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letterbladeHere is a long ramble, which I shall cut, about metadata for fic headers for this newest attempt to reboot my personal fic site. (Ha-ha, I said 'fic' twice.) Much more about the concept of 'what would you like to know about this story before deciding whether to read it?' than it is about actual fic, for those of you leery of the latter.
So yesterday I posted this:
This is an attempt to place all the metadata (i.e. Things People Might Want To Know About A Fic) in a neat little layout that is simulatenously, hopefully, useful and cute.
I've been turning over a general website reboot in my head for a while; basically the whole thing is pieces of paper--not all library cards, mostly sheets of linen bond paper, or maybe little scraps for small notes, Polaroids for images, etcetera--over some sort of unobtrusive desk-like background.
The library cards are specifically for fic headers. Not going on top of the actual page with the fic; the idea is to have one tidy little block of code that I can copy and paste. So there would be a page with All My Utena Fic, for example, a string of library cards. And then the page with All My Slash, and again, all the relevant cards. It will be a very long setup time, but actually adding new pieces should be trivial.
Most of this, I hope, is obvious:
- At the top, the title, which is the link to the fic itself; at the upper left, in place of call number (on some layouts, at least) the fandom, which links to a list of everything in that fandom.
- In the main area: a quote from the fic (because I've shifted over the years to preferring to have a quote for the summary), and then, in brackets, a quick description of major elements. For examples "Jack and Rose, a lesson in telepathy," or "young Tom, schoolyard angst," or "Sloth, girl!Envy, oldlady!Dante, shameless WTF porn w/ genderfuck."
- Below that, other things as relevant to the individual fic--as you can see above with the spoiler warning, the beta note, and the reference (that could lead to author's notes, a recording of the fic, fanart if I had any, that sort of thing). Possiblilities there: Spoilers (obvious), Canon (for example, much of my HP fic is not OotP or HBP compliant), Beta (obvious), Dedication (one of my fics does have one), Ref. (mentioned above, may change the keyword to something more obvious), and some sort of keyword for challenge stories written for specific people or contests (would need to add that to the Arcana Viscera card, of course).
- Bottom right, word count, so people know what they're getting into.
- Bottom middle, the canonlit tag. This I'm proud of. This tag indicates whether canon knowledge is necessary to make much sense out of the fic. Obviously it's a huge judgement call, but I think it's a very useful piece of information for people playing the 'oh, I like her stuff, but I don't know this fandom' game, and it's a piece of information not generally included in fic headers. (It's also of interest to me that a fic can not require canon literacy yet still contain fatal spoilers, or sometimes vice versa.) Y for yes and N for no, of course; and to give the example of a rare case of a crossover, for Five Leaves, "Canonlit. TW Y / RGU N"
- NOT on this version of the card, because I only just remembered now that I wanted it on there: down at the bottom, between the word count and canonlit tag, is the year it was written. This is mostly there as a subtle disclaimer on, say, most of my HP fic--I write this five years ago, it's not gonna be as good as the rest--and as general random interesting information.
- Lower left side, the content tags. More on those later.
I think there will also be little hover tags explaining what needs explaining, particularly the more obscure like the canonlit tag. Unless people find hover tags annoying. I personally don't; I think they're cute. At least on websites when they serve partially to provide snarky commentary.
I AM GETTING MANIC. You couldn't tell? ^^;;
But this was what I was poring over on my lunch break today:
Those subject tags. Down on the left.
First off, the idea is to tag fics like LJ posts. So you know that this fic contains basic elements A, B, and C, and if you like to know what you're getting yourself into, you can check. Don't wanna read slash? Don't click on something with the "m/m" tag. On the other hand, really craving something kinky? Click on the "bdsm" tag on any card and it'll take you to another page containing all the cards with that tag.
I think it'll be fun!
I am trying to limit the number of tags to the absolute necessary (I do not know database coding, so those pages will be updated manually) and to keep the keywords short and sweet, so as to be able to fit everything in its little column.
I've found them falling into three categories:
Basic Metadata:
"assorted" = this fic is actually a collection of ficlets batched on one card, and thus will contain a wide potpurri of content [as I intend to post, say, all my Star Trek drabbles and throwaway ficlets in one cookie jar (technobabble-flavored), all my PGSM in another (pink-sparkly-flavored), and so forth, and only post seperately those fics distinguished by length, effort, or particular quality]
"best of" = this fic is, by my flamingly subjective opinion, one of the better ones on this site
Possibly also tags based on size ("ficlet" for < 1k, "megafic" for >10k), but I don't think those are as necessary.
