Genre vs. Content: Not Always the Same Thing · 5:37pm Dec 26th, 2017
I'm not sure when I'm going to be adding Warning tags to Twilight's Secret Journal, even though it is in dire need of them.
The problem is any change to the story description would need to meet the new rules on Genre's three-tag limit, and "Genre" includes a mixture of two kinds of tags.
One kind of tag is actually genre: mystery, horror, sci-fi, adventure, slice-of-life, drama, epic. These are legitimate overarching themes into which stories can be categorized.
The other kind of tag isn't always a genre. It's more frequently used as a softer content warning: romance, dark, tragedy. These can be genres, sure. But they're also flags to warn the reader what they're getting into.
bookplayer once held Back to Normal hostage with a downvote until I agreed to add a Dark tag to it (which I still don't see, but enough other people agreed that I relented). That's how strongly ponies feel about correctly tagging stories. But now you can only do three Genre tags, except for some of them which are actually content tags that have no limit but are mixed in with the other Genre tags to bucking confuse you (like human and second-pony).
So I have a slight problem with this. I wouldn't mind being cut down to a single Genre tag if they were only genres. I need to be able to warn my audiences if a fic is Dark, or has Shipping/Romance in it, or has a Bad End (Tragedy). That's what readers expect.
Under the new system, I'd have to remove Dark from TSJ. It's definitely Drama and Horror first and foremost, and it should probably either be tagged with Romance or Porn (I'm not sure which is more appropriate... or, less inappropriate). TSJ goes beyond 'sex' into a whole psychological area that includes drama, horror, shipping, unrequited feelings, and actual pornographic sections of a few chapters (including the one I'm stuck on writing at the moment).
But many of my readers have DEMANDED the Tragedy tag as a warning! So is TSJ now Drama, Horror, and Tragedy? No longer Dark and no longer Romance/Shipping?
Do I wait until somepony knocks some sense into Knighty's head about this important distinction?
Ideas are gratefully accepted and devoured.
No ideas, but I do gotta say, I do not envy youre dilema.
there's no excuse to limit tags that accurately reflect the work, but honestly I feel like horror is inherently dark.
Frankly, if something has both horror and tragedy, which kind of suggests how the horror is going to end up I think you can drop the drama. And honestly, the romance/shipping, with the way the various characters are affected throughout the story doesn't feel legit either
Tag machine broke
Wait... Tragedy was demanded? Does that mean that the story is actually not a tragedy? Now I'm confused...
I'd make sure to tag it to your specifications in the long description and first comment, then make the appropriate fimfiction gestures.
4759800
that means the readers think it was even though the author doesn't.
why no just message knighty directly? he seems pretty open, and while it might take a while for him to implement any changes, it'd be worth it. I've noticed this issue on a couple of my stories, too, though it's not as serious.
4759833
That makes no sense! A story is only a tragedy if the ending is (I think)!
4759866
well, I think a lot of people are going to go with their gut on what is a tragedy and what isn't rather than some technical definition
4759866
Tragedy can happen during it. Let's say I've of the main characters get maimed, or dies. Or somehow suffers irreparable trauma. Either way, tragedy before the end.
4759873
I dont agree. The "Sad" tag is for a story that has tragic things in it and is a very large part of it. The "Tragedy" tag is for when the whole point of the story is the tragic suffering of the character(s) and there by the ending. If you have a tragic story but with a happy ending then it is not a tragedy. Or at least that is what I learned a tragedy is.
4759767
There's a huge gulf between horror and drama. Drama is angst, internal struggle, difficult choices and suffering. TSJ is more Drama than any other tag.
4759840
I posted an Issue on the Github tracker.
4759866
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4759873
The point of the Tragedy tag is to warn the audience that this isn't a "come from behind and win" story. Some readers want Celestia to save the day by killing all the (to them) bad characters and completely reverse Twilight's fortune, and this story is intentionally a slow descent. That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a Bad End, but it does mean most of what Twilight attempts to do will come to naught.
Without the Tragedy tag, a sizeable proportion of the audience will be led to believe the story will turn around at some point. I needed to add the tag because I was getting a lot of pushback from those readers, both in public comments and private messages.
4759928
if you have any knowledge of the characters you're reading in a horror setting you will know they are feeling all those thing
Never understood the point of tag limits.
My first reaction to reading this post: "Does TSJ have a romance tag?" *goes and checks* "Holy shit, it does! Why does this have a romance tag!?"
