Ships

Turn long AO3 relationship tags into compact cover names

AO3 supplies relationship tags. FanFicFare writes them into #ship. This page is the simple route: a calculated #short_ships column finds one romantic relationship and replaces its full tag with a familiar short name. It is a good starting point for ordinary single works.

On AO3, a / in a relationship tag means a romantic or sexual relationship, while & means a platonic relationship. Gen is AO3’s category for works without a romantic or sexual relationship as the main focus. The basic template uses Gen as a convenient fallback when it finds no / relationship; that is helpful cover text, but it does not prove that AO3 assigned the Gen category.

Create the calculated column

Create Cover ship tags, with lookup name short_ships, as Column built from other columns, behaves like tags. If you have not created a calculated column before, review the explanation in Add AO3 metadata.

Basic route

If you do not want to set up the extra anthology source column, use the basic template instead. It reads the first romantic relationship available in #ship.

1. Open the basic ship template in a plain-text editor.
2. Find the two example ship rules between Translation table and Add your ships above this line. Replace the complete AO3 relationship name and the short cover label with your own. Preserve the participant order exactly as AO3 shows it: Character A/Character B does not match Character B/Character A. Copy an elif block when you need another ship.
3. In Calibre, open Preferences → Add your own columns, select Cover ship tags, and edit it.
4. In the column’s Template box, replace the existing contents with everything from the file’s program: line to the end. Save the column and restart Calibre if asked.

When a relationship is not in your short-name list, the template shows a shortened version of the original AO3 tag instead of leaving the cover blank.

Use {#short_ships} in Generate Cover’s Contents → Custom text field when you are ready to show it on a cover.

Want more than one ship or better anthology handling?

For a cover that preserves AO3’s relationship order, can show several ships, or works better with anthologies, continue to Anthology-aware ships. That optional setup adds an #all_slashes source column. Its Ship code generator then creates the longer #short_ships template without asking you to edit repeated code by hand.

Works without a romantic relationship tag

The basic template displays Gen when it finds no relationship containing /. That is a convenient fallback, but it is not always the same as AO3’s relationship category.

To use AO3’s category instead:

1. Create AO3 relationship category, with lookup name ao3_category, as Comma separated text, like tags.
2. In FanFicFare → Configure FanFicFare → Custom Columns, map it to AO3 Categories.
3. In the #short_ships template, replace if !s0 then return 'Gen' fi; with:

if !s0 then
    category = list_intersection(
        'Gen, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Other',
        field('#ao3_category'),
        ','
    );
    if category then return category else return 'Gen' fi
fi;

This uses only the known relationship-category values and keeps them in the displayed order above.

Limitations

Calibre can alphabetize tag-like columns, so the first value in #ship might not be the author’s first relationship. This matters most for anthologies and works with several ships. Anthology-aware ships preserves the source order.