so the history of warnings 101, continued

[seperis]

This is an update to my last post on the history of warnings.

Specifically: legionseagle posts here about the ongoing use of warnings as social control in some book fandoms and is still a realistic and pressing concern for writers.

I wrote the attached story in April this year inspired by the April fanfic challenge of the Lord Peter yahoogroup dealing with the detective stories of Dorothy L. Sayers, but in the end did not post it to the list because of the then rule that all fic featuring a same-sex pairing (even if it otherwise fell within the PG guidelines of the challenge as a whole) could not be posted on-list but only linked, and if it were linked the title bar had to prominently include the work "SLASH" so that list members who objected could avoid it. I decided I didn't feel comfortable complying with that restriction, so didn't make it available to the list.

On a Harry Potter yahoogroup when Half-Blood Prince came out (2006?), someone who tried to analyse the Tonks/Lupin relationship in terms of Queer Theory was told that doing so without posting a warning in the subject line was equivalent to breaking into other list members' living rooms and fornicating there.

Furthermore, there's a (current) warnings policy posted by an individual describing her own policy which some people are promoting as a sort of aspirational gold standard in the current debate, which, among a lot of other stuff I don't agree with, suggests that the policy's author considers "dialog concerning abortion" is too much of a hot potato to be including in fic even when warned for.

So in some of the corners of fandom in which I am active (book fandoms, you'll note) there is an active and on-going use of warnings as a mechanism of conservative social control, which shapes my response to warning discussions rather profoundly.
edited at (to clarify status of warnings policy quoted) 2010-07-07 03:42 am (local)

ratcreature links to her comment in the last warning debate regarding the history of warnings in Sentinel in this comment. Direct link to the warning comment in zvi's journal here.

ETA: spiletta42 would like this to be added as a clarification of her warnings policy, link is here. Her specific complaint can be found in comments.

Added:

facetofcathy here links to a comment in her LJ regarding slash warnings by an anonymous user here.

ranalore here talks about her negative experiences with warnings as social control. She also covers some ground on the difference between labeling for content and labeling for physical accessibility. There was a lot of conflation of the two and they have very different requirements as well as challenges to implement.

ithiliana here posts some of her recollections.

feanna here shares some of her experiences with warnings.

allegraconbrio here shares very recent warning discussions in the Glee fandom.

tazlet here states she did a warnings panel at at one of the last Z-cons.

aivilo_18 here brings her views as a moderator for SVUfiction.com, which is brilliant. Knowing in concrete LJ is very multifannish doesn't change the fact I keep forgetting we're working in a structure of many fandom traditions. That fandom is one I could see being very sensitive to content advisories since the context of the fanfic and source would require it both for advertising and warning purposes. I wonder what kind of difference it makes if you went from a fandom with warnings used for social control and one that needs them because of the nature of the source.

ineptshieldmaid here talks about warnings in context with Narnia and other fandoms and their uses.

If anyone else wants to share personal experience on warnings either historically or in their current form, please feel free to add a link and I'll organize these. I am going to go out on a limb and say that this topic is far from dead and I'd like to have a reference post to consult later.

I'm going to say this in case it needs saying; the new (and much better) reasons for warnings are not incompatible with avoiding the historical (and in some fandoms, current) use of warnings as social control. We can do both, and from what I'm reading, we can do it in a way that satisfies vidders that warnings will not be used for specific institutional exclusionary purposes, only personal use.



Level with me - at what point do the words "specific institutional exclusionary purposes" become something that reads like, IDK, normal, when I'm pretty sure they were never meant to meet and is there a double negative in there? Someone, for the love of God, give me a phrase that doesn't sound like a drunk grad student playing cultural anthropology scrabble.

I am going back to porn today.

Comments

[cofax7]

give me a phrase that doesn't sound like a drunk grad student playing cultural anthropology scrabble

Method for maintaining/enforcing conservative social standards? Still too wordy, though, and a bit vague.

I appreciate the recognition that there's a way in which mandatory labeling excludes people (i.e. labeling for slash content is homophobic), and a way in which warnings can make fannish activity include people who previously were excluded (i.e. warning for sexual violence so people can avoid triggers and still participate). Both of these things can be true, but they're not the same thing, and it should be possible to avoid the first and still accomplish the second.

