Evidence post

[bridgetmkennitt]

While nominations are going on, if you feel your nominated fandom or characters might be difficult to verify for eligibility, please link evidence below in this post. Whether it is because the fandom eligibility is on a non-AO3/FFN archive or has a single fandom exchange, the name is different on FFN and may be difficult to find, the character name you nominated isn't canonical on AO3, the nominated character is only on a few episodes...anything that might potentially require clarification on my end, please post about it here.

Comments

[raktajinos]

I was the nominator of these characters and I was referring to the character iterations from Living Witness.

Yes, the "Mirrorverse" as its know is a very specific 'verse in Trek, but for the past 20 some-odd years, the fandom, when referring to the Living Witness (LW) characters has always just referred to them as the Mirror Characters. And this became the standard, with an author sometimes leaving a note in their fic and/or summary about it being the Living Witness characters, but it wasn't required as it was clearly understood. As there is no other canon Mirror characters from Voyager, this has worked very well for the past 20 years. To think about using the character tag of 'AU Living Witness Janeway' is a really new way of specificity for a fandom that is really old. When we started writing these stories, that level of specific character tagging would not have been required. For old fandoms, the 'rules' and language are different than newer ones.

Canon-specific, while it's not *proven* that the universe suggested in LW is or is not the actual Mirrorverse. It very well could be, but that's not exactly relevant to this discussion.

I'm aware of Memory Alpha and Memory Beta, thank you.

Mirror C & J, as they are known to the fandom, are the LW characters; not the books. Because you're right, most people aren't familiar with the books - and they are largely not considered canon in the traditional sense. And it's quite US-centric to think that these nominations automatically meant book characters, especially in lieu of the rules of fic exchanges. In fic exchanges like NPT and Yuletide, Trek novels have been nominated under the 'Literature' section as 'Star Trek DS9 Novels' or whichever series is being nominated. Nominators and offer-ers are intelligent enough to know the difference and act accordingly. Combining the legacy rules of the fandom as well as the fact that barely anyone is aware of the novel-canon by your own admission, with the basic structure of fic exchanges, I don't see how it t was "unwise" to nominate characters that appeared ON screen and have been fanonically labelled as 'Mirror' characters...there is very little room for confusion.

[ghiaccio]

Well I was completely unaware fandom unofficially nominated LW characters as Mirror characters until now, that's why I let mods know what I thought was an unaware mistake. And I'm a trek fan and a fan reader for a long time.

Oh, and I'm not from US at all. When I saw the nominations my first reaction was thinking they were fanon characters, but to make sure of it I googled for them and found them on Memory Beta.

And honestly, since Mirror Tuvok (the canon version, not the LW one) is a character I do requested and offered, I'd be upset if I had to receive a gift that isn't about Mirror Tuvok. At least this chat enlighten me over this and I'll ponder if I want to risk to request him or offer him again in future exchanges. It frustrates me though, knowing I can't request a character because of it. :(

[raktajinos]

:) Well it had never even occurred to me that we *should* be referring to them by the 'AU Living Witness Janeway' kind of tag (which *does* make sense. I'll use that tag in the future for clarity sake. It also never occurred to me that there would be any confusion over it.

Ohhhh, that makes sense. I thought you were one of those book-purists (so apologies if my above response felt snarky, cause when I thought you were a book purist it was meant to be snarky...but you're not so, whoops :) ).

It does point to a larger hole in the "recording" of fan activities. For the LW characters to not pop up as understood Mirror characters in the "official" fan record, is troubling. Probably most of the people who write/read them are like me, and never really think to edit those hahah. I wonder if its on the fandom wiki. Either way, I'll have to make time to try and contribute to it/those.

Mirror Tuvok and LW Tuvok are *really* similar though; I don't even think the differences would be perceptible in fic anyways. I've offered to write Mirror Tuvok in these exchanges for years (never gotten it though so hahaha). But I think you'd be safe to request him. I think most people would never think the tag meant the book character (unless it was in the literature section). If I had gotten that assignment, I would have rewatched the relevant DS9 eps and Living Witness before writing the character.

The fanon has *assumed* that LW was the unofficial official Voyager glimpse into the MirrorVerse. Sure, it was about some aliens getting it "wrong", but we've assumed that that was just their way of telling an interesting story (cause LW is an excellent episode) and there are too many similarities in the LW universe to the actual Mirrorverse. So unofficial official. haha. Though that does create some timeline issues for Tuvok. *waves hand at timeline issues*.

The really important thing is that we want more Voyager fic.

But I've learned a lot too from this discussion. I never knew that the VGR Mirror characters had been explored in the books at all.