will they be able to? If someone who likes this fandom wants to participate in a chromatic challenge, will they be able to? (Obviously not all fandoms can do this, some fandoms only comprise of a few characters at all, sometimes no one can find someone else to help with nominations. I mean this in general terms.)

I know every year only about 1/3rd of people nominating end up using the nominations coordination posts and spreadsheets. This year, why don't some of us help each other out to make the tagset more inclusive?

Edit: tl;dr: If you want to nominate more characters from a fandom, it's best to coordinate with fellow fans on the nominations pages I've linked above. If you don't want to, you don't have to.

Comments

[paradisi]

The only issue is that I can see this making matching harder if people set up to offer for characters that were nomm'ed...but then unrequested. You can't guess what people are going to request unless they put up letters, and those aren't required.

[aunt_zelda]

That's a problem every year regardless of fandom. A couple more characters in some of the fandoms isn't going to wreck Yuletide.

[paradisi]

I didn't say it was going to wreck Yuletide. But inflating characters in the tagset regardless of reason/rationale doesn't do anything to benefit matching.

[aunt_zelda]

regardless of reason/rationale
If people want to nominate these characters, isn't that a reason to nominate them? What other reason is there to nominate a character unless 1) you want to write about them 2) you want to read about them or 3) you're nominating because someone else wants them and they ran out of slots?

Character nomination coordination last year helped one fandom I know in particular, Critical Role. They had 24 characters nominated last year, and got 15 stories in the collection by year's end. Everyone from the main cast (6 characters) to the supporting cast, to some of the villains, were nominated. I got matched with someone who requested one of the minor antagonists. They were overjoyed. That wouldn't have happened without coordination among fans to ensure multiple characters got nominated, not just 4 of the leads by 20 different people.
I don't think "inflating characters in the tagset" is something to worry about right now. If it becomes a problem later, great, there's plenty of ways to solve that. But right now it seems that Yuletide doesn't need to shrink itself down.

[paradisi]

I have no problem requesting characters for the above three reasons. If someone came to me on the nom coordinating spreadsheet and asked me to add two diverse characters to a fandom I had open slots for, no problem.

But you're not asking that. You're asking people consider adding in a bunch of characters blind bc there's open slots, in case someone hypothetically, maybe, wants to offer that.

And that's great for Critical Role, but it sounds like there were enough fans/people dedicated to that fandom to request it on its own and well as offer, which is how it got a coordinated, robust tagset. It wasn't just people adding in characters willy-nilly bc they thought someone might request or offer it, possibly.

[aunt_zelda]

But you're not asking that. You're asking people consider adding in a bunch of characters blind bc there's open slots, in case someone hypothetically, maybe, wants to offer that.

Please do not put words in my mouth. We seem to disagree about expanding the nominated characters, that's fine. If you want to have a conversation that's great, but don't put words in my mouth.

[paradisi]

Apologies, then. That's how I'm interpreting this initiative. What do you mean?

[(Anonymous)]

+1

This is how I interpreted the main post as well. You may wish to rephrase it.

[muccamukk]

Lots more people sign up than nominate though, so this would just make the tagset a bit more robust. If I nominate three obscure fandoms and then pick something as my fourth than someone else who nommed and didn't end up participating did, I'd still be unmatched. There's always a list of initial pinch hits.

[paradisi]

Like I said before, the sentiment is good and I understand what they're going for here. But I don't see what's so great about adding a fourth fandom (and potentially widening your net) only to still be unmatchable bc no one was actually interested in offering those characters on first blush.

[aunt_zelda]

Every year I see plenty of people go "oh, I wish someone had nominated more women/more chromatic characters/that person" when they find out about the challenge posts. Every year there are duplicate nominations for characters from people who didn't coordinate.

I don't understand what you mean by "fourth fandom." I've teamed up with friends in the past to nominate multiple characters from an ensemble show, sometimes that's one or two extra characters, sometimes it's eight characters total. I see people do this a lot. It results in more choice and more opportunities from people who want these characters nominated.

If you don't want to nominate more characters, you don't have to. If you want to, it's best to coordinate with fellow fans. That's all this post is saying. Clearly you don't want to nominate more characters, and that's ok. Then this post isn't for you.