TSJ doesn't have any romance in it. The only thing even close to "romance" are the types of feelings between a long-term kidnapping victim and her kidnapper. You know, Stockholm Syndrome. And perhaps the type of """romance""" between an abuse victim and her abuser. You know, psychological fuckedupidness. There is no true love between any of the characters in this story. Give me an example and I'll tear it down. The mayor and her revealed feelings for Twilight? Lust induced by magical brainwashing. Rainbow taking Twi's virginity? Lust, pure and simple. And Twi wanting her hymen gone because the vampires see it as important for some reason.
And this leads to yet another thing I don't like about you, TQ: Your tendency to think you know better than everyone else. If a whole bunch of people "DEMANDED" a tragedy tag, then maybe the story needed it. I know this is your story, and you see it one way, but if a whole bunch of other people see it another way, then maybe, just maybe, you should consider their view. The fact that you seem to treat dissenting opinions with disdain is a terrible trait for an author. This is not to say you should change everything to match their whims! This would of course lead to the story ending with Celestia and/or Twilight going full Blood Knight and murdering everyone. And that's lazy and boring. But you need to find a balance. Simply adding a tag so people know what they're getting into is a nice compromise, in my opinion.
I would agree that TSJ is horror, drama and tragedy. There's no romance in this story. There's also no porn. The porn tag is for stories with little to no plot that leap straight to the clop. TSJ does not fit this description at all. In fact, for the themes the story follows, there's very little actual sex in the story AT ALL. So no porn tag is needed.
4759994
Hence my asking for advice, whereas with you it's always your way or the highway.
Look in the bucking mirror sometime.
Are you this much of an asshole in real life, or is it only online that you talk to people like this?
4759992
I think it was to keep people from adding every tag to their story just so it would show up on searches more. It might be less of an issue these days. Then again, a ten-tag limit might be fine as well.
Me, I'd rather be able to mix SoL and Adventure, seeing as how I have one of those coming up. >.>
4760038
You know, I honestly tried to come off as less of an asshole than I usually do when I wrote that comment. I realized I had failed before I had even submitted it. It's just that your whole holier-than-thou attitude grates on my nerves. You come off as this high and mighty author, that you are the one in the right, and that everyone else is wrong. No matter how many people disagree or the reasons they give for disagreeing.
weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/am-i-out-of-touch-no-its-the-children-who-are-wrong.jpg
After posting my comment and realizing how vitriolic it was even after I tried to tone it down, I realized something: I hate you. I hate you as an author. And I love it. I love criticizing you. I love pointing out what I see as flaws. I love pointing out how you seem to think you're so much better than us lowly plebs who just don't understand the masterpiece you are making. And holy shit I realize that makes me a terrible person. But I strongly believe there need to be people like me to counter people like you. For every elitist prick there needs to be an asshole to drag them down. For every asshole there needs to be a nice guy to point out how much of an asshole they're being.
And, once again, I feel I must point out one thing: I have never told you to do anything. I have offered criticisms, or even insults, but I have never told you to do anything my way. I've made suggestions and I've said maybe you should listen to your audience. I did not demand anything.
Did you even read the rest of the comment you quoted? If you had you would have seen such snippets such as this:
No demands for change. Just stating that you might want to listen to other people.
And this:
I'm including myself in that whole "matching their whims" thing, too.
And this:
Even said it right there: this is my opinion. Not what you MUST do.
I am aware of how much of an asshole I am. But are you aware of how much of an elitist prick you are?
>tfw I haven't even read the new rules
If there's a 3 tag limit, and you want to use more, just pick the 3 most applicable/important tags, use those, then in the top of the description just write "[Tag4][Tag5][Tag6]"
4760039
Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, a general limit of ten would be a much better approach imo.
4760053
Is the asshole position self-elected? And the elitist prick position elected by the asshole?
4760053
For the record, I don't disagree with anything you said in the post I referred to (apart from there being no Romance in the story—I agree about how tags are for readers not authors). I just don't think it's constructive to say "another thing I hate about you is you think you know better than everypony else" if you expect somepony to listen.
I don't think I know better than everypony else. That's why I ask for advice. Sometimes I agree with advice, and sometimes I don't, and when I disagree that doesn't mean I think "I know better than everypony else".
Don't talk down to people if you want them to read what you have to say. I didn't bother to read the second comment you posted because I don't want to deal with emotional pain today.
4759992 Knighty likes rules.
(Unless they're rules against stories which treat fathers raping their daughters as humor, of course.)
4760462
While that's certainly not my brand of comedy, I'm not sure why you'd want rules against that.
4760477 I used to feel that way. Then one day I was checking the popular stories on fimfiction, to see if a story I'd published would be featured. There were 4 stories that day, one in the featured box and 3 rising toward the top of popular stories list, that were comedies about fathers raping their daughters. There's a comedy in the featured box right now about Sunburst raping Flurry Heart.
