Because ao3’s tagging system explicitly allows romantic pairings in Gen fics as long as the relationship is not the focus of the fic.

(But real talk: this comes up a lot on Tumblr and on r/ao3 and while most people know the Gen fic rules, there’s always a portion of people who don’t and get extremely frustrated when they can’t find a fic devoid of romantic relationships. Which is valid! But definitely not a reason to blame authors or their fics.

What concerns me is the growing amount of people who acknowledge ao3’s correct tagging rules and then say “well I don’t like/believe in it” and proceed to ignore the rules and continue to be upset because they don’t want it to be a rule and they think they can apply their own “beliefs” to the system and others should too.

That’s not how rules work.

If you want to change ao3, join the OTW. Run for one of their elected seats. Petition for a rule change, etc. Help wrangle the “no relationships” tags and encourage use of one others might want too.

But stop treating every relationship like it’s icky and that others are morally inferior because they’re okay with the Gen rules. You don’t make the rules, and that’s a good thing!

heads up, folks! it looks like - EVEN AND ESPECIALLY ON YOUR CUSTOM BLOG VIEW!!! - tumblr only counts the first twenty tags! on a post! after this, the post won't show up in that tag, not even on your blog

so if you have a personal art tag but you put it at the bottom of the post under all of the #switch #nintendo #mario #bros #64 etc etc etc bloat tags, it doesn't work.

please put your most relevant tags first! having an art tag that doesn't have all your art posts in it is basically useless, after all

there used to be a saying that tumblr search only counted the first five tags on a post, which is why crosstagging for reach was pointless. tumblr has since updated to count twenty tags - at a cost. any tags after #20 apparently do not show up in that tag on your own blog.

i found this out because i was looking at someone's cool mario 64 art project, and because they put the tag for the project at the very bottom of their tags, the final post NEVER showed up in their tag for the project when i was browsing it ON THEIR BLOG (very different tumblr behavior than it used to be years ago!). i did finally stumble on the final post of the project, thankfully, and realizing what happend, i started counting. tumblr counts the first 20 tags, but tag #21 and all after are useless.

"Civic Duty" 12"x16" acrylic, collage, spray paint, paint pen, colored pencil on secondhand canvas board