my idiotic little warning-label rant

[hth]

Warning labels aren't one of the things I get all exercised about, every six months when they become an Issue again in fandom. There are certain subjects I'm totally willing to revisit over and over again for the rest of my life, but that isn't really one of them, basically because it's become blindingly obvious to me that no solution will ever make everyone happy, and such is life.

However, just this one time, I want to say this.

As much as you, gentle reader, may hate accidentally reading a story that upsets or disturbs you in some way -- and I get that you hate it, I hear that -- that is exactly how much I hate being told before I even start the damn story that everything turns out all right in the end. I fucking *hate* that, because if the story is even remotely well-crafted, there was a perfectly good chance that I would undergo some amount of suspense and excitement while reading it, but not anymore. I hate it when people do it in the notes to their own stories, I hate it when people do it in recs, and I *really* hate it when people do it to my stories. I also don't want to be told that everything *doesn't* turn out all right in the end -- if I get warned for character death, I goddamn well want it to happen in the first three paragraphs, otherwise I consider it a spoiler.

Isn't it weird how fandom gets so freaky intense about protecting people from spoilers in canon (don't say it was a funny one! Don't say Ladon's going to be in it! Warn people if your story gives away the color of Rodney's cat as revealed last week!), and yet is totally blase about giving away the ending of fanfic before anyone has a chance to read it and think, even for a moment, Wow, I wonder how this is going to work out?

You see what I'm saying about the no-win situation? If you don't warn for unpleasantness, you'll piss off all those other people. If you do warn by giving away the ending, you'll piss me off. Warning labels are a fandom dead-end. Everything you do is wrong, so you just have to pick your poison.

I think of labeling and recs and that kind of thing as serving a function similar to movie trailers. I know what kind of stuff I like, and if someone's written that kind of thing, I want to know about it, and I also want to know what I'm probably not going to be into enough to spend my time on it. This is a sketchy proposition at best -- how many movies have you wasted your time on because the trailer looked really awesome, and yet, no? But, for example, take The Departed, which I saw not too long ago. I knew it was a Scorcese flick, and I know not only that I love him, but what kind of stories he's generally drawn to, so that helped. I also saw a bunch of commercials, which told me it was some kind of a gangster movie, which I took to mean it would probably be violent. I read a couple of reviews, wherein I was told that it was kind of a psychological thriller about the parallel lives of a gangster undercover with the cops and a cop undercover with gangster, and that the reviewers in question liked it. This is the kind of thing I want to know. I do not, under any circumstances, want to know the body count. I don't want to know that. I want to be aware that, given the setting, the plot, and the people involved, there could well be one, and then I want to watch the freaking movie. Equivalently, I don't mind vague warnings for "darkness" or "adult content" or whatever; that's fine to know, that helps me know the mood and milieu to expect. But then let me *read the story* to find out if it's the everybody-dies kind of darkness or the wow-close-call! kind.

Anyway. Like I said, I think it's just a decision that everyone who writes or recs has to make, knowing that they're helping some of their potential readers enjoy the story more and causing some of their potential readers to enjoy it less. You just make the call and then get on with your life.

Comments

[dsudis.livejournal.com]

I once risked pissing off everyone in a new and creative way, by putting a death story warning on a story in which the primary character thought he was going to die, for the whole story (and then didn't). I couldn't think of another way to get the majority of readers to entertain the possibility that he might actually die, within the context of a fic community where you simply do not kill characters without warnings.

I was relatively new at the time, though (and it was due South in a polite phase, at that) so I just got gently corrected regarding the definition of "death story." *g*

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I found your comment really interesting, mostly because of within the context of a fic community. Because while I understand Hth and most commenters that it can be incredibly frustrating to be told where things are heading, I think dsudis puts her finger on the main reason: as a community it seems we've agreed to certain conventions over the years, have created certain expectations, and part of this is that a larger number of things are already pregiven.

