has kind of permeated my brain more than I realized
ha. I learned that The Author Is Dead when I was 16 and never looked back since. This is a slightly different issue, imo. I mean, the problem is, you're completely right--different readers will see things differently. And the reason the author is dead is because the author didn't make the text for the reader and if she did, that doesn't matter. The text is what it is and anyone can make anything out of it they choose. But tags are for the reader. And since they're for the reader, whatever the author intended shouldn't matter; the tags should be just what the reader wants them to be. But the author of course has no way to divine what readers will think, so should she just go with what she intended?
if the author isn't very good at telling what others are likely to see in the fic, that doesn't work very well.
Exactly. I think I sort of tend to be an outlier in terms of what I want in stories, so it's really hard for me to understand what other people want. Over on lj, in response to this post, someone mentioned a particular story as an example. This example story was labeled gen, was mostly about the relationship between two young men, and then ended with one of the young men deciding to pursue a relationship with another young woman. The commenter was using this story as an example of something a lot of people were upset by--and I totally get that they were upset, and that response is not invalid. But to me, that story was gen because it was not about who got together with whom; it was about family. I'd've probably labeled it gen and upset a whole lot of people!
I would expect to see the tags
You're right! This was really badly worded! What I should have put was "I would like to see the tags". I was trying to deal with what I feel is this expectation of doing tags "right." Everyone who asked about my tags on Ao3 was really really nice about it and not at all condemnatory or aggressive, but I still have this kind of "I did something wrong! What do you want from me?!?" response, like there's a right and wrong way to do tags. ...Maybe there is; I'll never know :o)
tagging practices would vary from archive to archive and between fandoms, at least to a certain extent, because people pick up on the social norms of the fandom and fandom location they hang out in the most.
What an interesting point. I'd never thought about it that way, but of course you're right!
no subject
ha. I learned that The Author Is Dead when I was 16 and never looked back since. This is a slightly different issue, imo. I mean, the problem is, you're completely right--different readers will see things differently. And the reason the author is dead is because the author didn't make the text for the reader and if she did, that doesn't matter. The text is what it is and anyone can make anything out of it they choose. But tags are for the reader. And since they're for the reader, whatever the author intended shouldn't matter; the tags should be just what the reader wants them to be. But the author of course has no way to divine what readers will think, so should she just go with what she intended?
if the author isn't very good at telling what others are likely to see in the fic, that doesn't work very well.
Exactly. I think I sort of tend to be an outlier in terms of what I want in stories, so it's really hard for me to understand what other people want. Over on lj, in response to this post, someone mentioned a particular story as an example. This example story was labeled gen, was mostly about the relationship between two young men, and then ended with one of the young men deciding to pursue a relationship with another young woman. The commenter was using this story as an example of something a lot of people were upset by--and I totally get that they were upset, and that response is not invalid. But to me, that story was gen because it was not about who got together with whom; it was about family. I'd've probably labeled it gen and upset a whole lot of people!
I would expect to see the tags
You're right! This was really badly worded! What I should have put was "I would like to see the tags". I was trying to deal with what I feel is this expectation of doing tags "right." Everyone who asked about my tags on Ao3 was really really nice about it and not at all condemnatory or aggressive, but I still have this kind of "I did something wrong! What do you want from me?!?" response, like there's a right and wrong way to do tags. ...Maybe there is; I'll never know :o)
tagging practices would vary from archive to archive and between fandoms, at least to a certain extent, because people pick up on the social norms of the fandom and fandom location they hang out in the most.
What an interesting point. I'd never thought about it that way, but of course you're right!