Not the F/F you were looking for

[wrangletangle]

(This month, I'll be contributing to #femslash february by highlighting female character-centric and femslash-centric tags at AO3. Today I'll start with the not-so-happy post, to get it out of the way. The shiny starts tomorrow.)

Any shared system of classification eventually runs into the problem that different people have different definitions of each item in the classification. Case in point: if you filter for F/F on AO3, you will get at least four separate things:

* Works where one or more canonically male characters have a (frequently magical) sex change in-work but are not portrayed as trans*,
* Works where one or more canonically male characters were born cis female,
* Works where two or more women are briefly together in the background, making up a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole work,
* and Works where two or more canonical women are actually involved in the primary relationship.

Generally, the first three categories will equal or even outweigh the fourth. Which is why the statement that F/F even makes up 29,000 works, or 5% of the archive total, is ridiculous to me personally, because my personal definition of F/F is so vastly outnumbered on that tag.

This is also why I've never subscribed to the F/F category, even though it was the first tag to be available via subscription. It's simply far less useful to me that the freeform tag. -_-,

(Incidentally, this is at least 10x more true for poly. I can honestly say I've never bothered to filter for 'Multi' after the first time; as a tag for any form of poly, it's always been useless.)

Starting tomorrow: Happier posts!

Freeforms of the day: Femslash, Polygamy, Threesome, Moresomes

Comments

[erinptah]

"Multi" is the default icon that gets added to a fic if you check two or more of the other categories. So a Harry/Draco-and-Ron/Hermione fic tagged "M/M" and "M/F" will get that multicolored icon when it appears in search results.

(Although it does not appear to be added as a tag -- I just tried to search an M/M+M/F fic of mine, and it didn't come up under the filter.)

Either way, I always thought "more than one of these categories" was what the tag was designed for, rather than referring only to poly relationships. So it doesn't seem like the same kind of tag abuse that can be complained about with F/F.

[wrangletangle]

Oh, you're absolutely right - it does that! It's just that the FAQ tells us to use that category for threesomes, etc., if we want a category at all. I'm not complaining about "tag abuse" so much as concerned that a category for poly simply doesn't exist. There's a strong bias in the system towards the idea of gender being more important than the number of participants, probably becuase there's a strong bias in the system towards pairings. One flows rather naturally from the other.

[erinptah]

Huh. If the tag FAQ says to use it for poly groupings, when the system automatically adds the same image to works whose authors have given no indication of polyamory, someone somewhere did not design this well.

In my experience most fans themselves are more interested in gender first, number of participants second. As in, people are more likely to look for slash, and be happy with two men as well as five, than to look for poly, and be happy with F/F/F as well as M/F/M. Do you think that's not the case?

I mean, there are plenty of other metrics we could apply to relationships in a fic beyond gender and number of participants. How much sex they have in the story, for instance, or what kind, how kinky it is, whether it's a crossover ship. To me the freeform tags feel like the most intuitive way of handling any of those. (...well, I would love a ticky box selection to designate whether a work is a crossover, but that's getting into fandoms rather than relationships.)

And poly fic is a thing I look for! But according to user tagging, there are many things that are more general-interest -- the "Kinks" tag has more than twice as many works as the "Polyamory" one, while "Oral Sex" has over five times the number. I'm not sure poly is a factor that should be elevated to the category level.

[wrangletangle]

In my experience most fans themselves are more interested in gender first, number of participants second.

It's not that I think or don't think that's the case - it's that I don't care what "most" fans are interested in? The archive was designed primarily by people who think that way, obviously. I, and some other folks who prefer Poly to everything else, don't care so much about the gender of the participants compared to the number and arrangement.

For example, there are a lot of different dynamics with threesomes, and yet more different ones with foursomes, etc. I personally prefer the foursome and fivesome dynamics, but appreciate the dynamics of other types of Poly, including sharing without all participating. There's a lot of nuance there, and for me, what's interesting is the setup, not the gender. Frankly, I'm lucky if I can get Poly in a fandom I know the canon for, let alone in a specific gender combination. Gender just doesn't factor in usefully.

I find the slippery slope argument non-compelling for the usual reasons. Yes, we could make a ticky for crossovers. Does that have anything to do with Poly? Not really. They're separate requests with completely separate implementation methods on the coding side. You're welcome to add your voice to the many who've asked for it over the years, and I wouldn't argue with you at all.

