[ SECRET POST #2192 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2192 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Tales of the Abyss]


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[Merlin, RPS]


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[Lilo & Stitch]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 032 secrets from Secret Submission Post #313.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. http://i.imgur.com/NGUop.gif

[deadtree]

Someone should make a guide for the uninitiated for things like that honestly-- it seems like common knowledge, but clearly there are people out there who don't understand how to properly tag fics, squicks, kinks, and pairings... or even rate things, for that matter :\ A kiss doesn't make it "M", but if there's graphic gore in a "T" rated fic that's even worse. It's not rocket science!

[(Anonymous)]

I mentioned to someone once that their HIV-themed fic probably didn't really need to be rated E, since by all accounts it was tamer than "Philadelphia" which was only PG-13. Her reasoning was that the fandom in question was pretty sensitive, so it was just a "better safe than sorry" approach.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm doing this. I am totally going to make a guide. I will post a link to it here tomorrow. Anything in particular anyone wants?

[thene]

Ratings systems IRL are hardly better. The King's Speech was rated more restrictively than The Dark Knight, because it used the word 'fuck'.

Personally I think fandom needs to move away from using ratings to simply stating whether something is SFW or not, and if not, why not. That's how the rest of the internet works and it's a much better system than the MPAA have going.

[nan]

This bothers me as well, OP. :\

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I can see why this would get annoying quick.

[supermanda]

Use the &. It means "and" not "fucking".
lol thank you

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed so fucking much

[forgottenjester]

Oh geez, I've come across this. I never click them even if I think it's a mistake. I just can't take that chance. I've even had people say in the summery, "This is friendship. No het pairing here!" and then they use the "/".

YOU ARE SENDING ME MIXED SIGNALS!

[silverr]

It might be that they don't have access to a relationship tag with an ampersand (or can't make one) ... if that's the case labeling the fic "Gen" or "Friendship" or "Family" instead of Romance / M / E is the only way to counteract the two characters involved showing as a relationship.

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh, yes. There should be some sort of requisite manual people have to read before posting fic on AO3.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm with you. Also, to other AO3 posters, if your "cute" tags number in the dozens, you maybe need to stop. While we're at it, please don't include any variation of "I suck at summaries" in your summary.

[(Anonymous)]

Unfortunataely there's been an influx of tumblr users to AO3 and the tags are suffering as a result.

[unicornherds]

They're also losing potential readers. There are a lot of friendship pairings that I love but will not read if they're romantically paired. So if they label it Bob/Steve and not Bob&Steve, I'm not going to read it.

[elaminator]

Agreed.

[making_excuses]

Same here.

[(Anonymous)]

Me too. I also have some pairings I prefer to be romantic and it's a dissapointmemt to find a fic with a "/" tag and it turns out to be platonic. Better for everyone to keep them distinct.

[queerwolf]

Yes, so annoying. I always roll my eyes when it's marked gen but has character a/character b. One of these things is not like the other.

[lady_songsmith]

I thought that convention went the way of the dino about 5 years ago. It was already being disregarded rampantly by the early naughts, and given most archives these days don't provide a choice, I figured it was no longer a thing. Sort of like the convention about putting the 'top' first is no longer a thing (except maybe in anime/mange fandom, which I understand is fussier about that).

[(Anonymous)]

Uh no? Even on places that don't let you use & you can still list it as '"character a, character b". As far as I'm aware (and I'm a fandom slut) / still commonly means there's a sexual or romantic pairing and I think most authors who use it otherwise are aware and do this on purpose to get more hits because they usually make it a point to explain that it's just gen (sometimes even claiming you can pretend it's shippy if you squint or read this like you watch the show!) in the summary.

[omorka]

I agree, OP. Having said that, let me ask an open question here: if I write a story that has no romantic or sexual content, except that it acknowledges a canon couple is a couple (say, having other characters refer to "your boyfriend," or some such), should I still mark it gen, or do I need to mark it het/slash/femslash as appropriate to the couple with an "established relationship" tag? It seems misleading to put in a ship marker when the story has no sex or romance and doesn't deal at all with the relationship as such, but it also seems potentially misleading for people who for some reason hate the canon ship to mark it as purely gen.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, if the couple's canon anyway and there's only one mention in passing, then that's gen because the focus is *not at all* on the pairing. It's assumed that the characters will know about & mention the pairing. That small a mention doesn't warrant an A/B tag and
might mislead those who're looking for A/B romance (or put off those who want gen).

However, if A/B is significant enough in the fic to be in a small part of the fic but the rest of it is gen, you could either tag it with the pairing or have something in your author's note to the effect of, "Mostly gen [or platonic], but contains hints of A/B."

[therangerking]

The genre of the fic depends on the focus of the fic. Basically, if I write about Aragorn talking to Boromir about Faramir, and it includes Faramir/Eowyn being mentioned, it's gen. If it's Faramir sitting in bed with Eowyn talking about his platonic friendship with Aragorn, it's gen. If it's Aragorn and Faramir screwing, or leading up to screwing, or kissing, or any form of romance, it's slash. If it's Faramir and Eowyn screwing, or kissing, or any form of romance, it's het.

Man it took me years to figure this out.

[(Anonymous)]

OKAY WAIT I AM CONFUSED

/might be doing AO3 wrong

so even if a fic is marked gen, i always assumed the A/B meant that this is "a relationship" that will be featured in the following story, without dictating the exact nature of that relationship so that it COULD be friendship, romance, sexual, etc. i've read a number of gen fics that use the A/B tag in that sense and have been using it myself to because most tags on the AO3 exist with slashes and not '&'s or any other symbol between two character names. obviously i know that historically / = shipping but i figured that the big fat "GEN" on top would have given away that this is not a relationship being dealt with in the romantic context???

if i'm wrong, please correct me so that i can go back and fix this. ughhh.