[seperis]

Method for maintaining/enforcing conservative social standards? Still too wordy, though, and a bit vague.

Yeha, I tried tossing in conservative too, then I worried people would think I meant the current use of warnings was conservative and it would all end in tears and more painkillers.

I appreciate the recognition that there's a way in which mandatory labeling excludes people (i.e. labeling for slash content is homophobic), and a way in which warnings can make fannish activity include people who previously were excluded (i.e. warning for sexual violence so people can avoid triggers and still participate). Both of these things can be true, but they're not the same thing, and it should be possible to avoid the first and still accomplish the second.

God yes. And knowing the argument that's being made by the no-warnings side should make it easier to craft a middle ground. Even if warnings aren't used that way now (though I bet anything legionseagle is not alone in her fandoms using warnings for restriction purposes), we can't change the historical context that was still in existence a few years ago either.

And--fandom is cyclic. If we can somehow also keep strict limits on what specifically constitutes a warning, backdooring in new ways to do content-control or social control through warnings could be eliminated, which is really my favorite part. I do not want a mass return of warn for slash. Just--no.

[princessofgeeks]

i'm afraid I don't have better language for you either, but I'm fascinated by the discussion and am tuned in. Thank you.

[seperis]

i'm afraid I don't have better language for you either, but I'm fascinated by the discussion and am tuned in. Thank you.

I live in hope a first year grad student or preferably, a college junior will drop in. They do better acaspeak than like, academics. *grins*

Thank you! I'm enjoying watching people open up about this.

[facetofcathy]

Not my experience, but a public description in my journal: http://facetofcathy.dreamwidth.org/33142.html?thread=141942#cmt141942

Which, while I don't agree with the way the commenter responded to pressure to conform, I think they very clearly describe the pressure.

(And I'm booting them off my lawn in my reply because they were obnoxious to someone else in another thread, not because I disagree with them in this instance.)

I have a personal experience which involved a request for a warning on a story containing a main character with a non-canon permanent disability which is revealed in the opening paragraphs. I declined to change my header, and I don't bear the asker any ill-will, and I do understand why they asked, but I felt as though they expected my conformity to their own perception of fandom standards to be automatic.

I don't really want to link to this, because the person had every right to ask, and I think they should be left out of this discussion. But the last fic warning discussion came up with the oft-repeated meme that if someone asks you after the fact, you just post the warning they want and all is good again. And my answer is no, not always.

[seperis]

Added your first link and a link to this comment both.

I have a personal experience which involved a request for a warning on a story containing a main character with a non-canon permanent disability which is revealed in the opening paragraphs. I declined to change my header, and I don't bear the asker any ill-will, and I do understand why they asked, but I felt as though they expected my conformity to their own perception of fandom standards to be automatic.

Mentioning that, this came up in SGA with a story by lemonbella. I don't know if I read the controversy or heard it from her (this was circa 2005-2006 maybe?) but I remember there being something about warning for permanent disability (when it's not already canon).

I wrote one fic (wip) with what was going ot be a permanent disability; I dont remmber it ever coming up. Granted, prtty much every rec I've ever seen mentions it first, so maybe that's why?

Thanks very much for linking to the comment in your LJ. I appreciate seeing what kind of context warnings are in.

[sherrold]

I'm going to say this in case it needs saying; the new (and much better) reasons for warnings are not incompatible with avoiding the historical (and in some fandoms, current) use of warnings as social control.

Thank you for this -- and for pointing out that warnings have been occasionally/intentionally misused in fandom.

[seperis]

I think, at least on this side of fandom, it's hard to remember, and I dont' think I've ever actively been in a fandom where warnings were that prevalent. Or likely, considering, they were invisible to me; in usenet I warned because that was what I was taught when I entered fandom, and after that it was pretty much a matter of preference or general leaning or philosophy. The reframing of the discussion in terms of accessiblity is complicated to think about if your base was always intensely philosophical.

historical note

[laurajv]

One thing missing from ratcreature's Sentinel history is that haircut warnings are not just a shortcut for a type of story (though they are that, too), but are something that was actually requested on, iirc, Senad, shortly before or around the founding of Prospect-L.

