(I kind of loathe that term, actually -- for me the story always should take precedence over who is "paired" with whom)

I take you are not a fan of romance, then? *g*

Although I do sometimes get annoyed by people who clutter up the tags with little exclamations that should really just be part of the summary, as they won't help anyone ever find their story.

Eh, some of them can turn into actual tags through common-usage, and the more tumblr style tagging system doesn't hurt anyone. I actually find them useful on occasion - there are reasons I used "Thor is Sir Not Appearing" and "SHIELD is shady but means well" as tags for my de-aged fic. No, they are not searchable tags - but they are information for the reader that is would otherwise be awkwardly placed in the summary. Particularly the SHIELD bit - they do mean well, so I'm not taking the fic into dark, dark, dark places.

It's not all about being a way for searching.

Fair enough, if the original tags convey information -- it's the ones that read things like "I suck at summaries" that I can do utterly without ...

And NO, I don't hate romance -- I was speaking for my own writing. I basically suck at pure romance. (Should have clarified what I meant by "for me"...) I can READ PWP with the best of them; can't write it worth a damn, though. THAT SAID, I am currently trying to turn my hand at a pure relationship piece to lay under the tree for everyone here (since I missed the Secret Santa by signing up a day late). We'll see whether it works ... :-)

It's something authors grow out of, so I just...let it slide (and admittedly don't read, because I'm a judgey writer). And I don't know, I find those tags kind of fun - and information in ways the author doesn't intend. Saves me reading it if I dislike the tags, after all.

Ah, gotcha. I was under the impression that was your opinion for all fics. And, well, relationship-centric works aren't all smut or fluff. I suppose it helps if they are short, too - then it can be little snippets of a life, rather than a plot.

Good luck!

Clearly, the written medium is insufficient for communication ... ;-)

I do like relationship pieces and even write them myself (see "The Skies over Manhattan" as an example of just the kind of character vignettes you mention). What I'm un-fond of is the assumption that everyone has to be "paired" when someone writes about a relationship dynamic. I guess this comes out of my experience in the Voyager fandom where "pairing" is basically the entry ticket into having your story read. And as I said, the limits of FFN that makes no distinction between "pairing" and "relationship" when you tag two characters.

As for my own writing, I do like exploring relationships; my longer stories I like to be about something more. For Voyager, I've written about abuse of power and political corruption, human trafficking, organized crime and terrorism; war crimes and post-conflict politics, as well as the magic of mermaids and the tragedy/inevitability of cultural decline. (I didn't bother trying to find or make up tags for any of these things; I prefer the reader to figure it out.)

Oh, I also occasionally write pure fluff (see "The Pool" a couple of pages down. :-)

It just helps to add qualifiers to your words. Written communication is awesome :D

AO3 has the very useful tag for non-romantic relationships - so instead of Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, you put Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, and that implies platonic. Fandom in general is terrible with gen fics, sadly.

To me, I guess, a relationship can be used to explore so many other things - and that there is nothing wrong with exploring a relationship in of itself. But I also...don't set out to write about "big things". I've written about the effects of (to pick a common one) war on people, in various ways - but while I use a lot of research into attitudes and reactions (sooooo many books), my research is nothing unless it fits the character and how she or he or zie would react and how they process things. I have big things inform my writing, but I never use it as the main point. But, that's me.

Hmm, if you had issues about search ability of tags, I'd absolutely add those things into the tagging system. People who are interested would click, and others who aren't would stay clear, and everyone is well informed. Uninformed readers can lead to bait and switch, which is never fun.

Zie? Cool. Gotta remember that one ... ;-)

Actually my complaint about inability to distinguish between relationship tags was about FFN, which only allows two to begin with and then doesn't distinguish between friendship and romance.

I guess I'll stop trying to describe how I feel about relationship fics because it's obviously *complicated* (and the piece I'm writing right now is turning more relation-shippy by the minute, so I'll just be contradicting myself by tomorrow)... ;-)

As for the Big Picture stuff, most of it comes from things I've dealt with professionally over the years, issues that bug me, images I have to get out of my system. Hence my fixation. Character responses and, yes, relationships often provide the vehicle. (My main Avengers piece that goes in that direction is "In the Service" -- have a look; I'd be interested in what you think of it.) As for tagging those things that would be a bit too much in the direction of a spoiler for me, so I don't; I give an idea in the summary.

In my other fandom people are familiar by now with the kind of stuff I write; still working my way into a niche in this one! It sure is fun. :-)

Thanks for a great discussion!!