nonny · 6mo
What’re your thoughts on fics not tagging who tops and who bottoms anymore? It’s so annoying! I don’t get why it’s now done. I know people try to pass it off as “dynamics shouldn’t matter, you’re weird if you only enjoy the ship in your preference.” Which… girl it’s not that deep just tag. But I don’t even know if this is a new thing?? Like I’ll see older drarry fics from the 2000s and who tops or bottoms is not tagged or mentioned anywhere. So I guess I was also wondering if fandoms went from not tagging/mentioning to tagging back to not tagging from the 2000s to now? Like please I cannot take getting jump scared by top draco anymore!!
oh it drives me crazy! if you're writing a fic where they have sex, tag (or otherwise somehow indicate) what kind they are having -- that includes who tops and bottoms! and yeah people can say it doesn't matter, but 1) it does, people absolutely write characters differently based on how they imagine it, and often i can detect which way someone ships something even when looking at sfw art or fic, and 2) even if that wasn't true, IF THAT'S JUST WHAT I WANT TO SEE, THAT'S STILL VALID. you're not going to trick someone into switching how they ship things by not tagging it, so why do you refuse lol
for how it used to be done i think it depends based on a couple things:
1) anime fandoms did tend to do name order. like everyone knew 1x2 was different from 2x1!
2) with there being less obsession with reversible "equality," many fandoms did tend to go a majority one way, and you might only see it mentioned in the author notes if it was out of the norm
3) since fics were archived and promote differently, that mattered... like a fic might not have had "bottom draco" in the summary but if it was on the Bottom!Draco Emporium (real archive) and promoted in the bottom_draco livejournal community, and you found it that way, you knew lol
but yeah, it's never been perfectly done anywhere. but the active backlash against it is more recent imo and super annoying