It was a peculiar request -- and I think most people found it so, to the extent that the requester (who stated that she found Blair getting a haircut in & of itself traumatizing) was extremely upset. I felt bad for her, but...seriously?

Anyway! just a bit of history there.

Re: historical note

[seperis]

I still boggle knowing that. Just boggle.

Merely popping in to recall...

[tazlet]

leading a panel on warnings at one of the last Z-cons, where it appeared many people arguing for warnings and their willingness to embrace them was because of their value as 'advertising.'

Re: Merely popping in to recall...

[cereta]

I've been arguing that for years. I want stories labeled for slash because I want to be able to find slash. Yes, I like or stories to be labeled for character death or child harm so that I can avoid them, but I like non-con "warnings" because I want to be able to find those stories.

This is why I think "warning" is a really, really BAD umbrella term: because it assumes that the only goal for some things is avoidance.

(I should add in all of this that I have no problem with writers/vidders/whoever limiting the information they provide, although I do think a general "I choose not to label for content" is a good practice. The only time I've ever gotten pissy about lack of content information is when the creator has implied or even outright said that it was in some way bad of me to filter my readings or to simply avoid their work if they're not going to provide certain information. And those people are pretty few and far between.)

[sage]

Oh, god. *laughs* You have no idea how I've been struggling with writing the warnings on this new fic -- your history posts are awesome, btw -- but the whole debate has me utterly lost on what I should warn for vs. what would be ridiculous over-warning. /o\

Used to be, a blanket "warning: disturbing content" was enough. This story has that in spades, but it doesn't have any of my own squicks, so deciding what warnings to specify in the gray-out field has me baffled. (Fandom, why so hard??)

[seperis]

*hands* OH yeah.

The most prevalent seems to be rape/non-con situations, which is my base standard, if that's any help. The only other two I can remember that I use regularly are for torture and--once, cannibalism. I'm not even sure I'm consistent on drug use, because QaF was, y'know, drug yay drugs poppers yay! So mixed message there.

...cannibalism. I need a nap.

[ellen_fremedon]

I'm going to say this in case it needs saying; the new (and much better) reasons for warnings are not incompatible with avoiding the historical (and in some fandoms, current) use of warnings as social control. We can do both, and from what I'm reading, we can do it in a way that satisfies vidders that warnings will not be used for specific institutional exclusionary purposes, only personal use.

Thank you for this. I've been really disheartened by how many discussions I've seen conflating the two uses of warnings into one massive slippery slope argument.

[seperis]

Knowing where they came from--or how they were used and sometimes are still used--makes it (to me) a lot easier to scope out where that particular problem can be addressed and hopefully close any potential backdoor efforts to make warnings into negative controls again.

We really may need to change the word to Content Advisory and be done with it. I hate hate hate the idea that changing just the word might make that kind of difference, but in this case, it really might help the separation.

[allegraconbrio]

Last month, in Glee fandom, a reader in the Puckurt community on LJ made a post requesting that when people write Puck and Kurt that they warn if the fic is portraying Puck as the bottom because it squicked them right out. The community came back with some mixed responses, but the main one was "hell no" that is not something you warn for. The original post was deleted by the OP, but the follow up post can be found here. The follow up does have some comments that make it clear that in that community at least thinks things like sexual positions could be put in tags or author notes, but should be differentiated from things that should be warned for, i.e. sexual assualt.

As an aside, that warning policy that legionseagle links to does not read to me like the author is saying that abortion is too much of a hot topic button to write about, even if warned for, but rather that the author doesn't write about the topic (or miscarriages or child death, or eating disorders, etc.) but would warn if those elements are in a story. However, if people are holding that up as a warning policy to be aspired to no wonder some folks are anti-warning. I am very pro-warning and that complicated policy is so convoluted that if people said I should do it like that I would throw up my hands in exasperation and say no freaking way. Good for the author, I guess, but not for me.

