#e.g. queer platonic relationships‚ vs friends with benefits where the benefits remain in the background‚

[canonical-transformation]

I am guessing anon ran into the explicit makeouts in a "&" fic that was mostly centred around the making up, and that would explain their annoyance. But there's not enough context in the ask to be sure of that.

There's an element of subjectivity to what counts as platonic vs slash, right? E.g. what counts as romantic tension, what kinds of non-normative dynamics are "romantic"/"sexual" or not, etc. One person's non romantic is another person's extremely relatable demi pre-relationship.

Past a certain point, there's no definitive "case law" for appropriate tagging(*). As a reader, the author's tags are just a rough guide.

I don't begrudge rarepair authors for tagging both if they're genuinely not sure which applies—privileging AO3 "inclusion" filters over "exclusion" I guess. (Particularly true with category labels too.)

(* I was inactive in fandom for Sexytimes and live in blissful ignorance.)

Extremely petty pet peeve but authors please for the love of God learn the difference between & and / tags with relationships

I am looking for a rare pair why are you tagging it with both. Please decide before you post it so I don’t have to scroll through non romantic stuff to find romantic stuff for my rare pair 😭

If you can see the two guys passionately making out, tag that shit as / only so that I can read it

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