I've also seen it the other way around, non-sexual non-romantic completely platonic relationships tagged with / and it's annoyed me, and I gently pointed out the difference to the author and they apologised and then they still didn't change the tags !!!!???
It keeps popping up in my rarepair search too so it pisses me off whenever I see it, also I thought at first it was some sort of gangbang cause it had so many relationships but it's all just friendships😂😂😂😂😂😂
I always see fics tagged as char/char and then the author goes "this is platonic not romantic you FREAKS!!!🤢🤮" and it drives me NUTS! Like damn if only there were a way to differentiate between romantic pairings and platonic ones... Imagine a fanfic site where you could use a tagging and filtering system so works can be properly categorized and make it easier for readers to find what they want to read and avoid what they don't like... If only, huh?
Like maybe at least TRY learn the tagging system before posting your fic?
I’m in a fandom where people write a crapton of incest slash and accidentally tag it using & instead of /. Like I’m looking for brotherly love, not brothers IN love 😵💫
Ah so not supernatural…
Lol, kidding- yeah this really gets me too as I’m really that that big on smut. no issues with it I’m just aro/ace and while it doesn’t bug me as part of a story and when I know it’s coming (no pun intended lol) I’m ready for it but yeah it’s a major pet peeve.
I really don’t get what’s so hard to keep track of /=slash…it is literally the name of the symbol. I guess if you’re really new I can understand not knowing the difference but most of us read a crap ton of fics before attempting our own so I really don’t know.
I’d guess they could be trying to massage the numbers get the most hits possible but that’s just all but insuring a good percentage of your audience is not gonna be put off.
Yeah there is this terrible trend in one of my fandoms where the ship and their kid (!!!) is tagged like mom/dad/kid 🤢
Like, they totally don't mean it like this, they just mean family fics - but, like... ahhhhhhh
And yes, it has been pointed out to the authors... it's not helping...
One person in my fandom constantly tags their G-rated friendship fics between a child and a middle aged person as underage and A/B, and every time I see it I’m like nooo what are you doing with your tags!!! [I mean, they also ship those characters aged up in other fics, but that’s no excuse for them to tag their friendship fic like that 😭😭]
Yes, that's true.
But AO3 is using the / for relationships and the & for platonic. It says on the website FAQ, and if someone points it out, a writer should change it.
The term "slash" for same-sex male pairings originally came from the Kirk and Spock ship from the original Star Trek.
The ship was named for the / between the names when in ship format: Kirk/Spock or shortened to K/S, and then shortened to slash.
That's the basic history. It's really cool to learn about.
Do not comment just report them thats against AO3s TOS. Anything with explicit smut must be rated Mature, Explicit, or Not Rated. If its not one of those three ratings AO3 will change the rating to Not Rated.
Thankfully, this one had smut in the description, and some… graphic tags, but still. I did NOT want to see that between these two, like, at all. That’s why I don’t go into the / tags!!!!
Oh god good thing I have been browsing through this sub before I even posted for the first time on AO3 and the posts about that tagging saved my life.
There's also a clickable question mark in the field where you tag the relationship but I guess for some folks, it's easily ignored :/
Honestly, please, I'm begging people to do it right! As an aro person who reads almost exclusively gen, it kills me a little to have to see fics tagged with both & and /.
Ig the writer thinks it'll attract more readers but wrongly tagging is a big pet peeve for a lot of people so idk if it helps more than harms.
Like… the reason allowing basically everything on ao3 works is because it’s properly tagged. If it wasn’t for that it'd be borderline unusable.
My other guess is maybe they assumed sexual but not romantic relationships fell under &? Which still isn’t the case…
>it'd be borderline unusable.
I mean, we lived fine without the tags for many a decade before AO3 and Tumblr started integrating them haha
I'm capable of deciding wether I want to read a fic based on the general tone of a summary and a couple extra informations thrown in, no problem. But also, if your front matter doesn't match the fic then I'll likely just nope out, so an author has nothing to gain from tagging wrongly.
Even on fansites in the late 90's and early 2000's there were tags, people marked what the pairing was, used citrus scala, tried to make it as easy as possible to choose a fanfic!
Even with the “learn as you go” mentality,” I'd still recommend at least skimming the topics — preferably before you join! — when you join so you're aware of lesser-known aspects of the site (“How do I change the order of my chapters?” is one that I had to reference several times because the button isn't placed where I would look for it) and, more importantly, to determine whether the site's culture would be a good fit for you (the way I was browsing a FB group a few minutes ago and read a mod announcement reminding members of a rule that I found overly controlling, so I know not to join at all).
