a, abbr, acronym, address, [align], [alt], [axis], b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, cite, [class], code, col, colgroup, dd, del, dfn, div, dl, dt, em, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, [height], hr, [href], i, img, ins, kbd, li, [name], ol, p, pre, q, s, samp, small, span, [src], strike, strong, sub, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, [title], tr, tt, u, ul, var, [width]

For each entire work:

• Rating (General/Teen+/Mature/Explicit)
• Archive Warnings (Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings/Graphic Depictions Of Violence/Major Character Death/No Archive Warnings Apply/[Rape/Non-Con]/Underage)
• Fandoms
• Categories [In case of romance and stuff]
• Relationships
• Characters
• Additional Tags [the tags can be literally anything, from highly standardized and capitalized to short rambles]
• Work Title
• Summary [Max. 1250 characters]
• Notes [Max. 5k characters. both at the beginning (they appear just below the summary) and the end of the work]
• Collections
• Series [different from collections because they are strictly ordered and can only (to my knowledge) contain work from the same account]
• Inspirations
• Work skin
• Limitations on visibility and interactions
• Co-creators/gifts to other accounts etc.

(each work has a

Furthermore, each chapter allows for more stuff:
[*]Chapter title
[*]Chapter summary
[*]Notes [both at the beginning and the end of the work]

1A.

I’m not certain myself, due to a few factors. First and foremost Keeper was the one that set up that account, and they’re not here anymore. Given that it’s been years since I have even logged into the Archivist gmail either, I worry that it may lock itself with only Keeper as the recovery – and I do not recall if I changed any of that. I guess it depends on google’s reaction if one of us tries to log into the old account.

1B.

For the name, I’m pretty alright with an underscore myself. It’s a tiny bit of nostalgia for me, recalling the times when spaces were never allowed in usernames, and IIRC we used an underscore for the old mothership forums.

For the picture, the “official” M:EM logo is a fine choice, though I will admit a certain fondness for the brain avatar we used on the mothership, tho I never knew which card art that was.

1C.

That’s something I’ll have to come back to. I’ve never considered myself good at that, but theoretically it should be easy to slap something together?

2A.

I do not recall uploading any works directly to the NGA wiki. I do not know how AO3 handles text formatting, tho, and it might take a bit of work to replace all the html tags. I don’t recall how many works I had edited for the Archivist’s Google Drive to that effect, but that’s an option as well.

2B.

Honestly for a while now I’ve thought that there are a number of works that deserve some more easily-accessible home even if they aren’t officially part of our Archive; like, I understand why our rules have kept some works out of our own canon, but it’s unfortunate that things like OL’s story of Gideon’s Bible had to be rejected. Between my expanded horizons over the years of the freedom of fanfiction, and my plummeting opinion of the official WOTC treatment of the Magic multiverse since retreating from the game, I’ve long wanted to just let anything “in”.

The fact that AO3 allows for such sub-accounts, where we can just have like a publisher of mainline works and secondary publishers of spin-offs, without even handing off that responsibility to every original author to make an account and post it themselves, sounds great; though I wouldn’t be opposed to just creating a tag for what counts as “M:EM Inclusive” so that if, say, Raven made an account just for his M:EM Highschool shenanigans, they could still be found via the tag, or if others wanted to add on their own takes to let our multiverse grow organically.

2C.

Oh, it actually looks like most of our works can be taken directly from the forum threads because they’re already using HTML tags. I’m not super familiar with HTML but I can see some substitutes in the allowed list – code blocks should work fairly well in place of quote blocks, for instance. It depends on each work’s needs and maybe looking over what those HTML tags actually do

3.

Also worth noting that the four major tags often serve as a “cover” for people browsing and IMO should always be filled: Content Rating, Relationship (a “General” rating in which there are no romantic relationship OR the romance is not the focus of the work exists), Content Warnings, and the In Progress/Complete tag.

Also given AO3’s interface, I personally find having too many tags on a work can be detrimental as it makes a “word cloud” before the summary and can be hard to sift through, even though normally I am all for tagging works with as many tags as possible for organization and search purposes.

