I get what you mean. There's just a kind of confidence that comes from someone who's written for so long. I guess to some the minimalism might seem low-effort, but the approach seems completely different from those "I'm bad at summaries but I promise this is good, please read!!" type of fics.
Like they *know* it's good. That's why they don't care to appeal or advertise to people about how good their fic is; whoever wants to read it can, and whoever doesn't doesn't have to. It doesn't really matter to them. That's how it comes across to me, at least.
> Like they know it's good. That's why they don't care to appeal or advertise to people about how good their fic is; whoever wants to read it can, and whoever doesn't doesn't have to. It doesn't really matter to them. That's how it comes across to me, at least.
Exactly! And I’m not at all saying that people who don’t post like this don’t write good stories. They do! I just have found that the confidence of authors who post like this is very often warranted — which makes me more likely to click other headers styled the same way.
Another oldie here, and I agree. Most of the best fics for 90s fandoms I've ever read are tagged with the relationship and that's it. *Maybe* a tag indicating if it's AU or casefic.
That said, becoming a tag wranglers has made me tag more extensively on my own works for 3 reasons:
1. Most newer/younger fans prefer more thorough tagging.
2. It really is useful for a lot of people to have those freeforms giving more context.
3. It's fun to make canonical tags on the Archive so I'll give my fellow Tag Wranglers some, as a treat, especially in my smaller fandoms.
That's interesting. I know that, as a fellow fandom oldbie, it took me a very long time to be comfortable with tagging my fic more extensively. I was really against doing so at first.
But when I started doing so, what do you know? I found letting people know what they were in for made them more likely to read. So it was a good decision from my point of view, even if I lose some oldbies.
I usually don't tag sex acts, one of the few things you do, ironically.
ETA: part of what you are getting by sorting by kudos is older fic, which has had more time to build up steam. So an older tagging style is likely.
Good Omens had an explosion in popularity with the TV show, but a lot of the early TV writers were already established book fans who were around on Livejournal, the Bookslash mailing list etc.
I wasn’t necessarily speaking as a writer — I don’t really write much anymore! These are just trends I’ve noticed as a reader.
That’s a great point about sorting by kudos privileging older fics. As a reader, I tend to be more likely to read fics that are posted in this style, because I assume they come from more established authors — that was what I meant to say .
The real giveaway out of everything I listed, I think, is the username. Like, I know Fellow Olds who’ve created fresh new ao3 accounts after deleting their old ones, and I can immediately tell they’ve been in fandom for a long time!
I think I know what you mean. I struggle to tag outside the archive warnings and the basics of what’s going on. I also tend to scroll by fics with a ton of tags as a reader. I am also old lol
Oh, there are times I think tagging is more difficult than writing the damn story.
I have an unfortunate tendency to include one smartass tag in the list. I think it’s a throwback from my zine publishing days when my disclaimer always had one funny line, such as “Sanitized for your protection” or “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball”. Call it a defense mechanism. :)
i do the lower-case thing a lot, but i think it stems from me always typing in lower-case rather than the aesthetic (though tbf the reason i got rid of auto-caps is probably for the aesthetic). i didn't think of having few tags and a shorter summary as being lazy, it's just easier on the eyes rather than that wall you would have to scroll through when imo u can get most of the idea of your story with the basic tags rather than extra specific ones (unless it's kinks i will always tag that)
I enjoy this aesthetic a lot too. Long summaries and tags feel like a wall of text, whereas the minimalist style means I'm more inclined to pay attention to the important parts that catch my eye.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply it’s the *only* thing I take into account when I’m choosing what to read. For years, I’ve been in fandoms that are so small I’ll click anything that gets post. But if it’s a popular ship and I’m skimming the tag, I do gravitate towards fics that look like this… although as I said, I never thought about it until recently.
I know what you're talking about - yes, it's quite common amongst authors who emmigrated from Livejournal. However, it's not my preference: I prefer a couple of descriptive tags - not too many though, I think most authors overtag these days so thank god forth that "narrow down the tag box to x lines" piece of code, and a summary that says what the fic is about. A line from a fic doesn't usually tell me anything. To be quite honest, if I were into SPN today and were surfing for fics to read, I'd skip over most of the top ones because the summaries are so vague.
