Mmm, nope.

Hahaha this is possibly one of the most ludicrous things I have ever seen posted. I hope, for your sake, that you never are assigned to moderate one of my stories. I might just have to start writing new stuff explicitly to (further than the vast majority of all existing writing has) prove you wrong. There is no such thing as "conflicting tags", it is possible for a story to have major elements of both properties, and if people CANNOT use both tags, then you are denying a major chunk of the readers the ability to find what they enjoy.

tl;dr-- You are a bad moderator and should feel bad, what you are describing in this blog post does nothing but hurt the readers.

Maybe if there was a way so that you could label when stories stop being Slice of Life and become Adventure...
My thinking:
Chapters 1 to 4: Slice of Life
Chapters 5 onwards: Adventure

Sloppy, but if it was done like that would it be acceptable?
(Feel free to hurl abuse at me, this does feel quite stupid)

Oh, and what if the pony's slice of life IS adventure? What then?

329707
These really aren't difficult instructions to follow, and tags can most definitely be conflicting. While you can argue that Comedy and Sad can be mixed (which usually takes immense skill on the authors part), Slice of Life and Adventure are pretty much non debatable. They are completely different archetypes of story.

...I still don't see why "comedy" and "sad" would be mutually exclusive any more than "comedy" and "dark", for instance. Granted, such a story would be far more reliant on irony than than off-the-wall randomness which is more nominally associated with the genre, but what is the "random" tag for if not to separate the two?

Is it weird that I enjoyed reading this and laughed at the end?

329715
No, they really aren't. And that's the problem: Even if they did form an incompatible framework, people cannot always tag their entire story with one single state. Huge sprawling pieces of work can move back and forth between the two, regardless of what you think. Not to mention... There are a lot of readers who would not be interested in a Romance, but would be interested in a Romance / Adventure hybrid like Unintended. By making it so that authors cannot use multiple tags, you’re denying a significant portion of interested readers the ability to easily search for the things they enjoy, and making it harder for worthwhile fics to get recognition. This policy literally does nothing of any benefit except for allow moderators to be pedantic, or give biased moderators a spurious ground to deny fics they personally dislike (Not saying that this is one of those cases, just saying it's a known issue on pretty much any site).

A challenge eh?

What about an adventure/slice of life story which is a normal day in the life of Daring Do?

329717
The entire purpose of tags is to tell readers what your story PRIMARILY is. Yes, you can have a sad story with comedy parts. Yes, you can have a comedy story with sad parts. However, one of those tags is going to end up being dominant, and that's what your story should be tagged as. I am usually wary of an author who is claiming to have a story that is both Comedic (evoking laughter and happiness) and Sad (evoking sorrow).

As far as the Random tag, it's listed in the FAQ as a sub-genre of Comedy, which tells the viewer that the story uses, well, random humor as a primary device.

329722
You seem to be confused.

I'm not telling people they shouldn't mix tags. Romance / Adventure is perfectly acceptable. So is Comedy / Random, Dark / Tragedy, Sad / Slice of Life and so on. I'm telling people not to mix Adventure and Slice of Life specifically, because it doesn't make sense. They're different things.

329728>>329722

i921.photobucket.com/albums/ad60/moonlit-sonnet0/Animation%20and%20Comics/My%20Little%20Pony/Frienship%20is%20Magic/Pinkie%20Pie/Popcorn.gif
This is good!

329728
I am not confused-- I understand that perfectly. Although you do also have a denial up there against a Sad / Comedy fic, which makes me a bit confused, because that is VERY common. Any given Cohen Brothers movie, for example. But on the main topic of SoL-Adventure, again, I am telling you that they are not mutually exclusive. YES, they are different things. But that does not mean they cannot be mixed, and in fact it's pretty easy to do so. People should be able to tag their stories accurately, regardless of the moderation team's opinions on what is and is not possible for them to write. Sensible restrictions would include things like refusing completely false or misleading tags, or possibly a cap on the total number (like there is on character tagging).

329715

Disagree.
Stories can easily be both.

I can write a story that involves, for instance, AJ going off on an adventure while thinking about home. The story would be interspersed scenes of thrilling danger and mundane farmpony life while AJ tries to come to terms with the 2 sides of life she now leads, and which is the "real" her. She may be an Element, but she still has 3 apples on her flank.
Or a story where the mane 6 are attending Pinkie Pie's funeral. Each delivers a story of hilarity from their lives with Pinkie. Comedy and sad.
One of the stories I proofread (on hiatus) is Kindred Spirits. It's a story about an adult Spike and Gilda meeting in and escaping from the wilds on the border of the griffon lands. Once they get back to Ponyville, the adventure side abruptly ends and it becomes shipping and slice of life.
Or consider one of my favorite fics, "Keeping it Simple". Each chapter is practically a different genre.

