I’m building a fanfic archive and I’ve been thinking a lot about the limitations of AO3’s tagging system lately. For me, the biggest issue is the lack of distinction between “main” and “side” characters/relationships.
If I want to read a fic where Character A is the protagonist, I have to filter for Character A—but then I get hundreds of fics where they’re just a background cameo. Same goes for relationships.
I also wish I could filter out any relationship involving a character without filtering out the character themselves. Sometimes I’m too tired of seeing ships with A/{B, C, D…Z, X, Y}, but I don’t want to exclude Character A altogether.
And sometimes I’d like to search for attributes like “BAMF” that apply to the main character, regardless of who that character is. If I search for “BAMF Character A,” I can get fics where A is just a side character.
What limitations bug you the most? Have you found any workarounds?
I think the only way I could deal with Ao3s shitty tagging system was when I stopped using the site entirely. It’s complete horseshit, and it makes me mad still. There are some really cool fics out there, and I’m sure there’s a bunch of fics that fulfill your search parameters, but I’m also sure that with Ao3’s tagging system, you will not find them unless you’re willing to scroll through dozens of pages. Sorry I can’t be more helpful :(