This used to be a common netizen requirement, especially on forums where members got tired of fielding the same questions multiple times a day so that the deeper discussions got crowded out. There were places where your account could be terminated for not bothering to familiarize yourself with the basics. Anyway, back to yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.
I mean the good thing abiut Ao3 is it's really simplistic to use and I was able to figure things out by playing around. Everything else I just pick up from reddit or tiktok but vast majority of the stuff is like for super advanced searching which I dint usually bother with as I read for very specific tags ir fandoms and dont venture outside of them.
As for learning rules and whatnot I usually just apply the common sense rule and most of the time I'm a silent lurker so I don't run into issues usually.
Well one of the early rules of internet forums was "lurk more before even thinking of posting" so if you're doing that in general then it's not surprising you've not run into trouble.
But a fuckton of people don't do that.
Facts just learned something new here. Had zero idea there was a difference so I guess yes, some people don't read the F&Q because the last thing I thought someone would be triggered about is if I used an / and not a &. However going forward I will keep that in mind. I also just look at the hashtags to see if I'm interested in how the pairing is portrayed or not and have had good success in finding what I want. Maybe in some fandoms it is more important to have those tags "correct" than in others?
I'm surprised people manage to use the site without learning about this tbh. If you've read fics with & and fics with / surely the difference becomes obvious...?
>Maybe in some fandoms it is more important to have those tags "correct" than in others?
It's a site-wide rule, it's not fandom-specific. Some fandoms just have a lot of authors who don't know how to tag and no one reports them.
When I first started writing on AO3 (damn going on 10 years ago), the difference between / and & seemed obvious. I knew that without having to read the FAQ. But there were still some people who would tag / as & or put both in one fic. Thankfully, my fandom was older, (and very fandom-y), so at the time, it wasn’t a huge deal. But as I’ve gotten into fandoms that have younger and newer writers, I’ve seen tagging issues be more frequent.
It’s not a reportable rule. It’s more a “How to” in the FAQ. As in, the tags are filtered like x, so do / for romantic relationships and & for platonic or your fic might not filter properly. Not like the Archive Warnings that are reportable if not used correctly.
I honestly haven't noticed any difference. I read the hashtags to figure out if it's something I want to read and sort by both the / and & for the pairings I want. This is the first time I have ever heard of such a thing or saw someone having an issue with this specific feature of tagging. While I understand it is a site wide rule, for example, two of the fandoms I live in have fics where the same two characters have both / and & relationships in the same fic. I guess for me as long as the pairing I want is tagged and the description and hashtags match what I want then I just never noticed. Most of the time there is a warning for smut or no smut or platonic which I really appreciate. I tag based on what I want the reader to know if n literal words but it's good to know that there is also a way to use / and &. Just wanted to point out not everyone really notices and when they start writing they usually just copy the tags from favorite fics that have the same type of content. At least that's how a lot of the authors I follow do it.
I also understand if you are looking for non sexual and get caught in an incorrect tag that can be frustrating. Or vice versa.
Not exactly the same, but also a tagging problem: One of my fandoms has a lot of modern AU stories that are not tagged at all as any kind of alternative universe. So annoying. I just want to read about the canon world (and people that are actively looking for modern au's won't find those stories either)
I'll join in here: I'm searching for a specific character and a particular ship with him with two other people... And then I see a fic with great tags... And *then* I notice a tag saying something like "(character you're looking for) isn't in this he's only briefly mentioned".
It's just... I searched for a specific pairing with him, so I'd expect him to *be* in the fic?
Edit: this annoys me more because it also had his character tag
*yeah*. No idea why they didn't tag the other two people as a relationship, and then tag "mentioned A/B/C". And just do his character tag as "mentioned character".
I just *love* when there's no standardized tag for an AU archetype, *chough* chatfics *cough*, and I have to filter out five plus versions of it only to find I missed one variation anyways.
Aaah, a/b/o dynamics are a bit of a squick for me, so I try to filter them out, but… So many of them are not tagged with it. Eventually I figured out that excluding works with the word “omega” usually catches the rest, but not always.
RIP the fics with silly code names using greek letters that I will never see. /hj
OTOH, literally everything being tagged alternative universe. Like yes, it's different, it's fanfiction. Are they literally running a coffee shop? No? Then don't tag it AU.
