The Offspring of Booze and Keyboard

[elf]

It's high time for the tag wranglers to start wrangling some of those loose incoherent tumblr-style freeforms.

I speak, specifically, of the "I was drunk when I wrote this" concept. I don't know if the canonical should be "written while drunk" or "drunk author" or "drunk writing" (not that, I think; it sounds like it refers to the contents of the fic, not the meta-state of the author) or something else. These decisions are for tag wranglers. *insert airy handwave*

The tags that should be synned include, but are not necessarily limited to:
i was drunk when i wrote this
I was clearly drunk when I wrote this
Drunk Writing
I write when I am drunk
Things I Write While Drunk
I wrote this when I was drunk.
don't judge my drunk
jfc i wrote this drunk at 3 am two years ago
I might have been drunk when I wrote this
Because apparently drunk me writes porn
Don't Drink and Write, which has been used on two fics by different authors! One more and it's eligible for canonicability! Which is a totally cromulent word that's perfectly appropriate to a discussion about fic that was written while drunk.
this is what happens when you let me write while drinking
what was I drinking when I made this
I was drinking okay I regret nothing

Making it canonical would merge several similar tags, encourage future similarity of tagging, and--BONUS!!!--make it easy for people who hate that kind of fic to avoid it.

(Disclaimer: I was not drunk when I wrote this. But I am coming off four days of five hours' sleep each.)

Comments

[cesy]

Yes, I would love more of this type of synning of freeforms.

[elf]

When I'm more coherent and have free time to burn, I'll probably poke through other "just for fun" tumblr-style tags and see what other groupings I can find.

[naraht]

This fic might offer some inspiration if you haven't seen it already:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/591845

[elf]

I...

Wow.

Obviously, AO3 needs a "Crack!Meta" tag.

[arcanetrivia]

LOL, I like who_la_hoop. She's... kinda like that.

See also this AO3 user (although similarly, I find her tags very amusing): potionpen

[naraht]

I can't actually believe that there isn't a canonical!

[elf]

I know! I went looking for it and wound up saying bzuh? Not canonical yet? ... Maybe they're waiting for a single phrasing to take dominance? (In which case, there should be a fic-fest for drunk-written fic and a poll for best fic and that author's tag of choice gets applied to everyone's fic in the archive.) ("Best," here, is open to broad interpretation.)

I *want* AO3 to be the first fic archive on the internets with an actual "written while drunk" searchable tag. And if it's not, I want it to be the largest.

[musyc]

I know there's a Harry Potter monthly challenge for drunkfic. *searches* firewhiskeyfic. (Claims it's multi-fandom, but I don't think it worked out that way actually).

I like "Don't Drink and Write" the best, myself. Shame I follow that rule assiduously, or I'd put it on a fic and give it that third use to make it canonicalicable.

[azurelunatic]

I am sober right now, and I approve this message.

[ruuger]

I hate to be the negative nelly, but I really wish tags like that won't be made canonical. There has been talk about adding a filter that you can use to hide just non-canonical tags (instead of all additional tags, like you can do now), and making non-informative tags canonical will completely defeat the purpose of that feature.

I have nothing against people using Tumblr-like tags, but I would like the option to filter them out because to me as a reader, they are nothing but visual clutter (and, as I realised after having an eye operation last year, a serious accessibility issue).

[naraht]

I see your wider argument about accessibility, but surely "this fic was written while drunk" is actually fairly informative for a potential reader?

[ruuger]

Now that I've given it some further thought, having this particular tag canonical could be beneficial for readers in that it would allow for the readers to filter out those fics with the new tag filtering system. But I can't really come up with a 'positive' use for it - I don't think anyone would go specifically looking for fics that have been written while drunk, like they would with genres, kinks, tropes, or even most content warnings, because the tag says more about the author than about the actual fic.

[anatsuno]

Filtering-through-exclusion is just as valid, anyway, but I can think of several challenges of the bingo type that could send me looking for fic written while drunk (for example for podfic bingo, which has a "record while drunk" square, it might be interesting to use fic written while drunk). :)

[melannen]

Also if one is writing in character as someone who's drunk and wants to find an accurate voice: I know I've looked for that at least once.

[elf]

I would (I will) use it to search for fic. It does say things about the fic--it says "this was written for fun; has no intense heavy-thoughts plot going on; probably light on the angst; I handwave past inconvenient details; oh, did I mention fun? Yeah. This is for fun."

Sometimes I want to read no-brain-required tropish squee-fic. I wouldn't want to read an epic-length story in that mode... but written-while-drunk fic is not likely to be epic length.

[samjohnsson]

So asked, so granted! "I Was Drunk When I Wrote This" is now the canonical.

That said, the wranglers don't by and large check this comm. Poke them on Twitter @ao3_wranglers or through the support form at ao3.org/support and they'll be able to get back to you easier!

[elf]

YAAAAAY!

I wasn't expecting wranglers to actually check this. I knew if I officially wanted to request something, I should use the feedback form.

YOU ARE AWESOME. AO3 is awesome. Fandom gets awesome fic. And drunk fic. And hopefully, sometimes those overlap. *\o/*