[lferion]

I also read through that link, and agree that the original author was saying that she doesn't/hasn't written anything that had abortion (from canon or otherwise) as an element, but would warn if she did. I can easily see how people would take her fairly compact (that is, precise but not elaborated) statement and run other places with it. I have not read those other discussions, so I'm not actually commenting on them.

I agree also that as a general-use 'policy' it would be cumbersome and open to pretty wide differences of interpretation.

Thank you for the Glee conversation link.

[feanna]

When I came to fandom (around 2002) het and slash were pretty seperate. In Harry Potter, but very much so in LotR (book fandom) with a few exceptions, usually by good authors and on their personal sites.

SLASH was very much a warning (in the sense of it being dangerous and definitely not what a poor het reader wanted to come across accidentally), though it was calles Yaoi in Harry Potter fandom (at least in some parts) at the time. Most every site had an explanation for "what is yaoi" though, those explanations (and the fics) were closer to the definition of slash than actual yaoi with the included character dynamics.

I do remember that slash stories (in specifically slash spaces) also had HET warnings. I suppose those probably came up in reaction to having to include het warnings/feeling excluded, but also out of the seperation of those two genres, because I did get the feeling that het was generally unwelcome in some cases and in those fics everybody (well, all the guys, mostly the females were ignored) was gay/ acted gay/bisexual.

[ithiliana]

*nods* I came into LOTR in 2003, and those attitudes were still pretty prevalent. Communities would require warnings on slash fics no matter what the ratings that they didn't apply to het fics, i.e. a PG 13 still required WARNINGS if it were slash.

[ithiliana]

Joining in on thanking you for these posts.

I have a couple of personal anecdotes: I came into LOTR fandom in 2003 with a lust for Frodo and Faramir which turned out to be a controversial pairing in the fandom: some people declared that the "warning" for interspecies (which meant Man/Hobbit only, not Elf/Dwarf, not Elf/Man for the most part) should be applied. The few interspecies folks I quickly met told stories of being driven off listservs pre-LJ for writing slash, especially pedophilic slash which many people saw Frodo/Faramir or other hobbit/men pairings as (I supposed it might have applied to Hobbit/Elf slash but I don't recall much of that, although as time went on Frodo had a bit of a thing with just about everybody including the Witch King, happy sigh).

So the Frodo/Faramir or Frodo/Men slashers were thrilled to get into LJ and have their own communities--If you look at the interspecies LJ community there's still a warning in the profile about 'if you don't like it, don't read it' so definitely yes, their experience was one of being shut down, censored, told to shut up because of the pedophilia factor.

A few years later, reading some very good post about rape and triggers, I realized that I should shift my non-con label or warning to rape in the cases where the fic involve non consensual sex....

I do remember talk of people being told to warn for slash and the idea of labelling as a more appropriate term, i.e. many people seeking out the type of stories that fit that category.

Interspecies Info

[ithiliana]

community formed in 11/02, and I joined LJ in 2003, March, and quickly found them (my first published story was an RPF of David Wenham and Elijah Wood - but then David discovered he loved Frodo more than Elijah, and then Viggo and Sean arrived, and I sort of kept a bit of a toe in the Interspecies Group (Frodo and Faramir OTP!), and in the Men of Gondor group, which focussed on the men and not so much interspecies (though, again, that changed over time.


http://community.livejournal.com/interspecies/profile

WARNING: ads on the community, so here is text

[info]interspecies is a community for those fans (and writers) of LOTR slash that prefer, or even just enjoy interspecies slash, particularly that which involves hobbit/big people.

This area of the fandom is often looked down on by others, so please - consider this community a safe haven for those of you who love it!

No flames - if you don't like interspecies, what are you doing here? Feel free to post fics (behind lj cuts), pictures, gossip, thoughts... anything relevant to the topic.

and remember: Have fun!

[cesare]

I'm glad to see this aspect of warnings getting some discussion. I see continuity between arguments over warning for slash, and some of my friends pointing out that warning for BDSM is pejorative to those of us who practice, a point which I agree with. We specify kink content in a "Contains" line in the headers, so we still label for it, we just don't call it a warning. (Things like noncon and character death still go under "warnings.")