This stuff defines our community. Our community. Which means we have some responsibility for how it develops. And I don't want to be part of a community that is known for comedies in which fathers hilariously rape their daughters and the daughters end up loving it.
Would it be okay to post comedies about murdering Jews? What if half of the stories published are about killing Jews? If you were living in Germany in 1900, would you look at the newspapers, pamphlets, and books calling for exterminating the Jews and say, "Well, that's free speech for you!"
Why do we have rules against scripts, instruction manuals, and metafiction, but no rules against comedies about fathers raping their daughters? If we had no rules about content it would make more sense, but we have lots of rules against different types of content. It seems pretty clear to me that using child-rape as a source of humor is worse than metafiction.
4760585
The problem is that you can't make rules about fiction without inadvertently banning fiction that deserves to be seen in the process.
Here's what Neil Gaiman has to say, and I agree with him completely.
And that said, if those stories are that popular, then either the popularity metric needs to be tweaked, or they don't define our community—they are part of our community. I mean, Donald Trump was elected because most White people in this country agree with most of what he says and does. Some Americans might not like that, but they still have to take ownership.
4760602
Fimfiction is not the Supreme Court. You're still allowed to publish your foalcon elsewhere. Fimfiction is a community.
Is it wrong for a community to have standards? To say, "We are not the kind of people who do this thing?"
Also, will you go on the record as saying you support allowing Nazis to call for the extermination of Jews in Germany in 1920?
The approach you're talking is the rationalist approach, in which you set up a few rules as axiomatic and inviolable, rather than allowing social institutions to exercise discretion. This leads to fetishizing a few principles as absolutes, and sacrificing everything else to them, because no more than a few principles can be upheld absolutely at one time.
4760620
I don't see why you can't do what most users of the website do and turn on the M filter. It doesn't take me promising this or that about Jews and murder to see that the problem for your story's lack of popularity is not the existence of fetishy porn stories.
4760625
The M filter filters out Mature stories. I don't want to do that. Nor is my personal preference the point. Nor is the popularity of my stories the point. The point is having community standards to keep your community from becoming a foalcon-hub that attracts disturbing people.
I don't want to get acrimonius; I'll drop the conversation if you prefer. But I think you're dodging the question about Nazis and Jews because you know you have to answer "yes, it's okay", or take back everything you've said here.
4760756
I'm not getting drawn into the "defend Nazis" argument sidetrack because the important point here isn't about defense of free speech, but about utility. There are two points, really:
Invoking Godwin's Law off the bat because you don't like fantasy fetish porn is a sure-fire way to shut down a conversation with most ponies. I, however, am not most ponies.
0) The most people-pleasing solution to "I see stories I don't like" is "tag and filter", not "arbitrary set of rules nopony will be happy with because everypony will think the line should be somewhere else". The site intends to serve as many authors and readers as it can, and isn't going to kick off stories on theme unless it has no choice in the matter. (And there are good stories about rape between father and daughter: I wrote one recently, it wasn't porn by any stretch of the imagination, the rape was a twist at the end nopony was expecting, and it still hit the feature box.)
The correct solution is an (insert thing you don't like) tag and an (insert same thing here) filter. You should be able to filter stories beyond a simple M filter by using the warning tags. If you think that seems like a good idea, you should post it on the issue tracker (two things: add 'foal romance' to warning tags, and add a more complex tag filter so you can filter out 'foal romance & M & sex'). Using the issue tracker is what the rest of us do when we want to bring a site request to Knighty's attention. He frequently listens. I think this is something he'll want to implement to appeal to a wider base and it's in line with his vision for the website. There isn't a need to remove literature to satisfy people who complain about its existence when better solutions like these exist.
1) This is not why your stories aren't featuring.
Turn off the M-filter and see if your stories are on the feature box. If they aren't, you can't blame porn anymore. It's pretty simple. And even if you could blame porn, I think you're putting too much emphasis on the importance of the box and the importance of the readership here. Readers read what they want to read, and if you kick some of them off the website, that means there are fewer readers now, not more readers.
If your complaint is that you are on the feature box but being pushed off of the M-feature box by porn (which I kind of doubt, but let's assume); and, as you seem to suggest, the fetish porn writers are a tiny subset of authors worth ignoring; then the problem may be that some statistical feature of fetish porn is pushing it unfairly high on the feature box. That's an algorithmic issue that can be fixed. Maybe the algorithm shouldn't give bonus heat to stories with mixed up/down thumbs and a billion comments, because people aren't going there because they want to read the story, they're just visiting to argue. This is another thing you could add to the issue tracker to have looked at.
