Late Night Rambles: Tags · 6:33am Oct 20th, 2015
So, it's pretty late where I am, I can't sleep, and I thought it might be fun for me to rant about the tag system on fimfiction. So here are my thoughts on each tag with the most misused tags (in my opinion) at the end.
Adventure/Slice of Life: These two are actually pretty easy, and that's why they're first on the list. Their binary nature makes sure no one puts them both down. I can't really say much that's interesting here, but if you want a good rule of thumb for some reason, here it is: If you're writing about how one big important thing changes the character and their world, you probably want to use the Adventure tag. If you're writing about how a bunch of little things change their character, use the Slice of Life tag. Now, can we move on to the more interesting and occasionally problematic tags? No? We still have two more easy ones? Fine, let's plow through them.
Romance: Almost forgot this one, even the one unifying force in the Orchestra-verse is love and romance. I'm not very bright sometimes. Anyways, what can I say that hasn't been said? Well, here's something, long-time readers might recall that The Unbearable Lightness wasn't originally tagged as a romance. I thought it shouldn't have the tag since all the romance's presented were ultimately destructive and toxic to the soul, but EquesTRON pointed out that a the romance doesn't have to be healthy for the tag to work and that an unhealthy romance is still a romance at the end of the day. I guess when using this tag, the question you should ask yourself is how big a role the romance plays in the story. If it's more than a little, use the tag.
Tragedy: Probably the least utilized tag on the site, but also one of the easiest ones to understand. Is your character undone by a flaw? You're writing a tragedy. If not, you might just want to use the Sad tag. Don't confuse the Sad and Tragedy tags, they're different for a reason.
Comedy: Pretty easy to use as well. The biggest problem with this tag is the fact that a lot of people (myself included) have a hard time realizing the difference between a story having jokes and being a comedy. For instance, Your Own Worst Enemy has some moments of levity scattered throughout, but it is by no means a comedy, and if I'm being completely honest with myself, The Unbearable Lightness probably shouldn't have a comedy tag either. It's hard to tell since the first half has a distinctly comedic slant, but that quickly evaporates as Sweetie's descent into madness picks up pace. Then again, that's the case with most tragic-comedies. Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog might start out hilarious, but it ends with Billy being consumed by darkness. Hey, I wonder if that was one of my inspirations for The Unbearable Lightness.
Dark: Here's a tag so broad it's basically meaningless. It's like salt. If you're story deals with themes substantially darker than what we see in the show, you add the Dark tag. You can be writing about aliens blowing up Equestria, Celestia being a mind-controlling tyrant, some terrible awful sex stuff, or just a character trying to recover from a dark time in their lives. The Dark tag casts such a broad net, and it's really up to the other tags to explain what type of dark you're dealing with (Mature-Dark-Gore is different from Teen-Dark-Romance). Then again, I guess that's true with all tags.
Sad: Straight up, I don't know how to use this one. I guess it's fine if you're writing a really sad story, but I always get the feeling that if a story uses the Sad tag, it's going to be emotionally exploitative solely to make the reader sad. Like, is that it's intended function? I'd honestly appreciate some insight here. Why do you read or write sad stories? When is the appropriate time to use the Sad tag? I guess I'm a bit like Sweetie Belle here, even though my works can get a little... emotional sometimes. Anyways, to make up for my lack of insight, have a song:
Bonus: Age and Mature Tags
Everyone/Teen/Mature: Here's something else I've been struggling with lately, how mature does a story need to be to earn the Mature tag? Is dealing with adult themes enough to merit the tag? What about conversations and allusions to sex? How explicit can things be before we use the Mature tag? Some people might argue that if you wouldn't see it in a PG-13 film, you shouldn't read about it in a Teen piece, but I feel that writing gives us a level of ambiguity and abstraction that film doesn't. A story has the ability to turn the explicit into metaphor and coded messages, and even the raciest material still has to go be filtered and translated in the reader's mind. Is teen okay as long as there isn't any explicit sex or gore? I mean, that joke in RPO about Lyra having magic fingers was pretty risque, and any mature reader would immediately know what was up, but at the same time, it could still be in a teen work. So is everything short of graphic sex and violence okay for teen works, or is there some other boundary I'm not aware of.
