Meta and More Meta
1) I usually write and post meta here on DW first before moving it over to AO3, but while reviewing an old meta I realized it could use an update, and went ahead and drafted a new post there. It's titled What's in a Word? about variations in what is called fanfic.
2) Speaking of meta, adding to the signal boost of this very relevant post: "that currency thread" about how fandom is not an equal place and that inequality could get significantly worse.
One thing that it didn't cover but which I think is also relevant is that kids generally don't have money. Yet fandom is a largely youth oriented hobby. Many of us who are no longer youths may well have been when we latched on to it, and most surveys continue to show that fandom activity is dominated by the under 30s for a number of reasons. One of those is because it is something kids can engage in without much in the way of costs. It's also a problem when the pseudonimity that still exists in many parts of fandom (if not online culture generally) goes away if money gets exchanged online. Underage people are not legally allowed to have payment accounts so if they need to transfer money, someone else needs to be involved. While some kids may be perfectly happy to share their fandom activities with guardians, not all are (nor should they be). Changing these things changes the fan pipeline in a way I haven't seen in discussions about commercializing fandom.
3) Speaking of youths writing The pandemic is killing print products at student news organizations, as well as many digital operations. Hardly surprising given the past year of remote learning and the fact that pro publications are also dropping print in stages, with some weeklies who formerly did very well compared to dailies, shutting down entirely given a combination of fewer in-person pickups and advertisers closing up shop.
"[I]t’s not just American student journalists dealing with the fallout from the pandemic. Research from the U.K.-based Student Publication Association found that fully half of its student newspapers fear they’ll never be able to print again."
This made me curious -- how many of you subscribe to print publications (whether for work or pleasure?)
4) I have been watching Prodigal Son in a sort of background way, particularly given the show is now cancelled. One thing that struck me is that the predominance of wealthy characters in TV shows isn't just a combination of aspirational programming and advertisers who want to target the upper middle class (things I've talked about before). It also makes story telling much easier.
In general, wealth allows characters to be more influential and to pay for things directly. No need to worry about requisitions and approvals, or in following procedures. You can go to the press, who will pay attention and put out the information you want circulated. You can pay people to get things done. You can travel at a moment's notice and create expensive gadgets (yeah, looking at you Batman and Tony Stark). You can leave your job at any time and you likely have a broad education, making it possible for you to either know all sorts of things or easily connect to specialists who do. In short, you have freedom of access and freedom of movement, and you rarely ever have to bother about mundane issues. You also don't have to worry about consequences because you can pay for your health care and wiggle out of legal claims by either paying them off or tying them up in court.
5) AO3's announcement about the new 75 tag limit on posts has revealed a lot of user opinion about both tag overuse and how much people hate the practice of collecting drabbles or other short works all together in a single post as chapters instead of as separate items in a series (or as its own collection). I'm on their side myself -- it not only creates a wall of tags but it's useless in finding what you're looking for if only one post applies to the tag I'm subscribed to.
The post has over 11,000 notes on Tumblr within 48 hours and I only saw one comment that isn't celebrating the news. I suspect this announcement may become the first 1000+ comment post on the AO3 blog too. What surprised me was the following:
"god i know this is mean but if you use anywhere close to 75+ tags then it is not a good work. i know that in my heart of hearts as someone who has been on ao3 for over a decade and reading fanfics for 2 decades. please learn how to tag, and summarize, your fics. huge indicator of your writing and editing abilities sorry."
Without a doubt a wall of tags is offputting, but I don't know as I ever connected this to someone's writing ability. Am I alone in that?
It's true that an ongoing story is going to collect more tags as more characters make appearances and there are more story elements. But to me the overuse of tags has a lot to do with both reader demands and the desire to market a work rather than because the writer considers the tags truly important.
I suppose excess tagging could be, in part, because a story is so formless that all sorts of things get tagged since the writer couldn't tell you clearly what it's actually about. I've noticed some writers pointing out that they're tagging for every character whose POV is written in. While I can't recall ever deciding to read or not read a story for that reason I can assume that some people do. But the real issue is that if you've got a 100 chapter story with each one being told in a different voice, I question whether or not that's a story or a series of one shots. If it is supposed to be a single story, it sounds incoherent if you've got that many people involved in a primary character sort of way.
Moving on from excessive tagging, the point being brought up repeatedly in the AO3 post comments is that people feel that tagging is actually making stuff inaccessible which is totally contrary to what they're for. I'm not one of those who has enough character hate for anyone to care if they're in a story or not (as long as the story isn't primarily about them). But tagging a story with a character who doesn't even appear but is simply mentioned is, to me, indicative of what a huge problem it is that people insist on knowing everything about a story before they read it.
I'm not one of those people who usually does more than glance at tags before I download a work. My main criteria are what the pairing is or if it's gen, and the length of the work. I'll look at tags if the summary is unclear. I have definitely been put off reading something because of tags, which is unfortunate because the story itself might not have really been focused on those things. But the fact that the typical writer uses 11 tags for a story suggests that what's in the tagset really does represents major themes in the work. (What I'd also like to know is what is the most common length for a fic, because as far as I can tell from looking at feeds it's either under 5000 words or consists of chapters under that).
But I have my doubts that many writers think of tags as functional things as opposed to being ads, something on a label, rather than a path leading to the work. Of course, I'm probably particularly sensitive to this because of my past profession but I do wonder -- how would you describe a well loved fanwork and are the tags you would use for it much the same as the one the creator chose?
