fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2588 ]

[ SECRET POST #2588 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2588 ⌋

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

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

__________________________________________________

12.

__________________________________________________

13.

__________________________________________________

14.

__________________________________________________

15.

__________________________________________________

16.

__________________________________________________

17.

__________________________________________________

18.

__________________________________________________

19.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 103 secrets from Secret Submission Post #370.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Because of tags? Does ff.net not have tags? Or are they just more stringent on their tagging system or something.

I think it's character listings. FFN only lets you select ... four? I think? Instead of listing apparently every character in the story, as this fanfic appears to.

It's not just tagging every character that appears in the story, it's tagging every character that is briefly mentioned in the story.

LOTS OF AUTHORS ON AO3 DO THIS. IT DRIVES ME ABSOLUTELY BONKERS.

I am forever happy that my fandom doesn't do this. I know it's pretty common in a lot of spaces and is so frustrating.

I'm more irritated about pairings. I'll be looking for a certain pairing, and find them tagged for a fic in which they're briefly mentioned, or that has them as one-sided.

I have the reverse problem. I'll be reading a nice little fic for my OTP, and then suddenly there is un-tagged 'pair the spares' in there. For charcters that I do not see together AT ALL. But they're not the main focus, so it wasn't tagged for. But I don't personally see them being in character if they're written as being a couple.

Oh, what the hell. My OTP is Dean/Cas, and the second pairing is Sam/Gabriel.

But yeah, I see your point about not being able to find pairing focused fic if every little thing is tagged for. Still, I would have liked some warning that a fic was going to have other pairings.

AYRT
I think "x/y - freeform" is used for that?

What on earth does freeform mean? I thought it was a description of a style, a kind of exploratory prose. But now I've seen it used so many ways I no longer know.

Does it really mean 'x/y - although they're not canon'? Because that's most non-gen fics out there. ie, most of fanfic.

I think it's something that the AO3 system adds, not the writers. I remember a tag wrangler talking about it here once. It refers to a certain type of tag.

*googles because can't remember exactly* From the AO3 FAQ:

"Each tag belongs to a category: Relationship, Character, Fandom, or Additional/Freeform. Tag names must be unique, so if a tag already exists in one category, then when it is used in another category, the Archive automatically adds the name of the category as a suffix."

So, it's a way of making sure tags that use the same wording but have different meanings are unique from one another.

Thanks for your explanation.

Although I'd heard the AO3 tag wrangling FAQs were convoluted, and there's proof, as I didn't understand any of that, or why it would work.

I nearly thought I had it on the third re-read, but... no.

Wrangler popping head in.

Basically, no two tags can have the same name, even if they're different types of tags.

So if, for instance, Harry Potter is already a character tag, if someone puts 'Harry Potter' in as a fandom, the system will automatically change it to 'Harry Potter - Fandom'. If they put it in as an Additional (AKA Freeform) tag, the system will automatically change it to 'Harry Potter - Freeform'. Therefore, they are distinct tags with different names and the system will not confuse them.

Hope that made it slightly more understandable.

(no subject)

inevitableentresol - 2014-02-03 23:55 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

dizmo - 2014-02-04 00:04 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

rabidsamfan - 2014-02-04 01:38 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

dizmo - 2014-02-04 02:03 (UTC) - Expand

Ugh, yes this. I think fandom has gotten over the Sam/Gabe thing a bit now though, so thankfully you don't see it as much anymore.

What bothers me even more is surprise connotations of Wincest. It's much rarer, but I have come across a couple of D/C fics that mention Dean having had past Wincest-y feelings or experiences that aren't tagged appropriately, and it is the absolute fastest way to pull me out of a fic. It's totally fine that people ship Wincest, of course, but I don't. I don't see it in the characters and it's actually a major squick of mine, so to see it mentioned in passing as a completely normal, acceptable thing for the characters in a fic that focuses on a different pairing is infuriating.

I am still amused people seem to think Gabe/Sam was 'pairing the spares' and not you know something that started as a rarepair.

Ayrt

Oh absolutely it's a pairing in its own right (I can see how insulting that second sentence might have come off - sorry!) but it was also a common spare the pairs thing in d/c fic for a while there. Like, some writers explicitly said that's what they were doing, even.

In both case tags are not used correctly. In the first case they should not list every goddamn character from the series, especially if they are just briefly mentioned; on your case the authors SHOULD have put that second pairing in the tags, as they were part of a secondary plot, and clearly an imprtant part of that fic.

People forget that tags are a tool designed to help readers find or avoid stories in an efficient way. Idiots.

Are you calling the people in this thread idiots or are you referring to the authors?

I'm just pointing out something that I find annoying. It's just as easy for an author to say "mentions of x/y" or "side x/y". That way they warn people of the content without having their story show up in a tag that it shouldn't.

No, I was referring to the people who overtag. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I actually agree with you.

Me too- I wish they had a way to maybe make it so people list 'main pairing' and 'mentioned but not main pairings'- I read in at least two fandoms where the most popular pairings exist in pretty much every fic even just as a mention so it's pretty much impossible to filter.

God, that kind of thing pisses me off.

Why would someone be looking for a specific character if they're only mentioned once, in passing? NO. THEY WOULDN'T. ODDS ARE THEY'D BE LOOKING FOR A FIC WHERE THAT CHARACTER IS THE FOCUS.

WHICH IS WHY PEOPLE SHOULD ONLY TAG THE CHARACTERS THAT ARE THE FOCUS OF THE FIC, GODDAMIT.

yeahhhh that is really annoying.

ffnet has a shitty tagging system, but Ao3's is abused. :/

I wonder why people do that with tagging? Is it to make them feel more prolific/accomplished? To try to get attention drawn to their work by every poor bloke searching the tags for a character they want to see who may or may not even be relevant in your work?

I do not know how prevalent this problem is, though, since I rarely browse tags on that site.

Edited 2014-02-03 00:55 (UTC)

Mmmm, this sounds like a very plausible reason on why they do it. I mean, surely someone must pay attention if I tag every character in a series right?...

What they don't know is, people like me avoid fics tagged like this, as is clearly as day they come from someone who's desperate for attention in a bad way.

Generally, it seems to be because there are people in the fandom who'll go into an absolute pants-shitting rage if there's so much as a one-sentence mention of something they don't like.

Maybe its just me, but they accomplish the opposite when I'm scanning. Anything more than 2-3 lines of tags and I just skim right past. Sure, if it's some 140-chapter behemoth, maybe they're all warranted. But it just feels so attention-whore-ish that I can't bring myself to try them.

FF.net has character tags and genre tags, both of which you pick from a drop-down list. They recently expanded this so that you can have a bunch of character tags and indicate up to two pairings among them, but I believe you're still limited to two genre tags.

FF.net doesn't have tags. They have preset categories like genre, language, rating, fandom, and characters, so you don't get paragraphs of tags like you sometimes see on AO3. Which can be good or bad, depending how you view it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only