Tagging thoughts

[resonant]

How do y'all feel about stories that are tagged for every different sex act? Wall Sex, Blowjob, Handjob, Anal Fingering, like that?

It bugs me so much that I notice I've actually begun to train my eyes not to look at tags at all. It seems so crass; describing a love story by detailing sex acts seems like describing a human being by breaking down the chemical content.

And yet, on the other hand, searchability! I can easily see how you might sit down at the computer one night and say, "Wow, I'm really in the mood to do a search on Clothed Frottage."

Comments

[james]

If tagging is actually useful, and searchable, I love it. Sometimes I am, in fact, in the mood for reading a particular sex act, or emotional development, or just want something about hedgehogs.

As you say, it's pretty easy to skim over tags to not read them if you don't want to. What I dislike are those long and rambling "authors notes" in the tags that you can't search on, so why bother making them tags?

I wish more stories had good tags like "near-drowning" and "fisting" and "sub/dom from the sub's point of view" and the like. I once tried to make a list of all the fanfic stories I could find with near-drowning (and then being rescued at the last moment) in them, because that's a thing I like to read but no one ever seems to tag for it.

[realpestilence]

Ok, now I'm picturing a fic from the sub's pov: being fisted while nearly drowning.


...there's probably at least one out there. And I've been in fandom too long, because I'm trying to figure out how that would work. Sam/Dean?

[james]

No, no, it would have to be some ridiculous, tiny fandom so that I could never read it without scarring myself forever. Like Winnie the Pooh.

[realpestilence]

I actually read a Pooh porn fic once, just out of disbelief that it existed. That was a long time ago, when I was still innocent.


So. Kanga/Piglet, then? Bathtime is a ~special time for them.

[james]

Um. I have written Pooh porn fic.

Maybe 'Winnie the Pooh' was not my best example as a fandom that would scar me if it had subby fisting and near-drowning. *cough*

[realpestilence]

That doesn't bother me as much as relationships being listed at A/B when they're friends (and should be A and B, or A-B, according to the way we used to generally do it). So I go in prepared to read a romantic/sexual relationship and get something else. I might end up liking it, but it's kind of bait and switch. I do like gen and read it, when I'm in the mood. I also think "pre-slash" needs to at least have some indication on the characters' part that they're attracted to each other, or just go ahead and label it gen.

I don't care, I'll read anything if it looks interesting. I just like to know what I'm getting, so I can pick according how I'm feeling at the time.

[out_there]

I do tend to judge a story based on tags -- to many specific sex-act tags and I don't bother reading it if I want something character-driven and focused. On the other hand, if I'm looking for some PWP to hit a particular desire, they're very useful.

[boxofdelights]

Only one of my podfics has a sex-act tag. The sex act is rimming. I think tags for things you definitely don't want to read are really useful.

[carolyn_claire]

I find them vaguely annoying, too, and I don't look. There have been a few times, though, on longer, multi-chapter-type stories, where the tagged sex act list is so long that I sort of stare at it, agog and intimidated, and wonder if I'm up for it. Usually I am.

[rivkat]

I do tend to skip over tagsets like that, because it's not usually how I try to find stories--but I am really interested in what it says about the imagined audience. And I can see how useful it could be when that's what you want!

[pauraque]

I'm not very consistent about tagging my own stuff with kinks/sex acts. I tend to do it when the kink was the prompt, like in kink_bingo for instance, or if it's a common squick, like, say, bestiality. But it's very clear to me from the traffic patterns on my fics that people are in fact using the tags to browse for kinks they want to read — like, say, bestiality.

As for it seeming crass... maybe? Depends on the fic and what kind of audience you hope it to attract. In some contexts it could seem crass to tag that way, while in other contexts it could seem a bit coy not to.

[mergatrude]

I tend to skim the tag list for tags I want to avoid. I also find the long-winded, run-on tags annoying and often off-putting, but I guess they amuse the author(s), so eh. I can deal.

