In the "Hallucinations, Monsters" case, I wouldn't feel tricked. But, say, if something were tagged "Dom/sub, top!Lee, bottom!Starbuck," and it was actually a story about dom!bottom!Starbuck and sub!top!Lee, but the author hadn't tagged dom!Starbuck or sub!Lee, I might feel misled and confused as to why they didn't tag that. I would question why they tagged who was top, but not who was dominant, and I might wonder whether they were deliberately trying to trick the reader into interpreting their tag of "top" to equal "dom."
I'm starting to think that it is useful to distinguish between when the tags reflect an obfuscation in the story itself, and when the tags obfuscate something that isn't occluded in the actual story. In the "Hallucinations, Monsters" case, the tags accurately reflect a question in the story: are the monsters hallucinations? In the "Dom/sub" case, the tags obfuscate the story and seem to mislead the reader to no purpose. The first case I think is acceptable even if it encourages the reader to make assumptions that are not ultimately true in the story, whereas the latter is confusing and deceptive.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-04-03 11:56 pm (UTC)In the "Hallucinations, Monsters" case, I wouldn't feel tricked. But, say, if something were tagged "Dom/sub, top!Lee, bottom!Starbuck," and it was actually a story about dom!bottom!Starbuck and sub!top!Lee, but the author hadn't tagged dom!Starbuck or sub!Lee, I might feel misled and confused as to why they didn't tag that. I would question why they tagged who was top, but not who was dominant, and I might wonder whether they were deliberately trying to trick the reader into interpreting their tag of "top" to equal "dom."
I'm starting to think that it is useful to distinguish between when the tags reflect an obfuscation in the story itself, and when the tags obfuscate something that isn't occluded in the actual story. In the "Hallucinations, Monsters" case, the tags accurately reflect a question in the story: are the monsters hallucinations? In the "Dom/sub" case, the tags obfuscate the story and seem to mislead the reader to no purpose. The first case I think is acceptable even if it encourages the reader to make assumptions that are not ultimately true in the story, whereas the latter is confusing and deceptive.