Tags and expectations · 2:16am Sep 11th, 2017
Fimficion’s selection and system of tags is pretty decent, in my view. They cover most or all of the bases, and—applied properly—are rigorous and literary enough to be truly useful. (Really, the only improvement I’d like to see would be the ability to filter out tags. In my case, for instance, “Crossover” and “Second Person” are deal-breakers, and I’d prefer not to see stories with those tags in search results, even if other tags do match my preferences. Addendum: Battlecat points out that feature does exist, but neither of us is sure when it was added.)
The trouble is, too many people—readers as well as writers—don’t seem to apply or interpret tags properly. That problem is not limited to Fimfiction, of course; it’s endemic across the Web, and indeed any database system. Most people, unfortunately, simply aren’t careful or detail-oriented by habit, in my experience.
Some difficulties plainly were anticipated; the explanation for “tragedy” in particular bends over backward to make very plain that tag should be used for its technical, not its conversational, meaning. To be honest, I sympathize and agree with that approach, and do my best to tag accurately and conservatively—perhaps too conservatively, it seems.
The proximate cause for this post was a characterization of Foreign Nationals as “slice of life fluffiness”. The trouble here, of course, is that slice of life is not synonymous with light or fluffy—it simply means the story deals with the everyday rather than the extraordinary. The affairs of a broken family can be classified as slice of life, but they certainly couldn’t be described credibly as light or fluffy. The tag that probably comes closest to the opposite of “Slice of Life” is, I think, “Adventure”.
The tone I strove for in Foreign Nationals was very much down-to-earth, if somewhat low-key; indeed, rather the opposite of fluffy was what I had in mind. At the same time, though, I didn’t consider it dark or gritty or earnest enough to warrant any additional tagging. After running across that description, however, I decided, with some misgivings, to add the “Drama” tag, since without it some folks apparently just don’t take a slice-of-life story seriously.
The feature exists! You can filter out tags by adding them to your search parameters and then clicking once on the parameters you want to exclude. When it's toggled, it appears red which indicates the search will exclude it from the results.
I found out by accident just recently but I'm not sure how long it's been possible
I feel I should speak in defense of the categories in question, not least because I write crossovers, and Nico Stone-Rupan has demonstrated that even the second-person perspective can have some merit (though he's since moved to third-person and a protagonist named Second Person.) Then there are those like alarajrogers and her Next of Kin to Chaos continuity, which applies decades of experience writing Q to Discord and blends the two universes into an incredible whole
(that's still largely balanced towards the pony end of things.)
So yeah, discounting an entire tag can lead to you missing some quality fiction.
As for the Slice of Life tag, it's definitely picked up some fluffy connotations over time. The Drama tag may prove to be a wise addition.
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In both cases my aversion is conceptual, I’m afraid, rather than a matter of not discovering the right stories.
I find second-person narrative so obtrusively irritating (and vaguely creepy) I simply cannot get past it. I’ve tried to read several second-person stories ranging in reputed quality from dismal to excellent. None lasted more than a few hundred words before I rage-quit them. Maybe that says more about me than it does the stories, but there it is.
Crossovers as a concept irritate me slightly less, but the fact I have no connection to or affection for ninety-plus percent of the crossed-over properties makes up for it. The only crossover I’ve succeeded in finishing is Bosstone’s Stargate Equestria on Fanfiction.net. No other has lasted longer than any of the aforementioned second-person stories.