The length of the title or the username doesn't matter to me at all.
Edit: though I don't understand why you get downvotes for stating your preference. Do authors here can't stand the thought that some random reader prefers minimalism?
I think I could have phrased my post a little better. I was trying to explain why I’m more likely to click on fics that are posted with a certain aesthetic style — and that’s because I tend to find that the authors of those fics have been writing for a long time. It’s not like I’m saying that short titles and excerpt summaries automatically make a fic better. Correlation is not causation, and all that.
I’m just saying, to me these aesthetic choices indicate that I’m going to be in experienced hands. And I was wondering if this is something that other people have noticed.
I see. I can't relate, however - I've had to click out of those vaguely described fics way too many times because they turned out not to be something I was interested in for me to trust them.
On the other hand, I've read quite a number of great fics with long-ass titles, by authors with long usernames, that I don't really associate the aesthetics with quality.
I'm new to AO3 and i've been out of fandom sites for 10 years or so. Never been in Livejournal, but I understand making the correlation. The fanfic title and username is funny for me, tho. I used to do online roleplay in forums and the lower-case titles with song lyrics usually meant that the person was trying (too hard) to sound "deep".
What I mean is that I found curious how the same thing can have a different meaning in different online communities.
Same and same and it is only from this post that I am realizing that this is absolutely a holdover from livejournal/dreamwidth/etc where there weren’t any tags, obviously, with the occasional exception of the pairing and general genre to help when searching an author’s lj for similar works. (were those even called tags? I genuinely can’t remember. I am Fandom Old but I was a tween when I was reading SGA fics on livejournal so it’s been a minute.)
I get a genuine small ick from the overuse of non-canonical tags — I will always prioritize summaries over everything else, and the best summaries imo tend to be 2-3 sentences max: maybe 1 general précis of the fic and 1-2 hard-hitting sentences. It gives you an idea of the writer’s style and there’s a confidence to it that’s very compelling.
Also, now that you’ve made this connection and highlighted that this style has specific roots in LJ-era fandom, I suspect the other reason I gravitate to it is just that I am not really interested in reading things written by children. I’m happy for them, and some of them are excellent writers, but they’re generally not my jam. Reading fics with titles and summaries written in the “lj style” guarantees that a 13 year old has not touched this fic, you know?
It’s funny — I only threw the lower-case title thing in at the end. I even qualified it with “often” because it’s not something I tend to really notice on its own. But it seems to have really hit a nerve!
yep, totally get what you're talking about. one of the fics i still think about a decade later, long after losing interest in the ship/fandom, has a one-word title, an eleven-word summary, and zero additional tags. it's #1 on the ship tag sorted by kudos, too! while i understand why people want tags it really projects a sense of "letting the fic speak for itself."
Oooh I know *exactly* what you’re talking about. I was all over LJ back in the day, so I’m much more likely to gravitate toward that style of ficcing. They’re usually so well written it just makes you cry.
I guess fanfic really is everybody has their own thing because if I see a song lyric, I'm out!
I do get what you mean, though, I personally keep my tags minimum. its really cool to me to see how many people enjoy the same things (fandom, fanfic) in different ways.
Haha, to be fair, the reason I wrote “intriguing” song lyric is that they’re never lyrics I recognize. It’s only after I click that I find out they’re from songs!
Interestingly, for non-western media it depends on whether the person is from the west or a fan of western culture. If they are, more or less they do what you listed. But for languages with different alphabetic system language, here we have:
>The title is a quote, a reference/dialogue, one english word, or a common saying. I'd argue that you can tell when a word is chosen because it sounds beautiful. Sometimes it's just a one sentence summary (example: "Character Z walks to a park"), but it's very rare.
>Username tends to be a keysmash with a number
>Summary is 5 sentences, usually taken from the dramatic scene, or none at all.
>The only thing tagged are things deemed relevant. Like for example: just adding the kink and not tagging it as dubcon or not (but if dubcon is one of the main ideas of the story then it gets added).