3A.

Plane names might be better suited for a general browsing audience as something like Jakkard (World}, because while general nerdery fandoms would be familiar with the term “plane”, in my experience it means something a little different in every property. Like, by my understanding of D&D lore, each of our MtG-like planes would have to be labeled as a “material plane”, which would be even more unwieldy.

If we want authors as tags (which isn’t a bad idea come to think of it), I’d go with Author: [X] for it to be early in the tag list, though if said author has an AO3 account it would also be nice to link their account in the notes.

3B.

Both Original Work (as part of Fandom tags) and Original Characters (as part of general tags) already exist and I see no reason not to use them, particularly the simple Magic: The Gathering (Card Game + Original Work tags, as it very quickly establishes to the viewer “this is not just a fanfiction of what you’re familiar with”.

As I mentioned above, I’m roughly in favor of letting the project grow organically, particularly since
A) the Archivist account can serve as the final Word of God on what’s canon
B) we are a small and dwindling number and haven’t even had a vote in over 3 years; we could use some new blood, whom we could approach with the offer to be inducted into the canon under the Archivist account

Instead of coming up with a set of obtrusive notes for every story, I’d suggest a short disclaimer either for the description or as part of the end notes which just says something to the effect of “Like what you read? Check out our profile for more info” and when applicable add “This author is also on AO3 here”. Obviously the profile would be where to stick the NGA link.

3C.

I believe everything in the Archive subforum includes a short content warning at the top of the thread/post, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most depictions of “graphic” violence were skipped because that tends to be so integral to the fantasy genre. I wouldn’t be opposed to using the “Content warnings could apply” tag for most of our work considering that fact. That said, I think if we work together our collective memories could help elucidate most of the Archive for that purpose. Particularly since most of our prolific authors are still around and I read most of the Archive more than once during my time as Archivist.

3D (glasses).

For those that have them, the summaries on the NGA wiki might work, tho that list might be pretty small. It’s possible we’ve got other summaries sitting around in the voting threads or original posted threads for some stories.

I know for a fact that AO3 lets you add tags as they become relevant to a story, so I would say don’t worry about tagging every character until there’s been a few works with them in it, and even then I’d say only planeswalkers and prominent planar figures like Jackie, and not minor characters that might appear in more than one story such as Ursalyn from Beryl/Aloise’s romance plot (which I had to wrack my brain to find).

3E.

I don’t think it’s worth marking races as you’re suggesting (mostly because as you say then you can just do that for every race, but there are definitely some “fields” each work generally needs IMO:
- Author
- Plane (some exceptions such as Baloth Roars at Rock)
- Character(s) (Dossiers excluded for instance, but they would need their own tag)
- and a few general trope tags (mostly fantasy applicable)

4.

Probably the About section of the account will suffice, but I’ll have to think on this some more, especially as more people chime in.

I'll wait for further updates then.


Idk how relevant this might be, but I'm not sure I know what art you are talking about.


Not only it accepts most html tags but it takes rich text for works, meaning there 0 additional work necessary for most pieces.


Owo, what's that?


...I'm not familiar with that either?


We can't stop anyone from using the Magic: Expanded Multiverse tag, which is maybe what you mean by "organically".


That would prevent html in the quote from working, tho. Also, and I know that's a minor issue, the quote has the advantage of having the "X wrote" which is beautifully fitting for some excerpts, but I should prolly accept that as a loss.


Fair, it's important to find some balance.


Good point.


Makes sense, you hook them on the good stuff before reeling them in. Disregard the ominous phrasing


I've seen the use of the Canon-Typical Violence tag, but MtG not being terribly consistent with... well, almost anything, I dunno how apt that'd be.


Searching them like that might be more work than writing from scratch, though.


Oh yeah, the Work By Character index has a pretty optimal selection for that. Quick aside, I'd rather put tags with no other relevant work early than having to check again and again 300+ works to add them in batches.


Why would you exclude them?


Yeah... I'd rather have some list to pick the relevant options rather than coming up with names for classic tropes, tho.