It is unfair to ask for authors to prioritize which content to advertize.
The mods must decide if tags should denote genre or content. If the latter, tag conflicts are invalid as long as relevant content is present. If the former, tag overhaul is required to better accommodate traditional genre types.

The ONLY way I see this "conflicting tags" issue being resolved is by taking away the "sad" and "Slice-of-life" tags entirely and replacing them with a much more versatile "drama" tag.

329738
329739

That first one would be a primarily Adventure fic with secondary Slice of Life elements. The second, depending on how deep you get with the flashbacks, would be primarily comedy with sad elements. That last one depends on how long the different elements. If the Adventure part is longer, it's Adventure. If the Slice of Parts are longer, it's Slice of Life.

You aren't tagging your fic for everything it contains, you're tagging it for what the majority of it contains, and this seems to be where the confusion comes in when authors tag things. They say to themselves, "Oh, my story has sad parts and comedy parts, so I'll tag both." They should be asking themselves "What is most of my fic? Comedy or Sad?"

Of course, I will never be one to say the tagging system is perfect. It's not. In honesty it should be reworked from the ground up, but that's something that needs to be developed over time by knighty. If I'm not mistaken, the idea of a new tagging system is up in the air right now.

I'm gonna go pop some popcorn for the show.
i.imgur.com/tHw0b.gif

329743
Well, if one comes out, I will be highly interested to see it. But as it is, I don't think you've made a solid point, other than helping to point out that the current tag system is quite badly broken, and this is one of the main examples of how. Here's hoping the replacement comes along, maybe coupled with a more robust sortable search?

Ill just say that i see the tag system the same as i see the character system, you tag the MAIN theme or two or three that you focus on, that doesnt mean others can't appear (you can have ALL of them but that doesnt mean you will tag them all will it? )

If you look at it that way you CAN'T focus on grand adventures and the mundane common life at the same time, what happens after that can be a entirely new story with its own tags.

329707

I might just have to start writing new stuff explicitly to (further than the vast majority of all existing writing has) prove you wrong

Sounds like a challenge I'd love to assist you with.cdn.broni.es/images/emotes/mlp-dsalute.png

329726
I thought the idea of tags was to show what it contains, which is what I see wherever tags are used throughout the web.

So, does it contain adventure? Tag it.
Does it contain slice of life? Tag it.
Does it contain comedy? Tag it.
And so on.

The leading theme of what the story is about you can read in the description.

So if the story has a slice of life component that spans some time before the small adventure at the end, at least I would like to know it includes both.
I would want read it and weep to be tagd with both for that reason.

But that is just how I view tags and have come to known them.

329747
This.

329748
My Steam, email, GTalk, et al are on my profile page. Feel free to hit me up for a chat!

329749
See, THIS is what the tagging system should be treated like, even the current one. If we wanted something with which to say what the story was primarily about, then we'd have mutually exclusive Categories, not tags. And that's worse in every possible way.

329743

If I'm not mistaken, the idea of a new tagging system is up in the air right now.

I have an honest suggestion. Maybe a percentage showing how much of each genre your story contains?
Like a pie chart with each genre having its own "slice"

329743

Meh. Oh glorious day if that comes. Until then, as a reader, I have to argue for "conflicting tags" to be allowed.

A story tagged Sad and Comedy tells me something very different about the story than if it were just tagged either/or. Same goes for Slice of Life and Adventure.
This, by definition, displays merit in the combination of tags being allowed.
It allows the reader to discriminate.
For instance, I will probably try a Comedy fic, but less likely to try a comedy/sad fic, and almost never read sadfics. Not allowing that sad fic to include it's comedy tag basically means it loses a reader in my case.

If you want one defining tag for each fic, limit each fic to one tag.
Stick "human" into the character tags.

Also, this issue screws over compilation story posts where each chapter is a separate story with their own genre.

329743

What about black comedy? Or satire for that matter? Both can qualify as both equally Sad and Comedy, or Tragic and Comedy. The thing is, neither of those can be tagged as either or, because they're both. I may not be a skilled enough writer to work out something like that, but they are out there and the genre does exist. Look at the movie A Boy and His Dog for a good example of black comedy. In a lot of ways it's a laugh riot, but the overarching theme is both depressing and terrifying in it's own way.

And as I understood it, the tagging system is in place for ease of access to the readers more than easy of classification for the moderators. It just strikes me as coming off as extremely superficial to try and say well, this story is A so it cannot have ANY capacity for B, unless it completely shifts genre to B, so it therefore cannot be A any longer. If it's a fic that's episodical, for example, it could just as easily have three chapters of SoL, followed by a two part Adventure, then have one or two wind down chapters with some comedy, followed by a good dose of tragedy. The story has elements from all four categories, and thus, it qualifies as all of those genres. Just because one gets more screen time as opposed to others doesn't mean they suddenly take a back seat and stop counting.

