So, I've been playing in FanFiction land. So - much - fun! Seriously, it's been great. Long-o time since I put the words writing and fun in the same sentence. Whatever glass wall was inhibiting me in my original work WIP vaporized in fanfic land and I've been plugging away diligently. I've come to realize that tags seem to be much more a thing in fic archives than they are in forums. My question is multifold: How do you decide what tags to use for your stories? Do you 'cover all the bases' possible? How do you learn the standard tags (other than just running across them by chance)? When you look for things to read, do you search by tags? If so, what's your method? Character, content, particular story features? What's your go-to search parameter? What's your view on PWP and other such-like stories? Are there other kinds of fic that make you think "Sweet Cthulhu, not this again!"..?
I haven't posted any stories to any archives yet, but I'll say this: tags are probably the bane of my existence. They basically mattress tags that are said to be illegal to remove. I essentially browse through the most popular stories in my fandom. Believe me, they are not hard to figure out. Anything with romance/smut/feelings gets thrown out. This is probably the only time I'll ever use tags. In terms of a go-to search parameter, I just dump the romance tags and hopefully find a fic that isn't smeared with teenage, angsty love. Ick. I'm beating a dead horse at this point, lmao. Romance, smut, anything that takes away the magic of the original intellectual property. I don't care to know my fandom's OTPs or whatnot. I just want to read a good story, damn it!
Fair enough. Most of the fandoms in which I have written are relationship heavy, in-canon, so I certainly do have pairings I focus on. I tend to pick No One's OTP™, tho.
Congratulations, you are now one of us My favorite fanfiction forum is FanFiction.net (FFN), which has a list of 21 genre tags (from "Adventure" and "Angst" to "Travel" and "Western") from which you can assign up to two for the story you're posting For my novel-length Doctor Who fic, I assigned Sci-Fi and Adventure For my Dark Knight swords/sorcery short story depicting the opening robbery, I assigned Fantasy and Crime For my post-zombie Sherlock Holmes short story depicting the first meeting with Watson, I assigned Supernatural and Hurt/Comfort It's been a while since I've gone to FFN for new reading material, but whenever I did, I'd generally look through the Frozen archives. Sometimes I'd search by "Most Reviewed" going back through the entire archive to find the best stories of all time, sometimes I'd search by "Most Reviewed" only going back the last month because I wanted to see which new stories were the most popular, and sometimes I'd search by "Newest" to see which stories I'd hope would become popular as they got more exposure. I could also add character pairings that I did or did not want to see. In the case of Frozen, I do not like Elsa/Anna, Elsa/Hans, or Anna/Hans, but I could only put one pairing on the "do not want," and I always picked Elsa/Anna stories to cut from the list because there were so many more of them. The only pairing that I specifically looked for was Elsa/OC ("original character:" somebody from the author's imagination instead of from canon) when I wanted to read a Get Elsa a Girlfriend story*, but most of the time I didn't care if Elsa would have a romantic plot or not in a story. *With the caveat that I don't like P (mf, mm, ff, ...) regardless of whether there's P or not. The biggest "Sweet Cthulhu, not this again" for me in the Frozen fandom is Spoiler: Rant Hans being redeemed – for trying to murder both of the sisters – and becoming one of the Good Guys. I'm a Christian, and I believe strongly in the concept of redemption – Saul of Tarsus went from being a mass murderer to being one of the core leaders of the early Church – but I've seen a bunch of "Hans is redeemed" stories, and none of them was written well enough to feel real and convincing. So far, this theme in the fandom feels less like a genuine interest in redeeming evil people's evilness (an interest which we don't see enough of in the real world, the lack of which causes a great deal of harm) and more like an interest in excusing evil people's evilness (an interest which we see too much of in the real world, the presence of which also causes a great deal of harm).
Ah...ha. Okay, so I've been playing over at AO3, where it seems things are a little different as regards the set-up, or (probably more likely) I still don't understand all the ins and outs yet. When you create a piece there, you start with the Fandom(s) the story falls under. Some stories cross soooo many fandoms, but then I look at the word count and it's like 2000 words, and I'm like... how? Then you pick the Relationships (if any, not required) the story is going to include. There's a difference between Tom/Tina and Tom & Tina. / means romantic relationship, & means other kind of relationship. Then the tags (insert Inception whaaas!), and this is where I feel like I get lost. Some stories have only a few, some have a never-ending list of them. Some are obvious, some are opaque. Schmoop? Seriously? ETA: Also, what is "P"?
