a tag I would like people to use

[eruthros]

I was clicking around through tags on the AO3, probably after following a link to a story from white_collar's weekly roundup, and I discovered that the AO3 has a risk-aware consensual kink tag!

I clicked on it, and was taken to ... the safe sane and consensual tag, for which there are all of nine stories.

So first I sent off a message to the AO3 tag folks attempting to explain that although RACK and SSC are used sort of synonymously by some people, they are often considered really really different. I mean, okay, I got to that tag via hoosierbitch's i trust you (to make my darkest dreams come true), which is a story in which Peter fucks Neal until he passes out and then keeps fucking him and refers to unconscious Neal as an object, and the other stories marked RACK are a bloodplay/knifeplay/fearplay story involving blood-drinking and knifeplay on the genitals, and a gunplay story in which the top cocks the gun. Which, well tagged guys! that's RACK right there! But it might kind of startle someone searching for safe sane consensual. (And I haven't read these specific SSC stories, but I've sometimes found kinks I practice marked as outside the boundaries of "safe" or "sane" in SSC conversations, which I hate. And I really wouldn't be expecting that from stories tagged RACK.)

But after I did that, I was sad that there weren't more stories tagged RACK. I would love for that tag to be bigger, because I would totally use it to find new and interesting fic to read.

Comments

[sineala]

There are some weird tag redirections there.

For example, I would not have expected Languages and Linguistics to encompass either (a) free-form warnings for use of obscenities or (b) anything not written in English. And yet, the majority of the works with the tag are one person's Spanish translations of Harry Potter fic. Sigh. I haven't reported it because I don't know how to report "the way this tag is generally being used is really not helpful to anyone looking for fanfiction about the tag's ostensible topic." I think this is just a pitfall of self-tagging.

I kind of had the impression that SSC was basically a proper subset of RACK, because in both cases you're consensual and risk-aware, but the difference is in the amount of risk you're willing to take on.

[eruthros]

Yeah, there are a lot of ways that people divide them up -- some people call SSC a subset of RACK, some people consider them basically the same thing, some people think of them as fundamentally different conceptions of what risk and safe(r) sex means (as a scale or a binary choice). So I can understand the confusion, but it could lead to some really weird combination of stories under the same tag.

I think partly it's self-tagging, and partly it's tag wrangling; in this case, people have self-tagged as RACK, but it's been grouped under SSC. In the case of language and linguistics, it sounds like sort of a combination of the two?

[torachan]

If you find that sort of thing, you should totally report it, because chances are, the wranglers will agree that that is really not a helpful category and will change it, because in this case, it's not something the users did. Users tagged things like "language", "translation", etc. and some wrangler came along and thought that making an umbrella category for those would be helpful, which...maybe it could be, but not with that wording, I agree.

[cypher]

...Wow, yes, that's a pretty clumsy one -- especially because it looks like that tag isn't being used as an umbrella tag for other filterable ones, but instead a lot of related-but-distinct terms ("language," "dead languages," "linguistics," "multilingual") have been made synonymous with it.

I'm going to poke around in that cluster and see if I can do some separating into more useful parts.

[helens78]

Oh, hm! RACK is definitely a tag that belongs on lots of my stories, so I should think about that some, definitely.

(But agreed that it needs to be wrangled out out OUT of the same category as SSC! Not the same thing!)

[eruthros]

Ha, actually, when I saw it, I was like "only nine! But so many of helens78's stories fit in here!" Truefact. And also I thought about telesilla's stories :)

I just sort of instantly recoiled when I saw that they'd been wrangled into the same category, yeah.

ETA: Oh man, I was just like "hmm, I wonder where they put edgeplay" and I learned that the edgeplay tag includes edging. *facepalm*

[anatsuno]

Edging? oh? *needs to google*

*back* haha, oh, I see. Nice confusion there. /o\

[eruthros]

Yeah, edging is I think more common in people-with-penises kink spaces? Anyway I hadn't seen it before I started doing kink_bingo. I can see why there's confusion, but it does make me snerk a little thinking about edging as edgeplay.

[helens78]

I DID NOT KNOW THERE WAS A NAME FOR THIS.

Or a tag on AO3.

*wanders off to ponder contributing to such a tag*

[anatsuno]

ponder ponder ponder! this will make me happy. :D

[helens78]

I can definitely ponder this going forward! Going backward, I kind of go "omg so many things can't remember the plot /o\", but if you can think of any off the top of your head, I'll be happy to add the tag. :D

[eruthros]

I think Shameless might count? It's sort of funny to think about a slavefic universe that way, but it's something Sean chooses to do knowing the risks.

[torachan]

I just went in to fix edgeplay/edging and I see someone already has!

[eruthros]

Yeah, I sent in a note as soon as I found it! I probably over-explain every time I send in a note, but I'm never sure how much info the tag wranglers want :)

[cypher]

I have loved your notes, honestly. They explain why you want the change really clearly, and they are also still friendly about it -- we've gotten some really "how could anyone have done this, you are all horrible people" ones in the past. ^^;;

[anatsuno]

Ack! That is indeed unfortunate. I hope they take your email into account.

[eruthros]

*points to comment by cypher below* They already have!

I still want more things tagged RACK, though :)

[cypher]

I saw the support request come in for this, and separated them out! They are both filterable tags now, and one should not lead to the other.

The wrangling group is pretty big and disorganized, and we have weird synonym issues come up in freeforms a lot, but we try to fix it whenever somebody points out problems to us!

[eruthros]

Yeah, I figured that it would would be sorted as soon as I pointed it out! Tag wrangling seems hard.

I still want to find more things tagged RACK, though :)

[cypher]

It is tricky! Last time I heard an estimate there were about 120 of us, and getting that many fen to agree on anything, well. ^^;

But yes! Both are tags that could stand more use. I will probably go through my stuff when I get home and see what I can add tags to.

[aris_tgd]

... I should apply that to some of my stories, too. *heads off to the AO3*

Thank goodness for the "edit tags" option.

[eruthros]

Yeah, it's a great option! I'm always discovering tags that I should have used.

[theleaveswant]

That's a really good point. I've been pretty sloppy with how I tag things, but I will go through my posted works and tag RACK where applicable now.