I mean, fanfiction has stretched if not exploded its generic limitations quite a lot recently, but I'd still argue that a large number of readers a lot of the time read for repetition and comfort rather than exploration and surprise. Personally, I go back and forth. There are times I adore getting surprised (like in pop, I used to enjoy not knowing who'd end with whom) but other times, I'd hate not to get my happy ending for my couple, not to have my generic expectations fulfilled...

I think it keeps on coming back to the debate I seem to be having nonstop lately (and sorry to drag it into your LJ, I guess), namely, that fanfic is *not* like regular literature insofar as we're already invested in the characters in ways we don't tend to be in most stories with characters we just met. As a result, we may also read for particular generic expectations and can get upset when these are not fulfilled (just like a romance reader may get upset when the couple doesn't live happily ever after or a mystery reader may bedisappointed when the story turns out to be *not* about solving a muder).

To me the not wanting to read death (or even unhappy ending or having my characters end up with someone other than whom I think they should be with) is simply an extension of not wanting to read even the bestest story in a fandom I don't care about. And I guess we all have different levels of what we need to know or not (like, some folks *will* read a fic even without knowing the fandom and others need to know pretty much every major plot point), but I don't think it's an either/or as much as a spectrum where most of us align somwhere in the middle...

And because of that spectrum, I think you are totally correct that everyone needs to decide for themselves...b/c the same thing can spoil one person and lack warning for another. I just updated my sGA rec page, and had a hard time putting fic in relevant categories, b/c it might spoil the plot (like, one fic I had should have gone into "notquitehuman," but that wasn't revealed until the end, so I ended up not putting it in there... otoh, if someone were to look for that particular genre, they wouldn't get to read that story...)

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

You're very right about the issue of fannish genre expectations -- it's big and it's huge and it's daunting, at least for me. Because I want people to get what they want, but not *only* the majority, you know? Look, I like the rom com/chick lit conventions of slash as much as the next person, where there's banter and friendship and romance and sex and a contented monogamous ending, I truly do. But I can't exist on a diet of that. I need to have other stuff going on in fandom, as a writer and as a reader, and even if I am in the minority there, I think my needs must surely be legitimate, too.

The issue I have with certain warnings and the type of un-warning I talked about in the post is that it doesn't just replicate the Fannish Standard, it serves to reinforce it by saying that one of the crucial pieces of information about a story is *the ending.* The assumption is that we always know the ending (happy, mated, monogamous) when we begin the story, and that we're supposed to know the ending. Getting partway into a story and experiencing doubt and fear as to what the ending will be is considered such a bad thing that we have to be *warned* that we may experience such doubt, and then protected by the author, who either keeps us from that experience by saying "deathfic" so that we can avoid it by skipping the story, or by saying "don't worry, it turns out okay!" so that we can avoid it by simply knowing our fears are unfounded.

I sometimes am really not sure how or where I fit into fandom, as someone who doesn't want every conclusion to be foregone, as someone who isn't looking to be served a steady diet of certain emotions and protected from experiencing others, as someone who needs a chance sometimes to find out what happens next by *finding out,* by getting there on my own. More and more that seems like not just a minority viewpoint, but some kind of violation of Community Standards, like I'm somehow doing fandom wrong when my need for something suspenseful is viewed as an obstacle to everybody else's need to have their "repetition and comfort" at all times.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

It's odd how you feel it's getting more homogenous whereas I'm feeling it'sgetting more and more heterogeneouss...and maybe we're both right :D

I was under the impression that popslash made a big left turn (and I never commented on your last post but I had little more to say than a big WORD!!!!), and I loved the breath of fresh air of going in blind, of reading SeSa and having no ideawhat the pairing was gonna be....

Like you, I love both...at differnt times and for different moods. And there are times when I totally need to know that there's gonna be a happy ending...there are times when I embrace End of the Road or Freedom, others when I purposefully go to the uncategorized areasor the writers I know won't make me comfortable.

Genre defiancerequires generic definitions first, of course :-)

But yes, I hear you on the ending thing even as I just left Area52 despondent, b/c I couldn't search for post-There But For the Grace of God multiverse fic and post-Fallen amnesiac!Daniel. I love the archive interfaces where I can search and exclude everything under the sun and tailor my fic to my specific need of the moment...but I also like being surprised....

