So you know how you put in all the tags for your story, and there's the relationship field? Well, that can be used to describe any kind of relationship in the fic, not just romantic pairings (which is what I'd always assumed). Here's how you're supposed to distinguish between non-romantic relationships and romantic ones:
[Character Name] & [Character Name] = Rivals, enemies, friends, family, etc.
[Character Name]/[Character Name] = romance
I've gone in and fixed this on my stories. Personally, I just tag the relationships that are actually important to the story, because there is an issue of people tagging every single ship there is, including background ones. This means that if you want to read something featuring a particular couple and try searching, in some cases you get back a bunch of results where said couple just gets a mention or the like. It's pretty annoying.
I've noticed that too, about people tagging every single ship there is in a fandom. It's like, 'Whoa, slow down, folks! Stick to what's actually featured in the story." It can be a drag trying to sort through that, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteI can only guess at why people do that.
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