The Sex Issues: (mostly for those who don't want to read about it)
"gen" = this fic contains no sex
"softcore" = this fic contains implied or non-explicit sex, or maybe even just kissing
"hardcore" = this fic contains explicit sex [these have a thoroughly ineffective but token Javascript 'are you over 18?' age check to read]
"m/m" = this fic contains boy on boy (or maybe boy on boy on boy!)
"f/f" = this fic contains girl on girl (or maybe girl on girl on girl!)
"m/f" = this fic contains boy on girl (or maybe girl on boy!)
"bdsm" = this fic contains consensually kinky sex of some way, shape, or form
"abuse" = this fic issues of consent or other unpleasantness [this is a tag I've waffled over a lot. I virtually never write straight-up non-con in the standard fandom sense, but I dick around a lot with other parts of this general area. Hell, in one of my fandoms, semi-unwanted-sex-as-psychological-torture is a standard modus operandi of multiple characters. (Utena, y0.) And it's definitely something I want to tag so that people who need to avoid it can, but I've been trying to figure out exactly how. Honestly, "consent issues" would be the tag I'd want, but it's too long, and it doesn't cover some other possible uses of the tag--for example, I'd tag my recent Suziefic with this tag, because the implication of her past abuse was strong enough through it, but it's not exactly an active textual consent issue. Mew.]
[Also note that other possible Sex Issues would be noted in the main summary--it's not like I'm not going to tell you if a fic contains, say, underaged characters or pseudosnuff (think homunculi), but I write them so rarely that it's not worth making a tag for.]
Moods and Other Content Concerns: (obviously a lot of these are very subjective, but they're notes I want to be able to put on several particular fics, and I think it'll also be interesting to see the lists that are created with some of these)
"violence" = this fic is particularly physically violent in some way
"humor" = this fic attempts to amuse, and probably fails
"artsy" = this fic is experimental, intertextual, pretentious, or otherwise literarily deluded
"soc" = this fic contains stream-of-consciousness character rambling
"[unnamed]" = this fic is particularly dark in some way [haven't decided what to call this. dark? angst? again, very subjective, as the default tone of most of my fic is moody/wistful and often rather dark, but this is something I can throw on as a warning/invitation that something is More So.]
I am also considering the following two...
"horror" = this fic is deliberately intended to disturb the reader [on relatively few--the DMVs, Arcana Viscera, The Unreality of Blue, Five Leaves in Autumn) but I think it may still need to exist.]
"fluff" = this fic, shockingly enough, contains characters being happy [may rename this; I don't usually write fluff in the standard fandom sense, this is more a tag for stories where Nothing Much Bad Happens, like, say, Fuzzy.]
...and am leaning towards including them. I was also playing with a "torture" tag, for those fics dealing with deliberate personal physical or psychological (again, Utena, y0) torture, but I think it's mostly redundant.
Oh holy fuck this is getting long.
Really what this boils down to is this:
I know I read pretty indiscriminately, if I know the writer's good, or it's a character/pairing that interests me, or whatever. I either ignore most warnings and ratings or take them as good signs. And sometimes I think that, ideally, reading fic on the internet would be like picking up a book--you don't know, opening, say, a Random Fantasy novel, whether it's going to have a sex scene, or a random lesbian couple floating about in the background, or a disembowling. Or, as Rusty keeps liking to prove, you don't know when you turn on the telly whether there's going to be random tentacular mpreg, or even just really pretty boykissing. There are some things I see people warning for--bad language, for example--that I just don't bother with at all. But it is a convention, and there are definitely, for some people, some things which they don't want looming up in their face if they click on a random link.
IMHO? I think the simple action of making most of the standard warnings linkable tags transforms them a little. There could be that little tag in the bottom left saying "m/m," sure. If it's there in the summary in all caps blazing away, it looks silly, it's obtrusive, it's got this subtext of "ohmigawd, guys, watch out for the boykissing!" (To which a hell of a lot of us say, "and we care why, exactly?" or "bring it on, bitch!") But if it's there in the corner, you can ignore it if you don't care, or you can look for it if you do. Or if you care in the other way, if you suddenly have a burning urge to pull up all the other fic with "m/m," you can do that to. This is why I keep calling them tags and not warnings; making them immediately clickable allows a positive reaction as well as a neutral or negative reaction.
