labels

[pensnest]

I love metafandom, but sometimes my meanderings along its byways leave me bewildered. All this fuss about labelling a story... So many people demanding 'warnings' for such things as background pairings and mpreg. Such delicate souls. Why, I have achieved squick by means of teddybear abuse and unexpected Kevin, not to mention lava lamps, but my friends do not, I think, desert me. However, it does seem to be a topic that arouses unexpected passions in the mildest fannish breast, so I wonder.

My personal habit is to post fics in my own LJ pretty much randomly. If I've written a story, you'll usually get a sentence indicating that it was written for such-and-such a reason. If you are wise in the ways of LiveJournal, you may notice that an occasional story is tagged 'wtf', and you will approach with caution (or glee). I don't in general announce the pairing (anyway, sometimes the pairing is a surprise, and the surprise is part of the story) or the rating. I write with the expectation that if you've friended me, you will have figured out that I perpetrate popslash, including Lampfic, and will treat any LJ-cut entries with appropriate caution.

I don't think the lack of a label on popslash has ever deterred me from at leat *opening* the story. Would you, personally, be *more* inclined to read if I went the whole labelling route, and headed up stories with appropriate categorisation? Do you do that yourself? Do you care, either way?

Incidentally, I run a double index on my website, with pairings and degree-of-sex announcements on the Alternative Index, for those who are looking for something specific and don't care to be startled by, say, Kevin. I'm contemplating revising this to present the stories by pairing, given the startling *quantity* of the things. How do you like stories to be presented, if you're reading on a website? Any advice would be welcome.

Comments

[nopseud]

I'm not really bothered about pairings. I like summaries, especially if it's a writer where I'm going to save their whole webpage and I'll want to find things again later. And I like to be able to pick out the porn and avoid the angst.

If there isn't a summary, then I'll just scroll down to the end of the story and look to see if it seems like the kind of thing I want to read or not. Often, I'll do that anyway, and read a few points a random on the way down if it's a long story, to see what's what. I don't read WIPs, because it's really hard to read the end of a story which hasn't been written yet :-)

But I don't read anything like 100% of the stories posted, so an interesting-sounding summary definitely helps in getting me to look in the first place. Otherwise, I'll generally read or not by who wrote it.

On my webpage, I stick all my pairings and warning on a separate page, so that people can look or not as they like. I guess the ultimate would be to have an 'index generator' where people can specify what stories and info they want to appear in their own personalised version of the index ('All Chris pairings' 'All JC pairings' 'No Joey Pairings' 'Explicit only' 'Pairings Listed' 'Full Summary' click).

[pensnest]

It's a cool idea to put all pairings and warnings on a separate page, so people can seek them out or not as they choose. I've just poked around at my Alt Index, though for the present, notice of porn is no longer present - mainly because I'm never really sure how to categorise it. I mean, there's sex and sex, there's 'this is what they're doing but not in detail' and there's 'this goes here and that goes there'. Oh well.

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the separate page is a great thing - that way both "schools" get what they want :-)

I actually remembered about the people who don't want to know pairings when I reworked my rec pages so now the author A-Z pages have no pairings given.