long & interesting ffa thread on the AO3/OTW

Thing is, as a writer, I don't particularly care about having access to uncurated tags. Especially for things like pairing/character/genre, or even for tropes. I can see the benefit of having an uncurated "other stuff" field, but for everything else I would be perfectly happy to select from a dropdown menu or similar, as on ff.n. I try to tag my own work based on autofills, and try to remain within AO3 style, but it's not easy to do, and I don't know how successful I am even then at creating useful metadata for my fics.

As a reader, right now I feel like I would actively PREFER curated tags; I have fond memories of using the old Automated Archive search engine with various inclusions/exclusions, browsing long lists of generated story-links. And I just - I wonder how much this is a THING for people, or if others share my general attitude of not-caring.

Some polls:

Never done one of these before, but what with ... everything, on top of end-of-semester writing woes, I could really use a boost. My thread on allthingsgood's lj-based love meme.

Think of it this way: once ALL of the nonfannish internet sites/structures have betrayed us - kicked fandom off, died, started randomly stripping audio, deleted comms, ect. - and we have, in response, constructed ALL NEW shiny fandom-owned alternatives - then, why then, we shall rule the world.

Ahem. Moving to diigo for now.

eta: what the hell is a diigolet and why will it not respond to click-and-draggage in the way that its parent website says it will?

1. Because I value the emotional freedom fandom has taught me to value my id and the contents thereof.

I love the awareness of my id I've been building in fandom. I look back at my baby fic, and the thing that strikes me most isn't how badly written it is - and it is! - but how tragically unaware that little girl was of what she wanted. My baby stories dance around my id, and sometimes they just miss it altogether, because I had no idea what I was doing. No one had ever talked to me before about the erotic pleasure of (nonsexual as well as sexual) stories. I just knew that some bits of books made me really happy, and I was trying to figure out how to replicate that feeling.

I'm happier for having a name to put to my id. It means I spend less time chasing it, and more time experiencing pleasure. My feminism values women's pleasure pretty highly.

2. Because I love all of your ids, and I love knowing and seeing them.

Even if they're not my own. You read anyone's work for long enough, and you'll end up knowing quite a bit about her. cesare gave the example of narrative emphasis on advanced degrees in a porn story, and that's pretty much exactly what I mean. We're writing to please ourselves here, and if you cross fandoms with somebody you're going to see her reapplying tropes and being attracted to similar stories and yeah, that's going to give you some information about her.

But when I think about the phrase "my id is showing," I think of prowriters who don't know how to approach or harness their ids. There's something very uncomfortable about reading someone's book and both seeing their kinks and knowing that they didn't mean for you to see their kinks. Um. Lots of dudely sff gives me this feeling: Orson Scott Card, (occasionally) Frank Herbert, Stephen Lawhead. It's awkward, because you can tell that they're not doing it on purpose, their ids are just creeping out and they can't get them back in the box. They're not doing anything with that id pleasure, just flailing. In contrast, writers like Tamora Pierce or Baroness Orczy, heck like, Tolkien, who knew how to use the id if ever anyone did - the ones who know what they want and tie the power of their ids to some pretty masterful purposes - I love seeing their ids. Not a problem. Their ids work for my benefit.

And I love seeing fandom's collective ids in particular, because of that thing mentioned above re: women's pleasure. You guys, I think our id vortices are so cool. I think it's so cool that we have language for all this stuff that critical communities don't - woobie? that's our word. Literature's jam-packet with 'em, but academia hasn't been over-arsed to name the phenomenon. I love that we have structures and spaces that let us really get to know our pleasure buttons, and that uncritically celebrate our happy feelings. And, y'know, that whole thing where "good" writing is totally a narrative kink anyway. So.

If your id is showing, it might not gel with my id. I might scroll down or backbutton out. But unless your id is talking about, idk, Indian princesses - Sherlock Holmes kinkmeme, I'm looking at you - I'm not going to have a problem with that. If your kinks are really obvious in your writing, I'm actually pretty likely to think it's cute, and to grin when I see them pop up. I don't feel the need to police either your id or my own.

3. Because I just can't see us resisting all the baggage about ids and good writing bouncing around our culture. telesilla's already been burned. It's inevitably going to be more panopticon than we want it to be, I think.

Ugh. I somehow - don't ask me how - ended up in the Sherlock Holmes section of ff.n, where I found a disturbing quantity of fic marked "bromance." I've never seen that term applied to fanwork before; I earnestly hope to never do so again. Bromance!

Oh my god. Whoever just gave me six months' paid accountage - I just opened my recent comments page, and my eyes got really, really big when I could suddenly see more than ten. Um. I feel all verklempt. This is pretty much the most awesome thing anyone has ever done for me, and, uh. I'm so grateful to you, whoever you are. And really happy. If you tell me who you are, I will totally make you fic or icons or wallpapers or banners or mixes or any other thing you want, because you are definitely my new favorite person in the world.

"the blonde"? Is a girl. I can tell, because you spelled that descriptor in the feminine way. Words that are also not ungendered: fiance/fiancee, confidant/confidante. Get the picture? I keep feeling like I've accidentally wandered into Elric genderswap fic - not that there's anything wrong with that.

It's been like fandom party central these last couple of days, between the AO3 opening and Yuletide and the shiny new Merlin ep and just wow. I heart this thing of ours so hard. It makes me so happy that between the AO3 and Dreamwidth and Fanlore we're really coming to be in possession of our own arts, and my inner cultural historian is also really thrilled that we've begun constructing our edifice, making our mark a little more indelible.

Erroneously gendered contemporaneous reviews of George Eliot just make it all the better. Sporfle.