Wow. In FFN, stories can cross any number of fandoms, but you can only officially assign 2 of them. I've also never seen large numbers of fandoms crammed into such a small word count. I don't like this set-up. I just googled "archive of our own schmoop," which was not immediately enlightening, and clicked on a link to a list of similar tags, which was an atrocious mess. After a moment's thought – and a quick look at some of the similar tags – I've decided I'm not interested in looking further in case it turns out to be something dirty. EDIT: The siren's song of information broke me: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schmoop schmoop (uncountable) 1. (fandom slang) Fan fiction, or part of a fan fiction, which is sweetly romantic or cute, usually to a degree considered maudlin. Synonyms: Fluff That was with regards to your PWP question. I don't like Porn stories, regardless of whether they are With Plot or WithOut Plot
Yeah, I learned what it was by going to Fanlore. But, as terms go... not very intuitive. Gotcha. It's a strange thing. Most of my stories (fic or fiction) have sex, but I would not call all of them Porn. But it seems - as is always the case with this particular dynamic - where people draw the line is so variable as to not be of much use. And then there's the conundrum of you want your story to get read, of course, but you also want to have an actual story, not just a sex scene. The conundrum comes in where the one piece I put up that is pretty much barebones smut (Altered Carbon fandom) went over like a house on fire, and then my GoT piece, which is story-story (with a smidge of smut), not so much. Part of me has to also assume that striking while the iron is hot is a part of the whole thing. Altered Carbon just hit Netflix a couple of months ago; GoT has been around. Do you think there's merit in that idea?
AO3's system is pretty complicated at the beginning, but it's also great for filtering and finding stuff later. Much better than ff.net. You actually don't start with the fandom. You start with the rating and the archive warning, and both are important. For example, if I categorise a work as "E" (explicit) and give the "rape/non-con" warning, people can reasonably assume that it's not much more than rape porn. If it's rated M or lower and has perhaps a bunch of other tags, then rape/non-con is certainly an element of the story, but it's not all it is about. When it comes to actual tagging - I use - character names - if applicable, the quest (for game worlds) - for TV shows, perhaps the episode? - if necessary, specifications of relationships (friends to lovers, BDSM, ABO dynamics ...) - seems that's something people actively search for. I wouldn't overthink it - after all, tags are a way to categorise, so it makes no sense to be too individual (and yes, many authors on AO3 totally overdo it).
Yep, yep. I forgot about the Rating and Warning, though I have noticed that rating is skipable? Sometimes that corner of the four-square is empty, and you can choose not to have warnings (none of the warnings on the list ever seem to apply to my stories, so I always choose none).
Eeeeeey, welcome to fanfic land. It is indeed fun to play around in someone else's world sometimes. Here's two cents of a bag tagger. Okay, admittedly I am a bad tagger and haven't posted very many stories, but I tend to go for basic ones. Genre, character, maybe a setting, that sort of thing. I slowly absorbed them through not actually paying much attention but seeing them anyway? To be honest? Googling [Fandom] rec's list. And then go from there. If there's an author I particularly like, look at their other stories, even check their favorites, that sort of thing. Sometimes I do hit 'sort by kudos/favorites', and even more rarely I poke around what was recently updated, see if anything jumps out at me. It's very rarely I've searched solely for a tag- I actually downloaded an extension to hide stories tagged as ships I didn't like. Blech, no thank you. PWP. Also 'hey this is a good story with a solid friendship- and now it's porn'. I very much subscribe to the 'if the teaser doesn't interest me, I don't click' mentality. Mostly what makes me go 'Sweet Cthulhu (love that phrasing btw) is when I get invested in a story and the author throws something in the mix that saps a lot of my enjoyment. (Which might happen less if paid better attention to the tags if I'm honest.)
Okay I'll throw in my two cents on this too: if something has a small fandom I do notice my standards do go down somewhat. New things are less likely to have a lot of stories, so there is probably some merit to that.
I'm cool with PWP, but crack-ships don't work for me. For me that answers to the "author throws something in the mix that saps a lot of my enjoyment" part of your comment. I feel like so much of the canon has to be subverted to make that happen, that why bother even starting with a canon to begin with. Like Ramsey Bolton + [anyone who didn't crawl out from under a rock] is a no.
