unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-03-16 12:28 am

To Tag or Not to Tag

I think it's really useful to tag things in a story to make it easier for people looking for that kind of thing to find it, and I love that AO3 enables this in a really big way with its tagging system, but this also often conflicts with my desire for certain elements of my stories to be a surprise.  And of course my stories aren't going to be spoiled completely by the tags regardless, but it's just like--it's generally considered a good idea to list major pairings, characters, tropes, and indeed I really, really like to list these things, but listing them also sometimes conflicts with creating more of an opportunity for certain aspects of a story to be a surprise.  So it's really hard for me to choose between them sometimes haha.
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
2021-01-28 12:31 am

AO3 Tags

Pruned a couple of the ramble-tags on my Cut Strings fic and added a search tag for 'Fake Marriage' on my Heart of Shadow fic since it definitely has that trope going on.  I like some degree of ramble tags on a fic (both on the ones I read and the ones I write) because I feel that they can preview aspects of the fic that the summary or the more conventional tags can't as easily do, but I think they should be limited in number and should supplement rather than replace the more functional tags.  Also felt my 'Marriage of Convenience' tag didn't quite encapsulate the entire dynamic I have going on with Talzin/Palpatine in that fic, so I hoped the new tag might better communicate that.