This seems like a good solution. It makes the information available in the headers in a non-pejorative way. But one of my friends has been receiving anonymous comments deriding her for putting kink content under "Contains" instead of "Warnings." Now... if you're looking at the headers for warnings, you can't miss the "Contains" line. Anyone seeking to protect themselves has the resources they need. Insisting that has to be called a warning seems more like an effort at social control than concern for reader safety.

[seperis]

Insisting that has to be called a warning seems more like an effort at social control than concern for reader safety.

That's a good point. A "Contains" for advertisement/enticement and a "Content Advisory" for things that may involve triggers may be a workable compromise.

[ithiliana]

the issue of the phrase: ""specific institutional exclusionary purposes"

It's a tough one.

I tend to paraphrase/gloss it as "warnings will not be used for suppressing non-normative perspectives" which is even more words (too long time in academia).

But....the thing I keep tripping up on is that individuals who make up the dominant group in any social situation will all probably see themselves as individuals, so they're just ASKING for personal use; it's the problem of having so many individuals asking for their personal use that I think is why so much discussion of the topic becames so painful.

Because, yes, I remember the attempts to suppress/control the kind of fic I wanted to write, and for a long time I was totally anti warnings. But when I read the information around triggering content and the issue of lights/cuts/etc., then I realized I needed to take that into account because this wasn't an issue of a dominant group trying to repress outsider/numerical minority/'odd' content but of individuals who are very much a numerical minority in fandom needing more information to help them decide. Then it all made sense.

[seperis]

I think the big thing--to me--is that warnings in this case need to be instituted on a level equal to a single person reccing a fic instead of the level of, say, an archive. And part of this, I admit, is also because its very easy to abuse warnings with a singular group (an archive, a mailing list, a con) but harder when it's singular people. It would be easy (at least in my view, and I think this retrospectively was the position of a lot of people in both warning debates) to slip into using warnings as social controls for something (and while slash could be a problem, I'm actually thinking kinks will be where it might hit).

I want to use bdsm as a flashpoint for that; some people warn for it and some use 'contains' for it, and I have to agree with BDSM practitioners that their lifestyle shouldn't be considered a warning.* But the lifestyle itself, for someone with certain sexual or misc triggers, might be a problem

*caveat - I think warning for extreme scenes or non-con scenes would be entirely separate, which opens up the idea above to use "Contains" for advertisement and "Content Advisor" for stuff with the potential to trigger.

Example:

Title: BDSM Fic of BDSM Stuff
Author: Person
Codes/Pairing: Fred/Barney
Rating: R/NC-17/Explicit/Mature/M/Not Rated
Summary: Blah
Author Notes: Blah
Contains: BDSM
Content Advisory: non-con, bloodplay (I have no idea what to put here, this is just a very random example of potential that I swear I am not insisting go together or ever have gone together. I like bdsm. A lot.)

I'm rarely going to say the problem here is the language, but in this specific case, reading over comments, I have to agree, the problem is the language. There's way too much psychological baggage with warnings for them to be used without a lot of people twitching.

[ranalore]

I have...too many examples of warning as social control in my personal history of fandom to list, really, and also most of the evidence to back up my recollections was lost in various computer crashes, but I can say that my own rather hard-line "Choose not to warn" stance is the result of dealing with years and years of various fandom fora demanding not only that fic be labelled for certain information, but that it be labelled in a certain way, which unfortunately dovetailed into my own history of emotional abuse. It was only when the heated warnings debate of last year arose that I consciously realized one reason my fannish productivity had arisen after the general fannish move to social networking sites from mailing lists was because I was no longer hitting a personal trigger head-on every time I wanted to post a story.

