Pros fic rec - Inter Nos by Oftg

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I get very odd A03 lj notifications in my feed - none for ages and ages, even when it turns out people have been posting Pros stories, and then sometimes loads in a row, even though they were for stories posted over periods of time. Bizarre (and if lj did that, there'd be floods of complaints and demands to fix it)...

This morning, though, I had a notification for a story by "Oftg" (is that anyone reading this lj?) - Inter Nos - and nipped over for a read (not that I'm delaying work or anything *g*). It's a good little story, based on something real, and decently written, and well worth reading if you've got a minute or two. *g* Hopefully the author will write some more Pros for us!

I'm not sure about the "additional tag" though - "Canon compliant". Surely that's the default position for a fan fic, unless you've written an AU...?!

Comments

[tinturtle]

I think it's "0ftg", with a zero.

I don't know what "canon compliant" means in this case. When applied to slash, I think it sometimes means that the author has incorporated the various heterosexual relationships that the heroes have in canon into the story, rather than just ignoring them

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

On A03 it looks more like a lower-case "o" actually. Don't think it's a 0...

I think it's the "in this case" that would end up being problematic - if everyone has their own definitions of things, then tags cease to have much meaning.

I think it sometimes means that the author has incorporated the various heterosexual relationships that the heroes have in canon into the story, rather than just ignoring them
But again, that would just be "fanfic"! Ignoring canon m/f relationships seems too vague to hang a tag on, to me. If an author deleted the relationship that would be different (and again, would make it an AU), but simply not including them in a story seems a bit of a non-issue to me. If they're not relevant to the story, then why mention them? And if they're not relevant to the story but are being forked in just to show that the author's acknowledging them, then that's authorial vanity rather than good writing. If they're included in the story just because it's part of the story (which is how I read this) then there doesn't seem any need to make a special point about it (especially a vague one like "canon compliant")...

[tinturtle]

Definitely "0ftg", with a zero. I copied into a program that uses a font in which zeroes have a dot in the center to distinguish them from "O"s.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I took a screenshot and then created a preview at A03 using both versions — o in the first one, and 0 in the second one. The zero is perhaps slightly fatter than the letter "o", but not in any way that makes them distinguishable unless side-by-side. Which begs the question - if you can't tell the difference between them, then does it matter what they're read as? And if the only thing that can differentiate between them is a computer/computer de/coding, then what does that say about the importance being given to humans vs computers...
(https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/byslantedlight/8284114/4143078/4143078_original.jpg) (https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/byslantedlight/8284114/4143341/4143341_original.jpg)

Which interestingly reflects me back to my other point - if saying "canon compliant" doesn't have a generally agreed meaning, and/or people use it differently as a tag, then what does that say about the importance of being the author vs being the reader..? And if the author is only using it to make a point known only to them (in the same way as using an otherwise non-distinguishable "0" in their name), then what does that say about their attitude to humans (readers) vs computers (an authorial vanity)? (Philosophical questions, btw, I'm not actually expecting you to answer them!)

[tinturtle]

I agree that in your screen shots the lower-case "o" and the zero look almost exactly, if not exactly, the same. I think that must be a quirk of the font employed by your browser, though. After reading the name in your post, then following the link to the story, I immediately said to myself, "That's a zero, not an 'o'." I only checked it in the program I mentioned so that I could be absolutely sure before insisting in my second reply that it was definitely a zero.

(Incidentally, I can also tell that you write "A03", not "AO3".)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Well I don't exactly have some whacky browser, it's standard Google Chrome!

And yup, my fingers go for A03 rather than AO3, because the latter looks really clunky to me. Olly, on the other hand, would look odd as 0lly!

[macklingirl.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're right and it is a zero.

I compared the oo from AgtSpooky with her name. For me, it looks like two different signs.

(https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/macklingirl/63614131/643147/643147_original.jpg)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

It's certainly a zero on the source page, but it's not what I'm seeing on my screen, as per the screencaps above, so... *shrugs*

[macklingirl.livejournal.com]

I used copy and paste because I was curious. But be it how it is, she wrote a good story and I hope she'll write more in next time.