(For kinks, no one that I know of has ever asked for kinks to be marked in any way other than the freeforms. How would that be uniquely useful to a specific set of users?)

One of my goals is to make users aware that the Poly, Threesome, and Moresomes tags even exist (many don't know, and so don't tag their works). I also want to encourage the wrangling staff to find a way to link these tags together usefully, as right now they're all completely separate (which is one reason Poly doesn't have that many uses). And yes, Poly shippers are a minority. So are Femslash shippers. I'm used to it. ^_^

However, I really don't think using freeform tagging numbers is a reasonable way to decide what gets a category. Femslash's freeform, even after I subtagged about 20 tags to it tonight, only has about 3200 works. One could easily argue that 40 or more other tags have higher uses, and therefore Femslash shouldn't have a category either. But because of the gender focus of most of the archive's designers, f/f does get its own category (which I'm very happy about).

So, well, I'm probably preaching to the choir anyway. Perhaps a Poly awareness month later in the year? *ponders*

[erinptah]

So it's personal preference. That's fine! I'm just saying it doesn't sound like a widespread enough preference that the archive should feel obligated to give it special recognition, you know?

I'm not working down there in the code, so I didn't realize one "add another checkbox option for new works" implementation would be radically different from another. Either way, the main reason I mentioned crossovers is that that's the one thing where I *have* seen a lot of people request it as a category.

Of course the freeform tagging of "Femslash" (and "Slash", and "Het", and "Gen") is artificially low, because it's been a category from the beginning. Anything marked with the category is functionally the same as having gotten the freeform, and shouldn't be ignored as a measure of user interest.

I am all for more poly-encouraging events! Maybe try to get something going at shareandsharealike, or at least promote it there, and see if polybigbang will talk it up too.

[ciaan]

Hmmmm. I have absolutely put the Threesome tag on every threesome fic I've posted to the AO3, but I've never thought to use the Femslash freeform because it feels redundant to me since I'm already marking them as f/f. Whereas using freeform is the only way to mark a threesome. Does putting the Femslash freeform on really help readers/searchers enough to be worth it? Of course I want people to find my fic but I also get twitchy at having too many or repetitive labels on sometimes.

[wrangletangle]

As a personal preference, I'd love it if we didn't need the freeform at all. But looking at the reality of how the category tag is used, I often find myself frustrated - or hear the frustrations of others - about finding works that really are femslash between female-identified characters.

So I guess the answer depends on your fandom? If it's a fandom that's 95% femslash, you probably won't need the tag. If it's a fandom with lots of Rule 63 and background femslash, you'll probably want either "Femslash" or a subtag to make sure everyone can find your work without frustration. (Using subtags has the same effect as tagging with "Femslash", except even better, because your work appears in multiple filters.)

[ciaan]

Myself I generally search by character or pairing rather than freeforms, because I don't read much in fandoms where I don't know canon. Though I do sometimes search for freeforms but they tend to be small weird stuff (generally when something catches my eye when I'm already skimming or on tagging my own fic).

Well, I just added the Femslash tag to a few of my fics. And then when I was labeling one I noticed that Boys Kissing shows in the dropdown and Girls Kissing doesn't. So I added Girls Kissing and that now makes four fics tagged with that, so maybe that could become canonical. (And then if it does will it be capitalized? Because I typed it in with capitals but it's showing all lowercase.)

And I noticed that the freeform Polyamory has subtags of Moresome, Foursome, and Fivesome, but Threesome is not connected to it at all that I can see and I think it should be.

So those are my tagwrangling suggestions for the evening.

[wrangletangle]

What I tend to do is take a fandom I love and look for all the F/F in that fandom, regardless of which women are involved. I think that's where the system we have breaks down. (I actually thought the archive was broken the first time I looked at Avengers F/F, because only 3 works on the first page were actually about two or more women in the main role.)

Girls Kissing is now canonical, thanks for the catch! <3
(And yes, it's capitalized now. What happens is that the capitalization is set by the first person to use the tag, and it's not changed after that unless that tag is canonized.)

Unfortunately, Moresomes will be pulled out from Polyamory, because apparently it wasn't supposed to be subtagged. There was a pretty heated debate about one point about how these tags are used, and since Polyamory is a lifestyle as well as a shipping preference, we have to be extra careful. I'm looking into alternative umbrella terms now. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears!