Warning, Will Robinson!
Jun. 26th, 2009 04:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I have stayed out of the warnings debate and have only been following it at a remove (witnessing incredibly bad behaviour firsthand is bad for my blood pressure). I've been around for earlier rounds of the warning debate, but this is the first time the question of triggers versus preferences has come up, and it has been enlightening. PTSD is serious, folks!
So, two things:
1) I don't have warnings on my stories, because, as far as I know, I haven't written any stuff that needs warnings. Should I go through all the stories on my site and add "Warnings: nothing" to all my stories? Am I mistaken in thinking that I haven't written anything triggery?
What do you think?
2)
winterweathered has created a community called
ficsafezone, the purpose of which is to help people who have specific triggers vet stories without warnings (see community profile and sample post). I like this idea, I hope it works, because even if fans do start warning their stories better, there are still going to be stories out there which don't have warnings, and this could help bridge the gap.
So, two things:
1) I don't have warnings on my stories, because, as far as I know, I haven't written any stuff that needs warnings. Should I go through all the stories on my site and add "Warnings: nothing" to all my stories? Am I mistaken in thinking that I haven't written anything triggery?
What do you think?
2)
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 10:14 pm (UTC)I'm in favor of limited warnings.
I'm against paranoia, but there's surely a middle ground where courtesy and artistic integrity meet. Especially when we're talking about fanfiction, where most readers are looking for "more" of something they like in canon (characters, situations, ideas, relationships), even if that's rather broadly defined in some places. I'd be much more anti-warning in terms of original fiction and literature, but fanfic is a particular type of fiction with a very particular (ha) audience, hence my own stance.
(Or we could go to Romans 14, although that's not relevant here to anyone but me--the tension *feels* similar, even if it isn't really.)
Your icon is relevant to this discussion. *g*
no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 12:40 am (UTC)And I do not think that putting up an unwarned fic is the same as causing deliberate harm to a person, and I'm incensed that people are claiming that it is. I think warnings are a nice courtesy, but there are occasions where they will, in fact, ruin the fic (I have written one such that I can think of). I don't think that's a call which can be made by anybody except the author.
Beyond that, I don't want to go in Kat's journal, as it's not fair to her.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 02:09 am (UTC)I think part of the anger is that a number of the anti-warning folks have been saying:
a) that they themselves don't give a damn about hurting other people (in other words it isn't that they just don't want to do it, it is that they are explicitly declaring that they don't care about other people)
b) that the people with PTSD are lying about it in order to make themselves feel special
That makes me angry.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 02:47 am (UTC)For me, a lot of this whole argument comes down to dueling definitions and a basic, root-level disagreement about who is responsible for non-intrinsic harm resulting from the use of a resource. Is it the person who provides the resource, or the person who decides to use it? For me, it's the person who decides to use it; to say otherwise only discourages people from providing resources, and that deprives everybody.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 04:33 am (UTC)Alas, I have seen this. Well, the words were "I don't give a " [insert four-letter word here that rhymes with 'luck']. Which means the same thing, only with foul language.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 04:24 am (UTC)And yes, the only person who should truly be able to make that decision is the author. Anyone who says differently is treading dangerous ground. (And I won't go further into this either.)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 09:56 pm (UTC)I mean, "Warning: may contain spousal abuse/rough sex/non-consensual" etc is pretty straightforward, but if someone's going to be triggered by something as unrelated as calculus... I can't see how you can possibly cover all bases that far out.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 02:01 am (UTC)I was tossing up whether to join or not, because some of the kind of things that some people would consider triggery would be the kind of thing I'd want to wash out my mind with soap for, but (a) they do allow for different levels of investigation of stories and (b) not all of them will be like that, so I decided to join, because I'd like to help.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-26 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-27 12:42 am (UTC)