You even make that point when you broke down the episodes in your initial statement, but you focused on the trees for the forest there. Each episode does have an overarching theme, but, like chapters, they are all part of the same STORY. Ergo, you basically invalidated your own argument.

Seriously, you need to justify this beyond a mere "I think stories don't work this way". How does this policy benefit the authors and/or readers who use this site?

329760
Black Comedy = [Dark] [Comedy]

Just because one gets more screen time as opposed to others doesn't mean they suddenly take a back seat and stop counting.

With this kind of categorizing system, it kind of does. You are tagging for the main theme of your fic, not everything that's in it. And with that example you posted, that 'wind down' of tragedy and comedy isn't enough to alter the genre of the fic. Because that's what you're tagging, the genre of your fic as a whole.

Ergo, you basically invalidated your own argument.

Not at all. Each episode is it's own story, and each story is part of the series. Also, Friendship is Magic, as a whole, would most likely be slice of Life. There are more SoL episodes than there are Adventure.

329762
Because the site has rules which are supposed to be enforced. Also, it's not how "I think" stories work. I pasted the definitions of both categories to show that they're different.

329772
That's a non-answer. What benefit to writers/readers does the rule give?

329776
It allows writers to categorize their fics and it allows readers to find fics in categories they're interested in. If they want a Comedy fic, they'll find fics where it's mostly comedy. If they want sad fics, they'll find a fic that's mostly sad. If they want a Romance fic with Adventure in it, they can find that too.

What it prevents is the oversaturation of tags because people think that a joke thrown in between every brutal murder is good enough to put Comedy along with Dark and Tragedy.

329782
It prevents the categorization of fics. A writer tells you 'this is how I want to categorize my fic' and you say 'no, you're not allowed to do that'. That is the opposite of allowing writers to categorize their fics.

329786
Oh, I'm sorry.

I mean that it allows writers to categorize their fics in a way that makes sense.

329788
It allows writers to categorize their fics the way you tell them to.

329792
Well, yeah.

Essentially, that's what the rules are doing. Telling writers how to properly categorize their fics in accordance to fimfiction's standards. And according to fimfiction's standards (and officially definitions, like I cited above), Adventure and Slice of Life are two separate categories. A fic cannot be both.

329769

With all due respect, I'm failing to see the logic here. Dark, Tragic and Sad are semantics. You can interchange all three and get the same result without losing any momentum because all three follow the same theme, and the emotional context is left to the reader. The tags just get them there.

And the idea of tagging something is that yes, it does and should tell you everything that's in it. That's the point of the tags in the first place. Saying that something isn't a main theme doesn't mean something can't have secondary themes just as prevalent or important and deserving of attention. Speaking of "main" themes, if that's the logic, shouldn't they all be content based, and not context based? Sad and Comedy and SoL are all Drama for example. The first three are all context, but they all qualify as such. Tragedy and Romance qualify as well. They're all subsets of Drama, and since they all fall under the same purview, they should, can and do have the capacity to coexist and intermingle with one another, and be just as important as one another, even if they conflict within this limited worldview.

And, yes, you really did invalidate your argument. Looking at MLP:FiM, it can qualify as both a story and an anthology of individual stories, and yes, they are SoL, but many of the other genres are just as important and just as prevalent. The series is an adventure starring six friends and the trials they face, both normal and fantastic, and you can't argue that the Adventure episodes weren't any less prevalent or important than the non-adventure ones, even if they don't appear as often. And ultimately you're playing semantics here, as well. The series can be easily classified as one or the other, so it can be therefore classified as both.

What if you're writing Daring Do whose normal, everyday, mundane life is adventure?

HUH?

WHAT THEN?

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?

(Specifically Daring Do Well Lifestyle type fic)

Also, compilation posts

329797
If you look in the FAQ, every tag has it's own definition, and if your story falls under that definition, it gets tagged as such.

Also, there are 11 Adventure episodes to 38 Slice of Life episodes. Friendship is Magic is a Slice of Life television show.

329798
Then it's still an Adventure. Shut up. >:(

Compilations are a different beast entirely. I just wouldn't tag them as either, TBH.

329804

There are 11 Adventure to 38 SoL? That's still a fourth of the entire series, which is hugely significant, even moreso considering just how important those episodes are to the plot and characters within. They are, in fact, so important that they would require the tag Adventure because of how defining they are to the story as a sub-genre at the least. Claiming quantity as a deciding factor means nothing, because it's not about how many there are, but what role they play.

