sorry, need to vent

[mikogalatea]

Dear various authors on AO3,

If a character or relationship does not actually appear in your fic, or if they only have an extremely minor appearance in your fic with no real role to speak of, or if they only show up in the background and might as well be a random painting on the wall, then do not include them in the character or relationship tags for that fic!

No love,

Someone who likes many not-so-popular characters and ships and would prefer it if the results of searches she does for them included more fics that were actually about them to any degree.

Comments

[seerofrage]

I feel that so much :C
It's always disappointing to click through on something that sounds interesting and find it has like, nothing of the tagged character/ship you were hoping for.

[mikogalatea]

Yeah, it's kind of like false advertising. Very frustrating. =/

[kalloway]

Is this FE fandom, because I've noticed it's terrible for this for some reason.

[mikogalatea]

FE fandom is what sparked this post, yeah, though I wouldn't say it's the only fandom with this problem. The Dangan Ronpa section can be pretty bad about it too, even if maybe not quite to the same degree as the FE sections.

[kalloway]

I'm not surprised it's not the only one, but yeah, it was a pretty easy guess. (Searching for rare pairs in the Fates section just leads to disappointment.)

[mikogalatea]

I didn't mean to imply you were saying it was -- sorry! But yeah, it being a big fandom with loads of characters does make it an obvious magnet for this particular problem. (So does looking for rarepairs or fics about characters who aren't the Big Faves in the Three Houses section.)

[kalloway]

Nah, I didn't take it like that. ^^;; I just couldn't think of anywhere else I've seen it approaching as bad, but I also haven't been reading very broadly lately.

(I haven't done much poking in Three Houses-land yet but I can imagine!)

[fujicori]

Oh gosh yes, it is so frustrating.

(Hey, another fic where they're just tagged for the fact that the third-person narration makes one mention that they're dating, even when only one half of the ship appears in the fic at all.)

[sarajayechan]

/has been guilty of this in the past and even present, whoops

This is especially bad because I actually agree with your post, I've run into this myself when searching for rare pairs and it's Not Fun.