Archive of Our Own (AO3)
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So I finally got the invitation to create an account on AO3. I haven’t posted any stories yet because my OCD is compelling me to be exhaustive when tagging (I also don’t have any M/f stories that really belong there). I’ve spent several hours lost among the tags and FAQs, and for those of you who make use of AO3 I have a few questions.
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Is heterosexuality even allowed?
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I note that the gender/size tag we use don’t really work (or are not used) on AO3. “M/f” doesn’t always retain the capitalization and it returns hundreds of hits that have nothing to do with size. I have seen people use the individual tags “male giant” and “female tiny,” but that only indicates that there are characters present who fall into those categories; it doesn’t necessarily indicate that they interact with each other. There is a sub-category of tags called Relationships. Example: “Relationship: James T. Kirk/Spock.” Many such Relationships have been “canonized” and will be suggested when typing in the Relationship tag field. There are, however, countless “non-canonical” Relationship tags, including some that are quite creative or generic, such as “Relationship: Hannibal Lecter/Original Male Character” or “Relationship: Blond Himbo/Shy Librarian.”
It seems to me that we could use “Relationship: Male Giant/Female Tiny” as a distinctive tag that indicates the preferred configuration. There’s no reason not to augment this with additional tags such as “Shrunken Woman” or “Bratty Female Borrower” or “Protective Male Giant” or “Gluttonous Male Giant” or “Rapey Giant Bastard,” plus all the preferred body parts and activities.
Any other tips or suggestions for AO3 newbies? Questions for AO3 veterans?
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@Olo My time to SHINE
1- Yes. Just to hammer in a point: there is no censorship on AO3. The only rules are that you must tag your work appropriately. If it has rape, tag it. If it has incest, tag it. If it has suicide, tag it. Just use common sense. And if you aren’t sure, there is always the catch all: “Author chose not to use Archive warnings.” That will always cover your butt. The “moderation” on AO3 is self-moderation; if you don’t want to see something, don’t search it, filter it out, don’t read it, etc. It’s an archive, not social media.
2- The answer to all of your questions is to simply create your own tags. You want to tag it as “M/f”? You type M/f and then a comma. Voila, it’s tagged M/f. The only reason you would find it in the list that pops up when you start typing is if someone else has opted to use that exact configuration before you. The tricky thing here is that because of the vast variety of prose AO3 caters to, having “canonical” tags in original works would be… basically impossible. The GOOD news is that you can use MULTIPLE tags in order to appear in as many search results as possible. So go ahead and tag it with all the terminology you can think of: “M/f, male giant, big man, giant man, tiny woman, shrunken woman, tiny female, size difference” so on and so forth. There is NO LIMIT to your tags. You would shit if you saw the literal wall of tags some stories have. I am not joking. So go crazy. Tag away.
For relationship tags: ditto. Just type it in how you like it and end it with a comma.
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If it makes you feel better about posting there, I have been for a while now. Posting my size related M/f stories. Even my stories get a fair amount of readers. Though they don’t allow you to self promote. So you can’t advertise your patron or the like.
HH1
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The magic words you’re going to look for are things like ‘size fetish’, ‘size difference’, ‘macro/micro’, and shrinking and so on. Because like most things there’s an overwhelming GTS dominance, using the tags can help get you more specific results.
That said, I’m don’t look at Ao3 for my fetish needs; most of the stuff I find fetish-wise has a mass produced kind of quality to it (not just size stuff, but the ABO stuff I unfortunately run into while looking through authors and what not (fuck, now i"M thinking of ABO as a size story)), so… yeah. AO3 isn’t for sexy time for me (besides that one Among Us fic that just makes me interested despite myself), it’s fanfic central. I’ve found a small amount of size fics, but about half the of interesting ones (too sick to really get into sexual stuff right now, and that damn idea I’ve been wanting to write) are fanfics themselves, and honestly I can’t help but think that’s an unusually large proportion of original fics.
Power is choice.
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@Olo
Alpha Beta Omega, where people have ‘second sexes’, alphas are basiclly memetic alpha males, omegas are subs that are claimed, and betas are the normal people who are probably keeping society running while everyone else loses their minds to magic sex hormones turning off their brains every five minutes.It’s based off wildly inaccurate and outdated wolf pack dynamics and on Ao3 is largely an excuse to have a man who is strong and determined go through female style, often really rapey dynamics, while still trying to have them be the same character, somehow.
shrug
I’ve seen rare cases where it’s interesting, but in fanfiction… not so much.