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

I find tagging on AO3 kind of weird. I actually don't read a story with an excessive amount of tags, sometimes as long as the story! And the tags themselves are odd to me but I'm not in that group who feels tags are necessary beyond the basics, apparently.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean - I tend to ignore tags, especially as they can end up as spoilers if an author gets over-enthusiastic. I can see why some tags are useful - like "Christmas" perhaps, or other special occasions, but mostly if I want to read a Pros story then I just want to read a Pros story... I wonder which came first, given loads of tags, or those people you see who are looking for really specific types of stories... ("I want to read a Pros story where the lads are in a relationship but they don't have sex, and Cowley is an authoritarian figure, and the story also features female agents but not in a romantic way. Does anyone know of any...?" *vbg*)

We had that poll at CI5hq yonks and yonks ago (before A03 was more than a twinkle in someone's eye) about what people wanted to see in headers, and most people really only wanted title, author, pairing. I'm definitely still in that camp! *g*

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

I'm on a very active S&H slash group and most of the readers seem to want very specific tags. Here's a recent story posted by one of the members so you can see what I mean. It reflects what you were describing quite amusingly. LOL! https://archiveofourown.org/works/30578729?fbclid=IwAR2vGiQ3ToQPon_7oOaW7znoK8uzWaTXcLK0o6v6BMAyW1Oo__iMMUgdbJo

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh my days! Not alot of point reading that story then - it's all there right in the tags!!

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

Ha. You read an S&H story! *laughs* No surprises at all. However, one of the reasons given by many peeps for doing this is ease of finding a very specific story. That assumes people don't just go to their own fandom but search beyond that for exactly what they want. I don't look that specifically and I'm not sure if it's a product of reading mainly in zines. Interesting. Somebody could write a dissertation!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

However, one of the reasons given by many peeps for doing this is ease of finding a very specific story.
Yes, I get that - it just seems odd to demand/expect such very specific stories. Do these same people go through the blurbs of books looking for such specific requirements? The internet is clearly changing the way people read, and their expectations of reaading... for me reading's a wider thing - yeah, sometimes I want to comfort-read, and then I re-read, or go with an author I know writes in a way that I like, or maybe I want a Christmas or spooky story or something, which seems different because it's the setting not the characters or plot that I want t mould a certain way - and I can't imagine wanting to narrow it so far...

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

You're right. In the discussion there, people wanted specific, like Starsky eats green beans or Hutch has a toothache. Not just h/c but specific h/c. That's way too particular for little old me and I will continue to tag with limits. I do think it's changed and I seem to feel from non scientific observations that it's the next gen of fans with only online experience.

[macklingirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's quite funny. So I have read the whole story and know its content only by reading the tags. Saves a lot of time for the reader. *g*

But honestly, I don't read the tag-list either when it is so long. I might find a tag that could prevent me from reading a possible interesting story.

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

It's like the old Cliff Notes we used in school. The study guides on literature that sums up everything in a few pages rather than reading the entire look (like Dickens!).

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I might find a tag that could prevent me from reading a possible interesting story.
Excellent point! *g*

[jat-sapphire.livejournal.com]

I think of "canon compliant" as meaning that the story doesn't contain anything that could not have been in the show as aired. Which is true for this one, certainly, though it seems less true for any slash story. The sex referenced here is (much as I find it compatible) not really "canon compliant."

Maybe it means to offset the threat that the conversation raises. I feel like the story waves Chekov's gun around like mad and then quietly puts it away. I've read stories that didn't, though they seemed horribly anticlimactic.