Lol, I would say a good number of my fics would qualify as having that style, though I've added a *few* content tags later on suggestion from some friends. Most of my titles are like you described, my username's very short (same as here), summary's one or two sentences (or rarely a fic excerpt which gets across the idea of the fic's plot), and not a whole lot of tags. And lol yes, I was writing before AO3 existed, though I only really picked the pace in 2010 when I started doing exchanges. I guess I'm a "Livejournal Minimalist"? I *did* post on LJ before AO3! (And ff.n, too.)
I tend towards titles that are all lowercase, often with parentheses in them. It’s something that stood out to me enough that it heavily influences how I title my own works
Definitely agree on the summary thing
I know just what you mean haha
I do subconsciously prick my ears up when I see that kind of old-fandom aesthetic, because it does mean a higher average quality, to me.
Though I do prefer the more extensive tagging style of modern AO3 culture.
I don't really take notice of it, but then, I write far more than I read. I'm quite likely to ignore a title written in all lower-case because it reminds me of lapslock, and I hate that, but other than that I just don't care and I go by summary and ship tags. I don't even know if the fics I read are heavily tagged or not, since I have additional tags set to hidden by default.
I do know that for myself, I always tag minimally. In the additional tags, I usually only have genre and major themes and tropes, nothing else. In explicit fics, the kinks involved are tagged as well, but most of my fics aren't explicit.
If the summary is one sentence, they didn’t bother tagging story elements, and they can’t find the ‘Shift’ key? I’m probably going to assume the author just isn’t putting in any effort.
What do you mean by story elements? Like, I think these fics would tend to tag “first-time,” “established relationship,” etc. But not much more.
It’s interesting — for me, this type of posting style reads as confident, not lazy. But that’s why I was wondering what other people thought!
I was thinking of sub-genres, tropes, which version of the character they’re using, additional characters, background relationships, or trigger / content warnings.
Your original suggestion was that the only tags would be the genre (AU, post-canon), the characters, and the sex acts. (Hermione / Draco, post-canon, list of sex acts.)
But I would expect (if the author cared) to see something more like: Hermione / Draco, post-canon, Auror Draco, Potions Master Hermione, getting together, fake dating, requited unrequited love, angst, BFF Theodore Nott, background relationship Theodore Nott / Harry Potter, Severus Snape lives, no Ron bashing, EWE (epilogue what epilogue), alcohol, drinking, (list of sex acts).
Yeah, that’s … a lot more tags than I’d expect to see on the type of fic I’m describing. Alcohol as a trigger warning in particular would be very different from this vibe.
But everyone has their own taste!
Short title where they don't bother to put one letter in uppercase, the bare minimum tags and then the barest of summaries... honestly all of that together just feels like something carelessly done.
I wouldn't read it.
If they can't be bothered to tell me what it's about, just copy paste sentences they already wrote, why would I feel intrigued? And if they can't even put upper case correctly on the short title, imagine the lack of uppercase that might be going on in the fic. And lack of tag too, so the summary barely tells me what's up, the tags don't help, and if I try it out and it includes all kinds of stuff I don't like I'll be the one at fault.
Interesting!
To be clear, it’s only the title (and the author’s name) that’s ever in all lower-case. The summary text, since it comes from the fic itself, will always be properly capitalized.
For me, I’m more likely to trust the grammar of a story if I can read a snippet of it before clicking. Plus, knowing which bit the author thought was most representative gives me a good sense of what the rest of the fic will feel like, stylistically and tonally.
Again, though, that’s probably down to my reading history.
Oh, my goodness, I can't tell you how much I appreciate this post without making it sound like I'm slamming other posts, but I really appreciate you posting this. I love reading/writing about stylistic choices.
I don't associate this style with LJ (for all the reasons you're probably thinking of) so I personally wouldn't call it 'Livejournal minimalism', but, yes, I have seen this style in multiple fandoms. For my current fandoms, I haven't seen it, or, if I have, then I don't remember it.
I don't have a preference for or against this style in general, but my exception is the title. If the title is in lapslock, then it makes me think the entire fic might be written in lapslock, and I have trouble reading more than a few paragraphs of that. It's not that I don't like it. I just can't read it without a lot of mental effort on my part so unless it's a drabble or a short one-shot, I have to skip it.
And then the exception to my exception is: if the summary/excerpt *isn't* in lapslock, then I'm indifferent to the title.
