a little warning would be nice

[such_heights]

Today, half of my flist is full of discussion on warnings and triggers. And some of the comments from the anti-warnings side are really making my head spin.

Fannish culture has a lot of rules and codes of conduct that develop in response to the needs of fans and are subsequently enforced - cutting picspams for dial-up users, marking content as 'not safe for work', warning for spoilers. And we all agree that those are good, considerate things to do, and when someone messes up you can usually guarantee that the first few comments they get are along the lines of 'dude, lj-cut, use it!' or 'a little warning for graphic content would have been appreciated, I'm checking my flist with the kids in the room!', etc. We consider all of that to be common courtesy, and most people abide by it.

So I'm trying to get my head around the idea that there's a big difference between saying 'hey, this uncut post is super spoilery for people who haven't seen last night's episode yet, you should cut it' and 'hey, this story might be very triggery for survivors of sexual violence, you should warn for that'. Adding the warnings is about the same amount of effort in both cases, and wow, the second kind of sounds like the one more worth avoiding.

For discussion of what, exactly, triggers are like, see the below, which outlines what exactly we're talking about when we're talking about triggers, for people like myself who are fortunate and don't have them.

impertinence: Sexual Assault, Triggering, and Warnings: An Essay "Warning: Very explicit discussion of sexual assault and the nature, anatomy, cause & effect of triggers. Is itself triggery."

Being triggered is not like being spoiled, or being embarrassed because you opened up adult fanart in a public place. It's also not like being squicked or being made uncomfortable by a theme. We all have things we don't like to read about, and that's what the back button's for if we discover the story is going to go along those lines. That's very different from being triggered in the way that impertinence describes. People with triggers also aren't asking for everything ever that could possibly trigger a specific person to be marked; rather, the basic few, the stories that do feature sexual violence and consent issues. It's that baseline and that level of triggering that's under dispute here. Apparently, warning for noncon in order to ensure people who'll be triggered by that requires too much sacrifice of artistic integrity. Which, wait, what?

Unless I've missed something, headers are meant to do one thing: provide the reader with information. The vast majority of the time some of that header information does spoil elements of the story - the rating tells you whether there'll be sex scenes or not, the characters and pairings give you some details. Unless all you mark it as is 'title, teaser line, character a/character b, nc-17' and the story starts with said characters having sex, you'll probably have told your readers something about what's going to happen.

If a specific warning really is going to spoil your story (which is far from always the case), then you can create some sort of spoiler cut/whiteout for it, or you can have a blanket policy, clearly visible/linked to on every story you post that outlines what exactly you do and don't do with warnings. There are a lot of options here, and I am sure there is a solution for every writer -- also worth noting, where 'warning' may imply something negative about those who like to read stories with those themes, which I understand, 'contains' seems to work nicely.

Otherwise, if there's widespread disagreement about this, then I don't see how people with triggers can navigate fannish space very well, if at all -- all they'd be able to read would be stories that say 'warnings: none' on them (and when was the last time you saw that? the last time you put that in your header? I never do) or communities like some fic exchanges where stories won't be posted if they have content that isn't warned for. Or else, they'd have to research/check with a friend for every single story, no matter innocuous the title and summary might sound, however well you think you know the author, because if you don't know their warnings policy, it's your own fault if you get yourself triggered!

I really can't get my head around why anyone would want fandom to be like that. It's never going to be 100%, obviously, but I don't understand why it's a fannish faux pas to spoil somebody for an episode of a TV show, but it isn't one of similar universality to decide not to let potential readers know that your story could induce violent flashbacks in abuse survivors.

Posts by others that I've appreciated (again, content in the entries and their comments may be triggering):

again? we're having this debate again? by thingswithwings
The warnings thing by giandujakiss
This wasn't the post I intended to make today by annaalmode

Comments

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

So, for alcohol/drug abuse: would you warn for alcoholism in a Tigh fic or morphine use in a Gaeta fic? :)

I'm not sure what I would do if I were writing for BSG, because it such a short space of canon in comparison, but if I were writing an Iron Man fic set during the part of canon where Tony Stark was majorly suffering from alcoholism, I'd include that in the summary and/or warn for it, because there are large stretches of canon where it's not so much an issue (also AUs where it hasn't come up in canon at all or has only been vaguely alluded to, like movieverse and the Marvel Adventure titles - basically the G-rated version of superhero stuff they publish for kids, but a lot of fans like to write for it because it's not as Gloom! Doom! Nihilism! Despair! as mainline canon).