I do have to say, one problem I've had with the framing of the current debate is the conflation of "labelling for physical accessibility issues" with "labelling for content." I do have content-related triggers, and I don't wish to make light of the effects of hitting such triggers, but I also have moderately severe migraine, and I feel much more strongly about getting a heads-up for likely triggers for that, such as strobing lights and quick cuts between scene clips (within what I feel is a given context that vids are likely to contain quick cuts between scene clips as part of the nature of the beast). I realize this is just my personal take, and it's very much shaped by social prioritizing of physical accessibility over physiological accessibility, but it seems to be a common take that's definitely informing and shaping the debate, i.e., I feel like many people who feel strongly about labelling for seizure/migraine triggers (perhaps "form triggers?") could take or leave labelling for "content triggers," but the discussion is being framed as though there's only one kind of labelling being requested. Since I am "Choose not to warn" for content, but have removed some animated icons from my journal to avoid triggering seizures/migraines, and would warn for something like flashing text in a story, obviously I find this conflation problematic.

[darkrose]

It was only when the heated warnings debate of last year arose that I consciously realized one reason my fannish productivity had arisen after the general fannish move to social networking sites from mailing lists was because I was no longer hitting a personal trigger head-on every time I wanted to post a story.

I just want to second this, sort of. After the warnings debate last year, I stopped writing for about six months, because I would literally have a panic attack and have to pop an Ativan when I tried to post. I was terrified that I'd forget something or not label it correctly and then I'd be a Bad Person In Fandom. Worse, I came away from that discussion with the sense that I was being told, "You shouldn't be writing this triggery stuff, but if you insist, you'd better warn for everything or you're an insensitive bitch."

There has to be a middle ground.

[aivilo_18]

When I think of warnings, I think of what I look for that could potentially cause emotional harm. Being a past moderator for SVUFiction.com will make you really ultra-sensitive to what to look for when archiving fic for a show that a) is heavily invested in dealing with sex crimes and b) contains a large fan base of people who are sensitive to that kind of subject matter. So I’m, perhaps, a little more OCD than most when it comes to approving warnings in general because that fandom was a freaking landmine of possible triggers.

For the most part, the people who archived with SVUFiction were incredibly open to suggestions I had for warning tags before I approved their work. Yes, that fandom was absolutely *rife* with badly written tripe and sometimes I practically *cried* over the crap I had to approve because, technically, it was grammatically correct. However, the authors and readers in that fandom were, generally speaking, pretty sensitive towards treating each other with courtesy and respect. There were a few big ticket issues I had to come down on, but not too many to ruin my SVU experience. In fact, I’d say it’s the most important fandom I’ve ever been a part of and I’ve met a number of people through it who have become like family to me now.

Going back the topic at hand, when I look for warnings, I look for specific stuff like non-con and sexual violence, or chan/underage stuff, etc. I also look for the less specific signifiers like whether or not the fic is dark or heavily kinked-out and make my own decisions to read and/or approve based on how well I feel I know the author or potential readership. I look for things that, while they don’t pose a threat to me, may pose a threat to other readers (bondage, role playing, knife play, the list goes on). My kink or trigger is not, necessarily, someone else’s kink or trigger and, if you haven’t learned to not make personal assumptions like that *before* waltzing into the SVU fandom, you’ll learn that lesson pretty damn quickly once you’re there. Or be eaten alive.

Speaking specifically of slash and femmeslash, I’ve never considered those, in general, to be in the same field as the above. Or, if someone is going to “warn” for slash because of its potential for possible emotional harm, they should be doing the same for het as well. IIRC, I don’t think we necessarily had warnings for slash at SVUF so much as there were just separate sub-archives organized by rating and then by genre if you can call it that. When picking what type of fic you were posting, you could label it slash, femmeslash, het, or gen and it would be filtered into the correct archive. Maybe they’ve changed how they’re running the site there, but that’s how I remember it. At any rate, I think we warned for all four and, if the author chose to warn for slash in their summary, we didn’t necessarily consider it an error on their part, just a personal choice. Thinking about it now, in the context of your posts and in the context of the whole debat that's going on, I'd probably be a different moderator if I had to do it again, but hindsight is kind of a bitch, I guess.

All that said, personally speaking, I can count on one hand the number of m/f pairings I’ve shipped in the past and none of them are pairings I ship now. I stick to slash and femmeslash. I’m not interested in anything else. I’m not ruling out the possibility of eventually being interested in het again, but…god. I think I find het…icky now? And yet, if I started screaming my indignation over accidentally stumbling across het that wasn’t properly labelled as such, people wouldn’t really get it. Not that that’s stopped me before, mind you.

