heads-up, ao3 tagging

[jmtorres]

So, okay, you know how Marvel Movieverse, aka Earth-199999, is: Iron Man, Thor, Cap, Hulk, Avengers, but not X-Men or Spider-Man, those are not getting the tie-in Phil Coulson in your movie?

It was bothering me that searching Marvel movieverse or Marvel movies pulled up everything, including lots and lots and lots of XMFC, which, you know, weren't tagged Marvel movieverse, they were tagged X-Men First Class, but they got wrangled in. I submitted a support request about it, and AO3 responded by creating a new tag:

Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, which of course no one has used yet, but if you tagged for the individual films in the series, it sorts in. So I guess--keep tagging for the individual films, or use their new Marvel Avengers Movies Universe tag, but know that "Marvel movieverse" is going to continue to be treated as a general catch-all and not be separated from the X-Men or Spider-man series in AO3 wrangling.

(I would vote using Earth-199999 or Marvel 199999, since I know people do use 1610, 616, and 3490 at times, but um, apparently most people didn't go geek out at the universe numbering system like me. And no one has tagged 199999 on AO3 at all. I AM A GIANT GEEK. MOVING ON.)

Comments

[settiai]

And no one has tagged 199999 on AO3 at all.

That's only because I haven't written any movieverse fic yet. :-P I still can't believe I'm the only one using the "Earth-20051" (Marvel Adventures) tag.

[jmtorres]

I love you the best.

[jackandahat]

I'm glad someone's working on this - this is why I tend not to bother with AO3, because there's too much merged that doesn't belong together and it makes searching useless.

(I've sent in E-Mails about stuff I've hit before and got varying responses, gave up after the last one was pissy. I tend to be very much not keen on systems that try to think for me anyway, so I think it's just Not My Thing.)

[jmtorres]

I've found: they're happy to wrangle things together that they didn't know should be wrangled together (for instance, when I requested Bob the Skull and Hrothbert of Bainbridge be wrangled together for Dresden Files TV) but they're reluctant to unwrangle anything that is already wrangled together (like, Marvel movieverse, they didn't want to take anything out of everything that sorts into that tag).

I wish there was a way to search for "only the tag I have specified, not anything wranglers think is the same."

[jackandahat]

Which is really annoying - because some you could say are arguable/borderline call, but really... Hank McCoy and Disney beast? Nothing to do with each other. That's like lumping me in with Jack Sparrow and Jack the Ripper.

I checked and they fixed it now, but for a long time FTM took you to all trans fic, which annoyed the hell out of me. No, FTM and MTF are not the same thing, and just because I search for one doesn't mean I want the other. If I wanted "all trans characters" I would type in "trans character".

[niqaeli]

That particular conflation may be difficult to do much to completely correct -- whatever tag wrangling has been done (and I'm not familiar with those tags and am entirely too much headachy to go dig and find out), the problem will remain if people uploading fic only enter the tag 'Beast' when entering the characters then that is all the system has to work with. Which means, everything tagged with that, regardless of fandom, will show up if you search the tag 'Beast'.

The only solution there, I can think of would be to then check it against the fandom(s) and see if the fandom is Disney or Marvel and then wrangle the tag on the specific story to the correct character, but frankly that would probably be nightmare to either code into the system or to do have wranglers doing manually.

The tagging system on AO3 is an odd, odd critter and not for everyone. I do personally find it useful when searching for particular pairings, but it can also be very frustrating when you hit the edge cases and they've been mishandled or simply handled differently than you think they should. Better filtering tools when searching by tag would help, a lot, I think.

[niqaeli]

That would actually be a really, incredibly useful functionality. As much as tag wrangling can be quite helpful, sometimes it would be nice to say "no, give me only stuff ACTUALLY tagged with 'x'". Have you put in a support request? (I ask because if you haven't, then I will.)

I also really, really want to ability to filter stuff OUT by tag but I think that's planned but not implemented yet, yeah?

[jmtorres]

No I have not put in that request, and yes, filter NOT is planned but not implemented.

Go forth! Let me not be the only annoying requester!

[niqaeli]

Yeah, okay, when I get home I shall put in that request.

(Of course, I got to put in the horrifying request for cleaning up the Thor/Loki wrangling which was broken in weird ways. I don't even LIKE the pairing very much, most of the fic is awful. But it was driving me nuts that the wrangling was broken. *facepalm*)

[jmtorres]

What was wrong with it?

[niqaeli]

I don't remember precisely, I'd have to dig up the email or something, but it was something like Thor/Loki was wrangling everything in correctly, but Loki/Thor was only pulling things actually tagged Loki/Thor. Something like that, anyway. They got it fixed, though.

[zvi]

Wait, wait, wait, why is X Men Movieverse not the same as Marvel Movieverse, according to Marvel? I thought some subset of people who appeared in Wolverine are also appearing in the Avengers?

GAH, this is why I don't do comics! And this isn't even actual comics, it's two (maybe 3? maybe 4? where do Daredevil and Fantastic Four fit in?) movies.

[jmtorres]

It has to do with who has the movie rights for different characters and properties. The Avengers set of films are all independent productions by Marvel Studios (or were? I am not sure where Disney fits in in terms of ownership vs distribution) whereas the other stuff are co-productions: X-Men, Daredevil and Fantastic Four with Fox, Spider-man with Columbia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Studios breaks that down, sort of.

