I made a statement earlier today on twitter about AO3 tags, and how people are tagging. Namely, I saw a fic labeled with a pairing tag, but also marked gen. Which, to me, are mutually exclusive tags. A fic either features some sort of romantic pairing (not necessarily a sexual pairing), and then you further specify based on rating. Which is why the choices are Gen, F/F, M/F, F/F or Multi for that tag, and then the ratings are G, T, M, or E, based on how explicit the fic is. G for general audiences, usually meaning no swearing, no sex, no violence, sometimes not even kissing, through Explicit, for wall-banging, graphic sex or really bloody, torturous violence (or both, sometimes.)
That’s how I read it, anyway, and how I use the tags/ratings system on AO3. But I was told that some people would see my example fic as a slash fic with no sex in it. Not an asexual fic, necessarily, but just one that didn’t feature sex or other physical contact.
I don’t see that, but I can see how the tagging system can be read a bit differently by different people. That could cause some issues with readers trying to sort out fic, I’m sure, if they’re filtering out things they want or letting in things they don’t. So I’m curious – what is the convention people usually use? Am I off in the wilderness here and tagging my stuff incorrectly, or is there really very little difference? Half and half?
I have trouble figuring out how to label my own stories, sometimes. Sometimes I write ambiguous pairings—walking the line between bromance and more—or asexual relationships where there’s no romance but a strong bond. And those ARE gen, technically, but they’re also pairings. So…yeah. I have been known to do something like that. Or mark it as both gen and m/m. (Never mind pairings where there’s ambiguous gendering involved; that’s another issue.)
But yeah, generally when something is labeled ‘gen,’ my expectation is that it refers to the nature of the relationship, not the presence or absence of sex, and that ‘gen’ doesn’t involve anything stronger than friendship. (Or at least, nothing sexually loaded. Argh. These things are really hard to parse sometimes.)
I have to say, though, in response to the comment you got about ratings systems in different countries: AO3 does have its own guidelines on what falls into what ratings, and an explanation of what those guidelines are. Many sites that use ratings systems do. Users of those sites are responsible for reading the instructions, and not just assuming that they know based on what they’ve seen elsewhere.