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

[moonlightmead]

Hi. Here via metanews (belatedly). Like another via-metanews arrival, I don't seem to fit the pattern, so I'll reply, however late. The big thing for me is that I have different reactions depending on fandom. I have one main fandom where I live and breathe and read and write and which is at least 90% of my time (The Professionals), and a couple of minor ones where I read intermittently, and then I go following recs to things I know nothing about.

(1) In my main fandom, I try not to read the tags. AO3 makes this hard.

But in other fandoms, I don't mind. I certainly don't go out of my way not to. Very very occasionally, I search on a tag. It's so rare that I can remember most of the searches still! So I remember reading a rec which was a Narnia story dealing with Susan, tagged with 'Problem of Susan', and I knew instantly that I would like to read others in that genre, so searched for that. And a couple of years ago, I discovered the knotting tag and had a day of reading All The Knotting. (This must have been a while ago, because you could, indeed, read a lot of it in a weekend back then!)

(2) I think most tags are spoilery! Perhaps not these: tagging for episode, series, or post-canon, or writing styles: 'five things', 'epistolary', 'first person'. But even then, another writing style tag would be a spoiler: 'unreliable narrator'. Particularly because I have just found a heap of 'xxx is an unreliable narrator' examples, which stop me reading it and discovering it for myself. Another example is when something is revealed at the end, and it's been tagged for. I read a brilliant story recently where only at the end of the story do you realise that the POV character is blind. I read it on paper, with no tags. If I had seen it on AO3 and 'blindness' had been in the tags, the entire point of the story would have been lost.

(3) Main fandom (Pros): length (do I read it now, or save until have more time), some indication of whether it's fluff, light-hearted, serious or very heavy (again, 'read now, or later'), author (gives me an idea of what to expect), and whether it's slash, gen or het (slash is what I am in Pros for and I often skip the others). And that's about it. Don't even require the pairing. Pros is 95% B/D, and that's what I see and what I write (she says, stuffing evidence to the contrary under the table), but the occasional surprise keeps me interested.

Other fandoms: actually, how interesting - I like knowing quite a bit in other fandoms! I like to know what I'm getting: length, level of seriousness, slash/gen/het (happy to read various of those in various fandoms), how explicit, is it rapefic or deathfic or kid!fic or does it contain BDSM or blowjobs or femslash - oh, yes, pairing! Yes, okay, if it's not a fandom I intend to spend time in, I want the lot. How weird.

4: main fandom: I don't want to know much at all, not even the pairing for sure (although there has to be a slashy vibe to it). I want the big twists to be surprises to me. Pros is an old fandom with a lot of pre-internet fic, and lots of the stories were never categorised and tagged. I read almost everything without knowing what to expect. I don't have any triggers that I know of, and I want the surprises. I have been absolutely *rocked* by some unexpected twists - the time a main character kills a minor character, the time one of the big OTP returns to find the other of the pair now with another character, the time the rescuers arrive too late. That emotional reaction would have been completely blunted if I had known those were going to happen.

Other fandoms: again, if the author is trying for a surprise or twist ending, I would rather be surprised, but other than that, I am less worried by spoilers.

5) Atypical or creative use: I don't think I'd consider the spoiler issue. I'd probably be more irritated. Either tag it to be very clear, or don't tag at all, I think. 'Creative' use means that people who care about tags are not going to get what they expect.