[seperis]

..so that was brilliant. I forgot (and I have no idea how I did this) how a fandom with a strong and probably necessary tradition of warning due to the source itself would have a different context and environment for content advisories.

[ineptshieldmaid]

I've only been in fandom for the last two/three years. I've seen quite a lot of warning-for-slash - strangely, mostly on SPECIFICALLY SLASH COMMS. It makes sense to warn/advise/give some kind of note for slash on narnia_fiction - Narnia attracts both rabid 'cest slashers and straight-down-the-line Lewis fans of the religious persuasion. But Narnia tends to attract a young crowd of writers who feel self-conscious about *all* their content, or so I assume, since I can't think of any other reason to warn for slash on narnia_slash.

Thing is, in my fandoms, it's almost as common to warn for het. Hetfic, when written by ordinarily-slash-writers, usually comes with disclaimers like "het - I feel dirty now!". It was actually the ridiculousness of being ashamed to have written *het* that made me stop warning/noting het/slash/femslash myself.

It's ridiculous to attach shame to any pairing type. But it's also reasonable if an author wants to warn/otherwise note for pairing types - there *are* fangirls out there who aren't comfortable reading het (it took me ages to be comfortable with het, actually - both because I'm not comfortable with the objectification dynamic and because it used to hit more of my personal Issues buttons than slash did), and those who aren't comfortable with slash. A friend of mine (a *bi* friend of mine) is massively triggered by femslash at the moment.

Usually you can figure it out from the pairing notes - but, as someone on my flist, a recs compiler, noted recently, a fair chunk of people trawl fandoms for specific types of fic (eg, kinks) even if they don't know the character. If you see a pairing Sam/Jamie, how are you to know what gender Sam and Jamie are?

Which is not to say that anyone should HAVE to warn for slash/het/femslash/other. Or that communities should ban/restrict access to a particular pairing type. These things would be bad! But a lot of the discussion seems to drift toward saying that *authors* who warn for slash *are inherently homophobic* or pandering toward homophobia, or otherwise bad people. I gather that the rec-list-compiling friend I mentioned before has copped some antagonism for her choice to warn for slash, which just doesn't seem sane to me. There should be no more policing of what types of warnings you *can* put on your fic than there is of what types of warnings you *must* put on your fic.

[seperis]

Thank you for this! I liked this perspective on it.

Usually you can figure it out from the pairing notes - but, as someone on my flist, a recs compiler, noted recently, a fair chunk of people trawl fandoms for specific types of fic (eg, kinks) even if they don't know the character. If you see a pairing Sam/Jamie, how are you to know what gender Sam and Jamie are?

Especially this. We're all multifandom, so the old reasons may not apply anymore for some things.

[msilverstar]

I really like the AO3 "choose not to use archive warnings" option, once I understood it.

Joking about warnings can get a person wanked on, even warning for snow angels.

(frozen comment)

[spiletta42]

If I promise to never post fanfiction again, will you call off the anti-censorship army? I never said what I'm being accused of saying, or tried to tell anyone else what they could or could not write, but now thanks to this post my email's a cesspool and someone even called my house in the middle of the night to tell me off.

(frozen comment)

[seperis]

....are you high? Or--I have no idea what you are talking about, tbh.

[legionseagle]

Before I got distracted, I actually came back here to add to the anecdotal evidence of specific institutional exclusionary purposes being invoked in relatively recent fandom. This wasn't required warnings for slash; it was a total ban. At the Accio '05 Harry Potter convention at Reading University, UK there were in fact no panels or other discussion of slash content whatsoever*; when queried the concom differed in their explanations, with some suggestion being made that a ban on slash had originated from Warner Bros/Bloomsbury/Scholastic and that inclusion of slash content would have led to cancellation of the con altogether; a slightly different explanation comprised a statement that while no ban on non-explicit slash existed there had in fact been no submissions of proposed papers on slash or Queer topics and that its exclusion was therefore the fault of inertia on the part of slashers. However, I am aware that participants in late night round-table discussions were told, "Don't mention the "S" word" suggesting that there was indeed some form of policy in place, or at the very least mixed messages.