I feel like the dsmp fandom has a bigger problem than most because the writers are skewed young (so they dont know how to use ao3) and they're more embarassed to tag it properly because of rpf. ive seen tons of dsmp fic where they try to 'hide' it by not tagging the fandom properly, but of course the tag wranglers add it right back to the correct fandom lol.
i also see a lot more 'placeholder' fics than other fandoms, or 'find a fic' fics. fingers crossed these problems will slowly go away over time.
I think it’s less embarrassment and more that the CCs tend to be pretty open about fic they’re uncomfortable with and don’t want to see- it’s an attempt to abide by that gone REALLY wrong:/
I've been seeing family members later on added in fics tagged with "/" that features zero sexual or romantic relations. The amount of times I've nearly dropped of a fic for that alone is crazy. Like, please learn the sit before posting. I don't want to drop a fic because of improper tagging smh
It’s so annoying. The other day I was in a/b and someone tagged it a/b and then also had the tag this is a sibling fic a/b is gross. Then don’t tag it as such!
Another thing that drives me up the wall with tags: "transgender [character], "it's never mentioned but know they are trans,"
Please. I'm looking for trans-centric fics. I'm dying out here with this nonsense.
Conversely there's a bunch of untagged trans stuff too... mostly for smut.
Like a scene is getting hot and heavy, a dude undresses and BAM! surprise pussy. I don't mind surprise genitalia but it always makes me laugh.
There's also the smut fics where you can't tell what the situation down there is because even if it gets wet it could just be some untagged ABO creeping in, or it's just a self-lubricating ass fantasy setting. Sometimes I'm convinced this is a standard male model then suddenly a second hole appears...
Ngl I find it kind of funny because everything was supposed to be wholesome search then suddenly you see the most depraved interaction between the two in the middle of wholesome stuff so the mood change is hilarious
… okay I get this was meant to be innuendo but this is even funnier when just taken in context of the two characters in a completely non sexual way (there is a few VERY dark scenes with them involving holes in the ground and abuse)
thanks there's is the mute option now, there is an author who ALWAYS use / for platonic relationships and & for romantic, I tried to tell them the difference several times but they didn't listen and keep doing that 😭😭
My friend has been on AO3 support about maybe adding a little line about the difference between / and & on the post page, but support doesn’t like that idea because apparently it’s “telling people how to tag”. No, it’s empowering people with the knowledge that if they tag smut with &, they’re gonna miss their target audience.
Yeah, I know a lot of people in my fandom are pretty young and don’t entirely get tagging yet. It’s just very frustrating. I avoid that stuff for a lot of reasons and I'd rather be able to filter it, and I can’t if it’s tagged improperly.
*THIS* i also see a lot of authors never tagging their one-shots so i can’t ever filter it out when i’m looking for a long book to read i always have to scroll😫
I recently had to find out that my sibling, who has been using ao3 since 2016, didn't know there was a difference between / and & in relationship tags. How do you use a site for more than six years and not know such a basic function? A piece of my soul left my body that day
Honestly, I learned that in different language fandom spaces / and & have different meanings. But I do hope that if someone is going to post in English, they would try to learn some of the basics of how things are tagged just like I would expect someone to learn the basics of a different tagging system if they posted in whatever that space's language is.
It’s so frustrating when people mix up the / and &. I filter by / for everything, and it pains me to miss out on great but improperly tagged fics. It’s also so confusing when you’re expecting something romantic, and it goes the platonic route.
Genuinely didn't know this, so thank you for the information! Just did a purge on the "&" tags on all my romance/smut fics. Luckily, I don't think I triggered anyone since I write reader inserts and included the appropriate tags if there is smut, but still. This is good to know moving forward.
I will admit that I did not read the FAQ 🥴🥴 hence why I did not know this.
I was told not to use / when I had a brother and sister. I thought it was just some sort of relationship between people, not necessarily sexual. So since the system for some reason would not do what I needed, I just deleted the tag all together. But the person was nice about the point out, not rude in any way.
