How much can you bend the meaning of a tag?

[Rhaps]

I'm deciding whether or not to use the Romance tag, or rather, how much can I get away with it?

This is the SH's definition for Romance

A story in this genre focus heavily on the romantic relationship between two or more people.

But I want to use this for the philosophy of Romance:

Romanticism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjectivity, imagination, and appreciation of nature in society and culture in response to the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

What count as a romantic relationship between two people? There is of course, platonic romance, but can this platonic romance be about a person and the other side being nature/the world?

 

[Cipiteca396]

I would generally consider this to be the Adventure genre or something like a whimsy/wonder tag instead. I can't think of an actual tag for it off the top of my head, but Romance definitely can't be used this way.

 

[Jerynboe]

I’m not your dad. You can do it, but you will absolutely be accused of misleading tags and will deserve it.

 

[KidBuu699]

K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple stupid

If you have to have a philosophical debate in order to justify having a tag on a story, then that tag shouldn't be on there.

The tags aren't there for you. They are for the people who are trying to decide whether to read your story. All a person is doing by having false tags or meaningfully keeping tags off is asking to be reviewed bombed. Don't believe me? Read a story that is NTR that doesn't have the tag on it and see how fast its rating drops once its revealed.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I'm deciding whether or not to use the Romance tag, or rather, how much can I get away with it?

This is the SH's definition for Romance


But I want to use this for the philosophy of Romance:

Romanticism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

What count as a romantic relationship between two people? There is of course, platonic romance, but can this platonic romance be about a person and the other side being nature/the world?

The thing is, under the classic definition of "romance" you have Victorian smut, horror (i.e. "Gothic Romance"), the entire Arthurian cycle...
Anything that was neither comedy nor tragedy was lumped under Romance (and, heck, some would consider anything written in a "romance language" - i.e. any language derived at least 1/3 from Latin - as a "romance") for a long time...
I would stick to the modern definitions outside of a History of Literature or language history class.
You run into similar issues with "Comedy" - some pretty bleak stories are considered "comedies" because they have happy endings, even if NOTHING else is happy in the least (the Biblical book of Job, for example, or, well The Divine Comedy) - and there were some very funny (at least until the ending) tragedies in classic literature (the final book in the Three Musketeers cycle may well fall into this category - though all of them are also "romances").

 

[Arkus86]

Romance (relationships) and Romanticism (cultural movement) are two completely different things. You are not talking about merely bending the definition, you are talking about completely breaking it. The similarity of the two words has no bearing on this.
Nothing is physically stopping you from misusing the tag anyway, but you will get rightfully slammed for it.

What count as a romantic relationship between two people? There is of course, platonic romance, but can this platonic romance be about a person and the other side being nature/the world?

No. Even if you could brand one-sided feelings someone has towards nature as a romance, it's not a relationship if the other side is inherently incapable of returning the feelings. Maybe if the nature or world in your story was a sapient entity (e.g. something like Eywa from Avatar or the World Turtle concept respectively) you could swing it, but I doubt that's what you mean.

 

[AnEmberOfSundown]

I hate to pile on to what seems to be consensus, but yeah I agree.

If I went searching for "Romance" stories and came across a promising series where romance is technically a subplot but not really the plot driver? I'd be mildly annoyed at best.

It would be like classifying Star Wars as High Fantasy. Yes, the Force works like magic and there's technically a princess, and yes Obi-wan looks like Gandalf if you squint real hard but...no. It's "Science Fantasy" at best and even that's generously applying a bastardized label. Now if you'll please excuse me I'm ducking into my bomb shelter to avoid the incoming flame posts for trying to classify Star Wars.

 

[DireBadger]

well, if you were an AI-translated writer, your tags don't actually have any bearing on your story, they just exist to get you the maximum exposure possible.

Gotta get those American bucks!