theimprobable1 reblogged
ive hidden in a hole and obsessively watched the entirety of community in a week and now im crawling out bearing gay gifts. enjoy
theimprobable1 reblogged
This.
I don’t know about others but the only reason I put both is so that whichever someone clicks on, they will find my fic. So if there is supposed to be rules, I guarantee you that no writer knows these ones. We can barely get people to comment, you think we’re going to specifically choose & or / ? Hell no.
I’ve been in fandom for twenty years, and “/” means romance and “&” means no romance was literally one of the first things I learned. It dates back to Star Trek fanfiction of the 70s. I’m boggled by the fact that anyone who’s been reading fic on AO3 for more than like five minutes wouldn’t know that, and I’m curious as to what fanfic community you come out of.
I don’t think that tagging with both is actually going to get your fic in front of more readers. People looking for romance often exclude the “&” tag if there are too many gen fics tagged with both. People looking for gen often exclude the “/” tag if there are too many fics with both. So rather than putting your fic in front of twice the people, you are in fact more likely to get your target audience ignoring your fic because it has a tag they don’t want.
Also, by overtagging you are more likely to annoy potential readers away from your fic than entice them. A fic tagged both & and / better have both romance and a ton of platonic interaction between the two characters, like a slow burn romance friends-to-lovers arc. If it isn’t, I’m going to be very unhappy because the author lied to me with the tags to try and trick me into reading a fic with deceptive advertising.
When I’m in a fandom and see tagging where some of the tags don’t really apply and are just there to get it in front of more eyes, I’m going to assume one of two things. Either the author is a newb who doesn’t know anything, or the author is purposefully spamming the tags because they don’t care about lying to their potential audience and think that “spray and pray” is an effective tactic. In the first case, their writing probably will not be very good, so why bother reading their fic. In the second case, the fact that I can’t trust the tags to be accurate means I’m not going to read it to see if it’s interesting even if it has a tag I like. Chances are, that tag isn’t actually in the fic anyway, and even if it is, by spam-tagging the author is making the archive harder to use for everybody. Why would I reward bad behavior with attention? No. Far better to mute the author and move on.
vampirepunks-deactivated2024072
To everyone in the replies/reblogs saying "but no one teaches us this," oh but they do! Ao3 has several bits of information about tag use, archive warnings, etc. When you post a new work, you see these question marks next to each prompt:
Click on any of these, and Ao3 provides a description about the purpose of different ratings, archive warnings, character tags, etc. The relationship tags blurb links you to a very helpful FAQ about tags. It's also available on the main page through "About > FAQ > Tags." This page includes, "How do I tag a romantic or platonic relationship?" Their answer specifically reads:
"Romantic and/or sexual relationships are indicated by using a slash ("/") separator (for example, Mickey Mouse/Minnie Mouse). Nonsexual, non-romantic relationships—such as platonic relationships between friends, family, teammates, etc.—are indicated with an "&" separator (for example, Hinata Shouyou & Kozume Kenma).
Platonic and romantic relationship tags are separate, so searching and filtering by Aerith Gainsborough & Sephiroth won't show results tagged with Aerith Gainsborough/Sephiroth unless both tags are added to the particular work or bookmark.
Relationship tags can feature more than two characters but shouldn't refer to both a romantic relationship and a platonic relationship at the same time."
If you're ever unsure how to use Ao3 tags, chances are the FAQ has a simple but thorough answer. It's only a matter of the few minutes it takes to find it. Please, be courteous to your readers and fellow authors by putting in the effort to tag your fics properly! Ao3 provides so much information about how to use the site, and there are lots of guides on tumblr as well, such as The Fanfic Author's Guide to Metatext. Willful ignorance gets you nowhere fun, so just take a short, easy detour to find out if that tag works the way you think it does. You're less likely to get rude comments and your fic has a much better chance to reach its intended audience.
Also, just pay attention to how other people tag??? There are terms I didn’t know but learned by noticing when they were tagged and a commonality between the fics. If you don’t know what something means or don’t know how to tag, use other people for inspiration! We’re all on here together, it’s not a sin to be inspired by other people.