30 days of fanfiction meme (day 15)
Jul. 19th, 2011 01:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
Ah, warnings.
When I edited SSBB I had a no warnings policy. Or rather, there was what was known as the Elves Rule, which seemed like a throwaway joke or an euphemism[1] but was really not. The guidelines have since been reorganized, and if you think my memory extends to the letter of this sort of text you are quite wrong XD; but I assume those who care remember what I’m talking about.
When I designed the SSBB ruleset, years before Fandom had its controversy over warnings and triggers, I was concerned - fundamentally, primordially - that it should be a space where people didn’t self-censor or tone down their kinks or worry about offending others with their imagination. I had a suspicion that warning for some stuff and not other stuff propagates, even unconsciously, the idea that the first list is less acceptable than the second list.[2] You do have to balance that consideration against others, which I’ll get to in a second. But in the early days we were thinking about stuff like, is LJ gonna TOS us? Is some outraged Christian mom going to turn us in because there’s nothing stopping under-18s from reading the stories? And my instinctive reaction to the threat of that shiz was and is, NOT BORN WITH ENOUGH MIDDLE FINGERS TO LIFT IN YOUR DIRECTION, SEE YOU IN COURT ASSHOLES. My opinions are cheap, but not many issues make me angry. One of the things I do appreciate about Neil Gaiman is that he has the same position I do - and no surprise either, because if you’re a fan of manga or horror movies or video games, then when they come for your neighbour because he went through customs with a dodgy scanlation on his laptop, you rarely have the luxury of pretending your neighbour is very different from you.
Anyway. I wrote (and applied) the Elves Rule so that people would laugh at it, because that meant they would remember it, and believe it in a way that they wouldn’t if I just said “anything is fine”. There were other considerations. I thought it was likely, for instance, that in the absence of known fandoms and pairings people would start to filter their reading based on warnings and content tags, and I wanted to design against that. Big on serendipity, not big on comfort zones: I wanted people to read stories they would never have chosen to read if they had been told about the contents, and enjoy them. Or be horrified! Dragged down into the mire kicking and screaming! ...At the time I fancied myself a punk situationist, to be honest. Now that it’s Fantasia season again, I’ve been questioning whether my attitude was warped by the fact that 90% of the movies I watched between 1998 and 2006 were within the context of a yearly three-week Asian/horror/schlock/gonzo/indie fest. Basically, if you’re not traumatized, you’re doing it wrong. The censorship board has been running a PSA before the features this year, which garners the same appreciation from the crowd that “Reefer Madness” got from Harold and Kumar. Given this nurturing history, you could have hardly found a worse person than me to judge whether something needs a warning. On a purely practical level, I would have set myself up for failure.
SSBB, which I’m no longer in charge of, still has a no-warnings policy. I see it nowadays rather as I see restaurant allergen warnings: unless you are both ideologically and practically committed to establishing a safe space first and foremost[3], you’re better off not making half-assed gestures. HOWEVER. I’m orthopractic, not orthodox. The couple of times I thought I’d written a fic with genuinely dodgy content, I warned for it on my LJ. And if I had had to struggle with content that I knew was going to upset ppl more than once or twice over the five years that I edited the zine, I probably would have caved. XD; The truth is, SSBB barely ever approaches consent play let alone non-con - enthusiastic rough sex is as far as it goes. It’s remarkable, if you consider the history of yaoi raep through the ages. Perhaps it’s because writers know there are no warnings XD; but IMO much more likely because of the happi endo imperative. With a deadline and a 10K-word limit, your life is easier if you don’t go there.
[1] And in fact quite a few ppl over the years took it as an euphemism for non-con until I said otherwise. ^^; The impression came from the fact that the “what does the big red button do” type of person who tried to test the Elves Rule on elves tended to want to test the rest of the clause while they were at it. You had elves gang-banged by orcs, Santa’s elves sexing up giftees, the works.
[2] This is basically why people got PO’d when the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sherlockbbc mod refused to tell people to stop warning for m/m, with the justification that “some new fans don’t know pairing fic might contain gay sex”. Insert-sarcastic-comment aside, this resulted in said new fans learning from each other that they were “supposed” to warn for m/m, which I figure only set them up for unpleasant surprises once they moved onto other fandoms. (Fans were also told that saying warnings were “advertisements” was disrespectful. AFAIK this didn’t stop anyone from using warnings as such, but there you go.)
[3] Ideologically, I don’t believe Fandom or its peripherals should aspire to be a safe space. Not in this sense, and not as a whole. I appreciate all sides of the argument, though. Ultimately I think an AO3-like compromise on “statistically likely top triggers” (with everything else shunted non-judgmentally into a self-reported tag structure) is ideal, at least for archives and communities that serve a broad audience. Basically you don’t want to sentence anyone to a dearth of choice.
Important to warn for: see footnote [3].
Weirdest thing warned for: probably "blasphemy", in the Black Lagoon fic, which contained both killer nuns and nun killings. Mostly I was tickled that tag existed.
Ah, warnings.