OHMIGAWD, GUYS, WATCH OUT FOR THE GIRLRAMBLING.
But this has been interesting me all day!
What do you like to know before you read a fic?
So yesterday I posted this:
This is an attempt to place all the metadata (i.e. Things People Might Want To Know About A Fic) in a neat little layout that is simulatenously, hopefully, useful and cute.
I've been turning over a general website reboot in my head for a while; basically the whole thing is pieces of paper--not all library cards, mostly sheets of linen bond paper, or maybe little scraps for small notes, Polaroids for images, etcetera--over some sort of unobtrusive desk-like background.
The library cards are specifically for fic headers. Not going on top of the actual page with the fic; the idea is to have one tidy little block of code that I can copy and paste. So there would be a page with All My Utena Fic, for example, a string of library cards. And then the page with All My Slash, and again, all the relevant cards. It will be a very long setup time, but actually adding new pieces should be trivial.
Most of this, I hope, is obvious:
- At the top, the title, which is the link to the fic itself; at the upper left, in place of call number (on some layouts, at least) the fandom, which links to a list of everything in that fandom.
- In the main area: a quote from the fic (because I've shifted over the years to preferring to have a quote for the summary), and then, in brackets, a quick description of major elements. For examples "Jack and Rose, a lesson in telepathy," or "young Tom, schoolyard angst," or "Sloth, girl!Envy, oldlady!Dante, shameless WTF porn w/ genderfuck."
- Below that, other things as relevant to the individual fic--as you can see above with the spoiler warning, the beta note, and the reference (that could lead to author's notes, a recording of the fic, fanart if I had any, that sort of thing). Possiblilities there: Spoilers (obvious), Canon (for example, much of my HP fic is not OotP or HBP compliant), Beta (obvious), Dedication (one of my fics does have one), Ref. (mentioned above, may change the keyword to something more obvious), and some sort of keyword for challenge stories written for specific people or contests (would need to add that to the Arcana Viscera card, of course).
- Bottom right, word count, so people know what they're getting into.
- Bottom middle, the canonlit tag. This I'm proud of. This tag indicates whether canon knowledge is necessary to make much sense out of the fic. Obviously it's a huge judgement call, but I think it's a very useful piece of information for people playing the 'oh, I like her stuff, but I don't know this fandom' game, and it's a piece of information not generally included in fic headers. (It's also of interest to me that a fic can not require canon literacy yet still contain fatal spoilers, or sometimes vice versa.) Y for yes and N for no, of course; and to give the example of a rare case of a crossover, for Five Leaves, "Canonlit. TW Y / RGU N"
- NOT on this version of the card, because I only just remembered now that I wanted it on there: down at the bottom, between the word count and canonlit tag, is the year it was written. This is mostly there as a subtle disclaimer on, say, most of my HP fic--I write this five years ago, it's not gonna be as good as the rest--and as general random interesting information.
- Lower left side, the content tags. More on those later.
I think there will also be little hover tags explaining what needs explaining, particularly the more obscure like the canonlit tag. Unless people find hover tags annoying. I personally don't; I think they're cute. At least on websites when they serve partially to provide snarky commentary.
I AM GETTING MANIC. You couldn't tell? ^^;;
But this was what I was poring over on my lunch break today:
Those subject tags. Down on the left.
First off, the idea is to tag fics like LJ posts. So you know that this fic contains basic elements A, B, and C, and if you like to know what you're getting yourself into, you can check. Don't wanna read slash? Don't click on something with the "m/m" tag. On the other hand, really craving something kinky? Click on the "bdsm" tag on any card and it'll take you to another page containing all the cards with that tag.
I think it'll be fun!
I am trying to limit the number of tags to the absolute necessary (I do not know database coding, so those pages will be updated manually) and to keep the keywords short and sweet, so as to be able to fit everything in its little column.
I've found them falling into three categories:
Basic Metadata:
"assorted" = this fic is actually a collection of ficlets batched on one card, and thus will contain a wide potpurri of content [as I intend to post, say, all my Star Trek drabbles and throwaway ficlets in one cookie jar (technobabble-flavored), all my PGSM in another (pink-sparkly-flavored), and so forth, and only post seperately those fics distinguished by length, effort, or particular quality]
"best of" = this fic is, by my flamingly subjective opinion, one of the better ones on this site
Possibly also tags based on size ("ficlet" for < 1k, "megafic" for >10k), but I don't think those are as necessary.
