Navigating the Iron Lung and Project Hail Mary tags
I like Project Hail Mary. I like Iron Lung. I like the crossover between the two, whether that be via ship or not. However, some people do not like one movie or the other, or aren't interested in the crossover. And there comes a time when I am looking to see only ONE of them. And, given the amount of complaints I have seen about tags being clogged or filled with filtered posts, there are ways to see only what you want to see that people are apparently not aware of.
On tumblr, you can filter tags (>settings >account). However, this doesn't erase posts with those tags from your tumblr, either on your dash or in search. Here's what searching the tag 'tadc' results in if you have that tag blocked:
So, this feature is pretty impractical when searching, but i find it useful for your dashboard anyway.
What is more functional is excluding the tags you don't want from your search. This is a new feature that was added a few months ago, and makes tumblr's famously impossible-to-use search feature more possible to use. I previously was under the impression that this was a desktop-only feature, but after a little experimentation on mobile it seems to work with both.
The official guide states:
What this looks like in practice (using Iron Lung as an example):
Searching '#iron lung' gives these results.
Posts outlined in red contain only Iron Lung related tags, while posts outlined in blue contain Iron Lung AND Project Hail Mary related tags (including bloodymary). To exclude many of the crossover posts from our search, we can add the exclusion operator (-) combined with the target word, tag or phrase to the end of our inquiry.
There is a difference between words, phrases and tags, but all three can be excluded from search results.
After adding the PHRASE '-"project hail mary"' to our search, this is the front page of results.
All Iron Lung exclusive posts!
The same result can be achieved by going into 'advanced search' and experimenting with the settings there.
Occasionally, something will slip through due to spelling errors, wrratic tagging, etc. This is where filtering tags is actually practical, as only once in a while will something unrelated crop up as a filtered post.
Important to note is that tumblr is very fiddly about tags, words and phrases in search and there are some variations on this that will work and some that won't. I don't want this post to just be a guide on how to use search filters so I'll make a list of what inquiries work and what doesn't.
DOES NOT WORK IF SEARCHING FOR IRON LUNG ONLY POSTS:
iron lung -project hail mary
#iron lung -project hail mary
#iron lung -#project hail mary
iron lung -#project hail mary
iron lung -project -hail -mary
To shore up all defences, filtering specific character tags and common misspellings (ie, peoject hail mary) combined with exclusion operators is an option.
Another method I encourage is blocking people! It's not personal. If there is an artist or blog who is always on your dash with things you want to avoid, simply block them. No hard feelings. Nobody gets hurt.
You might also want to search for nicher tags. I spend like an hour yesterday going through the 'markiplier -bloodymary' tag and found a ton of Iron Lung art I had never seen before!
On the topic of tags (even though this whole post is on the topic of tags), people who post bloodymary are posting less in the main tags of both fandoms, as enough people are looking in the bloodymary tag itself. I'm not telling anyone not to maintag their crossover posts, but for those uninterested in the crossover, this might be a relief.
Though the example and list I have given applies to searching for Iron Lung exclusive posts, this should work the same way for those looking for Project Hail Mary posts. The query '#phm -bloodymary' is pretty effective!
For those looking for Iron Lung only posts, if you weren't already aware there is a tag being used that denotes solely Iron Lung posts as #just blood. This is a great invention and should be used as intended! If I see anyone tagging their bloodymary posts as #just blood with intent to mislead I will drag your ass through the mud for it 😃.
Furthermore, there are some really great blogs that are dedicated to their respective fandoms. If you want a list of who to follow, hit me! And my blog is sorted so that majority iron lung posts are tagged #iron lung, majority project hail mary posts are tagged #project hail mary, and crossover between the two is tagged #bloodymary. I doubt I'm the only one who has their blog sorted in this way.
One last thing is that I've seen some complaints about how a lot of ao3 fics when searching one fandom are crossovers. This strikes me as a rather silly thing to comment on, because ao3 is famed for the functionality of its search and has a whole section of its 'sort and filter' interface dedicated to excluding crossovers. And you can mute tags if it gets to be too much.
I hope this came across as helpful and informative rather than condescending or anything negative, I understand the several sides of these fandoms and the irritations that might arise. I like bloodymary! I love iron lung and project hail mary! I understand that people don't like what I like. However, what I don't understand is people spending time and energy on complaining about what other people like when they could be enjoying what they like themselves. I understand the frustration that comes with seeing a tag filled with things you're not interested in. But getting irritated over something you can change while remaining passive and refusing to take responsibility of your own fandom experiences is supremely unhelpful, to yourself and everyone else in this house. Hopefully I can alleviate that irritation with this post, and help smoothe things over between the various fandoms overlapping here.
This has been a flier of fandom ettiquete and advice drifting by on the wind. Thank you!
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