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The Word and the Life
I am messing around on AO3 (instead of doing all the other things I need to do, yes, shush) sort-of catching up on Yuletide fics and sort of thinking about maybe starting to do some actual tag wrangling now that yuletide is over (though I think I need to poke somebody about getting an account for the chatroom) and you know what I have discovered that I have a very strong opinion about, regarding AO3 canonical tags?
If you're working in a canon where somebody's full truename is powerful, and hidden, and binding, and they are very, very careful about who they offer it to and when they use it, even in the privacy of thought --
Then you shouldn't make their full truename their AO3 canonical tag.
It's just wrong. First off it breaks pretty much every rule of magical etiquette, plus it's a breach of trust, plus it's a massive act of hubris. I think *especially* because you're applying it to fanfic - sealing something with a person's truename is to try to make it them; to use a truename irresponsibly can change who the person is, because you're saying that whatever you've given that name to is the person, in some of the oldest Deep Magic there is.
And so sealing a fanfic with a truename - it's saying that your fanfic is the person true, and it runs into the danger of making that true, of shifting the person into the version you've sealed into the fic. And I don't like it. Fanfic shouldn't be about making it true.
...and, okay, yeah, the above is only about half-serious. But if I had fic posted to the AO3 in a fandom where this was relevant, and saw my character name tags turned into truenames? I would not like it. (Luckily the only fandom I currently have up where this applies is Earthsea, and Earthsea has a tradition that a person's truename becomes public-domain regarding stories told about them after their death, and is framed such that most Earthsea stories are in that context, so it's a slightly different situation.)
If you're working in a canon where somebody's full truename is powerful, and hidden, and binding, and they are very, very careful about who they offer it to and when they use it, even in the privacy of thought --
Then you shouldn't make their full truename their AO3 canonical tag.
It's just wrong. First off it breaks pretty much every rule of magical etiquette, plus it's a breach of trust, plus it's a massive act of hubris. I think *especially* because you're applying it to fanfic - sealing something with a person's truename is to try to make it them; to use a truename irresponsibly can change who the person is, because you're saying that whatever you've given that name to is the person, in some of the oldest Deep Magic there is.
And so sealing a fanfic with a truename - it's saying that your fanfic is the person true, and it runs into the danger of making that true, of shifting the person into the version you've sealed into the fic. And I don't like it. Fanfic shouldn't be about making it true.
...and, okay, yeah, the above is only about half-serious. But if I had fic posted to the AO3 in a fandom where this was relevant, and saw my character name tags turned into truenames? I would not like it. (Luckily the only fandom I currently have up where this applies is Earthsea, and Earthsea has a tradition that a person's truename becomes public-domain regarding stories told about them after their death, and is framed such that most Earthsea stories are in that context, so it's a slightly different situation.)
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...actually the Dresden Files tags have some other issues, with consistency and organization. When tag wrangling opens up again I may go see who currently has it and ask if they want someone to take it off their hands.
Despite knowing absolutely nothing about Dresden Files except what comes from reading every Dresden/Marcone fic in existence.But yeah, it was the truename thing with Harry that really started to bother me. It just feels... smug. Yeah, we unavoidably know his truename, but that doesn't mean we have to splatter it everywhere just to show off, y'know?
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I suspect our Dresden Files Delicious looks very similar.I guess the tag wrangler below gave a decent reason, although if there's a tag for "Robin (DCU)" I probably would have gone for something like "Harry Dresden (TV)" and "Harry Dresden (Book)" (which is how I tag on Delicious) unless there's a reason not to. Which I don't know because I don't really know the nitty-gritty of tagging on AO3 what with not having an account or anything.no subject
(They're also still pretty blurry about superhero tags; "Robin (DCU)" has four names as subtags and needs at least one more.)
There's debates about last names that are established outside of canon, like through author interviews, and how to deal with fanon names and original first or last names for characters that don't have one in that fandom.
My current thoughts are something like "everyone should put twenty tags on every fic, or as close to that as they can manage without hideous spoilers, so the wranglers have enough substance to work with that they can start coming up with better methods." Which doesn't fix the naming problems at all, but I'm hoping that wrangling lots and lots of other tags will inspire new ways of dealing with *all* the tweaky tag problems.
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But yeah, I suspect throwing this onto the wranglers list would get me some funny looks. ^_^ Sure, write kinky porn about them, that's fine, but throwing truenames around casually - now that's a step too far! (But it *is*. Because until you start throwing around truenames, you're not writing kinky porn about *them*, just about an image of them. ...hmm, this is starting to sound like an RPS argument. I am okay with that.)
