more AO3 thoughts
Aug. 14th, 2011 05:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lirillithI love the tagging system. Ages ago, I remember posting on my writing journal about what constitutes gen. When I write a fic about Locke and Terra with no distinct romantic bent, but thoroughly focused on the importance of their relationship, is that gen? Even though they're my OTP? Now I can just whap the "pre-relationship" tag on it! Problem solved! I also enjoy some of the silly content tags, like sticking the "airships" tag on many of my Setzer fics.
But every time I see the "female characters" tag, I wonder why it exists. My FF.net profile has 33 fics included; only 7 of those have an exclusively male POV (not counting ones with multiple points-of-view, both male and female.) All of them feature a female character in some context. And my two primary fandoms are games with predominantly male casts. I mean, I realize a lot of slash-heavy fandoms don't have much fic about female characters at all, but I find the whole idea of writing female characters so seldom that you tag them as something out of the ordinary to be really alien.
I really don't write male POVs often. It's not so much out of discomfort or fearing that the male POV will be unconvincing, anymore - it's just that female characters are usually my gateway into the material. Maybe once I get to writing Tiger & Bunny fic that'll change, I dunno.
But every time I see the "female characters" tag, I wonder why it exists. My FF.net profile has 33 fics included; only 7 of those have an exclusively male POV (not counting ones with multiple points-of-view, both male and female.) All of them feature a female character in some context. And my two primary fandoms are games with predominantly male casts. I mean, I realize a lot of slash-heavy fandoms don't have much fic about female characters at all, but I find the whole idea of writing female characters so seldom that you tag them as something out of the ordinary to be really alien.
I really don't write male POVs often. It's not so much out of discomfort or fearing that the male POV will be unconvincing, anymore - it's just that female characters are usually my gateway into the material. Maybe once I get to writing Tiger & Bunny fic that'll change, I dunno.
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Date: 2011-08-15 12:36 pm (UTC)"Pre-relationship" is a wonderfully useful tag.
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Date: 2011-08-16 08:19 pm (UTC)