When I edited SSBB I had a no warnings policy. Or rather, there was what was known as the Elves Rule, which seemed like a throwaway joke or an euphemism[1] but was really not. The guidelines have since been reorganized, and if you think my memory extends to the letter of this sort of text you are quite wrong XD; but I assume those who care remember what I’m talking about.
When I designed the SSBB ruleset, years before Fandom had its controversy over warnings and triggers, I was concerned - fundamentally, primordially - that it should be a space where people didn’t self-censor or tone down their kinks or worry about offending others with their imagination. I had a suspicion that warning for some stuff and not other stuff propagates, even unconsciously, the idea that the first list is less acceptable than the second list.[2] You do have to balance that consideration against others, which I’ll get to in a second. But in the early days we were thinking about stuff like, is LJ gonna TOS us? Is some outraged Christian mom going to turn us in because there’s nothing stopping under-18s from reading the stories? And my instinctive reaction to the threat of that shiz was and is, NOT BORN WITH ENOUGH MIDDLE FINGERS TO LIFT IN YOUR DIRECTION, SEE YOU IN COURT ASSHOLES. My opinions are cheap, but not many issues make me angry. One of the things I do appreciate about Neil Gaiman is that he has the same position I do - and no surprise either, because if you’re a fan of manga or horror movies or video games, then when they come for your neighbour because he went through customs with a dodgy scanlation on his laptop, you rarely have the luxury of pretending your neighbour is very different from you.
Anyway. I wrote (and applied) the Elves Rule so that people would laugh at it, because that meant they would remember it, and believe it in a way that they wouldn’t if I just said “anything is fine”. There were other considerations. I thought it was likely, for instance, that in the absence of known fandoms and pairings people would start to filter their reading based on warnings and content tags, and I wanted to design against that. Big on serendipity, not big on comfort zones: I wanted people to read stories they would never have chosen to read if they had been told about the contents, and enjoy them. Or be horrified! Dragged down into the mire kicking and screaming! ...At the time I fancied myself a punk situationist, to be honest. Now that it’s Fantasia season again, I’ve been questioning whether my attitude was warped by the fact that 90% of the movies I watched between 1998 and 2006 were within the context of a yearly three-week Asian/horror/schlock/gonzo/indie fest. Basically, if you’re not traumatized, you’re doing it wrong. The censorship board has been running a PSA before the features this year, which garners the same appreciation from the crowd that “Reefer Madness” got from Harold and Kumar. Given this nurturing history, you could have hardly found a worse person than me to judge whether something needs a warning. On a purely practical level, I would have set myself up for failure.
SSBB, which I’m no longer in charge of, still has a no-warnings policy. I see it nowadays rather as I see restaurant allergen warnings: unless you are both ideologically and practically committed to establishing a safe space first and foremost[3], you’re better off not making half-assed gestures. HOWEVER. I’m orthopractic, not orthodox. The couple of times I thought I’d written a fic with genuinely dodgy content, I warned for it on my LJ. And if I had had to struggle with content that I knew was going to upset ppl more than once or twice over the five years that I edited the zine, I probably would have caved. XD; The truth is, SSBB barely ever approaches consent play let alone non-con - enthusiastic rough sex is as far as it goes. It’s remarkable, if you consider the history of yaoi raep through the ages. Perhaps it’s because writers know there are no warnings XD; but IMO much more likely because of the happi endo imperative. With a deadline and a 10K-word limit, your life is easier if you don’t go there.
[1] And in fact quite a few ppl over the years took it as an euphemism for non-con until I said otherwise. ^^; The impression came from the fact that the “what does the big red button do” type of person who tried to test the Elves Rule on elves tended to want to test the rest of the clause while they were at it. You had elves gang-banged by orcs, Santa’s elves sexing up giftees, the works.
[2] This is basically why people got PO’d when the
sherlockbbc mod refused to tell people to stop warning for m/m, with the justification that “some new fans don’t know pairing fic might contain gay sex”. Insert-sarcastic-comment aside, this resulted in said new fans learning from each other that they were “supposed” to warn for m/m, which I figure only set them up for unpleasant surprises once they moved onto other fandoms. (Fans were also told that saying warnings were “advertisements” was disrespectful. AFAIK this didn’t stop anyone from using warnings as such, but there you go.)[3] Ideologically, I don’t believe Fandom or its peripherals should aspire to be a safe space. Not in this sense, and not as a whole. I appreciate all sides of the argument, though. Ultimately I think an AO3-like compromise on “statistically likely top triggers” (with everything else shunted non-judgmentally into a self-reported tag structure) is ideal, at least for archives and communities that serve a broad audience. Basically you don’t want to sentence anyone to a dearth of choice.
Important to warn for: see footnote [3].
Weirdest thing warned for: probably "blasphemy", in the Black Lagoon fic, which contained both killer nuns and nun killings. Mostly I was tickled that tag existed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-19 09:25 am (UTC)I tend to warn more rather than less but it's less a safe space thing and more because I like a bit of warning myself; I tend to read fanfic with certain expectations and want to know if I should be in the mood for something else. Though over time I'm becoming less enamored of spoilers, warnings included. Still, I'll keep warning if I think a fic warrants it; if it stops me from upsetting some folks, while not hurting anyone else, no reason not to try.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-23 04:44 pm (UTC)