seperis | genre and warnings in professional literature

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genre and warnings in professional literature

So this just occurred to me--and this is not to reopen the warning debates--but something I realized posting comments in a friend's DW today about warnings and genre.

Warning: Could potentially be triggering, as while it's a theoretical discussion of professional fiction and warnings, comments do mention specific instances, novels, and authors with triggering content.

Right, so we say the jacket summary will tell you sometimes, and recs, on if something is going to trigger you--examples rape, pedophilia, incest, eating disorders, self-harm, et al. I've never entirely been sure of that because a.) I rarely read reviews and b.) dust jackets/summaries are just as misleading in professional fic as fanfic.

I was trying to think of the times profic surprised me with something really unpleasant in the family of potential triggers (other people's common triggers) and it was maybe a handful of times at most, and it's not like I don't also read blind either, where to challenge myself I'll buy books in genre sight unseen and read them. (Don't ask. It's like paying to be stupid, to be honest.) Thing is--and please correct me if I'm wrong--ballpark, what are the chances of hitting a sci-fi fic that involves a character with an eating disorder?

Again, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I'm going to tentatively state there's not a lot of books about space ships that also linger on the character's eating disorder and treatment, for example. In general, sci fi, for example, doesn't have a huge market share with rape, outside of the John Norman school of what the fuck, in which wtf, that's not even sci-fi; fantasy is more likely to have it, almost guaranteed if a major female protagonist is involved, either Far in the Past or mostly off-screen. In fact, outside a few exceptions, when reading in any genre (non contemporary literature, non issue literature, non YA issue literature), it's not going to show up as more than a Far in the Past or Well Off-Screen.

If you're a regular reader of romance, and I am, I can spot whether the story will be seduction or rape by publisher and summary, even if it never mentions rape (which you know, it won't). Mysteries, same deal. In general--again with some exceptoins--genre telegraphs concept.

Fanfic for the most part has no concept of genre whatsoever; I'm wondering now if that's a reason it's more complicated in fandom. More or less, if you're used to genre giving you some kind of warning by being genre, then fandom's mix and match would confuse the issue. It occurs to me that very few professional works try to handle a serious trigger issue and do anything else in a story; that seems to be the story's center. Which--am I missing something?

I wish I could survey for this. Hmm. Feel free to correct me; my experience in reading is definitely not everyone's.

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fantasy is more likely to have it, almost guaranteed if a major female protagonist is involved, either Far in the Past or mostly off-screen.

There are some authors where this doesn't happen: Mary Gentle's Ash has the five year old protagonist raped on page 3 or so. There are some authors who are much more in your face about it-- I think Diana Gabaldon counts as a fantasy author for this.

I was thinking of two that had semi- or explicit rape in fantasy; one was male, and it definitely came out of the blue, though not to anyone who had read the author's earlier work; the other I don't remmber specifically enough if it surprised me.

Imo (and I think about this stuff a lot), the primary difference is that in profic you can generally tell what genre you're getting into. Mystery, fantasy, etc., and subgenres beyond that - so YA female protagonist fantasy fiction vs YA female protagonist romance and so on. You get the cues from where they are in the bookstore, what the cover tells you and son on. Beyond that, opening paragraphs and chapters follow generic conventions quite heavily. Even if you open a book "blind," as it were, if you are an experienced reader, you'll sort it out fairly quickly.

This is why fanfic has titling sequences and warnings. Imo. They operate as covers & bookstores do. See also: my dissertation in progress. *shrug*

there's not a lot of books about space ships that also linger on the character's eating disorder and treatment
*cough* Mark in the Vorkosigan saga?

Anyway, I think that one of the differences is that we're emotionally attached to the characters in a way that's more difficult to achieve with profic, which makes it hit closer to home.

I've been surprised by rape in profic (the child molestation in The God of Small Things comes to mind), and I'm not sure how those scenes would go across for someone who is triggered by that kind of thing.

*cough* Mark in the Vorkosigan saga?

Yes, and I have known people to be triggered by the book that delves into the fracturing of his psyche and the development of his eating disorder -- not least because, hey, genre isn't much of a warning here. Even the previous books aren't that much of a warning; Miles's ongoing identity crisis is fairly nasty and arguably trauma-induced as well, but still is not at all similar to Mark's.

I was pleased that LMB didn't flinch away from Mark before, during, or after that mess but it's an incredibly harrowing read and not one that people go in expecting.

Oh, definitely. I don't have an ED, and I still find it LMB's hardest book to get through.

Triggers are VERY prevalent in the sort of SF that I read, because I read authors who give a damn about their characters and make their characters three-dimensional. Jonathan Carroll, James Tiptree, Jr., Sherri Tepper (well, okay, used to be Sherri Tepper, sigh), Dan Simmons, Diana Wynne Jones, et al. If I could think coherently, I could come up with a few other hard-SF authors, but at present, my mind is pretty much mush due to my circumstances. But they ARE out there, you just have to look.

It boils down to who treats their characters well, those are the ones you have to look out for. They'll drag your heart through the mud and stomp on it for good measure.