And if someone has claimed a fandom to wrangle, I kind of expect them to care about it a bit, enough to be invested at least a *little* in the universe's metaphysics...
But, yeah, wrangling people who use multiple names, or titles, or whatever, is always going to be an issue. Any attempt at specific guidelines is pretty much foredoomed from the start, and AO3's quirky and not-always-transparent ways of dealing with tag hierarchies and relatedness doesn't help. But that's half the fun, right?
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Nawww. I think this is what defines us as fans, caring about the details and the meaning.
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The AO3 doesn't 'change' tags - except in very rare instances. So if you tag a fic as 'Harry Dresden' for the books, it'll stay that way, but it'll be syn'd to his full name.
I have book!Harry's name spelled out to differentiate him from tv!Harry b/c the canons are different enough to cause confusion if they (or other characters) share a name. It had nothing to do with being pretentious and everything to do with keeping 2 characters with the same base name from requiring a 'disambiguation' that wouldn't have been much help at all, since their canons effectively have the same name.
If you see something in the names/tags that appears inconsistent or off, point it out to me and I'll take a look. There was some quick-paced wrangling going on around Yuletide that may not have been straightened out since things have been 'on hold' until after the crush and the break. Some things may have been that way a while and I haven't gotten around to cleaning them up with some of the tag guideline changes.
I apologize if this sounds harsh or bitchy, but I've had issues with having to go back and fix tags that had been wrangled incorrectly and it causes a lot of unnecessary work, so this is kind of a touchy subject on my end. I'm cool listening to suggestions regarding changes or whatnot, but reserve the right to not change a tag if the suggestion doesn't match the current guidelines or would cause confusion w/ respect to other tags in the database.
Tag wrangling is not, in anyway, straightforward. Like - at all.
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But the canonical we wranglers choose shows up in that damn filter - you know that one that looks like a table of contents to your works but really isn't because it lists every direct canonical and indirect meta-tag associated with any single tag you, the author, put on your story? One day the issue will work its way up the coders to do list and we'll be able to remove it if we want. I hope.
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The other things I noticed in the tags (and this might be more pervasive than I realize, it's just that it's the first time I've read an ENTIRE FANDOM on AO3 since I got my tag-wrangler privs) is that it struck me as odd that Johnny Marcone is the character canonical but it's just John Marcone in the relationship tags - is that standard AO3 practice and I just haven't picked up on it yet - where you use a well-recognized nickname as the canonical but use the legal name in the pairings? As someone who is learning the fandom by reading the slash, I found it mildly confusing.
Also not all of the relationship tags are parent/child to the character tags. Is that something that we're just not worrying about at the moment, since it doesn't really do anything the users can see yet?
Anyway all that together made me think that maybe whoever had it didn't have a lot of time to give it and would be glad to hand over responsibility, but since I see that's not the case, please strike the suggestion from the record!
For the record, I haven't touched anything yet, and I certainly don't plan on interfering in anyone else's fandoms without permission.
...the distinguishing from the TV character makes sense, but couldn't you have left out just one of the names? Just in case a demon comes looking? :D I know it doesn't change on my actual story, but a canonical shows up everywhere around the stories, and I have to use it to search. And I know y'all are tired of people whining about that over minor things by now, and beyond tired: I just never thought I'd hit a point where I cared about the difference enough to whine, and it rather startled me when I realized I had. And about this of all things!
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Another side of the true names argument is that, as it's not 'spoken' by Harry himself, it's not really his truename, since inflection is a large part of what determines the power in the name, not just the name itself. (which is more focused on in the first book than anywhere else - since names haven't really come up much at all since then)
Marcone's pairing tag is, possibly, a Yuletide bit, b/c if the character tag is 'Johnny' the pairing tag should be as well - which I can fix easily, if not quickly. *grumbles about slow page loads*
Hooking up the characters to the pairings is kind of secondary now, since the reason they were supposed to be connected before is no longer front-end visible. Initially, the idea was that Dresden/Marcone would link to Harry and Johnny character tags and when Dresden/Marcone was listed as a tag on the fic, the character tags wouldn't show up, since it would be assumed that, if that pairing is part of the tags, then, obviously, those characters are in the story somewhere/how. Designed, initially, to save screen real-estate, IIRC. But there were comments and complaints about the functionality, so it was removed. (Personally, I rather liked it, but *shrug*)
So, if one is working with tags, one should hook the characters to the pairings - which, I think, is still supposed to help with search results - but if we're doing a bit of a 'mad crush tag wrangle', that's a step that may be pushed to the back.
And - if you know of anyone who wants to wrangle "Forever Knight" - please let me know - I took it on b/c it needed help, but not wanting it as a regular part of my wrangling repertoire. =)