Film companies do not exactly make this sort of thing transparent. I would guess if there's a character from the X-Men movies who's breaking out and crossing over, it's Deadpool, but um, they didn't give him any lines to begin with in that movie, and he's not specifically an X-Men character, so Fox probably didn't get or possibly lost rights on him.

[valtyr]

It's confused by the fact a lot of people are cheerfully adding X-Men and Spider-Man to their Marvel Avengers movieverse fic, I think.

[jmtorres]

...admittedly I am mostly going by the headers so if people are tossing characters in as cameos and not putting them in the tags, I'm not seeing it in my tagging research, but:

As far as I can see, no, not actually? Most fic actually tagged Marvel Movieverse or Marvel (movies) is just Earth-199999 by the character lists, and if they include other characters, authors include other fandoms in the tags. Sometimes even referring to such fic as crossover. Like this: http://archiveofourown.org/works/116148 The tags on this are representative of what I've been seeing when the twain shall meet.

[valtyr]

I haven't checked from a tagging perspective, but I have seen a fair bit of mashing together willy-nilly; people are making graphics and art with Andrew Garfield-Spidey in, and the movie's not even out yet.

[jmtorres]

Yup, it's pretty much *just* a tagging perspective I was querying AO3 regarding. I want to be able to search for Marvel movieverse and get fic with Earth-199999 characters (and other Marvel characters are fine! Hell, other universes are fine too, traditionally if you seach for a fandom you get crossovers with that fandom listed as well) but NOT fic with no Earth-199999 characters in it and like, only XMFC or something.

[valtyr]

It's odd, because I've seen Steve/Tony fic tagged as Iron Man/Captain America crossover, which... seems so wrong to me. I totally agree the Marvel shared movie universe needs a distinct tag.

(It doesn't really matter to me; the only tags I click regularly are the Steve Rogers/Tony Stark tag, and occasionally the Tony Stark tag and the Steve Rogers tag. I know what I like.)

[jmtorres]

Yes, well! I know niqaeli is using Steve/Tony as her search term and I'm mostly following her bookmarks around, but a) I will read other pairings (and gen) and b) I am not used to checking headers to compensate for multiple canons with the same characters and at length I have determined that Ultimates fic is not my speed, in specific, but also that a lot of comics fic throws me because me I am just that much of a neophyte here, so I was trying to figure out how to find JUST movie fic on AO3 and then it got complicated.

ETA: I wish they would get the exclusion feature up on search! Because Ultimates, 1610 etc, are actually wrangled pretty well, if I could just filter them out.

[valtyr]

I guess the new tag will help, then! It could definitely be clearer which is which.

Wait, does this mean clicking on the Thor tag will bring up all the Iron Man results and so on? Because they're wrangled together?

Ultimates is quite a characterisation jump - Marvel Adventures, 616 and movieverse all have much more overlap I think. Although it looks like Clint and Natasha will be closer to Ultimates. Early to say, yet.

[jmtorres]

Nope! Searching for Thor will bring up: stuff tagged for the Thor film, stuff tagged for the Thor comics, and stuffed tagged with Thor as a character (ie, you might get Iron Man fic *if* Thor is listed as a character in it). (Character tags and fandom tags are not functionally different from each other! So you get things both ways.)

My new cue that I am reading Ultimates fic is the Steve in my head going "Why am I an asshole in this?" *facepalm*

[valtyr]

Sorry, I meant the "Thor (2011)" movie tag, that shouldn't bring up other continuity fics Thor is a character in? It doesn't seem to bring up other Marvel movies.


Steve, it's because you're trying to hide your inner pain with a stern facade.

[jmtorres]

Without actually being a wrangler and therefore lacking behind the scenes experience or terminology: as far as I can tell, some tags are umbrella tags, ie, when you search them you get everything wrangled to fit under the umbrella, and some tags are not, you get just the specific thing and not related things. Like, oh, here's one with a less complicated comic/movie relationship--The Losers. "The Losers" functions as an umbrella tag, you search it and you get "The Losers - All Media Types" which includes "The Losers (2010)" and "The Losers (Comic)". You try "The Losers (2010)" tag and it functionally excludes "The Losers (Comic)" tag and vice versa, except where things are tagged both. "Thor (2011)" is more a specific tag than an umbrella tag; the fact that's umbrella'd under "Marvel Avengers Movies Universe" with Iron Man doesn't make *it* an umbrella tag.

The Steve in my head is not big on inner pain. Mostly he's just not big on being an emomoppet; he lost a lot but still he's alive! and it's the future! and things are amazing! and who else is a robot? --hilariously the most emomoppet version of Steve I have in my head is from the AU where I was experimenting in how much of Tony's life you have to change to make him not be fundamentally damaged. Steve is all sad and Tony builds him a rocket! To go to the moon! Because trips to the moon will totally cheer everyone up, right? It always works for Tony. (the goddamn lunar base fic in my head is so ridiculous, I do not even.)

[valtyr]

Huh, that's novel. Thanks for clearing that up for me. :)

Ult Steve has more inner pain and is less articulate, so. (I mean, yes all Steves have a rough ride, but he's the only one who's had to kill the supervillain son he never knew he'd conceived with his wartime love. It's a much more crapsack world, which is definitely not to everyone's taste.) The Moon is a great cure-all. Somewhere I have fic where Steve takes Tony to the Moon for a picnic date. It's also not far off canon - Tony at one point lets Peter take MJ up to a satellite for a romantic date overlooking the Earth. Write lunar base fic! :D