Reading the tags/warnings?

Assuming that a fic is properly tagged, are you (as a reader) likely to ignore the tags or warnings on a fic if the summary seems interesting enough?

Also, if you do read the fic (and find you like/don't like it) is it okay to let the author know?

I ask because I recently had several people complain about the nature of a trigger written in my fic (already tagged on the fic), which I guess is reasonable. But why read it then?

Do you read it in the hopes that the trigger gets resolved/fixed or am I just dealing with trolls?

I always read /all/ the tags before I read a fic, if there are any. If I see a particularly interesting unique tag (like "all aboard the pain train" or "phil coulson has the patience of a saint" I might make a note of that in my comments.

Usually the only thing a multitude of tags tells me is that a story is bad. Most of the time, a story with many tags represents either an overabundance of shipping, bashing, or other nonsense...or somebody's spending more time polishing the storefront than making good merchandise.

You also can't trust tags; they're often wrong, added as things meant to be done later and possibly overcome by events or not yet a part of the story.

So do I read them? Yes. Do I place any stock in them as a mechanism? No.

I'll make a note of the tags/warnings, then read. Rarely have I seen a tag or warning that I felt needed to be there, and I have only rarely commented upon them.^note The only one I can remember is someone warning, "This is going to get steamy," and my reply was along the lines of, "This is barely even humid. I thought it was going to be steamy!"

I definetly read them, if just because they usually contain the info I want the most (are there pairings, if so what are they, and what does the author think that major things in this story are?). If I can get though all that and still think the idea's good, then I'll go read it. Granted... lots of tags probably means I won't read it at all, but still, I'd rather have them then not.

What about trigger tags/warnings?

I pay so much attention to those. so much. there are some things that I /do not want/ to read, and trigger tags help so much.

Since someone mentioned a lot of tags being a turnoff, what if the number of tags is because the fic has a lot of characters? That's p. much the bulk of my tags, since I write KH fic, and KH fic by nature involves a lot of characters/worlds.

I think with stories like that, it may be better to only tag the characters in focus during the stories. If characters N, X and Z are only there for a scene or two, there's no real point in tagging them unless it's a cameo thing, right?

(double post, sorry)

edited 17th Jun '15 12:40:58 PM by Notoyax17

Would you recommend not tagging the chars from the Disney worlds, then? Or I guess I could just limit it to the main characters. Lots of the characters I did tag have multiple appearances, though. Organization members, for one.

I view character tags as saying who the main 4-5 characters in a story are. If the character tags contain the entire main cast of a 'verse, then it might as well not have any character tags and advertize itself a gen because most fics include the main cast of a story no matter who the fic is mainly about. If it's just a few character tags, then I can better decide if I'd be interested in it or not. And in 'verses that have natural groups of people with names, it works better if you tag the name of the group instead of every member in the group. Then you can tag only the characters the fic focuses on.

Also, having only the main characters tagged leaves more room for plot/situation tags without the entire tag area becoming a wall of text, by which point you've probably already lost me as a reader.

I search for fanfics using tags. If I find a story with a tag I don't like or care for, chance are I'm not reading it.

How would you recommend handling new Disney characters, though? I'd been using tags for them to help people see that characters from certain worlds were appearing, though I suppose I could just as easily do that in the summary.