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Clarification - songs & fandoms
Apr. 2nd, 2017 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morbaneA note: since I've had 3 similar conversations on this topic recently, it seems like a general post would be useful.
When writing your requests, please treat each piece of music as its own fandom.
What does that mean?
The FAQ currently says:
...The piece of music must be able to stand on its own without reference to a longer work. You can nominate songs from musicals or operettas or other media – but if it would be necessary to understand the whole musical, or the whole operetta, etc, in order to appreciate the piece, then that piece of music is not appropriate for this exchange.
Songs should be considered separately from their artists. Prompts should include musician RPF only if the song or music video can be considered to have an autobiographical or self-referential element. People who appear in music videos are generally to be treated as characters, not as their real-life or RPF selves...
and,
Songs and music videos are the only canons you can nominate or request in this exchange. Just as a song can include a whole world, participants are encouraged to focus on those worlds.
So: please don't ask for works in other fandoms that use the song video or lyrics in some way. If a piece of music from a larger work (opera, movie, concept album with an official story behind it) has been nominated, please don't ask your creator to create a work that requires understanding of the larger specific work - you are pretending that the nominated piece stands on its own.
If you ask for another fandom or for a larger fandom, you are essentially asking your writer to produce a crossover. In general exchange etiquette, those are the VERY optional kind of optional details. Here, they contradict a goal of the exchange: ideally, when works are revealed, anyone should be able to see and appreciate a work with no more background knowledge than the requested song.
I am making this post not because people are wilfully breaking rules, but because the existing rules are perhaps providing insufficient guidance.
When writing your requests, please treat each piece of music as its own fandom.
What does that mean?
The FAQ currently says:
...The piece of music must be able to stand on its own without reference to a longer work. You can nominate songs from musicals or operettas or other media – but if it would be necessary to understand the whole musical, or the whole operetta, etc, in order to appreciate the piece, then that piece of music is not appropriate for this exchange.
Songs should be considered separately from their artists. Prompts should include musician RPF only if the song or music video can be considered to have an autobiographical or self-referential element. People who appear in music videos are generally to be treated as characters, not as their real-life or RPF selves...
and,
Songs and music videos are the only canons you can nominate or request in this exchange. Just as a song can include a whole world, participants are encouraged to focus on those worlds.
So: please don't ask for works in other fandoms that use the song video or lyrics in some way. If a piece of music from a larger work (opera, movie, concept album with an official story behind it) has been nominated, please don't ask your creator to create a work that requires understanding of the larger specific work - you are pretending that the nominated piece stands on its own.
If you ask for another fandom or for a larger fandom, you are essentially asking your writer to produce a crossover. In general exchange etiquette, those are the VERY optional kind of optional details. Here, they contradict a goal of the exchange: ideally, when works are revealed, anyone should be able to see and appreciate a work with no more background knowledge than the requested song.
I am making this post not because people are wilfully breaking rules, but because the existing rules are perhaps providing insufficient guidance.