I really wish that there had been some kind of warning on Ash, because it came out of the blue. I was told afterwards that sexual assault is common in Mary Gentle's books, but you'd only know that if you read them, and anyone coming in blind...

(I once started a review of one of her books with. "The protagonist is not raped.")

More or less, if you're used to genre giving you some kind of warning by being genre, then fandom's mix and match would confuse the issue.

Hmmmm. I think you're right, to a good extent. I read based on other recs because a certain reccer will give certain warnings (i.e. you can tell the difference between a story that's basically a romcom and one that will rip your heart out) but reading blind... that could easily lead to those moments of being halfway through a story and being stunned by the sudden triggers.

(Mind you, I also wonder if it's something to do with fandom as a community. We have more than a few community members who have triggers, and a lot of the community is based around friendship, around the idea of sharing glee and encouraging all to feel good, to feel excited, to feel safe. I think in general when someone says, "hey, this thing here caused me distress, I just wanted you to know," fandom will discuss it and come up with ideas/conventions to minimise harm.

I don't think professional publishing would. For bottom-line sales and a much wider buying audience, the distress of a few readers wouldn't be an issue. I think those with triggers are probably a lot more wary of picking books and -- to an extent -- find ways of working around the risk of triggers.

In fandom, people can have a say and at least some of the community will go, "Huh, you know what, we could do x without it really impacting our fun times, so let's try that".)

"I'm going to tentatively state there's not a lot of books about space ships that also linger on the character's eating disorder and treatment"

I'm another one who had Mark Vorkosigan spring to mind . . . but pretty much only him. After some brain-wracking, I remembered a character in the Wild Card saga that might qualify, assuming you put urban fantasy on the same shelf as space ships. No women. Huh.

A bit ago I was reading a recently-published ~~profic~~ book, and when I came across something triggering my first reaction was an indignant "she didn't warn for that!" (Don't remember what it was, sorry.) Took me a moment to remember that warnings are a fanfic convention, I'd gotten so used to it. Makes me wonder if it's going to spill over into the pro market -- I doubt publishers will start including non-con warnings on the flap, but maybe a third-party site like an imdb.com for books might start up.

~

Fanfic for the most part has no concept of genre whatsoever; I'm wondering now if that's a reason it's more complicated in fandom.

I think you have a point there. Which is why I'm increasingly in favor of "cover art" for fanfic, at least on those occasions when it's well done and appropriate -- because one of the functions of cover art is to give indicators of genre. (Though I am seeing some fanfic these days using "horror" as a content descriptor -- to use a less loaded term than "warning" -- which strikes me as being useful without being spoilerishly explicit. Given that horror as a genre exists, to quote a writer friend of mine, "to scare the bejeezus out of the reader," there's a certain expectation that anybody willingly going through that particular funhouse door has less than the usual grounds for complaint if they don't like what's inside. This wouldn't work as well for some fandoms as for others, though -- it's practically made-to-order for Supernatural, but might be less than useful for something like Glee.)

Also, profic in general is much less about creating a shared safe space than fanfic is; in fact, the explicit intent of a work may be to disturb the audience. (To switch mediums for a minute, one only has to consider something like Picasso's Guernica.)

It's been a long time since I've read serial romance, but there was a fad in the late '80's where the sex was often barely consensual, especially in the bodice-ripper historicals -- the "no, no, oh yes!" sort of situation.

One of the most horrible trigger-related experiences I've ever had was at the hands of pro sff - I picked up Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books unwarned, and I was maybe fourteen? and still riding high on a Tolkien-and-Lewis based wave of sff-is-my-safe-happy-place, and oh man the explicit rape was bad, but the exoneration of the rapist was what sent me into wallbanging and bad-poetry-writing and other trauma responses.

I used to find a lot of rape scenes in sci-fi, but the genre may have changed since I stopped reading a lot of it.

I think you are onto something though. Most accidental common trigger content I find in profic is in the general fiction category, rather than in genre.

(I did get triggered by Rose Madder. Which was my own damn fault. I can't say it didn't say what it was right in the package. I just didn't expect it to portray the mindset of some who had suffered from IPV with such accuracy.)

Off the top of my head, I was completely blindsided by the assault and rape in Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs. The only other books of hers that I've read are the two previous in the series, so I don't know if that's a thing with her or not. But it was also a case where the female protagonist (and I) thought interactions with Male Character A were friendly, where the other male characters thought she was flirting and leading him on. So I guess that should have been my warning? It certainly will be from now on.

Also, someone mentioned God of Small Things. I didn't see that one coming until the start of the chapter, and then only because a friend had recently been assaulted and I was hyper-vigilant about the warning signs in media.

Yes, this. The first one that came to mind for me was Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow/Children of God, which invests you completely in the very three-dimensional main character who gets fucked over (literally) and fucked over again. Literature as much as science fiction, but oh my god OUCH HEART SHREDDED.

Hm.

I feel like -- you are right, and you are wrong, perhaps in a weird way.