Going about it your way, you could also claim that a bag that has eight applies and seven oranges is a bag of apples. Just because there are technically more apples in the bag than oranges doesn't make them suddenly stop counting. Overtly simplified, yes, but the point stands on it's own merits. As much as I hate to say it, it looks like a lot of this argument is boiling down into "Well, thems the rules" which, as I had originally thought, this was a call for a need to reform said rules, not justify them, and your own personal opinion on the matter as opposed to any solid logic.

You're a hell of a writer and believe me, I get that moderating is a hard, thankless job a lot of the time and I respect that you do it regardless, but this? This is not going to accomplish anything of value. It's turning into one opinion over another, and honestly, something should be said when almost all of the posts here are in exact opposition to your idea. I'm not going to say that you're wrong, or that it's not without merit, but I am going to say that, maybe, just maybe, there might be something amiss here when you get this kind of response to your post.

Either way, I'm off for the night. You have a good one.

329823
Yeah, the tagging system is bad, but the best needs to be made out of it.

Also, people are forgetting you don't need to tag a fic with Slice of Life or Adventure. They aren't required tags. The idea is that if your fic has Adventure elements, you use the tag. If it has Slice of Life, you use the tag. If it doesn't have either or you aren't sure, then shit, don't use either of them. That's a viable option as well.

Users need to understand that fimfiction recognizes these as separate things that shouldn't be combined.

What if I wrote a fic with snippets of different adventures tied together by a dark tragic comedy? It would follow the life of Jake, a human in an alternate version of Equestria, and the slices would also elaborate on his growing romance with Princess Leia. Are you denying my authorial rights, Alex?

329838
[Romance] [Tragedy] [Comedy] [Alternate Universe] [Crossover] [Adventure]

I hate you.

329840
but the whole thing is set in a chronologically random sequence of life slices! Can't I have [random] and [slice of life] too, Mr.? Pretty please?
Also the romance will fail when Leia dies, so can I have [sad] and [dark]?

329841
i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/007/423/untitle.JPG

329844
guys I'm being oppressed :(

329846
In three posts, you made that whole thing worth reading, amazing.

-Minty

Heh, taking it upon yourself to cover for Wanderer D's slack? Where's Clueless User and Obnoxious Writer?! They need to be here to get it through our skulls that everything we know is wrong!

And if you're afraid of infringement, Ariamaki and DPV111 up there seem to be filling in quite well. I'll let you decide who they represent.

329846

What about multi-chapter stories where one or two chapters primarily talk about the main characters day to day life and in other chapters, the pony is pulled into a life changing/ adventure fraught with danger?

All's I'm gonna say is this; For these six ponies... Adventure is Slice of Life

On the Sad/Comedy thing, one thing that most people don't understand is how sad should be used.

The litmus test is "does it have a sad ending?" Even if your story is filled with death and loss and the houses of little fillies burning down while their parents are kidnapped by aliens, if everything is hunky-dory by the end -- lost ones mourned, their lives celebrated, fillies reunited with their parents in new houses -- then it's not a sad story.

I would also suggest using [Sad] when your intent is to make the reader cry, and in that case the ending doesn't matter as much.

However, when you're going about that route, [Sad] thus becomes wholly incompatible with [Comedy]. And again, [Comedy] should be tagged when the overall intention is to make the reader laugh. Just having the occasional joke or witty banter between characters isn't enough, and your intention can't really be to both make them laugh and make them cry. (If they're crying, how are they laughing? If you want them to laugh, then cry, you're a sadistic bastard, tag that shit [Sad].) One has to take precedence, just like with SoL/Adventure. I'm not sure why this is so difficult a concept to grasp.

I feel for ya, alex - s'why I quit.

I think you can mix sad and comedy if you're clever, but I do agree about adventure and slice of life. The random tag can't mix with slice of life either.

While you're at it, can you ban SoL Comedies, too? They're conflicting tags--if the main purpose of the story is Comedy, then its goal is to incite laughter, not to portray the day-to-day lives of ponies.

Not being sardonic. I'm quite serious about this.

I had a whole spiel written out comparing this to the rule change made about character tags, but to be honest I still disagree with the notion that [Sad] and [Comedy] are tags that can't work together. Films like Little Miss Sunshine and The Descendants are loaded with sad moments and black humor, but neither of them are what I would consider "dark" in the sense that the tag on this site is supposed to represent. I think that's where you're running into a problem, Alex: the context the [Dark] tag has taken on is that it really just means [Grimdark], which really makes that tag much more incompatible with [Comedy] than [Sad] is. Personally, I'd find it much harder to believe that a gritty, blood-soaked war story is as equally comedic as it is dark then I would to believe that a story is equal parts funny and sad.