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Jul 25, 2012 09:12

I just switched the tags for my Avengers fic on Ao3 to the "character&character" format rather than the "character/character" format. No characters have sex, make out, or profess love for any of the other characters in these stories. Characters do feel lust and look at each other with longing ( Read more... )

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lettered July 26 2012, 15:56:41 UTC
"multi" implies to me threesomes and moresomes? Because if you want to say it's both gen and het, you can check both. Which I do. The problem was one of the other tag selections, where you can choose who's with whom. The reason I want to select something there is that when I'm searching for something to read, I usually want to read about character A's relationship with Character B. I don't care if they're having sex or end up together or are just friends; if I'm reading a really solid fic about Harry and Draco having a real and powerful relationship, I honestly don't care if Harry ends up with Ginny at the end of it (as long as there's build up to that relationship too, as there was in QoM). If I don't tag the fic with a "relationship" and just suggest that it's there in the A/N, then if it wasn't my story, I'd never see it (because you can search by tags, and that's what I do). And I want the people who want to read the things that I would like to read to see it.

Part of the problem here is that I have different needs/wants than other readers, and yet I'm the one tagging the fic. You're right, some people were totally upset about QoM, but that reaction makes absolutely no sense to me. I'm not saying it's not a valid reaction; I'm just saying I so completely don't identify that it's hard to make a call about my own fics. Maya probably didn't think that story was about who hooked up with whom. That's not what I thought it was about, either. I would have labeled that story as gen. But for some people it totally wasn't, and I'm not sure how I as an author am supposed to know what other people want and what won't upset them without posting it first and then doing a poll about how to label it, which you can't do 'cause . . . no one's gonna wanna read an unlabeled fic.

I totally and completely agree, though, that mainstream fiction is difficult because het is just assumed even in the least romantic stories in existence. Still, what I sort of wish is that in fanfic, either het or homosexuality are just assumed, and only romances have to be labeled het or slash. Who decides whether it's a romance? I have no clue.

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