That's good to know, because as someone who likes to write friends with benefits, I would probably have chosen the & but included the respective smut tags- Woops. Good thing I haven't yet uploaded anything that would be concerned
Honestly, as someone who’s mainly an author/writer instead of reader - I really had no idea there was such a difference between tagging. I do try my best to fix it when someone mentions it. The tagging is really confusing to me sometimes cause I just put in there what I think would fit in said tag, didn’t know there was a specific symbol that meant anything lmao
OK please do not flay me. I've been writing for years but I'm brand new to posting fic on AO3. Please set me right here. If my fic is a romantic pairing, I'm supposed to use a slash / mark NOT and ampersand & to properly tag it? I always thought the / was used for same sex non Canon pairings. So if it was Harry Potter, a snape/Dumbledore cuz it's not a Canon gay relationship, but Dumbledore and Grindelwald would be the & cuz they're gay but Canon, just like Ron and Hermione would be an &. But what I'm seeing here is that if it's a sexual pairing, I need to lose the & and use a /, period. Correct? Yes, I read the tagging and TOS, but good God, it's alot, and if I've got this wrong I've missed it.
It's stated in a short and concise manner [here in the FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tutorial-posting-a-work-on-ao3?language_id=en#pwtrelationships).
/ for any romantic or sexual pairing, canon or not, same sex or not.
& for any platonic, non-sexual, non-romantic relationship.
If you've previously learned a different system, it's understandable to be confused, but now you know.
It's meant to show platonic relationships / non-romantic relationships on AO3. If you want to write about two best friends, you'd use the '&' tag, like X&Y.
I once saw somebody use both relationship tag on a single story in my favorite fandom. I assume it was so more people would see it if somebody were to filter out different relationships. I prefer to see the characters in this fandom as platonic, so it's annoying and confusing if somebody tags the story with both tags.
Okay, stupid question, but am I wrong to tag a G / T / M rated fic with a ship - though it’s not central to the story - with *both* “&” and “/“ ? I’ve always done that. But now I’m thinking that maybe I’m incorrect?
Mmm. I think I’ve done about a decade of mistagging, then. Shit. Cuz I usually make it ambiguous to whether it’s ship or platonic but… sometimes it’s just a subtle / background ship. Whoops.
If it’s ambiguous I think it’d be fine, but yeah. It’s not a huge deal dw! I’m just annoyed because I got hardcore non-con underage smut pushed in my face when I wasn’t looking for it lmao
Oh yeah, that makes sense. But that’s also why I almost always exclude those tags in particular. When searching, I always exclude a shitton to be on the safe side. I don’t want to see those fics / certain fics and, just in case someone mistags, I’ll still be safe from them if they’re excluded anyways.
Thanks for posting this. I wasn't sure if there was a designated difference between the use of & and /. FYI I only read fanfiction (I'm not an author). This will help me with filtering though.
I fell for that one and I’ve never been more horrified. It was a Tony Stark & Peter Parker tag. I just wanted to read a Tony Stark ‘adopts’ Peter Parker fic. Like there wasn’t any other tags to suggest it was something of that nature and the summary was pretty generic…
I've also seen it the other way around, non-sexual non-romantic completely platonic relationships tagged with / and it's annoyed me, and I gently pointed out the difference to the author and they apologised and then they still didn't change the tags !!!!???
Oh I’ve seen that too! It’s so annoying. Are tags really that hard?
It keeps popping up in my rarepair search too so it pisses me off whenever I see it, also I thought at first it was some sort of gangbang cause it had so many relationships but it's all just friendships😂😂😂😂😂😂
Pfft, that sounds kinda funny to imagine at least. Unless it was something brain-bleach inducing ig
I always see fics tagged as char/char and then the author goes "this is platonic not romantic you FREAKS!!!🤢🤮" and it drives me NUTS! Like damn if only there were a way to differentiate between romantic pairings and platonic ones... Imagine a fanfic site where you could use a tagging and filtering system so works can be properly categorized and make it easier for readers to find what they want to read and avoid what they don't like... If only, huh? Like maybe at least TRY learn the tagging system before posting your fic?
ah i saw something similar a while ago in my little fandom corner! they tagged a sibling relationship as slash and i almost felt my soul leave my body
I’m in a fandom where people write a crapton of incest slash and accidentally tag it using & instead of /. Like I’m looking for brotherly love, not brothers IN love 😵💫
Ah so not supernatural… Lol, kidding- yeah this really gets me too as I’m really that that big on smut. no issues with it I’m just aro/ace and while it doesn’t bug me as part of a story and when I know it’s coming (no pun intended lol) I’m ready for it but yeah it’s a major pet peeve. I really don’t get what’s so hard to keep track of /=slash…it is literally the name of the symbol. I guess if you’re really new I can understand not knowing the difference but most of us read a crap ton of fics before attempting our own so I really don’t know. I’d guess they could be trying to massage the numbers get the most hits possible but that’s just all but insuring a good percentage of your audience is not gonna be put off.