View poll: Kudos Footer-311
Comments at Dreamwidth
.
2) Speaking of meta, adding to the signal boost of this very relevant post: "that currency thread" about how fandom is not an equal place and that inequality could get significantly worse.
One thing that it didn't cover but which I think is also relevant is that kids generally don't have money. Yet fandom is a largely youth oriented hobby. Many of us who are no longer youths may well have been when we latched on to it, and most surveys continue to show that fandom activity is dominated by the under 30s for a number of reasons. One of those is because it is something kids can engage in without much in the way of costs. It's also a problem when the pseudonimity that still exists in many parts of fandom (if not online culture generally) goes away if money gets exchanged online. Underage people are not legally allowed to have payment accounts so if they need to transfer money, someone else needs to be involved. While some kids may be perfectly happy to share their fandom activities with guardians, not all are (nor should they be). Changing these things changes the fan pipeline in a way I haven't seen in discussions about commercializing fandom.
3) Speaking of youths writing The pandemic is killing print products at student news organizations, as well as many digital operations. Hardly surprising given the past year of remote learning and the fact that pro publications are also dropping print in stages, with some weeklies who formerly did very well compared to dailies, shutting down entirely given a combination of fewer in-person pickups and advertisers closing up shop.
"[I]t’s not just American student journalists dealing with the fallout from the pandemic. Research from the U.K.-based Student Publication Association found that fully half of its student newspapers fear they’ll never be able to print again."
This made me curious -- how many of you subscribe to print publications (whether for work or pleasure?)
4) I have been watching Prodigal Son in a sort of background way, particularly given the show is now cancelled. One thing that struck me is that the predominance of wealthy characters in TV shows isn't just a combination of aspirational programming and advertisers who want to target the upper middle class (things I've talked about before). It also makes story telling much easier.
In general, wealth allows characters to be more influential and to pay for things directly. No need to worry about requisitions and approvals, or in following procedures. You can go to the press, who will pay attention and put out the information you want circulated. You can pay people to get things done. You can travel at a moment's notice and create expensive gadgets (yeah, looking at you Batman and Tony Stark). You can leave your job at any time and you likely have a broad education, making it possible for you to either know all sorts of things or easily connect to specialists who do. In short, you have freedom of access and freedom of movement, and you rarely ever have to bother about mundane issues. You also don't have to worry about consequences because you can pay for your health care and wiggle out of legal claims by either paying them off or tying them up in court.
5) AO3's announcement about the new 75 tag limit on posts has revealed a lot of user opinion about both tag overuse and how much people hate the practice of collecting drabbles or other short works all together in a single post as chapters instead of as separate items in a series (or as its own collection). I'm on their side myself -- it not only creates a wall of tags but it's useless in finding what you're looking for if only one post applies to the tag I'm subscribed to.
The post has over 11,000 notes on Tumblr within 48 hours and I only saw one comment that isn't celebrating the news. I suspect this announcement may become the first 1000+ comment post on the AO3 blog too. What surprised me was the following:
"god i know this is mean but if you use anywhere close to 75+ tags then it is not a good work. i know that in my heart of hearts as someone who has been on ao3 for over a decade and reading fanfics for 2 decades. please learn how to tag, and summarize, your fics. huge indicator of your writing and editing abilities sorry."
Without a doubt a wall of tags is offputting, but I don't know as I ever connected this to someone's writing ability. Am I alone in that?
It's true that an ongoing story is going to collect more tags as more characters make appearances and there are more story elements. But to me the overuse of tags has a lot to do with both reader demands and the desire to market a work rather than because the writer considers the tags truly important.
I suppose excess tagging could be, in part, because a story is so formless that all sorts of things get tagged since the writer couldn't tell you clearly what it's actually about. I've noticed some writers pointing out that they're tagging for every character whose POV is written in. While I can't recall ever deciding to read or not read a story for that reason I can assume that some people do. But the real issue is that if you've got a 100 chapter story with each one being told in a different voice, I question whether or not that's a story or a series of one shots. If it is supposed to be a single story, it sounds incoherent if you've got that many people involved in a primary character sort of way.
Moving on from excessive tagging, the point being brought up repeatedly in the AO3 post comments is that people feel that tagging is actually making stuff inaccessible which is totally contrary to what they're for. I'm not one of those who has enough character hate for anyone to care if they're in a story or not (as long as the story isn't primarily about them). But tagging a story with a character who doesn't even appear but is simply mentioned is, to me, indicative of what a huge problem it is that people insist on knowing everything about a story before they read it.
I'm not one of those people who usually does more than glance at tags before I download a work. My main criteria are what the pairing is or if it's gen, and the length of the work. I'll look at tags if the summary is unclear. I have definitely been put off reading something because of tags, which is unfortunate because the story itself might not have really been focused on those things. But the fact that the typical writer uses 11 tags for a story suggests that what's in the tagset really does represents major themes in the work. (What I'd also like to know is what is the most common length for a fic, because as far as I can tell from looking at feeds it's either under 5000 words or consists of chapters under that).
But I have my doubts that many writers think of tags as functional things as opposed to being ads, something on a label, rather than a path leading to the work. Of course, I'm probably particularly sensitive to this because of my past profession but I do wonder -- how would you describe a well loved fanwork and are the tags you would use for it much the same as the one the creator chose?
View poll: Kudos Footer-311
Comments at Dreamwidth
.