Tags and Spoilers

[wrabbit]

So I have noticed some fans saying that they prefer to ignore or not read the tags on AO3 because they might find them spoilery. As someone who doesn't consider many things spoilers I found this intriguing. I would like to pose a few questions to everyone:

1) Do you typically read tags? How often do you search by tag?

2) What kinds of tags do you find spoilery and why?

3) What do you want to know about the content of a story before you read? Why?

4) What do you not want to know about the content of a story before you read? Why?

5) Would whether you consider any tags to be spoilery or not be affected if the author wrote the content indicated by the tags creatively or in an atypical way?

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

If the tags were intentionally misleading, I would not consider that a spoiler.

However, I would probably avoid reading anything by that author in the future. Intentionally misleading readers using tags is something I would be very annoyed by.

Authors who feel strongly about not giving information out before a story is read should simply announce that they don't tag their stories or use story warnings, IMHO. Gaming the tagging system would push my buttons as a reader.

[wrabbit]

I can see how it would be irritating if not actively malicious, but I've enjoyed it the few time I've been surprised by tags or warnings that I thought were going to go one way in the story, but really went another. The same with creative or contrary interpretations of prompts. I don't promote misleading readers into reading something they might not be into at all, but I do like it when authors are creative with their interpretations.

[princessofgeeks]

Yeah, you are clearly willing to accept tag usages that for me are just 'not done' and that would make me feel deceived.

Different strokes and all that.

[wrabbit]

There is also a thin line between tags that might encourage assumptions, purposefully or not, and tags that actively mislead. Bad example of the former: if I see the two tags "Hallucinations, Monsters," I might assume the monsters are hallucinations, but maybe the monsters end up being real in the story and the hallucinations are something else.

[princessofgeeks]

This specific example I would not have a problem with. Because as far as it goes, it's accurate. The reader may conflate or interpret the meaning of the two tags, but that is okay by me.

[wrabbit]

Continuation of my previous comment...

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.

[princessofgeeks]

I see what you're getting at, but for me it all comes down to what tags are for.

To me, they are for giving the reader accurate information about what's in the story. And by definition, that makes tags spoilery. Any attempt to make tags less spoilery infringes on the actual purpose of tags.

Coy or sly obfuscation with tags in order to attempt to not give away the ending or a plot twist is, imho, absolutely counter to the purpose of tags.

I repeat: If an author is against the entire idea of a reader knowing too much about the story in advance, the author should simply say "I do not warn" and "I do not tag" and hope the reader is down with that.

Even in profic that you buy in bookstores, there's a certain amount of expectation or reader/author promise implied by the genre. So rarely do we as readers plunge into something with absolutely zero expectations.

And yet, fanfic tags by design go way beyond that. They are intended to give real information. They are not for obfuscation.

I would be in favor of simply fewer tags than any attempt to coyly tempt the reader by subtly and poetically playing with the nature of the tags. For me, that kind of effort should be reserved for the fic itself. The tags are more like cold metadata.

But I don't do Tumblr, and Tumblr tags are indeed an art form that is probably bleeding into other places (like AO3) where tags are used. I myself would be in favor of resisting this trend.

But I am not really a good example to use, because I so rarely search for tags other than fandom and pairing.

Thanks for the thinky.

postscript

[princessofgeeks]

Creative or contrary interpretations of prompts are in another category for me. I don't mind them at all.

But intentionally gaming the tag system, which is supposed to be accurate metadata, would tick me off.