December Daily: AO3 tags

[resonant]

Starting the month with a bang courtesy of jesse_the_k - Top five AO3 tags

(Already I can see that these entries are going to be "and these are my top five tonight.")

5. I almost didn't put this in because it seems so obvious, but what could be better than First Time? I checked the tag page and found some funny ones that I hope are puns rather than typos, like Firs Time and First Tim and of course Fist Time.*

4. Author's Favorite. I love it when authors show me around their living room and point at the pillows that they really like.

3. I am embarrassed to admit how much I like Just The Tip. I think it's partly the way it implies a greedy and inexperienced teenage attitude that I like, and partly (and somewhat contradicting the first point) the way it implies some explicit or implicit discussion, negotiation, boundary-drawing, "I really want to have sex with you so now we have to figure out how."

2. Sort Of. Usually appended to something that some people want to avoid - say, Dubious Consent or Tentacle Sex - it suggests a writer who's willing to give you the tools to curate your experience but is also vibrating with the desire to explain to you that it's not that simple!

1. Pining While Fucking, because most of the time that's everything I want to read.

*editing to add that I mentioned this to the kidlet and said,"I guess in the Batverse you could have a First Tim," and they said, "Magnus Archives, but nothing else I can think of," and then we agreed that Romanceable Tims would be a great name for a band.


Leave me a comment to add a prompt to the calendar. The current list is below the cut.




2 destina - Top five pairs of characters, cross-fandoms as needed, that need to sit down and have a conversation and share life experiences so that at least one of them can benefit from it
3 mific - Top five fantasy professions/jobs
4 runpunkrun - Top five things you like to have at/on hand
5 mergatrude - Top five things you have overheard
6 storiesforsorries - Top five due South fanfics
7 norah - Top five things you would tell your 25-year-old self
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10 lunabee - Top five colors to wear
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12 celli - Top five TV episodes of all time
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17 dine - Top five ice cream flavors
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19 china_shop - Top five devices/appliances/bluetooth thingies/whatever :-)
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24 fox - Top five Christmas carols
25 break for Christmas
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Comments

[runpunkrun]

What a great list. Now you've got me thinking about "author's favorite" as a tag. I love to see that on a story I've just clicked on, but it's never anything I've considered adding to my own work. Apparently (now that I've been considering it for like ten minutes) that's just not how I think of my own writing.

[resonant]

I've thought about it, but I've never been able to get myself to do it, much as I enjoy when others do. I'm not even sure why.

[runpunkrun]

I can't figure it out either. I was playing around with two options: I'm too focused on my writing's flaws have favorites, or I can't pick favorites because I love all my children equally.

Neither of those is it, though.

[resonant]

When I worked for the newspaper, the library asked our two photographers to be on the judge panel for a photo contest, and every other judge chose the close-up of the toucan, but both photographers chose a photo of an old barn that frankly was really boring to me. When I asked them why, they both went off on a long technical thing about lighting and then they both, separately, said, "We can tell by looking at it that it was really hard to do."

So I think that's a gesture at why I don't want to tag my own favorite stories. Why they're my favorite is a story in itself, and I get frustrated at how the tag can't express that I remember the pleasure of the group effort, or I remember the pain of the fifteen rewrites, or I just know that it was really hard to do.

[runpunkrun]

You know, I think that's a big part of it for me, too. I'm thinking of the work and the joy that went into those stories, what I learned from them, not so much the plot or the dialogue or the characterizations or anything else that's consumer-facing.

Plus, ultimately, I want readers to make their own minds up about my writing, without my nudging them one way or another.

Still, I do like seeing that tag on other people's work. I find it very sweet.