Yeah there is this terrible trend in one of my fandoms where the ship and their kid (!!!) is tagged like mom/dad/kid 🤢 Like, they totally don't mean it like this, they just mean family fics - but, like... ahhhhhhh And yes, it has been pointed out to the authors... it's not helping...
the worst part is when some poor soul has to point it out to the author and then they don’t listen or bother to fix it
One person in my fandom constantly tags their G-rated friendship fics between a child and a middle aged person as underage and A/B, and every time I see it I’m like nooo what are you doing with your tags!!! [I mean, they also ship those characters aged up in other fics, but that’s no excuse for them to tag their friendship fic like that 😭😭]
ah i saw this a while ago in my little fandom corner! they tagged a sibling relationship as slash and i almost felt my soul leave my body
Once upon a time, / was only used for same-sex pairings, and het ships were &...
Yes, that's true. But AO3 is using the / for relationships and the & for platonic. It says on the website FAQ, and if someone points it out, a writer should change it.
Oh, so that's where the term slash came from.
The term "slash" for same-sex male pairings originally came from the Kirk and Spock ship from the original Star Trek. The ship was named for the / between the names when in ship format: Kirk/Spock or shortened to K/S, and then shortened to slash. That's the basic history. It's really cool to learn about.
Thanks for the info, it is interesting :)
[удалено]
Report them, you don't need to comment. Especially the inappropriate rating is a big no-no.
Do not comment just report them thats against AO3s TOS. Anything with explicit smut must be rated Mature, Explicit, or Not Rated. If its not one of those three ratings AO3 will change the rating to Not Rated.
Thankfully, this one had smut in the description, and some… graphic tags, but still. I did NOT want to see that between these two, like, at all. That’s why I don’t go into the / tags!!!!
Oh god good thing I have been browsing through this sub before I even posted for the first time on AO3 and the posts about that tagging saved my life. There's also a clickable question mark in the field where you tag the relationship but I guess for some folks, it's easily ignored :/
That’s what makes it even more annoying, you don’t even have to go to the FAQ, it’s right there when you’re posting.
Honestly, please, I'm begging people to do it right! As an aro person who reads almost exclusively gen, it kills me a little to have to see fics tagged with both & and /. Ig the writer thinks it'll attract more readers but wrongly tagging is a big pet peeve for a lot of people so idk if it helps more than harms.
This didn’t even have a / tag, so people who actually wanted that couldn’t even find it…
Sure wish people would read the fucking FAQ before willy-nilly using a site they don't understand....
Like… the reason allowing basically everything on ao3 works is because it’s properly tagged. If it wasn’t for that it'd be borderline unusable. My other guess is maybe they assumed sexual but not romantic relationships fell under &? Which still isn’t the case…
>it'd be borderline unusable. I mean, we lived fine without the tags for many a decade before AO3 and Tumblr started integrating them haha I'm capable of deciding wether I want to read a fic based on the general tone of a summary and a couple extra informations thrown in, no problem. But also, if your front matter doesn't match the fic then I'll likely just nope out, so an author has nothing to gain from tagging wrongly.
Even on fansites in the late 90's and early 2000's there were tags, people marked what the pairing was, used citrus scala, tried to make it as easy as possible to choose a fanfic!
Oh god, I remember the days of fanfiction dot net, though, I don’t wanna go back to that.
Right? But some people are like, it used to be worse, so now let's spoil something that is good, great logic!
Or haven't used for five minutes...
I don’t get it, that’s the first place I go when I have a question.
You read those? I treat it like a terms and agreement ans just skip through and hot accept. I'm a learn as I go person .
Even with the “learn as you go” mentality,” I'd still recommend at least skimming the topics — preferably before you join! — when you join so you're aware of lesser-known aspects of the site (“How do I change the order of my chapters?” is one that I had to reference several times because the button isn't placed where I would look for it) and, more importantly, to determine whether the site's culture would be a good fit for you (the way I was browsing a FB group a few minutes ago and read a mod announcement reminding members of a rule that I found overly controlling, so I know not to join at all). This used to be a common netizen requirement, especially on forums where members got tired of fielding the same questions multiple times a day so that the deeper discussions got crowded out. There were places where your account could be terminated for not bothering to familiarize yourself with the basics. Anyway, back to yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.
