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15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
Sunday of VividCon seems like a good time to have my very own Warnings debate, right? Right.
I warn. I try to warn for the things I can anticipate people being upset by. Death and rape seem to me to be the biggies, although I don't think I've ever written a story that I actually clicked the AO3 Rape/Non-Con tickybox for; I'm usually operating in some kind of gray area involving, you know, soul-bonded wolves or amnesia or something. When I was writing What to Do After Firing I had nights where I spent more time worrying about warning than I spent actually writing which turns out not to be a very efficient way to get anything written.
I think in practice the things I have warned for most are incest and (in a hey, this is NSFW, way) explicit sex. In general, I want people to be able to make an informed decision about whether my story is going to be their cup of tea.
Mind you, there was one time when I totally manipulated a warning to try to mess with people reading my story--lo these nearly eight years ago, when I first posted That Good Night: A Death Story, I had absolutely no faith in the story. I was, especially, worried that people would not take it seriously (even though I was the only one who knew that it had, in a way, started life as a screwball comedy) and would laugh off Ray's fear of death which, uh, in retrospect I do not know what I was thinking, but anyway. I thought that no one would take the story seriously if they didn't think Ray was going to die at the end--so I warned for death.
I got a lot of really nice people assuring me--and other readers put off by the death warning--that I'd added that warning by mistake or in a fit of overzealous concern, and it wasn't necessary (spoiler: Ray doesn't die at the end). Eventually I moved the warning into the sub-title, and on the AO3 what I actually warned for was suicidal thoughts (of which there are ... many).
Ahem. Anyway. Weirdest thing I have ever warned for. Apart from "dub-con gangbang of the soul-bonded wolf in heat variety" there was "lack of closure, dubious historicity, vodka, sodomy, and the lash" and, oh, well, it seemed like I posted three Vorkosigan Saga stories more or less right in a row where the respective warnings were "Warning: Prince Serg" and "Warning: Ges Vorrutyer" and "Warning: Canon attempted infanticide, incongruous cuteness." That was sort of a strange month for warnings.
ETA: Papercuts! How did I forget warning for papercuts? That's definitely my favorite.
( All 30 questions under the cut. )
Sunday of VividCon seems like a good time to have my very own Warnings debate, right? Right.
I warn. I try to warn for the things I can anticipate people being upset by. Death and rape seem to me to be the biggies, although I don't think I've ever written a story that I actually clicked the AO3 Rape/Non-Con tickybox for; I'm usually operating in some kind of gray area involving, you know, soul-bonded wolves or amnesia or something. When I was writing What to Do After Firing I had nights where I spent more time worrying about warning than I spent actually writing which turns out not to be a very efficient way to get anything written.
I think in practice the things I have warned for most are incest and (in a hey, this is NSFW, way) explicit sex. In general, I want people to be able to make an informed decision about whether my story is going to be their cup of tea.
Mind you, there was one time when I totally manipulated a warning to try to mess with people reading my story--lo these nearly eight years ago, when I first posted That Good Night: A Death Story, I had absolutely no faith in the story. I was, especially, worried that people would not take it seriously (even though I was the only one who knew that it had, in a way, started life as a screwball comedy) and would laugh off Ray's fear of death which, uh, in retrospect I do not know what I was thinking, but anyway. I thought that no one would take the story seriously if they didn't think Ray was going to die at the end--so I warned for death.
I got a lot of really nice people assuring me--and other readers put off by the death warning--that I'd added that warning by mistake or in a fit of overzealous concern, and it wasn't necessary (spoiler: Ray doesn't die at the end). Eventually I moved the warning into the sub-title, and on the AO3 what I actually warned for was suicidal thoughts (of which there are ... many).
Ahem. Anyway. Weirdest thing I have ever warned for. Apart from "dub-con gangbang of the soul-bonded wolf in heat variety" there was "lack of closure, dubious historicity, vodka, sodomy, and the lash" and, oh, well, it seemed like I posted three Vorkosigan Saga stories more or less right in a row where the respective warnings were "Warning: Prince Serg" and "Warning: Ges Vorrutyer" and "Warning: Canon attempted infanticide, incongruous cuteness." That was sort of a strange month for warnings.
ETA: Papercuts! How did I forget warning for papercuts? That's definitely my favorite.
( All 30 questions under the cut. )