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I know we discussed this when the Guide launched, but I wanted to check you're still happy to 'let them wonder'. You know my concerns.

-Nightshade, Head, Operations

> choosing to highlight only certain characteristics does imply that one values those characteristics

Sorry, can't let this bit pass. {= )

The point to highlighting the underrepresented is to make people who are often excluded feel seen. The value is in letting real people who have those characteristics know we proudly include them in our world where we can imagine anything. Those of us who are white, straight, and cis don't need help with that; you can't swing a cat without hitting one of us in media. (Not that you should be swinging a cat at all.)

I guess the Welsh might want help with that, IDK. And now I'm wondering if Dafydd Illian counts. And what about the Sato kids who (I think) are technically from Cardiff in the Torchwood continuum? And what about people from alternate–World One Wales-es? Pretty sure there's at least one of those. ... I think national origin might be even harder to capture accurately than gender. {X D

Re. Asian, Middle-eastern, etc., the advantage to "of Color" is that it captures ethnic minorities across continua. "Asian" doesn't apply in universes where there is no continent of Asia. Also, from a purely structural perspective, there are only 50 pages in "Agents of Color" at the moment; it's not exactly such a sprawling mess that it needs to be further broken down. If that changes in the future, though, awesome!

As for fantasy identities, yeah, there are some interesting cohorts there. We could definitely do elves, Time Lords, maybe dragons, maybe Vulcans... But we might want to leave the three Andalites, for example, to be covered by "Non-human Agents" (plus the Animorphs article, where there's also the one Yeerk nothlit and jeez, look, he's biologically 100% human, but culturally Yeerk, and if you asked him he'd still say Yeerk, so even the fantasy stuff gets complex!)

TL;DR, nothing is going to be perfect, so we should prioritize what we find most interesting and/or worthwhile for the benefit of real people.

~Neshomeh even hesitates to file Jenni under "non-human" because she spends so much time living as one.

It's a nonexistent island off the coast of New Caledonia. I'm not entirely sure how that would relate to the PPC, but it is interesting and could probably be used in a PPC story.

--Ls

But I don't have nearly as many characters to my name.

Re. numbers over time, I definitely remember thinking I was balancing the scales by adding male nurses to FicPsych c. 2008-2010. (And then I promptly killed two of them off, sooo, I accomplished precisely nothing there. ^_^; )

Re. Alex and Sam, I'll be happy to do so as soon as they feel like disclosing what the right category is. Until then, they're Schrodinger's Gender. ^_~

~Neshomeh

Though I should note that I've been so low-activity for so long that you should probably disregard my comments on this in either direction.

hS

... and the results were kind of depressing. I think I did better on gender breakdown than most other diversity-and-inclusion numbers, too.

The most interesting data would be how the gender balance has shifted over time, and I don't think categories would help with that.

hS

(PS: Alex and Sam object to your efforts to put them in multiple gender categories. You should just put them in the right one. Obviously.)

so of course I'm all for it ;)

Count me on board, then, I guess. Just as long as you're the one editing the infoboxes.

--Ls

I only need to do that once per template in order for it to apply to every infobox that uses the template. Since I intend to make the field hidden unless it contains data, it won't even show up on existing infoboxes. All effort to edit individual pages will be completely optional.

~Neshomeh

Hmm. Frankly, I am not a fan of specifically singling out individuals by inalienable characteristics in media, because I just.. don't think it really adds a significant amount of value to the character and derails more important points of story in order to pursue identitarian box-ticking. Personally, I don't think it's really necessary, and choosing to highlight only certain characteristics does imply that one values those characteristics, especially given that in our setting can easily have with characters any imaginable quality.

That said, I suspect most others won't necessarily agree with me here, given that this amounts to a political opinion, and I'm getting a bit off-topic from wiki categories, which is the main point anyway.

As far as adding more categories... why limit ourselves to only historically underrepresented identities? We can add categories for nonhuman agents (with subcategories for dragons, or elves), include more specifics than just "of color" (maybe a category for Asian agents? Middle Eastern agents?), or have one for, say, Welsh agents. If we're organizing characters by identity, might as well go for as many as possible, in my opinion. Frankly, I'd be perfectly happy with something like that.