The Sex Issues: (mostly for those who don't want to read about it)
"gen" = this fic contains no sex
"softcore" = this fic contains implied or non-explicit sex, or maybe even just kissing
"hardcore" = this fic contains explicit sex [these have a thoroughly ineffective but token Javascript 'are you over 18?' age check to read]
"m/m" = this fic contains boy on boy (or maybe boy on boy on boy!)
"f/f" = this fic contains girl on girl (or maybe girl on girl on girl!)
"m/f" = this fic contains boy on girl (or maybe girl on boy!)
"bdsm" = this fic contains consensually kinky sex of some way, shape, or form
"abuse" = this fic issues of consent or other unpleasantness [this is a tag I've waffled over a lot. I virtually never write straight-up non-con in the standard fandom sense, but I dick around a lot with other parts of this general area. Hell, in one of my fandoms, semi-unwanted-sex-as-psychological-torture is a standard modus operandi of multiple characters. (Utena, y0.) And it's definitely something I want to tag so that people who need to avoid it can, but I've been trying to figure out exactly how. Honestly, "consent issues" would be the tag I'd want, but it's too long, and it doesn't cover some other possible uses of the tag--for example, I'd tag my recent Suziefic with this tag, because the implication of her past abuse was strong enough through it, but it's not exactly an active textual consent issue. Mew.]
[Also note that other possible Sex Issues would be noted in the main summary--it's not like I'm not going to tell you if a fic contains, say, underaged characters or pseudosnuff (think homunculi), but I write them so rarely that it's not worth making a tag for.]
Moods and Other Content Concerns: (obviously a lot of these are very subjective, but they're notes I want to be able to put on several particular fics, and I think it'll also be interesting to see the lists that are created with some of these)
"violence" = this fic is particularly physically violent in some way
"humor" = this fic attempts to amuse, and probably fails
"artsy" = this fic is experimental, intertextual, pretentious, or otherwise literarily deluded
"soc" = this fic contains stream-of-consciousness character rambling
"[unnamed]" = this fic is particularly dark in some way [haven't decided what to call this. dark? angst? again, very subjective, as the default tone of most of my fic is moody/wistful and often rather dark, but this is something I can throw on as a warning/invitation that something is More So.]
I am also considering the following two...
"horror" = this fic is deliberately intended to disturb the reader [on relatively few--the DMVs, Arcana Viscera, The Unreality of Blue, Five Leaves in Autumn) but I think it may still need to exist.]
"fluff" = this fic, shockingly enough, contains characters being happy [may rename this; I don't usually write fluff in the standard fandom sense, this is more a tag for stories where Nothing Much Bad Happens, like, say, Fuzzy.]
...and am leaning towards including them. I was also playing with a "torture" tag, for those fics dealing with deliberate personal physical or psychological (again, Utena, y0) torture, but I think it's mostly redundant.
Oh holy fuck this is getting long.
Really what this boils down to is this:
I know I read pretty indiscriminately, if I know the writer's good, or it's a character/pairing that interests me, or whatever. I either ignore most warnings and ratings or take them as good signs. And sometimes I think that, ideally, reading fic on the internet would be like picking up a book--you don't know, opening, say, a Random Fantasy novel, whether it's going to have a sex scene, or a random lesbian couple floating about in the background, or a disembowling. Or, as Rusty keeps liking to prove, you don't know when you turn on the telly whether there's going to be random tentacular mpreg, or even just really pretty boykissing. There are some things I see people warning for--bad language, for example--that I just don't bother with at all. But it is a convention, and there are definitely, for some people, some things which they don't want looming up in their face if they click on a random link.
IMHO? I think the simple action of making most of the standard warnings linkable tags transforms them a little. There could be that little tag in the bottom left saying "m/m," sure. If it's there in the summary in all caps blazing away, it looks silly, it's obtrusive, it's got this subtext of "ohmigawd, guys, watch out for the boykissing!" (To which a hell of a lot of us say, "and we care why, exactly?" or "bring it on, bitch!") But if it's there in the corner, you can ignore it if you don't care, or you can look for it if you do. Or if you care in the other way, if you suddenly have a burning urge to pull up all the other fic with "m/m," you can do that to. This is why I keep calling them tags and not warnings; making them immediately clickable allows a positive reaction as well as a neutral or negative reaction.
OHMIGAWD, GUYS, WATCH OUT FOR THE GIRLRAMBLING.
But this has been interesting me all day!
What do you like to know before you read a fic?