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that when I wrote a character as being an alcoholic in an HP fic back in the day, I didn't warn. I'm afraid to go back and check whether I did or not, because I fear the terrible job I probably did trying to write something like alcoholism and PTSD as a 19-year-old. And I didn't warn for alcoholism or terminal illness in my Tombstone/Old West historical RPF fic either. I suspect because Tony's alcoholism is a Huge Big Deal in Iron Man and is directly addresses in the narrative (he nearly commits suicide via alcohol poisoning at one point, nd struggles extensively with trying to get sober) whereas Doc's drinking is more of an understated thing.

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

Makes sense.

I was sort of being factious, but at the same time, there are some interesting points. For one, I assume that anyone who actually likes Saul Tigh enough to search out or read Tigh fic will know that the fic WILL involve alcohol, or an alcoholic on the dry. There is no stretch in canon where one of those two descriptors does not fit Saul Tigh. Gaeta, on the other hand, is a morpha user for a very short time- there's only a couple of weeks between the amputation and his death.

Now that I think of it, I wrote a fic where Gaeta was on the morpha, but I didn't even THINK to warn. Because they're canon, I think the truth is that I'd only warn in a few situations:

1.) If I'd really gotten inside of Gaeta or Tigh's head at the time of the use, trying to explore what it felt like from their perspective to be in that place. However, my general feeling is if I'd done that, that would be the focus of the fic and it would be in the summary.

2.) If I'd really gotten inside someone who was close to either of them, watching their decline, and dealing specifically with their feelings about it. Again, I suspect this would the focus of the fic and would be in the summary.

3.) If I was having a character (and in BSG, this is SO possible) say or believe some nasty things or hurtful stereotypes about the substance abuser. The scene I wrote that I actually found the most ouchy didn't have Gaeta in it at all, but was an argument between Zarek and Hoshi after Zarek figured out that Hoshi gave Gaeta the morpha, and he had some fairly harsh words for Hoshi. I also wrote a Pern fic a long time back where one of the main characters had bulimia, and because of the not-so-impressive state of health care on Ninth Pass Pern, there were some characters that really had some awful things to say about eating disorders. We warned the hell out of that one, not only for the eating disorder but for the reactions of other characters.

However, if Tigh drinks on screen in a Dee-Hoshi fic (which has happened several times), I'm not warning for alcoholism, because that's where it does start getting silly, y'know? :) Warning: I wrote Tigh in character just... yeah. And yes, I'm getting a little silly here myself, but I think that's kind of where the gray line in warnings is. Writing an in-depth look at why Tigh is an alcoholic, how he feels, and how he copes probably should have some sort of forewarning for the audience (and probably does in the summary). Writing Tigh in general doesn't, even if he's drinking on duty, drunk, or even making comments about the fact he drinks.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

See, whenever I see "Tigh," I still think of the guy from Original BSG. *gris* I spent months wondering why no one in New BSG fandom seemed to write Apollo/Starbuck fic when they were *so* slashy in the original and surely genderswapping Starbuck shouldn't be putting people off the pairing that much before I realized their names had been changed to Lee and Kara.

I also wrote a Pern fic a long time back where one of the main characters had bulimia,

*sits up straighter* Pernfic? Do you have links to any non-eating disorders Pern fic? Fanfic for that series that isn't RPG-form is impossible to find.

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

LOL!!!! Yeah, original BSG Tigh vs. New BSG Tigh just are not even close to the same guy.

My stuff is all RPG/zine fics, because that was what Anne McCaffery would allow. But I know that thistlerose wrote some Pernfic, if you haven't found it yet. That's pretty much all I know of!