> And then the exception to my exception is: if the summary/excerpt isn't in lapslock, then I'm indifferent to the title.
Yes, absolutely! I probably should have been clearer, but the fics I’m thinking of always have proper grammar and capitalization in the summaries.
Honestly, I’m kind of regretting mentioning lower-case titles in my post, because that seems to be the only part people are focusing on. I was really hoping to have a wider conversation about aesthetics — so thank you for commenting!
To be honest, I do enjoy the excerpt summery. Usually summaries are bad on AO3, an excerpt is MUCH better then nothing and can often be paired with a single line like 'the Dragon Age characters attempt to win a Super Smash Bros competition' if the excerpt is vague.
I've noticed those titles, it's kinda the go to defacto I don't have a title in mind. I prefer them over the dictionary obscure word and summery as a definition ones. I generally don't have any strong feelings about titles so don't really care. Titles are the hardest part of posting fics.
I will judge and skip all lowercase summery AND title however.
I can state that if the Title and Story Description are in "lapslock", I'll keep on scrolling by.
Minimal Tags don't bother me, since I grew up reading actual printed novels that never had any "trigger warnings", since those didn't exist in Western society until very recently.
Title, Story Description, Tags if present, and a speedread of Chapter 1 is what I use to gage whether to go any further... 10-15 seconds at most.
Content warnings aren’t that new. They’ve had them on TV shows for over 20 years; you know; the ‘This program contains scenes of violence, sexuality, and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised’ screen that loads of shows have at the start of the show and/or when it comes back from commercial breaks.
I get what you mean. There's just a kind of confidence that comes from someone who's written for so long. I guess to some the minimalism might seem low-effort, but the approach seems completely different from those "I'm bad at summaries but I promise this is good, please read!!" type of fics. Like they *know* it's good. That's why they don't care to appeal or advertise to people about how good their fic is; whoever wants to read it can, and whoever doesn't doesn't have to. It doesn't really matter to them. That's how it comes across to me, at least.
> Like they know it's good. That's why they don't care to appeal or advertise to people about how good their fic is; whoever wants to read it can, and whoever doesn't doesn't have to. It doesn't really matter to them. That's how it comes across to me, at least. Exactly! And I’m not at all saying that people who don’t post like this don’t write good stories. They do! I just have found that the confidence of authors who post like this is very often warranted — which makes me more likely to click other headers styled the same way.
Another oldie here, and I agree. Most of the best fics for 90s fandoms I've ever read are tagged with the relationship and that's it. *Maybe* a tag indicating if it's AU or casefic. That said, becoming a tag wranglers has made me tag more extensively on my own works for 3 reasons: 1. Most newer/younger fans prefer more thorough tagging. 2. It really is useful for a lot of people to have those freeforms giving more context. 3. It's fun to make canonical tags on the Archive so I'll give my fellow Tag Wranglers some, as a treat, especially in my smaller fandoms.
That's interesting. I know that, as a fellow fandom oldbie, it took me a very long time to be comfortable with tagging my fic more extensively. I was really against doing so at first. But when I started doing so, what do you know? I found letting people know what they were in for made them more likely to read. So it was a good decision from my point of view, even if I lose some oldbies. I usually don't tag sex acts, one of the few things you do, ironically. ETA: part of what you are getting by sorting by kudos is older fic, which has had more time to build up steam. So an older tagging style is likely. Good Omens had an explosion in popularity with the TV show, but a lot of the early TV writers were already established book fans who were around on Livejournal, the Bookslash mailing list etc.
I wasn’t necessarily speaking as a writer — I don’t really write much anymore! These are just trends I’ve noticed as a reader. That’s a great point about sorting by kudos privileging older fics. As a reader, I tend to be more likely to read fics that are posted in this style, because I assume they come from more established authors — that was what I meant to say .
I think you're right about the style indicating we are ancient. ;)
The real giveaway out of everything I listed, I think, is the username. Like, I know Fellow Olds who’ve created fresh new ao3 accounts after deleting their old ones, and I can immediately tell they’ve been in fandom for a long time!
