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

[cyprinella]

That bugs me in the Dresden Files tags as well, because they have Harry's name spelled out in full for no reason that I can fathom. The books haven't made much of the name thing since the early titles, but it does count.

[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.

[highlander_ii]

I'm stepping up and commenting b/c I am the wrangler for the Dresden Files - both books and tv series and - at this time, no, I would not like someone to take it off my hands.

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.