--Ls

PS. I would be interested in looking through the agents category to see what they tally up to.

PPS. I can help with the Inactive category.

(I had to keep editing this because I messed up the strikethrough code. *facepalm* )

But if everyone disagrees with me on that, then sure, go ahead. It's not going to hurt anything. I might even help out, if needed.

--Ls

I'd put Laduquac and Ave in both Male and Female. Because there's no law that says we can't. {= )

For Sam and Alex, you could go wild and put them in all three; they are Schrodinger's Gender, each and all and none at once.

Most of the Glossary lot have associated pronouns, I think. I'm sure some don't, but I would be fine failing to capture 100% of all named characters. Not like the wiki captures 100% of everything else anyway, but we try. Sometimes. (♪ And if you try sometimes, you might find~~ ♪)

But nah, this is purely academic; I'm not mad about not going ahead with it. Just felt it worth pointing out that solutions exist if we wanted them. {= )

~Neshomeh

I really thought hS at least might be interested in the data, though. >.>

I strongly disagree with getting rid of any category that highlights minorities that are historically underrepresented in Western media. You can read it as "everyone else defaults to [insert assumption]" if you choose to, but a) you can choose to read unspecified as unspecified instead (plenty of people do this to add diversity to their fanfic [hi Lily]), and b) how else are you gonna find the characters explicitly written as not white, straight, human, whatever? And yes, for the record, I am rather in favor of adding more categories for non-straight, non-cis, non-human, and other minority agents so you don't have to hunt through all the unspecifieds to find them. {= )

Definitely agree with getting rid of the "Inactive Agents" category, though. It's not serving a useful purpose.

~Neshomeh

And one thing I may add: any transgender characters, or such would be easy to find linked in that very article on the subject. Not sure we need a separate category for it.

Other than that, I'm really not sure there'd be any particular benefit to having a category for male and female agents. Sure, other wikis do it, but it's not as though we're obligated to use any particular categories simply because other wikis have them, and as hS said, it just doesn't seem all that likely to be useful, at least in comparison to the workload it would give us. Consider the number of pages this would require an edit of: we've got around 900 Agent pages, 200 Staff pages, and 100 Flower pages--editing all that just to add redundant information (whether via infobox or category) easily obtainable already seems entirely unnecessary to me.

Oh, and speaking of unnecessary categories, I don't even like the "agents of color" category, because it rather implies (at least to me?) that agents are by default white (and human!), which is... not great. I also think we should axe the "inactive agents" category because it's not consistently applied, and I think the "retired agents" category works better in-universe. Of course, these are just my opinions, so take them as they are.

So, yeah, don't think it's worth it.

--Ls, having a bit more to say now that it's not really late at night

I only learned Doctor Who existed after joining the PPC, so to me, it feels like characters like Harkness have just always existed . . .

Also, your phrasing about Umbridge has made me picture:
Madam Umbridge lowered her wand, the Respecting Ancient Houses Policy now properly affixed to the take-notice board. "This isn't even my—" she grinned and giggled sweetly to herself— "final form." She picked up her briefcase and patted it fondly. "No, there are many other forms I can fill out, too! But I've another class to sit in on right now." And she skipped merrily away.

—doctorlit is positive Umbridge skips like a schoolgirl when no one is looking

Hi, everyone! It's been a... not ideal few months for me writing-wise (long story short, my fanwriting adventures are slowly coming to an end in my current main fandom, and I'm a bit sad about that), so I decided to go back to my roots and write something just for the hell of it. I first wrote a time travel story in the summer of 2021, and after being hit with an idea for a story within the same setting a few weeks ago, I decided to go back and expand that first story into a cycle of short stories within the same universe. As of right now, I have two out of the seven planned stories completed, but they both work as standalones as well, so if this falls through like my other longer writing ventures before, the current stories can still be read on their own.