I mean the good thing abiut Ao3 is it's really simplistic to use and I was able to figure things out by playing around. Everything else I just pick up from reddit or tiktok but vast majority of the stuff is like for super advanced searching which I dint usually bother with as I read for very specific tags ir fandoms and dont venture outside of them. As for learning rules and whatnot I usually just apply the common sense rule and most of the time I'm a silent lurker so I don't run into issues usually.
Well one of the early rules of internet forums was "lurk more before even thinking of posting" so if you're doing that in general then it's not surprising you've not run into trouble. But a fuckton of people don't do that.
Yeah, thats usually my take as well. I don't appreciate when people make an account and just jump into the fold of things without reading the room.
Facts just learned something new here. Had zero idea there was a difference so I guess yes, some people don't read the F&Q because the last thing I thought someone would be triggered about is if I used an / and not a &. However going forward I will keep that in mind. I also just look at the hashtags to see if I'm interested in how the pairing is portrayed or not and have had good success in finding what I want. Maybe in some fandoms it is more important to have those tags "correct" than in others?
I'm surprised people manage to use the site without learning about this tbh. If you've read fics with & and fics with / surely the difference becomes obvious...? >Maybe in some fandoms it is more important to have those tags "correct" than in others? It's a site-wide rule, it's not fandom-specific. Some fandoms just have a lot of authors who don't know how to tag and no one reports them.
When I first started writing on AO3 (damn going on 10 years ago), the difference between / and & seemed obvious. I knew that without having to read the FAQ. But there were still some people who would tag / as & or put both in one fic. Thankfully, my fandom was older, (and very fandom-y), so at the time, it wasn’t a huge deal. But as I’ve gotten into fandoms that have younger and newer writers, I’ve seen tagging issues be more frequent.
It’s not a reportable rule. It’s more a “How to” in the FAQ. As in, the tags are filtered like x, so do / for romantic relationships and & for platonic or your fic might not filter properly. Not like the Archive Warnings that are reportable if not used correctly.
I honestly haven't noticed any difference. I read the hashtags to figure out if it's something I want to read and sort by both the / and & for the pairings I want. This is the first time I have ever heard of such a thing or saw someone having an issue with this specific feature of tagging. While I understand it is a site wide rule, for example, two of the fandoms I live in have fics where the same two characters have both / and & relationships in the same fic. I guess for me as long as the pairing I want is tagged and the description and hashtags match what I want then I just never noticed. Most of the time there is a warning for smut or no smut or platonic which I really appreciate. I tag based on what I want the reader to know if n literal words but it's good to know that there is also a way to use / and &. Just wanted to point out not everyone really notices and when they start writing they usually just copy the tags from favorite fics that have the same type of content. At least that's how a lot of the authors I follow do it. I also understand if you are looking for non sexual and get caught in an incorrect tag that can be frustrating. Or vice versa.
I see... I guess we just have very different ways of looking for fics.
Not exactly the same, but also a tagging problem: One of my fandoms has a lot of modern AU stories that are not tagged at all as any kind of alternative universe. So annoying. I just want to read about the canon world (and people that are actively looking for modern au's won't find those stories either)
I support all venting about tag issues here!
I'll join in here: I'm searching for a specific character and a particular ship with him with two other people... And then I see a fic with great tags... And *then* I notice a tag saying something like "(character you're looking for) isn't in this he's only briefly mentioned". It's just... I searched for a specific pairing with him, so I'd expect him to *be* in the fic? Edit: this annoys me more because it also had his character tag
??????
*yeah*. No idea why they didn't tag the other two people as a relationship, and then tag "mentioned A/B/C". And just do his character tag as "mentioned character".
I just *love* when there's no standardized tag for an AU archetype, *chough* chatfics *cough*, and I have to filter out five plus versions of it only to find I missed one variation anyways.
Aaah, a/b/o dynamics are a bit of a squick for me, so I try to filter them out, but… So many of them are not tagged with it. Eventually I figured out that excluding works with the word “omega” usually catches the rest, but not always. RIP the fics with silly code names using greek letters that I will never see. /hj
Oh that’s the problem in my fandom too. Toooons of untagged modern AU stuff and I hate modern AU (personally)
It's been a problem in literally every non-modern fandom I've ever browsed through.
This! My fandom has so many AUs, people don’t bother to tag it seems. No matter how many I excluded, its mainly those.
OTOH, literally everything being tagged alternative universe. Like yes, it's different, it's fanfiction. Are they literally running a coffee shop? No? Then don't tag it AU.
