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

[kate]

Hi there. Here from metanews. This is intriguing, and judging by the comments so far, it looks like my not-wanting-to-be-spoiled-ness is out of the ordinary, so I'll answer your questions to hopefully provide insight on that phenomenon.

1) I never read tags when I'm looking for things to read (even though I search for things to read via the tags). I don't want to know what's in a story - I want to let the story unfold knowing as little about it as possible. This is important to my enjoyment of a story (this comes from book culture, I think - books don't have tags or warnings or ratings, and I like that). I do, however, use tags to search if I am looking for a particular kink or other item (rare pairing, etc.). I also use the tags to narrow down the field of what I'm looking at. I'm in the Supernatural fandom, and putting in a pairing I feel like reading will bring up thousands of hits. After that, I narrow by things I know I'm not interested in (alternate universes and crossovers, incomplete stories) and that makes my search more manageable. Once I've narrowed it down that far, though, I look at the summary and nothing else - I want the story to speak for itself.

2) I find all tags spoilery. And by "spoilery," I mean for the fic I'm about to read. I am fortunate enough not to have any triggers, so I don't need or want more information for my fic than a summary that shows me the author can write a full sentence with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and with content that intrigues me. Once I have that much, anything else is going to (however minutely) ruin the story for me. I don't want to know who else is in the fic, what sex acts there might be, what kind of plot it has, or strange elements that might be in there. Actually - there are a few tags that aren't spoilery (or are spoilery in a way that doesn't detract from the story), like: length (range for the number of words or time for podfic), tags that indicate there is a character of color, and other choices of that nature. They're also super-useful to search on, so I appreciate those tags, though I probably won't look at them until after the fact, or if I'm looking for those particular kinds of fics.

Caveat: I don't feel like people shouldn't tag - I feel it is vital to have appropriately tagged fanworks for people with triggers. I have trained myself not to look at tags so I don't spoil myself because I want to experience the fic without any foreknowledge. That's important to me because spoilers mute my enjoyment of the fic, but it doesn't trump the need to tag appropriately so that people with triggers can take care of themselves.

3) Addressed above, but to reiterate: I want a particular fandom and/or pairing, which I search on by tag. After that, all I want to know that the author can write a coherent, properly spelled and punctuated, grammatically correct sentence.

I do also want to know the basic premise of the story, so good summaries are vital. Too little won't grab my interest. Too much and you've just spoiled the story for me. I don't want to know anything more than a hook to start reading, and then I want the rest of the story to unfold without knowing anything else about it. Anything I know will dampen my enjoyment, because for me, the best part of a story is the surprise of where things are going. If I know where they're going before I start, I don't really need to read the story, do I? The more surprise there is, the more enjoyment for me. (And not surprise of "I never expected them to do that" variety (which indicates OOCness) but rather of the "what happens next?!" variety (which indicates excellent storytelling).)

4) I don't want to know anything beyond the basic premise of the story before I start reading. A good summary basically hooks you into the story and doesn't give anything away that you wouldn't learn from the opening scene. That's the most information I ever want from a story. I don't care what sex acts are included, what secondary pairings, what outside-the-main-relationship pairings, what kinks (unless that's specifically what I'm looking for when I search tags in the first place) or what tropes are included.

5) People who use tumblr-style tags on the AO3 are even more spoilery than regular AO3 tags. I generally don't read those fics because if I see the tags, I pretty much know the whole fic anyway. If "cuddling" is spoilery to me, "Dean has a squishy marshmallow center" is more than I ever wanted to know. It tells me more about the author's intent and read on the character than I want to know before going into a fic.

It's like a movie trailer - if it's done right, it gives you a sense of the movie and leaves you wanting more. If it's done wrong, you know the whole movie by the end of the trailer and there's no reason to go see it.

Other than tumblr-style tags, I'm not sure what atypical or creative tags might be, but it wouldn't really matter to me because I find all tags spoilery.