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This entry deals with a story that has been the subject of some discussion within bandslash fandom. Some of that discussion and certain comment exchanges could certainly be described as wanky. I am responding to the story, which makes this a personal response, but it is less a proscriptive response (you should warn for x, you need to warn in y
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(and, to be fair to the author, a warning of a non-warning is actually a warning, if you consider the things that are usually warned for to all be potentially traumatic: incest, rape, death-fic, etc.)
this, i imagine, is similar to picking up context-cues in a bookstore: it says mystery? maybe the book has murder in it! though this example is heavily flawed because, of course, murder mysteries are generally aimed at an audience that is looking for murder mysteries, and rape-fic is usually aimed at an audience that is looking for rape-fic or hurt/comfort or something along those lines, not an audience that is looking for another fic starring their favorites, panic! and fall out boy!
you know, before a friend of mine started going to NA and AA, i had never even heard of triggering words. so warning because something is "triggering" had never even occured to me; i've always assumed people warned because otherwise... you get a lot of comments along the lines of YOU DIDN'T WARN FOR RAPE. XD ahahah. for serious.
ultimately, i think it's the writer's responsibility to warn for things, however, i would have taken ficsoreal's warning as a warning that stuff was going to happen, and even though i read the story knowing there was rape, that warning would have me looking for the tension that i felt while reading the story, the "oh, when is this going to come together." (the opening scene was also a big hint, to me.)
on the flipside, it is 100% the reader's responsibility to actually read author's notes. XD
anyway. hopefully this made some sense; i have a cold and am feeling a bit incoherent. mostly i wish the story mentioned had had more spencer, as i am not lying when i say that i pretty much read bandom fic for spencer smith.
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I missed the warning myself -- mostly because I tend not to pay attention them, preferring to be fresh or whatever -- and normally I'm very much on the side of "ehhhh." But in this case I had a more angry and visceral reaction, which I was more interested in.
similar to picking up context-cues in a bookstore I think this is an informative comparison, because there seems to be a deeper expectation among fan-readers to provide more explicit directions. I think some of this is because we have an expectation of warnings, as opposed to in a bookstore. I was commenting to someone else that I think of fanfiction as an area where I don't have to be wary, which I hadn't realized before I went through this thought process. I think other people share this.
on the flipside, it is 100% the reader's responsibility to actually read author's notes.
Point! I think there can be an ethics of a reader, too. Whee!
The last part, about Spencer, made me laugh. Thank you.
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The bookstore bit is reminding me of reading the first Stephanie Plum book. It's a crime book, so I was expecting crime, but it's also chick lit, so I was expecting, not exactly light and fluffy crime, but light and fluffy depiction of crime. So it was really shocking when there was brutal, scary stuff. I think I had the same reaction to that as you did to the fic.
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