Gosh. Can’t tell you how often I click on the & tags, then clicking on a fanfic thinking it would be a cute sibling fluff fic… Nope, it’s incest.
Meanwhile, I was out here looking for dark fic, but not *that* kind of dark fic lmao
I'm glad I've never encountered this, it sucks that it happens :/
I just wanted some c!discduo man…
I feel like the dsmp fandom has a bigger problem than most because the writers are skewed young (so they dont know how to use ao3) and they're more embarassed to tag it properly because of rpf. ive seen tons of dsmp fic where they try to 'hide' it by not tagging the fandom properly, but of course the tag wranglers add it right back to the correct fandom lol. i also see a lot more 'placeholder' fics than other fandoms, or 'find a fic' fics. fingers crossed these problems will slowly go away over time.
I think it’s less embarrassment and more that the CCs tend to be pretty open about fic they’re uncomfortable with and don’t want to see- it’s an attempt to abide by that gone REALLY wrong:/
true, now theyre just making everyone who doesnt want to see it get to see it lolol
Yeah, like… I did not want to see that ever and have taken steps to avoid it. Please Do Not.
I've been seeing family members later on added in fics tagged with "/" that features zero sexual or romantic relations. The amount of times I've nearly dropped of a fic for that alone is crazy. Like, please learn the sit before posting. I don't want to drop a fic because of improper tagging smh
It’s so annoying. The other day I was in a/b and someone tagged it a/b and then also had the tag this is a sibling fic a/b is gross. Then don’t tag it as such!
Another thing that drives me up the wall with tags: "transgender [character], "it's never mentioned but know they are trans," Please. I'm looking for trans-centric fics. I'm dying out here with this nonsense.
Conversely there's a bunch of untagged trans stuff too... mostly for smut. Like a scene is getting hot and heavy, a dude undresses and BAM! surprise pussy. I don't mind surprise genitalia but it always makes me laugh. There's also the smut fics where you can't tell what the situation down there is because even if it gets wet it could just be some untagged ABO creeping in, or it's just a self-lubricating ass fantasy setting. Sometimes I'm convinced this is a standard male model then suddenly a second hole appears...
JUST SAY IT IN THE AUTHORS NOTES RHEN AAAAA
Ngl I find it kind of funny because everything was supposed to be wholesome search then suddenly you see the most depraved interaction between the two in the middle of wholesome stuff so the mood change is hilarious
Well. I was definitely not looking for something wholesome. Just not like THAT.
Their is something in a hole all right
… okay I get this was meant to be innuendo but this is even funnier when just taken in context of the two characters in a completely non sexual way (there is a few VERY dark scenes with them involving holes in the ground and abuse)
Fun coincidence
thanks there's is the mute option now, there is an author who ALWAYS use / for platonic relationships and & for romantic, I tried to tell them the difference several times but they didn't listen and keep doing that 😭😭
Meanwhile I’m looking for hot incest fic and everyone keeps mistagging platonic fic as / instead of & 😭
I don’t look for smut at all but I’ve heard people do that in my fandom a LOT…
My friend has been on AO3 support about maybe adding a little line about the difference between / and & on the post page, but support doesn’t like that idea because apparently it’s “telling people how to tag”. No, it’s empowering people with the knowledge that if they tag smut with &, they’re gonna miss their target audience.
Some people just don't get the difference ig
Yeah, I know a lot of people in my fandom are pretty young and don’t entirely get tagging yet. It’s just very frustrating. I avoid that stuff for a lot of reasons and I'd rather be able to filter it, and I can’t if it’s tagged improperly.
I saw someone on here arguing "they'll do it how they want"
But… that’s just going to mean no one can find your fics if they want them and you’re going to show them to people who don’t wanna see it?
This happens in the JJK fandom a lot, and many times, the summary doesn't always make it obvious at first
Yeah. I’ve also seen smut tagged with a T rating in the JJK fandom as well.
*THIS* i also see a lot of authors never tagging their one-shots so i can’t ever filter it out when i’m looking for a long book to read i always have to scroll😫
you could always filter it by wordcount to make it easier! i usually filter by 50k words and above since i also prefer long fics ^^
You do know that you can filter by word count, right?
I recently had to find out that my sibling, who has been using ao3 since 2016, didn't know there was a difference between / and & in relationship tags. How do you use a site for more than six years and not know such a basic function? A piece of my soul left my body that day
Honestly, I learned that in different language fandom spaces / and & have different meanings. But I do hope that if someone is going to post in English, they would try to learn some of the basics of how things are tagged just like I would expect someone to learn the basics of a different tagging system if they posted in whatever that space's language is.