As for the premise, this collection is about a secret agency whose goal is to keep the spacetime continuum intact. If that sounds a little familiar: I'm aware, but these stories aren't metafictional parodies. The main premises all center around time travel (time loops, alternate timelines, people meeting their past selves and so on), and they're all played for horror and/or tragedy. I'm also planning to add a soupcon of gay romance to the later stories, but the two I've finished so far don't have that yet.

• August 25, 1997: a young woman finds an answer to an unsolved mystery in an unlikely place. Warnings for implications of child kidnapping, some violent content, and strong language as well as mature themes (non-explicit, promise).
• Mirror, Mirror Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3: a seasoned time travel agent encounters a horrifying glitch on a mission. Warnings for mentions of needles and eye injuries, as well as more violence and language, and a lot of existential horror.

I'd be much obliged if someone let me know what they think of these; I've been feeling very rusty, and my latest stories desperately need feedback. I'm posting them on Wattpad just for reach, but if anyone here decides to check them out, please let me know what you think. :)

-Oculus

You know, since there's been quite a few book challenges lately...

And of course Hermione's first f-bomb is dropped about the library being locked to her! Anything else would have been OOC ;P

I did want to bring out how posh Justin Finch-Fletchley is! Honestly if it weren't for the blood status thing (and at least nominally according to the rules of Purityworld, that doesn't factor in at all now that he's a New Blood) I feel like he would've been considered a proper Malfoy playmate. He's proof that snobby Muggles also exist!

Lucius: How dare you expose my son to--
Lucius: How rich?
Lucius: Well, I’ll make an exception just this once.

(The Malfoys love money more than blood purity, according to Pottermore :P)

Yes, Harry is being ridiculously and unreasonably jealous. It will come back to bite him eventually. I promise.

Umbridge is horrible but I have to reiterate: this isn't even her final form. It's gonna get worse. I had a lot of fun drafting up the names of her horrible policies.

And re: Doctor Who: the DW reboot only came around in 2005, so that's why no one's wondering why Jacques looks suspiciously like the chap who played Raoul in the 1992 performance of Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre, or presenter of the Electric Circus on the childrens' programme Live and Kicking, or the presenter of The Movie Game. I will say, John Barrowman in the 90s was fine.

Thanks for catching that typo!

I would argue for Male/Female/Non-Binary/Gender Unknown or something, but for me personally I'd rather not. Like Ls said, pronouns in the articles themselves tend to be a better marker than a hard category.

Alex Orange and Sam Apple - who have their own spinoff which I've almost forgotten about - have genders; they've just never told me what they are. It wouldn't be correct to put them in "Non-binary".

There's also Laduquac of DAS, who is male but will eventually mature into a Drosk matriarch. "Will change gender" would seem to be non-binary, but he's definitely male for now.

Tiiiiiiiime Lords. I'm pretty sure Ave, at least, has a gender-switch while in the PPC - while not being "non-binary" at most points, since the character is fixed at either he or she until death.

And any agents for whom we just don't know, because they're a background mention on a glossary.

That's just off the top of my head when I've just woken up. :) Which, if you're happy with the categories not covering everyone, fine. But an info box field would mean "male, but will eventually mature into a female" would be just one more piece of text entry.

(Also, categories are great for searching up, eg, a DOGA character or an elf - but is anyone going to want to go "right, I need a page about a lady - apart from that I'm not fussed"?)

hS

Just to quickly respond to Linstar's comment, most of the details in the infobox are also covered in the article; the point is that the most basic facts are collected in a simple format one can take in at a glance, so it's redundant by nature.

My only slight qualm is the headache of backfilling the new row in all existing infoboxes, but that can at least be visually solved by making the row only appear if it has data in it.

New categories would definitely be a headache, but plenty of wikis categorize characters by gender, and I think it would be neat. Categories would have the advantage of capturing characters who only exist as redirects to the Glossary, and then we'd have a way to see at a glance about how many of each have existed. I'd propose three, for "Male Agents," "Female Agents," and "Non-binary Agents."

~Neshomeh actually enjoys grindy projects like this, anyway.

I think gender is a quite important information to include in the infoboxes, but I wanna see comm consensus.