And then there's the entire other issue of memorying for a newsletter that collects by pairings...and the frustration when it's not in the header...

[sgatlantislight.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me to wonder if a fanfic community or archive dedicated to the concept of "No warnings, no regrets" would be workable. Work posted there might be slash, het, or gen (or threesome/moresome); deathfic or just suspense; mono, poly, swinging, cheating; any pairing; happily ever after or everyone dies or they split up in the end; whatever. I hate suggesting more fanfic comms, since I think, especially in SGA, there are way too many comms, but it might be an answer (and I'd totally post there on occasion. Heck, I'd even start such a comm).

I had the experience of writing something like 45 or 50 chapters into an epic series and then realising the ending that had been in the back of my mind involved me killing off a main character temporarily and a significant minor character for good. At that point, what's an "I won't read deathfic" reader to do if I drop "Main character death" into the header warnings? Just decide to stop reading the series? I was pretty sure the minor character death wouldn't traumatise people too badly, but was a bit puzzled as to how to handle the major character death, so I specifically split the chapters so it was never entirely clear whether he was going to make it or not until he was back. I still had one person who caught a reference in the text to the character being dead while saving it off to read later who freaked out and a lot of people who complained that I'd made them really like the minor character and then killed him, but in the end it worked.

[pensnest]

Your comment about being surprised by pairings (etc) in SeSa reminded me how I read *everything* when first I discovered popslash, and enjoyed not knowing in advance which pairing(s) to expect. Which is why on my own website, I have an index page which does not specifiy pairings or, hmm, level of sexual content. Then again, after a while I started to seek out particular characters, which is why I also have an alternate index page which gives pairings and an indication of how much (if any) sex there is. I don't care if a story has a warning on it or not, I'll probably ignore the warning anyway. I don't like to put up 'spoilers' for my own stories, so I don't expect other writers to do so.

Now, my output is basically fluffy, so I haven't had occasion to put a death or rape warning up. There is a certain risk in reading my crack!fics, as a few people have discovered. Shrieks of protest can be elicited by anything - from sex involving an innocent teddybear to unexpected Kevin. But if a writer wants to surprise her readers, it doesn't make a whole heap of sense to tell them in advance what's coming up. As it were. (Besides, unless *someone* shrieks, how can I know I'm getting the crack right?)

I realise that even unexpected Kevin is not in the same league as rape or character death, and I think if I ever wrote a story which featured rape, I would warn for it (something like, "This story needs a rape warning"), simply because there are so many people around who could very reasonably be extremely upset by it, and I'd like to let them decide for themselves whether they wished to go ahead. Character death... hmm, maybe not. That would probably get a more general 'dark, bad things happen, read at your own risk' label - and that mostly because I have not established myself as a person who writes that way.

In popslash fandom, there seems to be a list somewhere for pretty well any category of fic that a person might want, from High Scool AUs to hurt puppies to whatever. People who use warnings to help them find the stuff they want can usually find recs, I think.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

That's too cool -- I'd love to do that. *g* That's why I like generic "angst" warnings: it's appropriate both for a story where the focus is, say, wrestling with one's mortality and for one where there's an actual death. The reader knows that only the stout-hearted should go forward, but they don't know any details of the plot.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I was really annoyed recently. I was invited to post a fic of mine on an archive, and it had the usual pull-down menu for warnings, and I chose "dark", then put in the author's notes to scroll to the end for detailed warnings (which was a huge compromise for me, because I don't even like saying that there is any need for a warning, because that in itself is a spoiler to some degree, but I'd had some complaints and decided I didn't want to deal with the wank, so I put warnings at the end) and it was rejected by the moderator. She said if I reposed it with the proper, spoilery warning, it would go through, but I just decided not to archive there, because I'm sorry, but if saying it's dark and there are more detailed warnings if you need them isn't enough, then too bad. I refuse to spoil everyone else for a few whiners.