Tags vs. Spoiling

[spanxthanx]

If you tag a story you kinda spoil what's gonna happen in it. In a story with a girl and a dude you would spoil who eats who with the tags F/M or M/F, for instance. But without tags it's harder to know if you want to read a story, maybe you don't like a certain kind of pred for instance. Is there a way to communicate to the reader enough information about a story so that they can decide whether to read it, but not so much information that the story is spoiled? Perhaps not use tags at all and let the reader guess what's going to happen from the beginning of the story?

[Eka]

This is relatively interesting. I would say in the short term. Just use ad-blocker to block the tag element temporary to archive this "spoiler free" experience. Long as you trust the author, why not. You can always just check which study you want to read, mark them down. Then wait till you forgot which tag belongs to which story and remove the tag, then go read them.

[ryanshowseason3]

As a dev I can envision a system that would allow this.

Basically a blocked tag list so content that contains it simply wouldn't show up. This would be a restrictive search.

Then as Eka suggested a blocker to hide all other tags so you couldn't see what else transpires in the content.

[spanxthanx]

That's sounds like a great solution.

[Omnomplus]

I find that the tags themselves are the ideal amount of information. It's enough to know if stuff I want to see is in the story, but doesn't spoil what happens when.

[Ixtili]

I mean even fanfiction has the "major character death" tag and horror technically spoils that someone's going to die by virtue of being horror.

[TrollingAccount0102B]

The purpose of tags are, to let the reader know, if they want to read the story. If it had themes that they like. And of course, to let others find it, if they search for a specific tag.

Not using tags but trying to get all the information, that someone would need to decide, if they are interested into this story is pretty pointless, because in the end you will have to spoil just as much, or even more, as if you had used tags right from the start.
Also, less people will even know, your work exists.

[Indighost]

I think that this is a fundamental contradiction of kinks.

I think everybody loves to be pleasantly surprised by their favorite kink.

But if you are searching for your favorite kink, you are fundamentally not going to be surprised.

The only way to be pleasantly surprised, i think, is to browse without looking at the tags. Even then, you will know that the thing in question will be vore-ish, and it may be something you really don't like, such as the wrong gender or violence level.

[Ohgra]

I definitely don't like the idea of not tagging stories. Speaking as a writer, people are reading our stuff on this site to get off, not necessarily for the story itself. Even if a story is really well written, if it turns out the vore content (or any other content) is not something I'm into I'll say it's a disappointment for me personally.

I know some people use a script or something to pull content that contains a list of tags they like, maybe it's worth looking into that then just reading the results while ignoring tags if you want to avoid spoilers? But I suppose you're gonna get some unhappy surprises mixed in with the happy ones doing that.

[Lightness0001]

Yeah I'm a writer also, and while sometimes it is kinda unfortunate that the story is being a bit spoiled, at its core there has to be appropriate tagging. Not just for the sake of viewers that don't want to see your content, but also viewers that do! I know sometimes I go looking for, say, role reversal type stories even though that kinda spoils the premise, but if they weren't tagged as such I wouldn't find them. Besides, it's not like the entire story is in the tags, you still wanna see how they get there :p

[ItsSongxing]

Tags take precedence over hiding spoilers.

A lot of people who like fatal vore are really into the dominance and submission aspects of this fetish. To see this in practice, look at a lot of popular characters made for vore. They are very often only preds, or only prey. The examples that immediately come to mind are Kattu's Gabi, and CassyInko's Ryla; in both cases, you know, for a fact, that they're never going to get eaten. They're effectively a walking spoiler, in the sense that anyone else in the story is either (A) going to get eaten, or (B) granted plot-induced vore immunity. The same is true for prey only characters; also walking spoilers, in the sense that, when they show up, the only real question is who is going to be the one to eat them, and how.

While this is less strongly the case for fanfic/fanart, since different creators have different preferences and interpretations of given characters, a given creator will usually have some characters as strictly preds, or strictly prey; for instance, crufl has commissioned a metric fuckton of art of Ibuki Mioda as pred. People into vore aren't into it for the dramatic tension aspects. This sort of foregone conclusion is, for a lot of people into fatal stuff, basically the point of vore.

[Eka]

There really should be no question about this. If you really need to be surprised. You have tons of way to do it. Just download the stories that you like the tag of, wait a few months and get back to it after you have several dozen, you would have completely forgotten what the tags are already. Etc.

Do not skip tagging item properly. We have enough problem with people not tagging things as it is.

[ChibiToy]

Yea, I totally get where you're coming from spanx, but Oghra already wrote it: After all's said'n'done, Eka's remains to be a porn forum. No matter how proud a creator might be of their work, it doesn't change the fact that a consumer basically just wants to get off. For example to me it's a world of a difference if it's M/F or F/M... Dunno why, but for the life of mine I don't wanna see a male pred... And if I'd begin to read a badass long story only to find out near the end it's something I actually dislike I would definitely feel like I just got played for a sucker, big time! x3

But I mean... It's not like you can't get a little creative, no? You could introduce multiple opportunities for a tag to happen and keep teasing the readers by continuing for the time being. Sure, tags are kinda spoiler-y, yet they also cause the reader to have expectations! Now you just need to play with those expectations and voilá, it's magic! E.g. If you've got a F/M story, just introduce 4 or 5 potential pred candidates... Let all of them act in a tease-y way so the reader is well-aware that each of them could be the actual pred... This way you could easily surprise the reader with a sudden nom scene even though they expected from the situation that another one was going to gobble up the prey. You could always let a completely new and unrelated character pop up out of the blue and do the nomming... Now that's what I call a surprise. xp

Another potential approach would be to tag just the bare minimum to sum up the core without giving too many specifics away, but yea, that's still not the way it should be... All in all I guess you're just overthinking this... Like, if I'd write a new story my audience would totally know who's going to eat who as well as all the premises and stuff just by the fact that I've written it! In that sense the whole story is already completely spoiled the very second I post it unless I create a new account to post there... but why would I go to that length if I have a multitude of playful and fun possibilities to surprise the reader with my own imagination? Sure, getting creative is definitely more work than not tagging your work, yet I'm fairly certain the payoff is bigger too... :3

Ultimately, I'm gonna agree with Omnom with my own words: I don't think the outcome (which is kinda set in stone anyway imo) should be your focus here; the journey to get there is the goal of a story and no tag in the world will be able to spoil that!

[Cruich]

Just going to add my voice to say that tags necessarily take precedence over spoilers. I don't like spoilers, but that doesn't apply to tags on this site, which exist so I can find the things I want to read. If it's not tagged, I won't see it. I watch certain tags so that those stories show up in my message page. For my own stories, I tag every element that I think someone might want to know about. And it's not like you're forced to look at that little box of tags.