*The con had parallel fannish and academic tracks, and registration was confined to over-18s only

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

First off, I think we need to move away from the term "Warning".

A few years back, a lot of people complained at one archive that nothing that wasn't labeled NC-17 was getting read. One person's exclude filter is another person's include filter.

I prefer terms like keyword or content description. Context is everything - in a slash archive, people assume slash. Het archive, people assume het. Mixed comm/mailing list/archive, label both. Do not assume a default, or that everyone knows you write non-con.


What people feel the need to label does describe a certain level of cultural norm within a group. At this point, no one labels for rimming in slash fic. I think that used to be labeled pretty often. Sex toys? Also no longer labeled. The world has changed in the last 10 or so years I've been in fandom.

In conclusion: Describe. Do not warn.

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea! The word "warning" itself implies something bad, dangerous, unacceptable, etc, imo; when what we're really trying to do is, as you say, describe it so people know better what they're getting. Good substitute word. :)

[kernezelda]

I don't warn, generally. I put on the MPAA labels, G - NC-17, and will sometimes list a summary and/or pairing. The pairing itself indicates het or slash. The one time I've actually put much of a warning on a fic was for an extremely dark non-con. If someone starts reading and doesn't like it, that's what the back button is for, IMO.

[melonbutterfly.livejournal.com]

Please, read this. http://impertinence.dreamwidth.org/470578.html
I don't know you or your stories, I do not want to give the "silently judging you" impression, and I mean no offense. I don't mean to tell you that you have to warn; that is your choice. But you should at the least note that you choose not to warn.

[verasteine.livejournal.com]

I'm categorically opposed to the word "slash" coming after the word "warning". Including any variant of that. Back in Torchwood fandom, last year, I argued strongly against using the warning space as an advertising line.

That said, warnings matter to me. I've come across things, not warned for, that really should have had a warning on them, and I will say so every time. I didn't know that much about the history behind warnings, but I do think it's difficult to compile a finite list of what can be or should be a warning, and what is up to the author. It would definitely be nice, for starters, if authors who choose not to warn will make that policy clear on their fics/vids, so I can avoid things I really don't want to see or read.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

It would definitely be nice, for starters, if authors who choose not to warn will make that policy clear on their fics/vids, so I can avoid things I really don't want to see or read.

I'm hoping for that to become more standard as well. AO3 has it as an option in theirs, which hopefully with more use will become more prevalent for people posting in other places.

[risti.livejournal.com]

Can you maybe include a link to this post (http://spiletta42.livejournal.com/300784.html) by spiletta42? The description "the policy's author considers "dialog concerning abortion" is too much of a hot potato to be including in fic even when warned for." is really kind of taking things out of context, and she's now getting flamed by people calling her both a "baby-killer" and a "close-minded republican who wants to control women's bodies" for the past two days... To quote from the post she just made on her journal:

Second of all, the abortion thing. The quote I keep having shoved in my face is taken out of context, and is part of a list of things which I have never personally written about to date, because the occasion has not arisen or because I personally would not enjoy writing about those issues. That this is specific to my body of fics is repeated several times throughout the policy. So why am I being accused of trying to force people to use my policy, or to not write about specific things at all? That isn't even close to anything I've said.

The fact that I have never personally written a piece of fanfiction about abortion does not prove that I either condone or condemn the legality of abortion, personally or politically, nor does it imply that I have any personal experience with it. I would not write it because it is a very personal issue for many people, with which I specifically lack experience, and therefore I would not be qualified to write it well, and I have no wish to try, because regardless of one's political stance, it is never a happy subject. It is mentioned only because at the time the policy was written, the issue was one of the many issues being discussed in fandom and I was attempting to be thorough.

Is it necessary to attack me and accuse me of being a "baby-killer" based on some assumption that I've had an abortion or else it wouldn't bother me to write fanfiction about having one? That is the most convoluted piece of logic I've ever heard in fandom, and that's pretty damn impressive. Especially seeing as other people, in reading the exact same sentence, came to the conclusion that I'm judging people on things which are none of my gorram business.