I wish AO3's tagging system could differentiate between leading characters and supporting ones.

[beatrice_otter]

So!  I am in the mood for some Lois Lane, Awesome Girl Reporter.  I take me to AO3, and find the Lois Lane tag, and sort it by kudos.  What do I find?

Pages and pages of Clark Kent/Lex Luthor slash (Smallville era) and Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne slash (current movies), with the occasional welcome break for Kara Danvers/Cat Grant femmeslash (Supergirl TV show).  In all of these, Lois is a minor background character who either a) gets our heroes together, b) is the obstacle to them getting together, or c) is off on the casefic aspect of the fic while the main focus is on our heroes getting together.

Now, it's nice to have the occasional femslash thing in there, so it isn't all "Lois Lane Pushed Aside for Whitecock," but still.  I'm not looking for Lois Lane, Minor Supporting Character (and shoved into a one-dimensional box to facilitate someone else's love story).  I want Lois Lane, Awesome Girl Reporter!

Going for the Clark Kent/Lois Lane tag does get me stories where Lois is actually a main character, although also a lot of stories where she's just there to be shoved out of the way for the whitecock pairing.  But while I love CK/Lois Lane fics, it's frustrating that either I'm limited to that or slogging through ENDLESS PAGES OF OTHER STUFF to get to what I really want, which is Lois Lane doing her job and being AWESOME at it.

This is also my problem whenever I'm in the mood for Sam Wilson fics.  In a very high percentage of fics, he is there to facilitate the Steve/Bucky angst.

And here's the thing: if AO3's character tags were broken up into "main character" and "supporting character," when I want stories focusing on Lois Lane or Sam Wilson or any of the host of interesting characters who get shoved aside in favor of the Major Pairing, I could easily find fics where they are the focus!

Comments

[the_rck]

I'm trying to stop myself from tagging for minor characters at all these days. I worry, though, that that means someone will get into a story and find a character they don't want even in a minor role. I should probably go back through my old fics and make sure I've changed those.

Is there much fic for the old Lois and Clark TV show on AO3? Those are likely to be shippy fics, too, but I'd expect them to be mostly het with Lois front and center. My slash googles aren't very good, but I don't recall seeing any m/m relationships in that that I'd expect to generate much fic. The non-Clark male characters either got very little screen time or were kind of repulsive or were Jonathan Kent.

[beatrice_otter]

Well, the thing is, tagging for minor characters can be useful because there are a lot of people who go, "well, there's oodles of Steve/Bucky fic, how do I narrow it down, I like Sam so let's see if he's in it, too." So there are a couple of reasons to tag minor characters. And some people tag "minor x", but that's only useful as a convention if everyone is doing it.

I never really watched Lois and Clark. And there's a lot about that universe that's fairly specific to it, actually, in plotlines and characterization. So it's a resource, but still not quite what I want.

[the_rck]

I think we're using slightly different definitions of minor characters. When I say I tagged for a 'minor character' I mean that they were in one scene and didn't say anything or said two or three lines and then vanished. They're in the sort of roles that, if they weren't named canonical characters, would just be Spearcarrier 1 and Spearcarrier 2.

I think the only times I've written in big fandoms has been for Remix, and those have been fairly tight little stories where it was clear who I needed to tag.

There are borderline cases-- I have a Problem of Susan Narnia fic that's a four things story, and her aunt and uncle appear in one section, fairly pivotally. I didn't tag for them, and I keep wondering if I should have.

I think I get what you mean about Lois and Clark. I didn't find it that far off from main canon when I watched it, but my formative Superman experience was the first two Christopher Reeve movies (I'm not sure I ever saw either of the other two). That gives me a different angle on the characters, I think, than if I'd come from comics or Smallville or anything else. Well, I did watch Superfriends in the 1970s, too, but I don't remember anything from that, so I'm not sure what impact it had. I'm not actually convinced that most of the superheroes in Superfriends had distinct personalities.

[beatrice_otter]

With Lois and Clark, it really depended on whether you're talking about the overarching plot themes--where it was really far off the main thrust of te canon--or the individual casefic-type eps, which were fairly close to canon.

[anghraine]

Yeah, I'd really like the feature too.

I don't know how much it'd do to help, but you could subtract all fics with a given fic from your results. It's a pain, though.

[beatrice_otter]

There are workarounds, but they're all clumsy.

[muccamukk]

Amen, sister.

Anything that's canon is the worst, like Jane/Thor because it's tagged in EVERYTHING so if you're looking for fic about Jane and Thor, hahaha, good luck.

There used to be separate char and pairing tags where you could write "Background Steve/Sam" and it would be more of a note than a tag, but it's all been syned into a bit lump now.

It's sad when FF.Net's sorting actually works better.

[beatrice_otter]

Yes, exactly! I'm not a Jane/Thor person, but I pity those who are because Good Lord.

[sixbeforelunch]

I love Jane/Thor, but I've completely given up on searching for it. It's way too frustrating to bother.

And speaking of canon ships, being a Jane/Bingley fan in Pride and Prejudice fandom is so bad. It's tagged in everything, but never the focus.