I agree, though, I'd be glad to see another Prosfic from this writer.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

the story doesn't contain anything that could not have been in the show as aired. ... though it seems less true for any slash story.
This sounds to me like dodgy ground. For instance, I've included the lads having sex in various of my own Prosfic, and I would also say that it's all "canon compliant" - in fact being "canon compliant" is something I try very hard to be in my fics! I want my lads to be the lads we see in the eps. Just because we don't see it on screen because of the social mores of tv producers at the time, doesn't mean it couldn't have been happening in the story without being filmed. I slash B/D because I see them having a romantic relationship on screen. That's what all the looks and touches and particular nuances add up to when I'm watching - so for me, "canon compliant" actually excludes any non-slash story, or pairing other than B/D. *g*

From the opposite direction, Pros stories where the lads are so damaged that they wouldn't be able to cope in CI5, whether the story is slash or not, would not be "canon compliant" to me, because if we know they have to be emotionally stable etc. to be in CI5 from watching the eps, then having the lads faint all over the place, for example, can't be "canon compliant". Same to me if they're holding hands in public in a story, or giving each other long explanations of the girlfriend they once lost - we don't see them expressing their feelings that way in the eps, so that wouldn't be "canon compliant".

So I guess I'm drawing a line between "canon compliant" and "1970s/80s UK tv compliant"... *g* Pros slash can be perfectly canon compliant, and various Pros het stories might not be. *g*

Maybe it means to offset the threat that the conversation raises. I feel like the story waves Chekov's gun around like mad
Oh, I didn't get that from it... You mean it's trying to be a spoiler by saying "I'm not going to kill them cos they don't die in canon"? In that case I'd be glad I had no idea what they meant by the tag, because that would be sneaking a spoiler through dishonestly, when A03 gives authors and readers the opportunity to be fair to each other... *eyes possibility grumpily* (*g*)

[jat-sapphire.livejournal.com]

I searched the author's username and found... the one fic. No other fandoms. Awww.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I did that too! Hopefully they're just starting out and will write lots more stories for us... *vbg*

[ella-caramella.livejournal.com]

If tags are meant to be used when searching for a particular something then for me they don’t work at all: I mean, is it even possible that if I search for example “bodie doyle ust” I end up with 2, and I mean 2!, stories in the whole of AO3? How does it work? I remember a time when AO3 functioned wonderfully and gave tons of search results. Now I think I need some help trying to understand how to do proper searches...

[tinturtle]

I found six works in Professionals fandom that use some form of the UST tag. (That was using the search tools that show up on the right after you have navigated to a fandom, as opposed to the search box on the home page.) Tags only work if people use them, and a large number of Pros authors either don't use them at all or use very few. (Also, from what I've seen, most Pros authors prefer to resolve sexual tension, in some cases frequently and at great length. *g* )

[ella-caramella.livejournal.com]

So you say it’s a peculiarity of the Pros fandom? Search is a nightmare on AO3 when it comes to our dear B/D, also when using the right side tools from inside the Pros section.

But... but... the ust, the pining, the longing for... sigh!

[tinturtle]

Fandoms do seem to vary a lot in how much people tag their works. Based on my observations, Pros authors use fewer tags than classic Man from U.N.C.L.E. authors, who in turn use fewer than, say, Marvel Cinematic Universe authors. Possibly this has to do with the volume of AO3 fics in a fandom? I don't know.

I find the search tools on AO3 quite useful myself, but I'm prepared to believe that others find them unintuitive. A minor in computer science may have warped my mind to work in the same way as the nerds who designed them.

Also, as I said, the search tools only work if they have something to work on. If only six stories have been tagged as containing unresolved sexual tension, then six is all you will come up with. I've found it difficult to turn up fics with some of my favored themes, too, especially in Pros fandom.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

But... but... the ust, the pining, the longing for... sigh!
I reckon the vast majority of Pros fics, especially the longer ones, involve some kind of ust. Try the Circuit Archive (http://www.thecircuitarchive.com/) or the Hatstand (http://hatstand.slashcity.net/), where older stories are archived (or ProsLib of course, where even older stories are archived), and look for the longer ones.

