Open to the floor - Headers/tagging

[wilderthan]

Several new things I want to do with my ficjournal! This is probably boring and so on but I'm in hope of making my fic more accessible and more accurately labelled, so it'll help you in the end, I promise! The first two sections explain what I've done and why; if you're not interested, skip to the poll section where I'll link some examples of the new headers and you can tell me how you feel about it.

Header

First, I'm rolling out a new header. So far, it's only been put on fics that I can edit on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal at the same time, on the first page of my Dreamwidth journal. Eventually it'll get to all of the nearly three thousand fics I have written. So far, I'm just trying to figure out what exactly is best to cover all newsletter requirements, and provide accurate information to everyone. To that end, I've added two "character" sections -- "main characters" and "referenced characters", so now I can make it absolutely clear who is involved in a fic.

I was also contemplating changing my method of warnings slightly, after I read this post on Dreamwidth, which says, among other things:

BDSM -- So here we come to it. There I've been talking about death and rape and child abuse and then all of a sudden...here's something that is an integral part of my sexuality being comapred [sic] with those three things. Somehow fandom has decided that a form of consensual sex needs to be warned for, like it was the same as death or rape or child abuse.

Which bothers me. That isn't my motive in putting kink under "warnings" at all. My actual feeling is more along the lines of, "Some people don't like this stuff, so I'm going to warn them in advance that it's present in my fic." This might be fairly clear to some people, maybe only a couple of people actually think this is an issue, but I'm going to put a poll in at the end of this post, to see what you think. One idea would be to still have warnings, which would be stuff like angst, death, incest, noncon, sap, smut: the big general warnings. Then I'd have a "kinks" section -- maybe not called that -- with stuff like BDSM, breathplay, knifeplay.

The trouble is deciding what I'm going to call that section, and what would fall into it. For example, where would "AU" fall? Some people don't feel that's something that should be warned for, others do. "Genderswitch"? Some people would call that a kink, others would say it needs to be warned for.

There's obviously a third option, and that's changing "warnings" to something less loaded. "What to expect", maybe. I feel kind of biased towards this kind of solution, partly because of how much reworking of old headers is going to be involved. For now, this is what I've done. There is an issue then of what I write when there are no warnings, etc. For now I'm going with "n/a", but if you have a better suggestion...

Tagging

In my previous tagging system, my fics were tagged by pairing or character. I've decided I would prefer it if fics were tagged by pairing and character, and there's no better time to do this than when I'm already editing my whole journal. The characters in the tags will be the "main characters" from the header, not "referenced characters".

Then, of course, I worry about the fate of anyone trying to search my journal for non-pairing fic. An answer occurs! I will now also tag fics with no pairing in them with "no pairing". That doesn't help them incredibly if they're searching for non-pairing fic in a certain fandom, but it would still narrow things down for them.

I am also thinking about an overhaul of my tagging for arcs and multi-chapters. Eventually, I'm going to hit the tag limit, and this makes it that much more likely. I think it will be better if I make index posts of the chapters, and link to it in each chapter -- as I did with arcs in the first place. Also, I am not overly sure what real difference I intended to make between arcs and multi-chapters, but it hasn't really happened, so all things will be tagged with the same thing. The chapters/parts will all be tagged with "multi-chapter", the indices will be tagged with "index" and "multi-chapter".

I also want to do something about my "very vague smut" and "smut" tags. I might rename it to "sex" and let the rating speak for the vagueness or otherwise. Let me know what you think.

I think that covers everything specific I wanted to do with tags. However, in the poll I'll provide a section for you to suggest anything you'd like me to tag by that I don't already (e.g. "incest").

Edit: From feedback so far, "what to expect" is now "contains". Still pondering what to do when there is nothing special to report. "N/a" sounds as if my fic doesn't contain anything. Which would be problematic.

Also, what would people think of my "characters" section being a single one, with characters that are only referenced in parentheses? Example (worksafe).

Please consider this when you vote!

[Poll #1422294]

Comments

[ruby-shards.livejournal.com]

I also want to do something about my "very vague smut" and "smut" tags. I might rename it to "sex" and let the rating speak for the vagueness or otherwise. Let me know what you think.

Now that I think it over a bit, I do like this idea, too. I think "vague" is kind of, well, vague. I think just labeling them all "sex" then letting the rating speak for the level of detail and depth works better and helps the readers know exactly what to expect.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your input!

Re: the character/referenced character thing. Most newsletters require a 'character' section, and I wanted to have a main character/referenced character section to help people know what they're getting. Like if I post with a characters section that says "Sam, Dean, Jess", some people might not read it because Jess is a part of it, whereas if I have her simply as a referenced character... but there might be another way around it, e.g. if I just had characters as "Characters: Sam, Dean (Jess)". What do you think?

[ruby-shards.livejournal.com]

When I do the character thing, I put referenced characters/pairings in parenthesis. It helps keep it less cluttered and is still pretty easy to understand. I do see your point in wanting to differentiate between referenced characters and main characters, so I think finding some way to do this is important. I would go with the parenthesis, but really, it's up to you. If you're afraid someone might not understand what the parenthesis are you could always do a sample header in a sticky at the top of your journal or in your userinfo, explaining each category and what can be found there.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I'll see if anyone else has any strong feelings on it. Thanks for the input, anyway.

[ruby-shards.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I'd be interested in seeing if anyone else has any suggestions on this, too.

[lassarina]

So, from spending far too much of my life reading this fucking warnings debate, here's what I'd do as a compromise:

Instead of "What to expect," cause that pings me out in a way I'm not okay with, I'd go with "Contains:" and that removes the loaded-ness of warnings. It indicates the things that the story, in fact, contains without making a value-judgment on whether it's good, bad, or a bundle of purple kittens.

But I am plus plus plus picky and feel free to ignore me.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think I like "contains" better because a) it sums it up in a word and b) it does not seem (to me) like it's loaded. Also c) it doesn't sound like I'm saying "I'm going to spoil my fic in the header" which "what to expect" kind of does. Thank you!