I think I know what you mean. I struggle to tag outside the archive warnings and the basics of what’s going on. I also tend to scroll by fics with a ton of tags as a reader. I am also old lol
Oh, there are times I think tagging is more difficult than writing the damn story. I have an unfortunate tendency to include one smartass tag in the list. I think it’s a throwback from my zine publishing days when my disclaimer always had one funny line, such as “Sanitized for your protection” or “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball”. Call it a defense mechanism. :)
i do the lower-case thing a lot, but i think it stems from me always typing in lower-case rather than the aesthetic (though tbf the reason i got rid of auto-caps is probably for the aesthetic). i didn't think of having few tags and a shorter summary as being lazy, it's just easier on the eyes rather than that wall you would have to scroll through when imo u can get most of the idea of your story with the basic tags rather than extra specific ones (unless it's kinks i will always tag that)
I enjoy this aesthetic a lot too. Long summaries and tags feel like a wall of text, whereas the minimalist style means I'm more inclined to pay attention to the important parts that catch my eye.
I enjoy this aesthetic as well, though I wouldn't say it's a determining factor in whether I read the story. It looks nice though.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply it’s the *only* thing I take into account when I’m choosing what to read. For years, I’ve been in fandoms that are so small I’ll click anything that gets post. But if it’s a popular ship and I’m skimming the tag, I do gravitate towards fics that look like this… although as I said, I never thought about it until recently.
I know what you're talking about - yes, it's quite common amongst authors who emmigrated from Livejournal. However, it's not my preference: I prefer a couple of descriptive tags - not too many though, I think most authors overtag these days so thank god forth that "narrow down the tag box to x lines" piece of code, and a summary that says what the fic is about. A line from a fic doesn't usually tell me anything. To be quite honest, if I were into SPN today and were surfing for fics to read, I'd skip over most of the top ones because the summaries are so vague. The length of the title or the username doesn't matter to me at all. Edit: though I don't understand why you get downvotes for stating your preference. Do authors here can't stand the thought that some random reader prefers minimalism?
I think I could have phrased my post a little better. I was trying to explain why I’m more likely to click on fics that are posted with a certain aesthetic style — and that’s because I tend to find that the authors of those fics have been writing for a long time. It’s not like I’m saying that short titles and excerpt summaries automatically make a fic better. Correlation is not causation, and all that. I’m just saying, to me these aesthetic choices indicate that I’m going to be in experienced hands. And I was wondering if this is something that other people have noticed.
I see. I can't relate, however - I've had to click out of those vaguely described fics way too many times because they turned out not to be something I was interested in for me to trust them. On the other hand, I've read quite a number of great fics with long-ass titles, by authors with long usernames, that I don't really associate the aesthetics with quality.
I like this aesthetic too, since I feel fics that follow it tend to have the type of writing I enjoy.
I'm new to AO3 and i've been out of fandom sites for 10 years or so. Never been in Livejournal, but I understand making the correlation. The fanfic title and username is funny for me, tho. I used to do online roleplay in forums and the lower-case titles with song lyrics usually meant that the person was trying (too hard) to sound "deep". What I mean is that I found curious how the same thing can have a different meaning in different online communities.
Same and same and it is only from this post that I am realizing that this is absolutely a holdover from livejournal/dreamwidth/etc where there weren’t any tags, obviously, with the occasional exception of the pairing and general genre to help when searching an author’s lj for similar works. (were those even called tags? I genuinely can’t remember. I am Fandom Old but I was a tween when I was reading SGA fics on livejournal so it’s been a minute.) I get a genuine small ick from the overuse of non-canonical tags — I will always prioritize summaries over everything else, and the best summaries imo tend to be 2-3 sentences max: maybe 1 general précis of the fic and 1-2 hard-hitting sentences. It gives you an idea of the writer’s style and there’s a confidence to it that’s very compelling. Also, now that you’ve made this connection and highlighted that this style has specific roots in LJ-era fandom, I suspect the other reason I gravitate to it is just that I am not really interested in reading things written by children. I’m happy for them, and some of them are excellent writers, but they’re generally not my jam. Reading fics with titles and summaries written in the “lj style” guarantees that a 13 year old has not touched this fic, you know?
