Weighing in on the Warning Discussion
Thing the first: for those of you not following me on twitter, I was not on the metro today. I'm fine and as far as I know, all of my friends are fine. I hope that's true for all my DC people.
Thing the second: You guys, this debate over warnings is just really more upsetting than it probably ought to be for me given that I don't have any personal experience with the things being discussed (and I'm so lucky for that). But, like, no one is saying that writers are OBLIGATED to warn for every little thing or that they're going to get dog-piled if they don't warn for everything that someone, somewhere might find vaguely distasteful. Now, those kind of dog-piles (why didn't you warn for het!) can and do happen, but all kinds of batshit stuff happens in fandom because fandom is batshit. I really don't think that's the core issue here.
As far as I can tell, the argument is mostly that it's the considerate thing to do to warn for guaranteed triggers. Yes, there's some gray area with certain warnings, yes sometimes people make judgment calls and other people disagree. No, fandom is never going to have a universal consensus, not everyone is going to warn, of course fandom is chaotic and is going to continue to be so, I feel like these things are givens that most everybody accepts or at least acknowledges as the state of things? But there *are* some general community standards about warning for noncon, dubcon, guaranteed triggers. Is there really an argument that there *shouldn't* be? Is there any *reason* not to be better to each other than that? It's not a perfect system and it's not an exact science and it's never going to be. All I see anyone really asking for is that we be aware of each other and the fact that we *are* a community and do the best we can to be kind to each other. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.
There was a third thing and that was my recent Gossip Girl marathon, but I think maybe that's a different post.
Thing the second: You guys, this debate over warnings is just really more upsetting than it probably ought to be for me given that I don't have any personal experience with the things being discussed (and I'm so lucky for that). But, like, no one is saying that writers are OBLIGATED to warn for every little thing or that they're going to get dog-piled if they don't warn for everything that someone, somewhere might find vaguely distasteful. Now, those kind of dog-piles (why didn't you warn for het!) can and do happen, but all kinds of batshit stuff happens in fandom because fandom is batshit. I really don't think that's the core issue here.
As far as I can tell, the argument is mostly that it's the considerate thing to do to warn for guaranteed triggers. Yes, there's some gray area with certain warnings, yes sometimes people make judgment calls and other people disagree. No, fandom is never going to have a universal consensus, not everyone is going to warn, of course fandom is chaotic and is going to continue to be so, I feel like these things are givens that most everybody accepts or at least acknowledges as the state of things? But there *are* some general community standards about warning for noncon, dubcon, guaranteed triggers. Is there really an argument that there *shouldn't* be? Is there any *reason* not to be better to each other than that? It's not a perfect system and it's not an exact science and it's never going to be. All I see anyone really asking for is that we be aware of each other and the fact that we *are* a community and do the best we can to be kind to each other. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.
There was a third thing and that was my recent Gossip Girl marathon, but I think maybe that's a different post.