One of my objections to the fandom convention of warnings is that you often have a set list of warnings to choose from, and if your totally gross thing isn't on the list, your obligation is discharged. It's like it says "only these 10 things need to be warned for, and if none of them apply, this story is Safe". (I'm still kind of mentally sorting out how generic warnings and trigger warnings differ. I like trigger warnings on meta, links, etc. but not particularly on fiction. But trigger warnings are often very different in content from the traditional kind, too -- like ED trigger warnings, for example. Anyway.)

And it's just not the case that something is Safe if it doesn't hit any of the warnings in the list, but the very existence of the lists changes the entire dialogue and...I'm not explaining myself well, I feel. Maybe I should use a vegetable metaphor.

In profic, by contrast, I go in assuming that anything goes. I might run into something really gross. I might run into something triggering. But since I don't know, and don't really have the option of knowing, I have a different mindset (and a different set of coping mechanisms) going in.

Like. Soup. Vegetable soup, OK? In fandom you get vegetable soup, and the soup has boxes checked off saying what vegetables are in. Corn, peas, celery, carrots, potatoes. That's all you can have in the soup. Except sometimes there are turnips or cauliflower and it never occurred to anyone to think about that so it's like, wtf turnips? This is fandom soup, there are no turnips.

Whereas with profic, I order vegetable soup and all I know is, there are some vegetables up in there. I don't know what they might be. Maybe I will hate them. Maybe not. Maybe, in this soup, those vegetables will be fine.

So I approach the soups differently. Fandom soup claims it is going to tell me about its vegetables, and so I tend to approach it like a familiar soup that is always the same. Profic soup doesn't, so I am more open about what I will accept from it.

I think my metaphor makes less sense than my actual feelings about this but then again, maybe not. Maybe it is the delicious broccoli meta in fandom soup.

That book made me cry. (Iron Kissed.) Not so much from the assault itself, but from her response afterward and her talk with Ben. I was sobbing. I agree that it was extremely sudden and I would have liked to have been warned for it- but I think the way she handled it during and after was pretty brilliant, too.

Those books HURT to read, but are amazing.

She handled it pretty well, imo, and I appreciate that Mercy is still dealing with the after-effects, but I really wish there had been some kind of warning on the jacket cover. Even if I had read the wikipedia page about that book, the vague "tragedy strikes" would probably have been enough to put me on guard.

Here from metafandom. :)

Just wanted to say that Neal Stephenson, who I consider, at least, to be a pretty prolific/popular scifi writer, has included triggery content in several of his novels.

Unfortunately, I feel as though the correlation is actually that scifi novels are less likely to have prominent heroines as opposed to fantasy and romance. And whenever there is a prominent heroine, I am always on edge, just kind of waiting for it to pop out of the story.

Which sucks, because there's little enough good science fiction, even less that centers on women. So trying to find a female protagonist in an untriggery plotline is a little like the needle in the proverbial haystack. But maybe that's just been my experience.

I do like the vegetable soup metaphor suggested by above comment, though.

Oh yes, those books were harrowing/amazing.

I admit I had an idea that The Sparrow was going to be, based on the last line of the opening bit: "They meant no harm." I was doing the read the first page thing in the bookstore, and I read that, my chest went *squinch* in that way, and I shut the book, put it on the To Buy pile, and promised myself a time&place of uninterupped reading for it, because I was pretty sure I'd need it. And I was so right.

This makes perfect sense.

I'm on the finishing stretches of a 20k-word fanfic in which the characters are toddlers. It's babyfic! Light and fluffy and - in chapter one, there are no adults and there's a monster chasing them. In chapter two, the monster starts eating people. In chapter three, the monster kills a baby and one of the characters carries its bloody, broken body around for a thousand words or so until he can work out how to 'bury' it; this is the same character who was recently dying horribly while trapped in an overheating piece of machinery. In chapter four, there's some quicksand...

Nobody's raped or cuts themselves or develops an eating disorder, but I'm sure I should be warning for something in that mess (Lord knows I squicked myself enough times while writing). Just... turnips aren't on the list of checkboxes, so if I do put a warning on it, it has to be of the 'may also contain unlisted vegetables' type.

If we want to keeo our safe space safe, the solution isn't so much 'more checkboxes' as 'ditch the checkboxes and just tell me which parts of the soup you think I might be allergic to'.

This is interesting to me, because I somehow lack the ability to detect the clues you mention being present. Which is why I've often thought that I'd love to see fanfic like warnings on published books.

The only romance I read was about five-six years ago, I would live with my aunt during the week because her place was closer to my work and also she lived next to my elderly grandparents. My aunt reads the cheapo-Harelquin Romance novels at a frankly unbelievable rate--she say's they're like popcorn for her brain. I'd get bored, and read them just because I was desperate to read. I might like better quality romances, but the cheapo-Harlequin's aren't worth the time and effort unless you're desperate. I quickly realized that there are only five or six basic plots, and you can easily tell which one this particular book falls in by the title and blurb. Usually, the only ones that had non-cons of the "no, no, oh yes!" sort were the ones with "revenge" somewhere in the title or blurb. That was nice, it made it easier to avoid. Since those were also the ones where he showed his love through emotional abuse, I gave them a wide berth.

Quite frankly, I'd much rather read romance in science fiction. Particularly fic. There's gotta be something going on, for me, beyond the romance itself.

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