Warnings in Fanfic
Never thought about warnings, mostly because I don't like spoiling the surprise :)
Yeah, no.
I'm well aware that this particular subject has been meta'd to death already, but seriously. There are people in fandom who might get triggered by particular subjects, or just have their entire day ruined by stumbling unprepared into death fic. You could argue that, if someone is that sensitive, they should stay away from fic, period. Except, that'd be like half of fandom, so not really.
As for not spoiling the surprise, there's always the option of putting the warnings under an lj-cut and leave enough space so that no one stumbles over it if they don't want to. Or saying that "this story might trigger something" or "this isn't a happy story." Saying that something is angst might be a first step, but since there are plenty of stories out there that have both angst and a happy ending it doesn't exactly tell me if everyone will die a messy death or not.
People ask for warnings again and again for a reason. And it's your prerogative as an author to drop common courtesy in favour of keeping the reader guessing, but it's also my prerogative as a reader to skip the hell over your post and remember you as a writer I'm going to ignore.
This post has been brought to you by an entry on a fairly large community that the author didn't even bother tagging (and where Rodney doesn't appear to be dead but it's impossible to say for sure), and the fact that I'm cranky like you wouldn't believe today.
ETA: As velocitygrass points out, one of, if not the most widely and insistently recommended story in SGA fandom is synecdochic's Freedom's Just Another Word etc. pp. A death fic. Which makes the argument that no one will read it if it's character death kind of moot.
Yeah, no.
I'm well aware that this particular subject has been meta'd to death already, but seriously. There are people in fandom who might get triggered by particular subjects, or just have their entire day ruined by stumbling unprepared into death fic. You could argue that, if someone is that sensitive, they should stay away from fic, period. Except, that'd be like half of fandom, so not really.
As for not spoiling the surprise, there's always the option of putting the warnings under an lj-cut and leave enough space so that no one stumbles over it if they don't want to. Or saying that "this story might trigger something" or "this isn't a happy story." Saying that something is angst might be a first step, but since there are plenty of stories out there that have both angst and a happy ending it doesn't exactly tell me if everyone will die a messy death or not.
People ask for warnings again and again for a reason. And it's your prerogative as an author to drop common courtesy in favour of keeping the reader guessing, but it's also my prerogative as a reader to skip the hell over your post and remember you as a writer I'm going to ignore.
This post has been brought to you by an entry on a fairly large community that the author didn't even bother tagging (and where Rodney doesn't appear to be dead but it's impossible to say for sure), and the fact that I'm cranky like you wouldn't believe today.
ETA: As velocitygrass points out, one of, if not the most widely and insistently recommended story in SGA fandom is synecdochic's Freedom's Just Another Word etc. pp. A death fic. Which makes the argument that no one will read it if it's character death kind of moot.