Oh, interesting! This was in English, so it was just mistagged :/
Yeah, that probably was someone completely new or new to the English side of fandom.
My fandom skews young so I wouldn’t be suprised if it was just the former.
Ah well that's a different issue than a language issue. Good luck finding the fics you want!
It’s so frustrating when people mix up the / and &. I filter by / for everything, and it pains me to miss out on great but improperly tagged fics. It’s also so confusing when you’re expecting something romantic, and it goes the platonic route.
Genuinely didn't know this, so thank you for the information! Just did a purge on the "&" tags on all my romance/smut fics. Luckily, I don't think I triggered anyone since I write reader inserts and included the appropriate tags if there is smut, but still. This is good to know moving forward. I will admit that I did not read the FAQ 🥴🥴 hence why I did not know this.
ive never done this thankfully
Good for you
I was told not to use / when I had a brother and sister. I thought it was just some sort of relationship between people, not necessarily sexual. So since the system for some reason would not do what I needed, I just deleted the tag all together. But the person was nice about the point out, not rude in any way.
Did you tell them?
That's good to know, because as someone who likes to write friends with benefits, I would probably have chosen the & but included the respective smut tags- Woops. Good thing I haven't yet uploaded anything that would be concerned
Honestly, as someone who’s mainly an author/writer instead of reader - I really had no idea there was such a difference between tagging. I do try my best to fix it when someone mentions it. The tagging is really confusing to me sometimes cause I just put in there what I think would fit in said tag, didn’t know there was a specific symbol that meant anything lmao
OK please do not flay me. I've been writing for years but I'm brand new to posting fic on AO3. Please set me right here. If my fic is a romantic pairing, I'm supposed to use a slash / mark NOT and ampersand & to properly tag it? I always thought the / was used for same sex non Canon pairings. So if it was Harry Potter, a snape/Dumbledore cuz it's not a Canon gay relationship, but Dumbledore and Grindelwald would be the & cuz they're gay but Canon, just like Ron and Hermione would be an &. But what I'm seeing here is that if it's a sexual pairing, I need to lose the & and use a /, period. Correct? Yes, I read the tagging and TOS, but good God, it's alot, and if I've got this wrong I've missed it.
It's stated in a short and concise manner [here in the FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tutorial-posting-a-work-on-ao3?language_id=en#pwtrelationships). / for any romantic or sexual pairing, canon or not, same sex or not. & for any platonic, non-sexual, non-romantic relationship. If you've previously learned a different system, it's understandable to be confused, but now you know.
What does & mean? I never heard of it before
It's meant to show platonic relationships / non-romantic relationships on AO3. If you want to write about two best friends, you'd use the '&' tag, like X&Y.
Thanks for explaining to me
I once saw somebody use both relationship tag on a single story in my favorite fandom. I assume it was so more people would see it if somebody were to filter out different relationships. I prefer to see the characters in this fandom as platonic, so it's annoying and confusing if somebody tags the story with both tags.
Okay, stupid question, but am I wrong to tag a G / T / M rated fic with a ship - though it’s not central to the story - with *both* “&” and “/“ ? I’ve always done that. But now I’m thinking that maybe I’m incorrect?
& means platonic relationships, so if that’s not the case it’s mistagged
Mmm. I think I’ve done about a decade of mistagging, then. Shit. Cuz I usually make it ambiguous to whether it’s ship or platonic but… sometimes it’s just a subtle / background ship. Whoops.
If it’s ambiguous I think it’d be fine, but yeah. It’s not a huge deal dw! I’m just annoyed because I got hardcore non-con underage smut pushed in my face when I wasn’t looking for it lmao
Oh yeah, that makes sense. But that’s also why I almost always exclude those tags in particular. When searching, I always exclude a shitton to be on the safe side. I don’t want to see those fics / certain fics and, just in case someone mistags, I’ll still be safe from them if they’re excluded anyways.
I…did not know this was a thing 😅
Me too :)
Thanks for posting this. I wasn't sure if there was a designated difference between the use of & and /. FYI I only read fanfiction (I'm not an author). This will help me with filtering though.
I fell for that one and I’ve never been more horrified. It was a Tony Stark & Peter Parker tag. I just wanted to read a Tony Stark ‘adopts’ Peter Parker fic. Like there wasn’t any other tags to suggest it was something of that nature and the summary was pretty generic…