AO3 Tag Wrangling Changes

[beatrice_otter]

AO3 just announced some changes in what nonfandom tags will be canonized (and what will be synned with what). They're all changes that will work well going forward, I think, but on a couple of them I'm worried about backwards compatibility with fic that already have certain tags. If you're a fic author you might want to check it out to make sure your tags mean what you want them to mean.

For example! They are creating a new tag for "Sensory Overload" and changing "Overstimulation" to "Sexual Overstimulation"

I think it's good to separate those two concepts to make it easier to find what you want and filter out what you don't want, but also, if you have a fic with an autistic character or someone who experiences sensory overload, now might be a good time to check what exactly you tagged it and make sure it's got the tag you want.

There's also some changes to gender-related and pregnancy related tags, and if you have fic about trans characters you might want to check it out.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I'm a bit confused about the "Trans Mpreg" tag. Is this commonly understood as a trans man being pregnant in the RL way, rather than the "standard Mpreg" setup of some kind of fantasy biology? Seems a bit of an odd fit in the fantasy pregnancy bucket. Presumably you also could just tag "trans pregnacy" then rather than "Mpreg".

Or is the impossible biology kept like in Mpreg conventions, but a trans woman is pregnant without an uterus etc? Though as that seems kind of misgendering I guess it's the former?

Do you know what the common usage is?

[beatrice_otter]

I have no idea what the common usage is. But those are all good questions.