Relationship categories query
Jan. 25th, 2025 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantasmalpoisonIs there a consensus about whether to additionally tag 'Multi' for a same gender polyship on ao3?
The answer is no, there is not, lol.
I know the description is 'Multi: more than one kind of relationship, or a relationship with multiple partners', but by searching the Polyamory tag and including F/F and excluding every other category except Multi, I got this:
And then the Polyamory tag including M/M and excluding every category but Multi:
Of course, this doesn't cover people who have written a same gender polyship and tagged it only as multi, something I can't see by just checking tags. And because Multi covers works with multiple ships of different gender makeup, and imo e.g. an M/F/F/Other fic is more logical (and therefore perhaps more likely!) to be just tagged as Multi than to have additional M/F, Other, F/F tags, it's hard to work anything out by just checking that. I'd have to do some adding up, for one thing.
Anyway, there's at least an indication that there are a significant number of people using M/M and not Multi, or F/F and not Multi for their polyships.
But there are very clear-cut Threesome subtags with gender categories, making them easy to check for comparisons. And Threesome is a very popular form of polyfic which is not a subtag of polyamory, so worth looking at separately anyway.
So, by looking at the Threesome M/M/M tag and filtering out other relationship categories, the majority don't include the Multi tag, ditto with Threesome F/F/F (neither of which are subtags of Group Sex! There is a lot of non-fandom tag wrangling that needs doing, obviously. Mommy Kink was only the beginning!).
I have some people muted, so these aren't even comprehensive stats for the specific things I've searched for, but I have a good idea which is the most popular choice now for the Threesome M/M/M and Threesome F/F/F tags. And yet, this is making me lean towards tagging for Multi! How contrarian!
I think it's kind of charming that polyamory is seen as much more default that people don't consider it a relevant factor to tag for, as one of those real life polyamorous people. But if I'm also tagging for F/F or M/M, for the most part, adding Multi doesn't cause many additional problems and allows for filtering Multi in and out. The fact Multi covers both polyships and works with multiple two-people ships makes it awkward in itself, of course, but maybe some people specifically love or hate both.
And one of the main problems of additionally tagging multi is that it makes the genders unclear at a glance, but prioritising glancers over people searching with specific filters is maybe silly. Even if I'm sometimes the glancer.
This again comes with the assumption that it is correct to tag a polyship with M/M or F/F, when they by default include more Ms or Fs, but I'm already convinced of that as a poly fan who sometimes searches for just femslash.
The answer is no, there is not, lol.
I know the description is 'Multi: more than one kind of relationship, or a relationship with multiple partners', but by searching the Polyamory tag and including F/F and excluding every other category except Multi, I got this:
And then the Polyamory tag including M/M and excluding every category but Multi:
Of course, this doesn't cover people who have written a same gender polyship and tagged it only as multi, something I can't see by just checking tags. And because Multi covers works with multiple ships of different gender makeup, and imo e.g. an M/F/F/Other fic is more logical (and therefore perhaps more likely!) to be just tagged as Multi than to have additional M/F, Other, F/F tags, it's hard to work anything out by just checking that. I'd have to do some adding up, for one thing.
Anyway, there's at least an indication that there are a significant number of people using M/M and not Multi, or F/F and not Multi for their polyships.
But there are very clear-cut Threesome subtags with gender categories, making them easy to check for comparisons. And Threesome is a very popular form of polyfic which is not a subtag of polyamory, so worth looking at separately anyway.
So, by looking at the Threesome M/M/M tag and filtering out other relationship categories, the majority don't include the Multi tag, ditto with Threesome F/F/F (neither of which are subtags of Group Sex! There is a lot of non-fandom tag wrangling that needs doing, obviously. Mommy Kink was only the beginning!).
I have some people muted, so these aren't even comprehensive stats for the specific things I've searched for, but I have a good idea which is the most popular choice now for the Threesome M/M/M and Threesome F/F/F tags. And yet, this is making me lean towards tagging for Multi! How contrarian!
I think it's kind of charming that polyamory is seen as much more default that people don't consider it a relevant factor to tag for, as one of those real life polyamorous people. But if I'm also tagging for F/F or M/M, for the most part, adding Multi doesn't cause many additional problems and allows for filtering Multi in and out. The fact Multi covers both polyships and works with multiple two-people ships makes it awkward in itself, of course, but maybe some people specifically love or hate both.
And one of the main problems of additionally tagging multi is that it makes the genders unclear at a glance, but prioritising glancers over people searching with specific filters is maybe silly. Even if I'm sometimes the glancer.
This again comes with the assumption that it is correct to tag a polyship with M/M or F/F, when they by default include more Ms or Fs, but I'm already convinced of that as a poly fan who sometimes searches for just femslash.