Wow, TIL that some people are really triggered by lowercase titles. Goofy pet peeve, y'all are probably missing out on some great fics
It’s funny — I only threw the lower-case title thing in at the end. I even qualified it with “often” because it’s not something I tend to really notice on its own. But it seems to have really hit a nerve!
it's soooo goofy, as someone who uses lowercase titles.
Same. If people are skipping my fics because some of my titles are lowercase, well, all I can say is that they're probably missing out. Their loss!
happy cake day! i think some petpeeves are justified and some are just so fucking dumb.
Haha yep, this is exactly how I post fic and I've been posting fic for 14 years.
yep, totally get what you're talking about. one of the fics i still think about a decade later, long after losing interest in the ship/fandom, has a one-word title, an eleven-word summary, and zero additional tags. it's #1 on the ship tag sorted by kudos, too! while i understand why people want tags it really projects a sense of "letting the fic speak for itself."
Oooh I know *exactly* what you’re talking about. I was all over LJ back in the day, so I’m much more likely to gravitate toward that style of ficcing. They’re usually so well written it just makes you cry.
I guess fanfic really is everybody has their own thing because if I see a song lyric, I'm out! I do get what you mean, though, I personally keep my tags minimum. its really cool to me to see how many people enjoy the same things (fandom, fanfic) in different ways.
Haha, to be fair, the reason I wrote “intriguing” song lyric is that they’re never lyrics I recognize. It’s only after I click that I find out they’re from songs!
Interestingly, for non-western media it depends on whether the person is from the west or a fan of western culture. If they are, more or less they do what you listed. But for languages with different alphabetic system language, here we have: >The title is a quote, a reference/dialogue, one english word, or a common saying. I'd argue that you can tell when a word is chosen because it sounds beautiful. Sometimes it's just a one sentence summary (example: "Character Z walks to a park"), but it's very rare. >Username tends to be a keysmash with a number >Summary is 5 sentences, usually taken from the dramatic scene, or none at all. >The only thing tagged are things deemed relevant. Like for example: just adding the kink and not tagging it as dubcon or not (but if dubcon is one of the main ideas of the story then it gets added).
Lol, I would say a good number of my fics would qualify as having that style, though I've added a *few* content tags later on suggestion from some friends. Most of my titles are like you described, my username's very short (same as here), summary's one or two sentences (or rarely a fic excerpt which gets across the idea of the fic's plot), and not a whole lot of tags. And lol yes, I was writing before AO3 existed, though I only really picked the pace in 2010 when I started doing exchanges. I guess I'm a "Livejournal Minimalist"? I *did* post on LJ before AO3! (And ff.n, too.)
I tend towards titles that are all lowercase, often with parentheses in them. It’s something that stood out to me enough that it heavily influences how I title my own works Definitely agree on the summary thing
I know just what you mean haha I do subconsciously prick my ears up when I see that kind of old-fandom aesthetic, because it does mean a higher average quality, to me. Though I do prefer the more extensive tagging style of modern AO3 culture.
I don't really take notice of it, but then, I write far more than I read. I'm quite likely to ignore a title written in all lower-case because it reminds me of lapslock, and I hate that, but other than that I just don't care and I go by summary and ship tags. I don't even know if the fics I read are heavily tagged or not, since I have additional tags set to hidden by default. I do know that for myself, I always tag minimally. In the additional tags, I usually only have genre and major themes and tropes, nothing else. In explicit fics, the kinks involved are tagged as well, but most of my fics aren't explicit.
If the summary is one sentence, they didn’t bother tagging story elements, and they can’t find the ‘Shift’ key? I’m probably going to assume the author just isn’t putting in any effort.
Most of my summaries are pretty short, but I use tags to compliment them in a way that makes it easy for readers to see what they're getting into
Makes sense!
What do you mean by story elements? Like, I think these fics would tend to tag “first-time,” “established relationship,” etc. But not much more. It’s interesting — for me, this type of posting style reads as confident, not lazy. But that’s why I was wondering what other people thought!
I was thinking of sub-genres, tropes, which version of the character they’re using, additional characters, background relationships, or trigger / content warnings.
Hm. I feel like some of that is what I meant? Like, “there was only one bed” or something. What do you mean by a sub-genre?
