So I heard that more people have been mis-tagging their Ao3 fics “for reach” lately. Obviously, I decided to go see if I could preemptively mute some of them, but I got kind of sidetracked.
Because I keep finding fics tagged “Non-Sexual Age Play” followed by the “for reach!” conversational-style tags. Like:
But glancing at the fics… they don’t seem to be mistagged after all? They do contain non-sexual age play. The writers just… don’t like calling it that? For some reason? Do they think age play is inherently ~inappropriate~ or “gross” or sexual (even though non-sexual is like. literally right there in the tag.)
Or do they think it can only happen between sexual and/or romantic partners? And why do they even want the reach that tag gives them?
Yeah. “Age Play” is a ~kinky~ thing, and as we all know, kink is bad! And always, always, sexual, even when it’s not! Maybe especially then! But if I virtue signal hard enough, my writing will stay Pure™
i think i’m just collecting these now
ok that’s enough of that! <3
There’s… several things going on here and I find it fascinating, honestly.
First is the “for reach” stuff. AO3 has no algorithm and posts are sorted chronologically with newest first. It’s a “tag what’s in it” site where people will then find exactly what they want by looking for those tags. Mistagging your fic is actually a thing you can get in trouble for! Yet they seem determined to try to get people to read their fic despite it not being what they’re looking for. All that will do is earn them a block or report, most likely.
Second, the vibe is purity culture. These sorts trying to litigate some very strict rules when the actual boundaries are kind of muddled. There’s notable overlap between people who do age play in a sexual scene and people who do age regression as a more general comfort kink thing. (For another example of ‘kink which isn’t wholly/only sexual,’ there are 24/7 kinds of BDSM exchanges, so they’re doing the kink all the time, though they cannot physically fuck all the time.)
That litigating is a really weird thing to do, anyway. The idea that someone necessarily must keep some strict boundary between sexual things and nonsexual things, is super strange because brains often mix things together all the time or find things which aren’t considered sexual, sexual. (For example, foot fetishes.)
Third, the collection of tags reads as people who are insanely insecure.
Discussion ¬