(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Gosh, there's a lot of rubbish reboot Trekfic on the AO3 these days. Benedict Cumberbatch seems to be inadvertently to blame for some of it, as there is the usual rash of badly-written Sherlock crossovers*, but even discounting that, the quality seems to have gone down dramatically.

Also, I wish people wouldn't tag slashfics with 'gay sex'.


* Stupid though Martin Crieff/ John Watson or Martin Crieff/ Moriarty is as a premise, it's surely topped by Khan Noonien Singh/ Molly Hooper?

Comments

[ineptshieldmaid]

Well, that explains why my fairly formulaic Kirk/McCoy fic the other day is proving oddly popular. It'd have disappeared in the wash in the heyday of ST:AOS fandom, but with the fandom dozing (and, if you're right, producing a lot of shit)...

Although the other problem is that now the AO3 is the central clearinghouse, whereas in 2009/10 fandom was mid-shift, and it was the older, more practiced fen who went to the AO3 first. I'm noticing this with The Force Awakens - there's a lot more crap on the AO3 to wade through that would've been on people's LJs and not necessarily cross-posted, back in the day. And, say, a Merlin/Arthur fic with background Gwen/Morgana wouldn't have turned up on the femslash LJ comms, but a Reylo fic with background Finn/Poe turns up in the Finn/Poe AO3 tag, or a Finn/Poe with background Rey/Jess, etc. So there's just so much _more_ to wade through.

[ineptshieldmaid]

oh, and what's particularly irritating about "gay sex" as an additional tag? Better than seeing it in the warnings, as in the LJ heyday....

[tree_and_leaf]

True. I suppose it's that I don't really like the multiplication of tags that you get on AO3, and it seems kind of redundant when you've got a slash pairing, a pwp tag, and an explicit rating. That really is being a grumpy old 'get those kids off my lawn' fan, though!

But yes, better by several miles than having it in the warnings.

[ineptshieldmaid]

Oh, I didn't mean to say it wasn't annoying - I was curious as to which reason you had for being annoyed by it, as I could envision several. And I do think it's less annoying on the AO3, where additional tags are not framed as warnings.

I... used to be annoyed by "tumblr style" redundant tags, but I'm coming around to them. (That one in particular is redundant, mind) I love oddly specific tags - eg, the fact that "dubious consentacles" is a canonical tag fills me with joy, and the fact that I once used the tag "gratuitous archivists" makes me happy. I like that if a personal or quirky phrasing of something is used often enough it scrobbles to a canonical tag: enough people use "friendship is the best ship" that if you tag your work with that it shows up in the canonical tag for "friendship", but "friendship is the best ship" expresses something about your approach or what you get out of that work.

I found, when I first posted something last year after three years' hiatus, that the AO3 seemed really... sterile, impersonal, compared to LJ/DW-based fandom. If someone opens my fic on my LJ or follows a link from DW they have my whole journal (including my personal tags, but also icons and meta and so on) to assemble a sense of me as a person. They don't have that on the AO3. Why should they trust me? How will they know what they're in for? I'm finding tumblr-style tags fill that gap. "don't look at me for a happy ending" is different to "warning: unhappy ending". "Inappropriate flirting with subordinate officers" technically comes under "power disparity" but tells you something more about what you're getting into.

On 12 February 2016 at 15:17, tree_and_leaf - DW Comment < dw_null@dreamwidth.org> wrote:

[tree_and_leaf]

Ok, 'dubious consentactles' might make me have to reconsider my stance.

[ineptshieldmaid]

Someone in copperbadge's circle discovered it was a tag that existed, and they embarked on a giant fic-a-thon to get enough dubious consentacles that it registers as its own tag rather than not scrobbling at all or disappearing into either dub-con or tentacles. This is the height of glorious user-generated tagging.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I think you're right on both points. (So much! And Sturgeon's Law inevitably pertains, I suppose).