#the notion that every fictional platonic relationship is inherently more interesting if made romantic is absolutely ridiculous

[noneuclideanwhimsy]

Every time I see a really cute writing prompt that lists its primary characters as close friends and someone comments “But what if… they were LOVERS???” I don’t reply but I am mentally slapping their hand and going “NO! Stay away from my precious platonic prompt with your amatonornativity!”

[cacodaemonia]

It's interesting to see how the votes are spread out so far! I figured I'd reblog this separately from the original poll to add my thoughts in response to a couple of tags. Not that my opinion matters, but I like reading other people's opinions, so. :) Also fwiw, I voted for 'The characters AND their relationship play a significant role in the story.'

I'll put this behind a cut because it's a bit long and rambling.

#i only tag a ship if they appear and their relationship plays a significant role #sic of sorting for a ship tag only to read a fic and theyre only mentioned #or in the background for one scene #personally i get butthurt when i'm searching for a ship only for it to like be a background mention #as a result in my own fics i only ever tag the main pairing #like they're the main focus of the story #anything else is like false hope

Same (though I do also tag platonic or romantic ships besides the main one if they're a big part of the story)! As a reader, it's incredibly frustrating to have to use ctrl+F or 'search in page' in so many fics just to see if the characters show up for more than very brief cameos. And before I started creating unhinged amounts of fic and art for my favorite ship, the vast majority of fics tagged with their ship barely featured them at all.

Considering how annoying that is from a reader's perspective made me a lot more careful with the ships and characters I bother tagging in my own works.

#and if shipping weren't made into a weird moral thing by modern day fandom i would probably not tag for mentioned ships

This is another reason why I think tagging every single ship or character that's even mentioned in a fic is a bad idea. It's important to be considerate about adding tags for certain topics, and for those that might only show up as say, a brief mention in a fic, I like to offer a little warning in the author's notes or relevant chapter notes. But realistically, if some readers are that upset over the mere mention of a ship they don't like, then that's honestly not my problem and it shouldn't be yours, either. We all have to be responsible about our particular squicks and comfort levels.

AO3's search function can be very useful to avoid tags one don't like, but its primary function is of course to find things one DOES like. So I think the recent focus on using tags as warnings for every possible thing anyone might find slightly uncomfortable makes the search function inherently much less useful.

For example, I am very squicked by the Anakin/Padme ship, so I'm likely to filter it out in some AO3 searches. But I want to filter out works that are ABOUT Anidala or heavily feature the ship—not every single work that even mentions it. That would be shooting myself in the foot, since I'd surely be missing out on a lot of fics that focus on other characters and barely have anything to do with Anidala.

So in my experience, over-tagging doesn't do anyone much good, and it can feed into the ridiculous notion that ships and preferences in fiction have anything to do with someone's morals in real life.

*climbs down off of soapbox*

As a connoisseur of a ship that often gets tagged in fics on AO3 but then shows up for like 3 lines out of a 20K fic, I often wonder how other writers use ship tags.

For example, do you see ship tags as something readers would actively search for, and therefore you only tag a ship if it plays a significant role in a fic? Or do you see ship tags as something readers would want to filter OUT, and therefore you list every ship that's even mentioned in your fics? Or maybe you list all potential ships in the hopes of attracting more readers? Or some other option?

But anyway, my question: