Hello there! I was talking with someone about how people, especially new-to-fandom folk and tumblr folks, don’t really understand some of the tagging conventions on Archive Of Our Own, so I thought I’d make a little post for it.
- if your fic includes any of the warnings listed, tag it with that warning.
- if your fic includes NONE of the warnings, tag “no archive warnings apply”
- if you do not want to say whether your fic includes content listed in the warnings for spoiler reasons or because it is a work-in-progess and you don’t know if it will include that content, select “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings”
- “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings ” =/= “No archive warnings apply”
- M/M, F/F, and F/M are all self-exlanatory. Use them if you have romantic and/or sexual pairings of those genders.
- “Other” means any other romantic and/or sexual pairing that does not fit the laid out gender pairings (ex, Man/Nonbinary)
- “Multi” indicates polyamorous relationships
- a slash (/) indicates a romantic and/or sexual relationship
- an & indicates a platonic relationship
- IF YOUR WORK INCLUDES PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS, ESPECIALLY AS THE FOCUS, TAG THE & RELATIONSHIP. DO NOT USE A / FOR PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS.
- you may tag both the / and & tags if both apply, for example, some queerplatonic relationships will be tagged with both (otherwise, default to & for queerplatonic) and some fic are written to intentionally be read as both shippy and platonic
- TUMBLR PEOPLE, PAY ATTENTION: Unlike how tags work on tumblr - a way to talk and add comments - on Ao3, tags are designed for searchability and organization. They have two functions: be able to find works by searching for tags and be able to read tags to determine if a work is one you want to read. (General search vs specific fic)
- Don’t talk in the tags on Ao3. It is not the place for it.
- Consider what genre and tone the fic is and use established tags to communicate this.
- Ex. hurt/comfort, hurt no comfort, fluff, angst
- Then, consider what subcategories your fic falls under
- Ex. whump, alternate universe, canon compliant,
- Consider what specific tropes you are using
- Ex. sickfic, alternate universe: canon divergence, alternate universe: coffee shops & cafes, grief/mourning, minor character death, first meetings
- Next, think about fandom specific tags. These are common (or can be newly established in fandoms with fewer fics) tags to indicate the type of fandom specific fic you are writing or popular tropes therein.
- Ex. Episode: s01e12 Prophecy Girl, Asexual Rudyard Funn, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Monster Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist
- You can add a clarifying tag or establish a new fandom tag, BUT BEFORE YOU DO, SEE IF THERE IS AN ESTABLISHED TAG YOU CAN USE FIRST.
- Why is it important to use established tags and tag the subcategories? I’m glad you asked! It comes down to the first and primary function of tagging: searchability. To use an example, the other day, I went looking for fics in the fairly small fandom of Wooden Overcoats. I wanted to read some whump fics, preferably ones that maintained my personal headcanon of aromantic asexual Rudyard Funn. Knowing that are not many fics, I thought to limit my search to just the tag “whump”. Only one fic came up. Ok, not a big fandom I can accept that, so I look through the general Wooden Overcoats tag. And I immediately found at least three fics which should have been in the results of my search but did not tag “whump”. What doesn’t come up when I search “whump”? A vague talking-in-the-tags alluding to the specific plot, “whumptober”, “whumptober 2020″, “march of the whumps”, or any similar tag. You have to tag what your working with if you want it to be searchable. That is the purpose of meta tags.
- And so let’s say I wanted a fic focused on a platonic relationship, as I often do. I can search for “Character A & Character B”, but only the fics that are properly tagged with that will come up as a result. That means that all the fic that doesn’t tag for platonic relationships, only romantic/sexual ones, will come up in the results.
- This is where you say what your fic is about. Use a few lines from the text, write a separate summary or do a mix of both.
- Do Not: Disparage yourself or your writing in the summary. This is not the place for it.
- HERE is where you can put whatever you want. Want to ramble in the tags a la tumblr? Do it here! This space is for whatever you as the author want to say to your reader. It does not negatively impact searching nor is something your reader is forced to read.
- This is also where you can put content warnings, requests for comments, requests for critique, your @ on other social media, or links to the playlist your made for your fic
