The Word and the Life

[melannen]

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.)

Comments

[elf]

Even without the magical resonances (which I don't expect AO3 to pay attention to, because I can agree that's... out there), the tag wranglers have to deal with spoiler issues of "what about characters whose names/identities aren't revealed until Season 4? Do we syn those tags to the Season 1 character names so it becomes obvious that's the same person?"

(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.

[melannen]

Well, the magic I believe in most thoroughly and closest to my heart is the magic of story, because us having these stories right down to the truenames, and having the space to make them ours, *is* a gift, so *I* don't want it to be 'out there', because I feel like there's a certain respect for the canon and the characters that should be a part of writing fic about them (even if you're writing against the text).

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?

[copracat]

But yeah, I suspect throwing this onto the wranglers list would get me some funny looks.

Nawww. I think this is what defines us as fans, caring about the details and the meaning.

[melannen]

Perhaps this is how I should introduce myself to the list! ^_^