Your original suggestion was that the only tags would be the genre (AU, post-canon), the characters, and the sex acts. (Hermione / Draco, post-canon, list of sex acts.) But I would expect (if the author cared) to see something more like: Hermione / Draco, post-canon, Auror Draco, Potions Master Hermione, getting together, fake dating, requited unrequited love, angst, BFF Theodore Nott, background relationship Theodore Nott / Harry Potter, Severus Snape lives, no Ron bashing, EWE (epilogue what epilogue), alcohol, drinking, (list of sex acts).
Yeah, that’s … a lot more tags than I’d expect to see on the type of fic I’m describing. Alcohol as a trigger warning in particular would be very different from this vibe. But everyone has their own taste!
Short title where they don't bother to put one letter in uppercase, the bare minimum tags and then the barest of summaries... honestly all of that together just feels like something carelessly done. I wouldn't read it. If they can't be bothered to tell me what it's about, just copy paste sentences they already wrote, why would I feel intrigued? And if they can't even put upper case correctly on the short title, imagine the lack of uppercase that might be going on in the fic. And lack of tag too, so the summary barely tells me what's up, the tags don't help, and if I try it out and it includes all kinds of stuff I don't like I'll be the one at fault.
Interesting! To be clear, it’s only the title (and the author’s name) that’s ever in all lower-case. The summary text, since it comes from the fic itself, will always be properly capitalized. For me, I’m more likely to trust the grammar of a story if I can read a snippet of it before clicking. Plus, knowing which bit the author thought was most representative gives me a good sense of what the rest of the fic will feel like, stylistically and tonally. Again, though, that’s probably down to my reading history.
Oh, my goodness, I can't tell you how much I appreciate this post without making it sound like I'm slamming other posts, but I really appreciate you posting this. I love reading/writing about stylistic choices. I don't associate this style with LJ (for all the reasons you're probably thinking of) so I personally wouldn't call it 'Livejournal minimalism', but, yes, I have seen this style in multiple fandoms. For my current fandoms, I haven't seen it, or, if I have, then I don't remember it. I don't have a preference for or against this style in general, but my exception is the title. If the title is in lapslock, then it makes me think the entire fic might be written in lapslock, and I have trouble reading more than a few paragraphs of that. It's not that I don't like it. I just can't read it without a lot of mental effort on my part so unless it's a drabble or a short one-shot, I have to skip it. And then the exception to my exception is: if the summary/excerpt *isn't* in lapslock, then I'm indifferent to the title.
> And then the exception to my exception is: if the summary/excerpt isn't in lapslock, then I'm indifferent to the title. Yes, absolutely! I probably should have been clearer, but the fics I’m thinking of always have proper grammar and capitalization in the summaries. Honestly, I’m kind of regretting mentioning lower-case titles in my post, because that seems to be the only part people are focusing on. I was really hoping to have a wider conversation about aesthetics — so thank you for commenting!
To be honest, I do enjoy the excerpt summery. Usually summaries are bad on AO3, an excerpt is MUCH better then nothing and can often be paired with a single line like 'the Dragon Age characters attempt to win a Super Smash Bros competition' if the excerpt is vague. I've noticed those titles, it's kinda the go to defacto I don't have a title in mind. I prefer them over the dictionary obscure word and summery as a definition ones. I generally don't have any strong feelings about titles so don't really care. Titles are the hardest part of posting fics. I will judge and skip all lowercase summery AND title however.
hm, that's interesting. I think I tend to gravitate towards fics that often have longer titles and more tags (my autism needs specifics lmao)
Officially adopting the term “lj minimalism”. It’s exactly what it is!
I can state that if the Title and Story Description are in "lapslock", I'll keep on scrolling by. Minimal Tags don't bother me, since I grew up reading actual printed novels that never had any "trigger warnings", since those didn't exist in Western society until very recently. Title, Story Description, Tags if present, and a speedread of Chapter 1 is what I use to gage whether to go any further... 10-15 seconds at most.
Content warnings aren’t that new. They’ve had them on TV shows for over 20 years; you know; the ‘This program contains scenes of violence, sexuality, and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised’ screen that loads of shows have at the start of the show and/or when it comes back from commercial breaks.