Alternate Universe: Please only use this tag when your story can be described as "Like regular Equestria but X." This tag isn't an excuse to just break from canon for no reason. If you're using this tag, you better be holding up a twisted mirror to the Equestria we know and letting us know exactly what the twist is when we hop in. The Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror" didn't just show us an Enterprise where things were nonsensically different, they showed us an Enterprise where the crew was completely evil and rocked goatees. We figured out where the divergence was pretty quickly. Yes, it can be argued that all fanfics take place in an Alternate Universe (The Orchestra-verse takes place in an Equestria where Luna had a Royal Orchestra established in Ponyville, for instance), but that doesn't mean all fanfics should have the AU tag. If you're going to use this, I feel the divergence should be big and fundamentally change the fabric of Equestria.
Random: Is your story an absurdist comedy? Feel free to use this tag. If it isn't, don't. I have never seen the Random tag done well outside of that situation, although if you want to send me a short story to prove me wrong, I'll be happy to read it and post a retraction. Until then, I'll see it as a way to shield nonsense in your story by saying "Of course, it doesn't make sense, it's randoooooooom." Don't be that guy or girl. Just... don't. I suppose you could also use the tag if your story's premise is "Wouldn't it be weird if one of the Mane 6 was actually (something that makes no sense in the world of the show)?" (You might think this would fall under the absurdist comedy clause, but I'm allowing some leeway since Rarity being a serial killer is certainly random, but not very funny.) But if you do that, you'd better make sure everyone else is behaving in character. Again, the Random tag isn't a shield for nonsense and you shouldn't treat it as such.
Crossover: Completely forgot this one existed. Pretty explanatory. If you're doing a character crossover (Project Stardust) or a spiritual crossover (Fallout: Equestria) use this tag. I guess you can also use this tag if you want to crossover various MLP universes too.
(Three paragraphs of content were deleted here because I can't disable my stupid trackpad on my laptop. You'd think I'd learn not to write blog posts directly to fimfiction, but I'm slow sometimes. Anyways, I hope you understand if things get truncated after this
Gore: Blood is okay, holding your intestines isn't. The more you show us the injury, the more likely you are to need this tag.
Sex: The seed of this blog post is actually in the Sex tag. I was debating with a friend about when to properly use this tag. They thought you needed to actually show sex, I thought it was enough for a story to have strong sexual themes. For instance, The Diamond in the Stars discussed some of the peculiarities of Twilight and Rarity's love life, mainly Twilight's voyeurism and Rarity's exhibitionism. Sure, I didn't explicitly show things, but I didn't go out of the way to hide them either. I think the Sex tag can and should be used to let people know if there are frank discussions and examinations of sexuality even if that sexuality never shows anything explicit. I'm curious what you all think. I could be totally wrong on this front.
Finally, a word against tag spamming. Ideally, your story should have no more than four content tags, and the more tags you add, the greater the risk of diluting what your story's about. If I see an SoL-Random-AU-Dark-Comedy-Tragedy-Romance-Crossover, I'm probably not going to know what your story's about or if I want to read it. If I see an SoL-Romance, I'll have a much clearer idea and be more likely to check it out if that's my cup of tea. Obviously, your description can mitigate the problem somewhat, but seeing a story with a whole row full of tags is still pretty offputting to me, and I'd hate to miss the opportunity to complain.
Anyways, feel free to give me more of your thoughts in the comments, and let me know if you'd be interested in reading more of my late night rambles. Also, since we're on the topic of tags, can someone explain to me how tags work in blog posts?
Gugh, I wish I was that eloquent about my vices.
Also, blogpost-tags are like hashtags on Twitter; you can use them to sort different topics. Although, since they have to be specific and nobody looks at them anyway, they're basically useless.
I have to agree with the use of the Sex tag, its why alot of teen rated stories have it.
3483736 Vices? What are you talking about? I don't have any vices. I have papal infallibility.
3483799 Cool, glad I'm not crazy.
I would say, the "Sex" tag is like the "Dark" tag — while it indicates a certain broad class of content, it requires other tags around it to give it context and explain how much of that content is likely to be in the story. "Sex" + "Teen" + "Comedy" = Risky Business or Revenge of the Nerds. "Sex" + "Adult" + "Comedy" = Porky's.
3498550 Right, I'd agree with that, and Sex + Dark + Romance + SoL + Teen = Your Own Worst Enemy.
I really think the sex tag is there when it decides to go above innuendos (some exceptions) though i dont agree with the last bit. Can'terlot has a lot of tags, but all have there place and it works out. And Can'terlot is a fine example of the M tag as well, it has very explicit gore, no sex (yet) but the tag still it is there and works (though chap. 25 was very straightforward), and that holds to the M tag as well, it can be there, but not explicit and if it is heavy enough, then yeah.(in this case the gore).