I also find it interesting in that we used to click on stories with NO IDEA what we'd find in them, but these days we're all so much more careful. I remember reading a story and being shocked by the death of a major character, but putting a warning on the story lessens the dramatic impact (even if it protects others sensibilities).

I don't know if it's a function of the mainstreaming of All The Kink, or that Fandom is so large and diverse we no longer know each author's style and kinks and therefore know what to expect of them. It's a conundrum. On the one hand, moar pr0n! On the other, can you trust them to give you what you want, and not hit your squicks instead of your kinks?

[metaphortunate]

IDK, I see a lot of "Author Chose Not To Use Warnings" on the AO3.

[mergatrude]

I must be skimming past those. They're the first tag on a fic, aren't they? Will have to start paying more attention. (I suspect it's a function of me tending to read authors I know and trust/love, or stories that have been recced to me. I don't do a lot of free diving.)

[minxy]

AHAHAHA. You're awesome. Also, yes.

I've mostly stopped reading tags. I usually feel like they are the author's Id showing, more than anything else. However, I've also found it very awkward to search for things I'm in the mood to read and generally rely on recs to find fic. Perhaps if I had more inclination to search for what I wanted then I would appreciate tags more?

Or, you know, not.

[riverlight]

I personally tend to tag only the sex acts that are particularly relevant to the story, where the kind of sex it is matters to the story somehow. It was probably kink_bingo that gave me a way to conceptualize it, actually—isn't "erotic focus" the phrase they use? If something's the erotic focus of the fic I figure it's worth tagging for, particularly for searching purposes.

I agree, I find it irritating. I think it's about focus—like, if you're going to tag every sex act in your story, why aren't you tagging the rest of the content the same way? (Have your characters in a car? use the cars tag! Have them going to school? put the school tag!) It just seems to dilute the function of tags in general.

[busaikko]

I agree with this! I think I'm also more likely to tag for kinks or scenarios that are unusual: I wouldn't tag for "kissing" in most cases, but I certainly would for "noncon" and "tentacles". (One of my most popular fics is probably read most by people who aren't in the fandom and have no idea who the character is, but arrive via the "tentacles" tag.)

I like the "erotic focus" guideline. If someone was asking for recs for certain sex acts, would that story be something I'd recommend? Or would I decide that they'd be unsatisfied when the "car sex" was just two lines in a 50,000 word story about something else ("They were in a car. So they had sex. Then the zombies came...")

[riverlight]

Exactly! It's the same thing for non-sexual scenarios—I'll only tag "road trip" if the characters actually, you know, take a road trip.

[florahart]

I like when tags not only give whatever kink things people might want or unwant, but also give a sense of tone --notnecessarily long A/N things, but like, serious tags for serious fic and goofy notes for silly fic? But what I hate--arrrrgh--is when people subvert the point of tags by putting many things in one bucket. Like, when someone posts their 37 ficlets as 37 chapters of one "story" even though they are unrelated, and tags for the 37 different pairings or fandoms or both, as well as all the kinks/sex acts in all the stories. There's no way to ask AO3 to only post the chapter in which the fandom:pairing is, say, HP:Charlie/Harry (which is rare, so maybe I want to read it), and it turns out this is fic 23 of the 37, and in the previous 22, 9 are HP in general and therefore therefore Harry is present in the first several paragraphs so they're hard to eliminate, and then four others are LOST, so there's a Charlie, same problem, and the other ten are one each of Twilight, 50 Shades, Fast and Furious, Teen Wolf, The Flintstones, Scandal, Once Upon a Time, Pretty in Pink, The West Wing, and Land of the Lost.

And then it turns out that many of these ficlets are substantial and involve whatever smut I might have liked in the tags, but the single Charlie/Harry that I wanted to read is a curtain-fic limerick.

And to get to it I had to get through Fred/Barney somnophilia, Duckie Dale breathplay, googley-eyed Ron/Hermione virginity fic, Vin Diesel crying PRS, young Jed Bartlett learning to ride a bike, Snow White/Grumpy knifeplay, and Sleestak pregnancy kink.