Mind you, there is something else we can try... let me see what I can do... *g*

[tinturtle]

I find ten works tagged with "pining." Numberless Dreams is really good, but the series it is part of will only break your heart, as it was never completed.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Good example of one of the issues of tagging - everyone's second-guessing each other about the terms they use to mean different things!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I presume people all use tags in different ways. I use them in the lj comms I mod as a way to index the comm, so that people can find authors or stories or discussion subjects easily, but that doesn't work for A03. *g*

I very consciously and specifically don't use many tags on my Pros stories in A03. I sometimes include a tag for something like "Christmas", or some other season, but that's as far as it goes. I don't really want people to know upfront whether a story involves ust or anything that specific, because a) then people are going into the story with expectations which they might feel are unfulfilled, and b) everyone's definitions of things like that are different, in which case return to a)... *g*

Pros is an old - one of the oldest - fandoms, and I suspect that has something to do with the tagging thing. If you've (generic "you", not you-you *g*) grown up with everything around you being tagged, and so being able to satisfy very specific requirements, then you probably do it and look for it automatically. When you're not used to that then it probably seems unnecessary, maybe even specifically unwanted, and just an extra faff when you're posting stories. Especially if you're posting stories you wrote ages ago as archiving rather than caught up in the excitement of sending your stories into the wild for the first time... *g*

[tinturtle]

When you're not used to that then it probably seems unnecessary, maybe even specifically unwanted, and just an extra faff when you're posting stories. Especially if you're posting stories you wrote ages ago

Yes, I think this probably has something to do with it, too. A lot of the Pros stories on AO3 began life as circuit or zine stories, or were originally published in archives with less metadata. Tagging is extra work for authors moving their stuff, especially in bulk. (On top of which they might not remember a lot of detail of stories they wrote ages ago.)

[tinturtle]

I've found myself of two minds regarding how to tag my one MFU fic. It has an unusual theme that I am very drawn to and rarely find in stories, so I want to make it easier for people with the same interest to discover it. On the other hand, I don't think it's clear until the middle of the fic that it isn't headed in the seemingly obvious direction, and I don't want to introduce spoilers. :-/

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's ultimately my problem with tagging that's too specific - if I'm told the plot of a story in advance then I'm much less interested in reading it, and a very specific tag is effectively giving away plot points. It changes the way I read something if I'm expecting something specific to happen.

The way that Pros dealt with warnings and spoilers before A03 etc. made most sense to me. The achivists at Circuit and Hatstand basically had two separate story headers for each story, and you could choose which one you looked at before reading a story. So I could quite safely go through the list of stories knowing I wouldn't be spoiled, and I'd have information about the title, author, story length and pairing. If people wanted to know whether a story would include something they didn't want, such as death, then they could use the spoilers lists. That's not tagging or indexing of course.

I guess for me the solution to your issue would involve having storylists somewhere for specific themes. If there was a known comm or list somewhere which people knew they could go to to find specific themes, then they could — and it would save spoiling people who preferred story twists... But that would involve a community of fans getting together to do it...

[tinturtle]

The way that Pros dealt with warnings and spoilers before A03 etc. made most sense to me. The achivists at Circuit and Hatstand basically had two separate story headers for each story, and you could choose which one you looked at before reading a story. So I could quite safely go through the list of stories knowing I wouldn't be spoiled, and I'd have information about the title, author, story length and pairing. If people wanted to know whether a story would include something they didn't want, such as death, then they could use the spoilers lists.

AO3 achieves a similar effect with the settings that allow users to turn off warnings and additional tags. (Although ratings and whether there are any warnings will still be visible, which I know annoys you.)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yep, saying there are "warnings" are spoilers in themselves, because then as a reader you're always keeping half a consciousness out for whatever the warning might be for...

Also, you have to register with A03 to turn things on and off, which you don't on the Pros comms - they came as standard.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I had to fiddle around for ages to come up with any Pros UST stories when I tried searching for it at A03. Partly it's because there's not many tags in Pros for it, but in the end the only way to get six stories to come up (because TinTurtle said she'd found that many *g*) was to go into the main search page, and then search by The Professionals as the fandom, and in the Additional Tags box (because "UST" just brings up half a dozen tags for SPN that start with "UST"), I tried typing "Unresolved Sexual Tension" in full - typing "Unresolved" then gave me a choice of generic tags, and I could choose "Unresolved Sexual Tension", which gave me the six fics. Of course whether they really are focussed on a ust situation you'd have to read to find out... *g*

All of which is another reason I don't often bother searching at A03, and tend to stick to the older archives... which of course has the downside that I might miss newer Pros fics by people not on lj (and people on lj now...). Despite having Pros A03 fed into my lj friends list...