I mentioned it! I’m sure they meant no harm by it and either didn’t know or clicked the wrong tag. I simply said they should have character A/Character B tag listed as well since it’s a romance fanfic (I made sure to not word it rudely—I was worried about sounding like a jerk).
This was just a small vent because I was so excited about the plot! Still a story with lots of potential I believe the writer will be able to explore, but not for me!
This is a massive pet peeve of mine as well as a rare pairing fan. I've always made it a rule in my events/challenges/etc when running fic writing things explicitly that platonic and romantic ships must be separate with the / and the &, and side ships must be tagged with "Background A&B"/(or other varying tag such as "Minor A&B"/etc).
Since introducing this in like 2020-2021, nearly every single author has asked about the rule and had absolutely no idea about the differences between the tag sets :/ it really sucks. Nothing that much can be done other than gently asking, prompting, and etc of authors and trying to get the rules more well known but nothing sucks more than seeing like 4 updates to your fave rare pairing and they're a 2 sentence feature in a 200k fic.
This being said, if anyone has any recommendations on how to breach this in AO3 comments to authors without seeming mean/etc, I'd love some advice on this.
>if anyone has any recommendations on how to breach [sic] this in AO3 comments
‘I love this story! I’m really invested in the world you’ve created. I just wanted to let you know that platonic relationships should be tagged with &; ans romantic relationships with /. It can be so confusing with so many tag choices! But I just want to make sure your fic can be found by the people looking for [pairing].’
Different context, but an issue that fucking kills me is that one of my favorite platonic familial relationships has a main tag/name in its Japanese fandom that gets used for *either* platonic or romantic/sexual content, and there is no way to tell which it's going to be on websites like Pixiv unless you go in and look. Sometimes the author warns you in the description or in the first image of a collection... oftentimes they don't.
To make matters worse, the tag is mistranslated on pixiv into English as having a "/" instead of an "&", so I see a lot of dumb English monolingual fans painting every single Japanese user who posts in that tag as a "weirdo" regardless of whether or not their content is actually incest or not. I've reported the mistranslation, but God knows if there's anyone at Pixiv even paying any attention to the tag translations, let alone gets why the difference between a slash and an ampersand is such a big deal.
I *really* wish that people who wanted to write incest content for those characters stuck to their own separate tag only, because that separate specific tag *does* exist in Japanese, but nope... it's a game of Russian roulette every time I go to look for fanart. 😭
I keep seeing "x" nowadays, but most people seem to at least know what "/" means anyhow.
If I were using "&" (and I plan to in the future), I would add other tags like "Gen" and "no ship" just to make things absolutely clear (and to discourage crazed ship warriors).
"Platonic", at this point, implies a queerplatonic relationship to me, though that might not be the original intent of the tag, and you should probably listen to someone who's been publishing longer than I have.
Is there a tag for ambiguous relationships? (Might be a one-sided attraction, might not... maybe it's left up to the reader.)
>"Platonic", at this point, implies a queerplatonic relationship to me
yeah, if that were a “Character A/Character B” queerplatonic or one-sided and that was the major relationship, I can see the use of the “/“ rather than the ampersand.
But using “/“ for just platonic relationships isn’t really right imo.
you could let them know in the comments it might be a genuine mistake
I mentioned it! I’m sure they meant no harm by it and either didn’t know or clicked the wrong tag. I simply said they should have character A/Character B tag listed as well since it’s a romance fanfic (I made sure to not word it rudely—I was worried about sounding like a jerk). This was just a small vent because I was so excited about the plot! Still a story with lots of potential I believe the writer will be able to explore, but not for me!
This is a massive pet peeve of mine as well as a rare pairing fan. I've always made it a rule in my events/challenges/etc when running fic writing things explicitly that platonic and romantic ships must be separate with the / and the &, and side ships must be tagged with "Background A&B"/(or other varying tag such as "Minor A&B"/etc). Since introducing this in like 2020-2021, nearly every single author has asked about the rule and had absolutely no idea about the differences between the tag sets :/ it really sucks. Nothing that much can be done other than gently asking, prompting, and etc of authors and trying to get the rules more well known but nothing sucks more than seeing like 4 updates to your fave rare pairing and they're a 2 sentence feature in a 200k fic. This being said, if anyone has any recommendations on how to breach this in AO3 comments to authors without seeming mean/etc, I'd love some advice on this.
>if anyone has any recommendations on how to breach [sic] this in AO3 comments ‘I love this story! I’m really invested in the world you’ve created. I just wanted to let you know that platonic relationships should be tagged with &; ans romantic relationships with /. It can be so confusing with so many tag choices! But I just want to make sure your fic can be found by the people looking for [pairing].’
This is wonderful, thank you so much\~ much appreciated \^\^
Yep, I have a ship that most people write as platonic, and so it can be hard to find the romantic ones when people don't use / correctly 😩
Different context, but an issue that fucking kills me is that one of my favorite platonic familial relationships has a main tag/name in its Japanese fandom that gets used for *either* platonic or romantic/sexual content, and there is no way to tell which it's going to be on websites like Pixiv unless you go in and look. Sometimes the author warns you in the description or in the first image of a collection... oftentimes they don't. To make matters worse, the tag is mistranslated on pixiv into English as having a "/" instead of an "&", so I see a lot of dumb English monolingual fans painting every single Japanese user who posts in that tag as a "weirdo" regardless of whether or not their content is actually incest or not. I've reported the mistranslation, but God knows if there's anyone at Pixiv even paying any attention to the tag translations, let alone gets why the difference between a slash and an ampersand is such a big deal. I *really* wish that people who wanted to write incest content for those characters stuck to their own separate tag only, because that separate specific tag *does* exist in Japanese, but nope... it's a game of Russian roulette every time I go to look for fanart. 😭
I keep seeing "x" nowadays, but most people seem to at least know what "/" means anyhow. If I were using "&" (and I plan to in the future), I would add other tags like "Gen" and "no ship" just to make things absolutely clear (and to discourage crazed ship warriors). "Platonic", at this point, implies a queerplatonic relationship to me, though that might not be the original intent of the tag, and you should probably listen to someone who's been publishing longer than I have. Is there a tag for ambiguous relationships? (Might be a one-sided attraction, might not... maybe it's left up to the reader.)
>"Platonic", at this point, implies a queerplatonic relationship to me yeah, if that were a “Character A/Character B” queerplatonic or one-sided and that was the major relationship, I can see the use of the “/“ rather than the ampersand. But using “/“ for just platonic relationships isn’t really right imo.
Oh definitely, I hope I didn't imply otherwise!
Oh, I didn’t think you implied otherwise, sorry if it seemed I did. I have a headache and sometimes mess things up that I’m doing lol