[melannen]

What do you mean about the separate char and pairing tags being synned into a lump? "Background X/Y", afaik, has always been synned to the main ship tag on AO3 (or, well, at least since the archive has actually had codified policies.) The only time it isn't done is when you're writing in a small fandom that isn't being wrangled, basically.

If you want "background X/Y" or "background char" to not get synned, you can put them in the freeform tags, and they will stay their own thing.

Alternatively, if you have a long list of background characters, you can just stick them all in one tag - "also includes Jane Thor and Betty" as one character tag - and we won't be able to syn them because they include more than one character int he same tag, so it'll stay separate.

(I agree that having minor/major character tag options would be GREAT - it is #1 suggested tagging improvement - but nothing has changed for a very long time on the rest of it.)

[muccamukk]

It's quite possible that I just ran across unwrangled tags enough times that I thought they used to be sorted differently.

I mean, sure, I could put characters in freeform tags, it just looks wrong, but whatever, but I really don't understand why the archive can't come up with something that works on this.

Frankly, FF.net is better for finding fic about minor characters. It's just a pity about the whole rest of the site.

[monanotlisa]

And here's the thing: if AO3's character tags were broken up into "main character" and "supporting character,"

Yes, yes, yes! There is NOTHING I want more from the AO3 right now! I can rarely find my characters or pairings*; they drown in the background of the popular ships the way you describe. A Major Pairing tag would fix this easily (well, on a technical database level, I am none too sure, but it does not seem unfeasible).

[monanotlisa]

* They're not juggernaut pairings, is why.

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah, also "major pairing" and "background pairing" would be REALLY REALLY USEFUL. For those of us who occasionally (okay, in my case, usually) are not into the juggernaut ships.

[endeni]

Yesyesyes, I really, really want that main character/supporting character differentiation, as well as the major pairing/background pairing one... *sighs*

[alatefeline]

Excellent point. I tend to search for user-created tags of "X being awesome" or "BAMF X" or a character-specific awesomeness trope, but it really really really isn't the same as being able to filter for main character, and it's only functional at all in large fandoms.

And it's very frustrating to go looking for under-represented awesome that can fully express itself in fandom, and find fandom mindlessly replicating the shove-in-fridge dynamics of bad (aspects of) mainstream media.

Without naming names...I am personally refusing to read anything *else* sympathetic towards a particular evil white sad bad boy until the imbalance that gave him more fics than a black actual hero is corrected. I get why the character is interesting! I would read that! But if someone has have the resources to explore his inner conflicts they have the resources to at least TRY to include these other characters who are also interesting and NOT simultaneously privileged and, again, actually evil. I can't dictate anyone's art. They can write and post whatever they want to. But other people can't dictate my audience participation, so I'm drawing lines that reflect what I WANT to see being written / created.

I want to see the main and supporting character tags happen, now.

[beatrice_otter]

Well, and the "women being awesome" tag is too often used to tag fics where the "awesomeness" involved is solely limited to getting the juggernaut whitecock ship together. And for specific characters, "bamf x" works but what if I want angst/whump starring them? Won't come up!

I used the tech support/comments link on AO3 to ask for this to happen. If enough people do, maybe it will?

[alatefeline]

Good points. And good plan.

[vicki_rae]

Finding anything that focuses on a single character being awesome, or being the focus at all, is impossible. Sam Wilson :(

There's nothing in ANY of the tags that differentiates between major and minor use. I want a time machine and a ten foot high sign that says major tags and minor tags.

In the Other Tags field you can use a minus in front of any tag. It's a find tags or avoid tags sledgehammer but sometimes it helps. I have a text file with a bunch of tag combinations and copy and paste the right glob of tags for every search.

If it's a ship tag, using minus the top hierarchy tag for that ship automatically excludes every fic tagged with any variation of the ship. For multiple tags the format is tag comma space next tag. You can also put tags and minus tags in any order.

It's useful when tag surfing across fandoms instead of fishing in one fandom. It also works to find fics that focus on a rare pair while excluding fics where the rare pair is a past failed stepping stone to the juggernaut pairing. But even that only works if the juggernaut pairing is always the focus if it's there at all.

Nothing works very well for any MCU pairing. I want a time machine and a ten foot high sign that says major tags and minor tags. Passive time travel of a second frozen character turned the already snarled MCU pairing tags into a impossible snake pit.

Buffy pairing tag searches are actually worse than MCU.

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah. I commented to them about it, and they responded that this is a common request that they're looking for how to accomplish, but then what do they do with all the old fics in the archive? How do they handle those? and I think that the only way to handle it is to a) impliment the tag change, b) email every author, ask them to distinguish major and minor characters in their tags, and c) for fics that never get retagged, have the characters show up in both major and minor searches.

It's cumbersome, but doable; it's better than the current system; and the backlog of fics that wwould end up partially mistagged by it isn't going to get smaller the longer they dither.

[sixbeforelunch]

Do you mind if I submit this suggestion via the AO3 feedback from and link to this post? I figure if we suggest it to someone officially, it might happen someday. *g*

[beatrice_otter]

Go ahead, but apparently it's one of the most requested features, but they can't figure out how to implement it given all the fics already in the archive.