My policy on warnings

[sholio]

I have been basically lurking on the current round of debate on warnings on fic (see metafandom for links if you're interested -- it's pretty intense and emotionally fraught [Edited to add: many of the metafandom links contain frank discussion of abuse and triggery material; please be careful if you are yourself prone to triggering on these issues.]). My own fic, of course, is about 95% fluff, which means the issue of warnings doesn't come up particularly often for me. The thought hadn't actually occurred to me, though, prior to reading some of these posts, that lack of warning is not the same thing as specifically mentioning that there is nothing in a story that needs to be warned for.

So I thought perhaps I should clarify my own policy on warnings.

Just on a purely personal level, I really really hate spoilers. I nearly always like to be surprised. But I also really, really don't want my fic to be a slap in the face to someone else. For the record, although I don't entirely agree with the specific example that she used, I agree wholeheartedly with the general sentiment of this post by minisinoo on the writer's responsibility to others. I do not believe that my own artistic integrity trumps my responsibility to avoid harming my fellow human beings, inasmuch as I can manage to do so. I respect others' right to feel differently -- I certainly don't think you're a bad human being for taking a "caveat emptor" approach to your fic or your journal, though I think it's polite to at least let people know (and most do). But, personally, I want to try to take steps to make sure that my fic doesn't ruin a reader's day if I can help it. Because I don't personally pay a whole lot of attention to fic labeling beyond rating/pairing, I've been becoming more aware of warning/labeling mostly by exposure to these sort of debates, and slowly working out the "rules" for how and when I warn over my last few years in fandom. If I don't label something with a warning or a note that someone feels should be on there, I am very open to being informed about it -- I might not agree and I might not go ahead and choose to warn about that, but I would like to know if I accidentally push a reader's buttons without meaning to, and I will try very hard to respond politely and take your concerns into account.

I always give specific warnings for non-con and character death, though I reserve the right to hide them under spoiler coding if I feel that it would spoil a twist in the story. (Very useful spoiler code, which I learned from naye, is this: <span style="color:#333333; background:#333333">Text to be hidden goes here.</span>. It looks like this.)

When I rec stuff, I try to give other specific warnings: permanent disability, torture, abuse, anything else that I think a reader might need to know to make an informed decision. I don't generally put specific warnings on my stories like that -- the thought had not actually occurred to me, until this round of warning debates, that maybe I should. (Looking back at some of what I've written, I can see a couple of stories that I think I might choose to put more detailed warnings if I was reccing them. I'm still thinking about this.)

My all-purpose warning for everything other than non-con or death is "dark". So far I've used it to cover irreversible brain damage (I seem to recall that I also labeled that one "sort of like deathfic, but not quite"), particularly violent stories, and an AU in which everyone hated each other. I don't tend to warn for fake or AU character deaths. I used to be fairly specific about "warning" my readers if I included a pairing, since most of what I wrote was gen and I didn't want the reader to skim past the header and straight into a Teal'c/Daniel/Vala threesome, but as I've been writing more non-gen fic lately, and also putting more thought into how I feel about pairings in fic and stigma of certain kinds of pairings in particular, I don't really do that anymore. (But I can promise that I wouldn't spring a surprise pairing on you in a story labeled "gen".) Since I rarely write sex and I don't think I've thus far posted anything with kink content, that issue has not come up for me, so I'm not sure how I would handle it.

Because of my personal tastes and beliefs, I am very unlikely to give specific warnings for partner betrayal, graphic sex (unless somehow not covered under rating), profanity, or unhappy/ambiguous endings. But I do try to slap the "dark" label on anything that is, in my opinion, likely to be an unhappy surprise to someone who is expecting one of my fluffier stories.

I guess the best I can say is that while most of what I write is fluff, not all of it is, so please heed the "dark" warning and feel free to ask me if you'd like information on specific content of any story I've posted or rec'd. If you feel that my warning policy is inadequate and there are other things I should do, please let me know (with the caveat that I will be balancing my readers' needs against my own desire to present the story for spoilerphobic readers like me).

Comments

[dossier.livejournal.com]

I've avoided round 99,894.2 on the spoilers/warnings debate. I do get that other people live and die for them though, and I try to offer the opportunity to be spoiled/warned. I just don't think that I need the aggravation of yet another fisticuffs. Didn't we settle this the last 99,893 times?

I can honestly say that there's nothing I've ever needed to be warned for in any of your stories. That said, like you I almost never, ever read warnings. I prefer the surprise. I might not like it much, but that's my choice, I know where the back button is. oddly the thing that will almost always have me clicking the exit button is humiliation, which is almost never warned for! I nearly didn't read smitty's The Best Things in Life are Free, because you know high school is always humiliating. :)

[sholio]

I think what's different about this round of the warnings debate as opposed to past ones (at least those that I've lurked on) is the explicit discussion of triggers. Though I knew about triggering kind of vaguely, I honestly had no idea how bad it can get. I don't really think that any of the major things that have been discussed in this go-around are things that I wouldn't have warned for anyway, but it's made me stop and think about my warnings policy, and I think it's generally good to self-reflect in that way every once in a while. One of the points that's been made by people who do have triggers relating to sexual abuse, major depression or self-harm is that once they hit the triggery material, the damage is already done.

The way you did the character death warning on that one McKay story was, I think, pretty much the perfect solution; the warning existed, but those who didn't want to know didn't need to read it (I fell into that category myself). Just knowing that there is a warning gives an idea that there's going to be *something* dark in the story, but it doesn't give away any specific twists.

I do have a bugger of a time figuring out how to rec stories that rely on that kind of dark twist if the author has chosen not to warn. It's less of a concern in reccing comms that have rules about, say, warning for character death, but I dithered mightily over one story by vain_glorious where knowing what there is to be warned for (or, actually, even knowing that there is a warning at all) would basically spoil the big twist in the story. I think that browsing the posts in this debate has given me better tools for dealing with that kind of situation in the future (even if just by saying "Author does not warn; proceed at own risk").