I knew I forgot something the other day

[thisbluespirit]

Apart from the things I remembered I forgot anyway...

1. Another thing from the flist: I've been following wrangletangle's posts about AO3 tagging, looking at femslash/female-centric tags during February (via halfamoon). Anyway, you might like to look at this post about the Women Being Awesome tag. It's canonical and can be used to filter works helpfully and it can be improved by more people using it (where relevant) and by adding individual "x is awesome" sub-tags. Once they've been used by three users, they're canonical.

So I added quite a few people where it seemed appropriate to me for my fic on AO3. And it does seem to me that if some of you had a moment to do the same, we could quite easily improve matters and make, say, "Leela is awesome" canonical (because she is, anyway). Or Romana, Martha, Liz, Barbara etc. etc. If you're wondering, when the post was made only five women had canonical "awesome" tags and none of them were from DW. You can also see who else I tagged there, too.

But, anyway, I realise I'm strange and like thinking about tags and things and also have the time to do such low-level things at the moment.

2. Not a thing I forgot, but in rl news, I went to see an ex-colleague at the library today about volunteering soon for an hour every fortnight (doing something not too taxing, I'm a great volunteer, ha). So that's good. We'll see how it goes, but it's definitely a Step Forward. \o/ (Also, she said at the end how much she and everyone missed both of us children's librarians now we're not around to spread glitter about the place. ♥) It's also just a tad ironic, really, isn't it? Never mind.

Comments

[john_amend_all]

Being a white, privileged male, I'm not sure my judgement is to be trusted about which of my fics portray women being awesome, and which ones portray them as objectified wish-fulfilments. Also, it would feel rather like bragging to attach tags containing 'awesome' to something I've written.

Here's hoping the volunteering works out for you.

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks.

And re, the tagging, obviously with AO3 it's up to the user which tags they choose. But if that's the main issue, well, you're not saying the fic is awesome - and you're just using the main canonical tag for a type of fic which is female-centric/features a female character being strong/positive/proactive. As to the other, well, I know what you mean, but we'd never be able to write or tag anything at all... You've got your own judgment & you know what your intentions were; also you can tell which fics got reviews that would suggest they fell into that category.

I was looking at B7 the other day. Since I started looking for it on AO3, loads of people have added their back-catalogues and now there are 1000 fics. Most of them are Blake, Avon or Vila centric. If Women Being Awesome were an option as a filter for finding Dayna, Cally and Jenna fic, I wouldn't care about the identity of the writer one bit. I'd imagine someone who wanted Zoe-fic would want to miss out on finding either of your investigative series.

But obviously I don't mean that you should - I just think in theory you may be worrying a little too much. I felt the same about the awesome part - that was why I found the post so interesting, because it made me see it from the "but this is just a useful common tag that would be even more useful if more consistently applied" angle.

:-)

[john_amend_all]

I know I'm not saying the fic is awesome, but I'd still be saying the character as written by me is awesome. Your suggestion of going by reviews is a good one — oh, and it looks as if I never brought what might be the obvious Victoria-is-awesome story over to AO3 (Concentration, where she frazzles a vampire with her knowledge of optics).

Anyway, I'll have a bit of a think about how the tags could best be applied to my fic. After I've managed to tear myself away from making unconventionalcourtship covers and satisfied the resultant urgent need for brain bleach, that is :-)

(ETA: I see 'Clever Women' is a synonym. I'd certainly feel more comfortable hanging that on fic with Zoë).

[thisbluespirit]

:-)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I was vastly amused the other day when I discovered someone else using my "Sneaking Around for Sex" tag from my Bond fics on AO3.

[thisbluespirit]

So, you just need one more person to pick it up... (And a wrangler to notice.)

;-)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Indeedy!! :D

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that is an interesting thing about the tagging!

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, I thought so too. It's better explained at the actual post, though. :-)

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I went and took a look it. :)

[evil_plotbunny]

So you're the one who left me dozens of freeforms to sort into their appropriate categories... :P :D

Just to clarify, tags don't automatically become canonical after three uses - a wrangler has to go in and make them canonical and sometimes in large fandoms, that can be a slow process. I'm hoping to have some time to spend sorting freeforms this weekend, but we'll see.

Also, I believe we'll be recruiting again soon, if you're interested in tackling tag wrangling from the back end. ;)

[thisbluespirit]

Sorry about that.

Yes, I'm pretty sure wrangletangle explained that; I'm just paraphrasing badly, so thanks for clarifying. :-)

Rl is probably going to be v unpredictable from now on, but it's defnitely something I'd consider if things level out okay.

[evil_plotbunny]

NP, you aren't the person who threw a stack of one word tags in another of my fandoms, all of which needed to be transfered to "No Fandom".

You don't necessarily have to choose popular fandoms...90% of mine are the sort where if I get one tag a month I'm surprised. And I don't advise grabbing as many fandoms as I have accumulated.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I think that is a Step Forward - best of luck with that, and I hope things continue in that vein. It's good to be missed, I guess - better not to have the opportunity to be missed, if you know what I mean. Still, though. :)

[thisbluespirit]

:-)

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Volunteering sounds awesome (albeit yes, ironic somewhat). Go for it!

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks. :-)

[ikel89.livejournal.com]

Good luck with volunteering! Irony or no, I hope it gives you a boost.

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, I'm feeling quite hopeful about it. Thanks! :-)

[liadt]

I hope the volunteering goes well and hopefully things will continue to improve.

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! :-)

[dimity-blue.livejournal.com]

It's great that you're feeling well enough to do a bit of volunteering! I really hope it goes well for you. ::hugs exuberantly::

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you! ♥

[paranoidangel]

That's great about the volunteering - it's a step forward that you can consider doing it to begin with.

[thisbluespirit]

It really is, isn't it? Thank you. :-)