4760783
4760756
For the record I find you both to be right. And you're both justified in your feelings. This is an important discussion to have, in my opinion, because it fundamentally affects the site.
4760783
You just ignored what I wrote and repeated the same arguments that I just responded to.
- It's not about preventing the stories from cluttering up my screen. It's about deciding our community doesn't want to be evil.
- It's not about my stories not featuring.
- Again you don't answer the question. The question is a valid question, not a conversation shutter-down, because it is a strong test of your claim that fimfiction should post everything anybody wants to write. You dodge the question because you're not really willing to stand behind your words.
Saying "we can't make any distinctions, so we shouldn't try" is an argument I don't accept anymore. Your stories are very obviously not the sort of "lol infant rape" thing I'm talking about. Admittedly fimfiction has a history of having story mods who are incapable of making intelligent distinctions, but that isn't an inherently insoluble problem.
Besdies, the argument you used to say we should allow publishing stories about infant rape can also be used to say we should allow real-life infant rape. The argument is that we're incapable of drawing distinctions between cases that should be allowed, like a sensitive story which uses rape, and cases that shouldn't, which are "exploitative". But this same situation holds in real life. What is "rape"? What if a doctor needs to conduct an examination? What if a four-year-old enjoys it, if it feels good, does that make it not rape? If a 14-year old has sex with a 12-year-old, is that ok? What about a 16-yr old and a 10-yr old? At what point exactly does it become exploitative? All these same fuzzy boundaries appear in the real-world case. I don't think you're willing to say that we should let dads rape their daughters because of the difficulty of discerning coercive from non-coercive, exploitation from mutually beneficial, etc., but the principle is the same.
4761111
I never made that claim, nor half of the other things you're accusing me of. You're arguing against a straw mare.
4761232
Yes, you made that claim when you said people should be allowed to write child rape comedies. Unless there's some category of things you think is worse than that, and shouldn't be allowed.
So now, either you're claiming that you do think there are things that shouldn't be allowed on fimfiction, or you're raising a bogus objection: that I said something you do in fact believe but haven't explicitly said.
If it isn't a bogus objection, then what's an example of a story type that you think shouldn't be allowed on fimfiction?
This would all have been much simpler if you would stop dodging the question I keep asking.
Let me restate it in a more-specific form: Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you ran fimfiction, but in Germany in 1930 instead of here and now. Would you allow people to post stories or articles which suggested that exterminating all the Jews would be a good thing? Yes or no. State your position. One word spent answering this concrete question will be more valuable than another page of rhetoric. Stop dodging the question.
4762551
This isn't 1930's Germany, it's a fictional story archive on the Internet and everypony here knows these stories are pure fiction. Should we allow stories that are clearly fictional comedies about exterminating a race of ponies? Yes, absolutely.
You say we can't have child rape comedies. Death's worse than rape, can we not joke about murder or death? I have a comedy where Trixie dies in an amusing way. That's by all means appropriate, and it should be.
So before you respond, let me tell you how this entire stupid argument is going to go. First, I say 'yes this thing is okay', and provide a counterexample (as I have just done). Next, you choose one (or both) of the following:
Then this shit goes on forever.
Feel free to repeat ad nauseum on your own time on a piece of paper. I don't think you need my involvement in this conversation to have the conversation you're trying to have.
4762603
Now you're changing my example so it isn't relevant. I asked the example that I asked, not the example that I didn't ask. I'm trying to ask whether there are any stories so morally objectionable and socially damaging that you would ban them, and you keep avoiding the question.
All fiction is fiction, but what is this "pure fiction"? Is it fiction that has nothing to do with the real world, and has no impact on how we think about the real world? Then it doesn't exist.
Ponies are people, as CiG says.
A story about exterminating a theoretical race of ponies doesn't have the same import and real-world impact as a story about exterminating Jews. A story about child-rape, however, has the same import whether the child is a pony or a person--at least, to most of us here who read pony stories.
4762613
You seem to miss the part I've been trying to make obvious over the past three comments, so I'll step out and be 100% blunt: I'm not interested in changing your opinion, and I don't want to have this conversation with you in public on my blog.
I think we might make headway if we have a chance to talk in person when next we meet (Trotcon or a party or something), but I'm not interested in playing a game of yesbut on this topic over the internet.
4762617 I might take you up on that at Trotcon; I might not.
I kept replying because you kept counter-arguing. "I don't want to argue, but I want to have the last word" means you still want to argue.
4765260
You seemed to want a reply, and I didn't want to be rude. I apologize.
Feel free to take the last word here and I won't respond to it.