A Matter of Notation
While I’m normally a lumper instead of a splitter when it comes to nomenclature, I do occasionally feel that a distinction is evident and worth marking. In fan fiction circles, there is something of a primitive notation for marking relationships, most prominently codified on (but not invented by) Archive of Our Own. There are two broad classifications of relationship in fan fiction spaces:
- Romantic or sexual relationships (notated
/
) - Platonic or familial relationships (notated
&
)
A romantic relationship between characters A and B would be notated A/B. Platonic, A&B. Throuples and trios have the shape of A/B/C and A&B&C, and so on. This notation is less like a mathematical operator and more like a delimiter indicating the items of a set. C/B/A is the same relationship as A/B/C is the same relationship as B/C/A and so forth.
I don’t think anyone would stop you from mixing the symbols, but it’s not well-defined what A/B&C means. Does this mean A/B are in a romantic relationship, and each happen to be friends with C? Or does this mean that A and B are lovers, while B and C are friends?
Generally, this is unimportant, as relationships of different kinds can be listed separately. Additionally, /
relationships between the same characters are generally considered to encompass or supersede &
relationships, so there’s no need to list A&B when you have A/B.
Limitations
This system works assuming you have a character relationship within these boundaries. But in darker tales, relationships are occasionally one-sided, sometimes exhibiting sexual interactions that aren’t mutual or consensual. Characters can be enemies or rivals. How does this system cope with these not-uncommon cases?
Well, sexual relationships of any nature, mutual and consensual or otherwise, are typically notated with /
. AO3 and other platforms do provide tags for rape and nonconsent, but their orthogonality to relationship tags makes them ambiguous. If you behold a story whose tags contain:
- A/B
- Rape/Non-con
It is not apparent whether the relationship between A and B is generally wholesome or abusive, or whether the specified rape has anything to do with either or both of the characters, especially if you have characters C and D tagged as well.
Perhaps for many users this distinction is unimportant, because the Rape/Non-con tag is typically used to filter content out of a search, so at that point, the relationship is immaterial, but if the tag should be used to filter content in, the intersection of the aforementioned tags is insufficient to ascertain that the two relate to each other.
“But why would you want to search for that?” some of you are probably asking. Well, personally, I don’t, but in the realm of fiction, all is fair game. Some people have a stronger stomach for the heavy stuff than I do. Even so, in the case of vague here-be-dragons warnings such as AO3’s Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings tag, the /
relationship marker now presents an even greater ambiguity; you have no idea whether the warned-for content has anything to do with the relationship(s) at hand or not.
New Notation
So I think it would be helpful to have a delimiter for one-sided relationships, perhaps with a distinction between abusive ones and merely unrequited ones.
Mutual romantic and sexual dynamics can retain /
, as that’s the default understanding of that delimiter anyway. But let’s assign two more.
- Romantic and Sexual Dynamics
- Mutual:
/
- Includes romantic partners, friends with benefits, and other such dynamics where all participants exercise due care for the well-being of the other participants.
- Unrequited:
~
- Generally covers pining and rejection, as long as that rejection is ultimately respected. A~B indicates that A longs for B, but B rebuffs A or is unaware of A’s feelings.
- Abusive:
@
- Includes stalking, rape, or other abuse or malfeasance. The aggressor is on the left, so A@B indicates A is the aggressor.
- Mutual:
Mutual polycules can retain their A/B/C/… notation for describing an extended set of participants. The directional choices seem like odd candidates for having more than two participants, although I suppose most obviously an author may want to encode an abusive relationship wherein multiple abusers are in cahoots with each other, sharing the same delusion, fantasy, or antipathy. In such a case, they may be comma-separated: A,B@C indicates that A and B conspire to abuse C.
The converse seems less useful, but perhaps A@B,C indicates that A abuses B and C as a pair. I’m sure more imaginative writers will see more obvious uses for this comma-separation notion; I am simply content to establish it as a convention.
Non-sexual and non-romantic relationships can receive a similar treatment. As much as I would like to split family and friendship dynamics, the popularity of found family tropes in fan fiction blurs the line considerably, so we will leave them as is, and simply add two new categories.
- Non-Sexual and Non-Romantic Relationships
- Platonic:
&
- Friends and family, as already established by common use.
- Rivalrous:
$
- Rivalry indicates a sort of tenuous mutual respect and intense sense of competition. Some rivalries are one-sided, but I don’t feel we must make directionality distinctions here. A$B indicates A and B are rivals as long as one of them believes it. With more than two participants, such as with A$B$C, everyone needs to be a rival to at least one other person in the rivalry.
- Adversarial:
^
- Characters in an adversarial relationship hold a deep-seated hatred or fear of each other, but without any sexual component that would put this into
@
territory. A^B means that A and B are enemies. A^B^C means that A, B, and C are all enemies to each other.
- Characters in an adversarial relationship hold a deep-seated hatred or fear of each other, but without any sexual component that would put this into
- Platonic:
For best results, don’t mix relationship types. If one character is in a romantic partnership and is enemies with someone else, simply list them separately:
- A/B
- A^C
Mixing of delimiters in a single relationship tag (e.g. C^A/B) shall be considered undefined behavior.
Such specificity in tags would enable better searching and filtering, and advance the notions of nuance in relationships among fan fiction characters.
Non-Arguments
It’s common for any tagging-related proposal to be shot down with a cry along the lines of “but if we implement this, a bunch of old stories will be mistagged!”
This is true, but many stories are already mistagged. Furthermore, if somebody’s back catalog is so enormous that correcting their tags after an update would be too burdensome, that is a bed of their own making. People who are unwilling or unable to retroactively conform to a new standard of tagging are not my concern; I simply seek the ability to be more specific in a way codified ahead of time for others to understand.