Augh.

[copracat]

I hear you!

[laurenthemself]

AMEN.

I've got one like this in TBBT fandom at the moment wherein there are currently 79 chapters. One of them is TBBT. Also since it's a collection about cocktails, most of every ficlet is a recipe.

[azurelunatic]

I'm all right with people who really need it having it available to them, but it would be nice to have an easy way to ignore it when I don't care about it.

[montanaharper]

Isn't there a way to make AO3 not show tags? I was sure there was.

[copracat]

I love people tagging for things. Some things are such small interest areas that you can easily miss stories, especially in the big fandoms where you don't necessarily have time to eyeball every story. Or it will have lots of things you think you'll like but then the author will fortunately tag that thing you loathe with the burning rage of a thousand suns and you'll save your time.

Professional fiction irritates me SO MUCH because it gives broad genres only. Tagging would make me buy more books, people. All historical fiction is not equal, for example. Or the time I read this great book that had factors A, B and C. I asked for that in the local queer bookstore where I'd bought the first book, citing the first book. I got recommended something that I would not have picked at all had I known it was neurotic middle class woman looking for love in all the wrong places genre, which pro fiction never labels, damn it.

[marina]

For me, the potential spoilery nature of the tags (going into a story and already knowing exactly what's going to happen) are greatly, greatly outweighed by the ENORMOUS convenience of searchability and the ability to avoid things I don't want to read! I generally really dislike "first time" stories, so if authors tag for it I can weigh my options of "but I really like this pairing" vs "oh but it's a first time story". Similarly, I don't like certain tropes and can more easily avoid them (or at least be prepared for them) than if the author just tells me the story is about A and B up front. I actually prefer stories with lots of tags to stories with few tags (I'll skip them or leave them for last, usually) because I know the tagged story gives me a much better chance of enjoying it by informing me more about its contents in advance.

And plus I LOVE filtering by particular sex acts (and discovering all the meta that comes along with what people tag for in what fandoms) or particular tropes when I'm in the mood. For example I'm the AO3's primary consumer of "knotting" fic, and being able to filter by it is super useful.

These days I try to tag my stories as much as possible.

[sassbandit]

Another cosign for "erotic focus" tags. Sometimes I just want to read *all* about blowjobs (or something less common, but actually, I have gone looking for good blowjob fic in the past). The problem, of course, is if people have tagged "blowjob" for fics where it's not a focus or where the mention of it is fairly fleeting. If I'm not looking for anything specific like that I just tend to skim past the tags.

I have to be honest though, it's the non-sexual tags that I love most. Like for instance the really detailed taxonomy of different kinds of AUs or tropes or whatever. The part of my soul that loves categorising and alphabetising gets really turned on by that.

[mific]

I'm often pretty fussy about which fandoms I really want to read (although I do play and read in quite a few overall), so I don't usually search by sex act tags at all - the act, done in a fandom I don't give a toss about, by characters who are strangers to me, is meaningless.
I don't think seeing a lot of sex act tags would put me off...much...other than to lead to eye-rolling and maybe I'd avoid the fic if I decided the author sounded like an idiot someone I wouldn't want to read.
I stick more to authors I know I like to read, and try new ones more on recs than on spec. Certainly don't get there from specific sex-act tags. I do tag for specific kinks a la Kink Bingo, and the "erotic focus" ideas above are good, too.
And I seriously hate the stupid "look I'm so hilarious yammering on" tags on AO3 (Tumblr, I'm blaming you).

[princessofgeeks]

I had no opinion about this for a long time, but then I noticed that the stories of mine that got the most hits on AO3 were precisely the ones I had tagged with every possible tag, including exactly which sex acts were in the story.

80 percent of my stories on AO3 are about Jack and Daniel from SG-1, and they are not all that different from each other in terms of quality, and yet there was a massive, massive difference in the hit counts for this reason alone.

I have concluded that there are many many people who search for fic to read by trope or sex act, not by fandom or author or even pairing.

So now I try to put as many tags as I can think of that would be relevant on the story. Except not those long, phrase like tags that I understand are popular on Tumblr. Because I look at tags as something to search for and if the ideas if them are not useful for that, then to me they belong in the author's note.

Someone upthread was bemoaning the fact that tags can give away the whole story, and that is indeed kind of a downer, but actually pairing labels can too!

I've had to make my peace with that because usually I'm reading for stuff which I pretty well know the resolution of -- first time slash stories are my favorite, and there's not a whole lot of suspense there, lol.

Anyway. The fact that most readers seem to use AO3 tags in this way is what made me start tagging exhaustively. Or as exhaustively as I have the patience for. I haven't gone back and fixed older stories, though. This kind of detail work is not my forte. I have to be just in the right mood.

I'm surprised all all your comments who find the tags irrelevant, honestly. I guess there are some fans out there like me after all! I read by pairing and then by author. When I find an author I love, I try out pretty much everything they wrote in fandoms I know. But clearly a lot of people are using AO3 in an entirely different way.

Here is the post I made on this exact subject. It got a couple dozen comments, so that might be interesting to you as well.

Thanks for the post.

[indywind]

I am ambivalent about tags, too, in a lot of the ways others commented.
the thing that specially tantalazes and then frustrates me is that often the things that will make or break a story for me are impossible or at least madly impractical to tag for, because they're either subjective and hard to define ("realistic character development" "X writing style/tone" "familiarity w/ canon is/isn't needed"), or objective but dauntingly specific ("'baby' only used to refer to actual infants" "majority English text contains non-English language" "less than 5% incorrect use of homophones or frequently-confused words").

I almost don't care about a lot of the things that people seem to often tag for or search on, except that they can be used as a sort of very coarse filter for some of the untaggable stuff I am more interested in. I know, special snowflake, first world problems.


I was sorta hoping kink_finders would answer for some of this, and recs for some more... but it's not a very big hope.

[laurenthemself]

Searchability good, but spoilers bad, and sex act shopping lists kind of sad (ever notice that the lists never include 'aftercare', 'pillow talk', 'extended foreplay', 'interrupted by puppy' and the like?).

[indywind]

I have seen tags for "aftercare" (once I realized it partly correlates with some hard-to-tag kinks of mine, I started searching on it as proxy) and maybe "extended foreplay" and "pillow talk" though they don't seem near as common as some other things.

[poala]

I think they can be useful if certain acts squick you out, or if certain kinks turn your crank lol

[panisdead]

I don't like tags much, period, but I realize this is not a reason for them to stop existing.

[wrabbit]

I disagree that it demeans human beings/the story, but I can see how you might see it that way. I personally am bemused by generic tags like "Kissing" but there really are stories out there that emphasize kissing and people who want to read them, I guess.

I look at it this way: we all want to read subtle, compelling stories which can't be reduced to naming the sex acts they describe, but many still do differentiate by the kind of sex and relationship they are looking to read or not read, including me. Tags also communicate the tone and the relationship dynamic: "Oral Sex" as a tag tells me one thing whereas "Facefucking" tells me I can expect a very different kind of sex and relationship from that story.

tags

[devon]

If the tag list looks like that, I just give it a TL;DR and go directly to the story. I'll stop reading if I hit a trigger, although that's pretty rare for me. There are many stories where I've been glad that I didn't read the tags, because I would otherwise have been spoiled. It's hard as a jaded fanfic reader to remain unspoiled these days. ;>

[wrabbit]

Partially inspired by this post I made a post to talk about people's feelings about tags and spoilers on ao3some: Tags and Spoilers

[china_shop]

Coming back to this because I'm trying out a new fandom for the first time in 5 years and consequently having tagging angst.

I find that sex act tags make a story feel more like a PWP, even if there's quite a lot of development/build-up before the sex. They shift my focus/expectations. As a result, I have a lot of resistance to using them, even though I know people find them useful for searching. *is conflicted*