I realised that as attached as people can be to OTPs, reading Sasuke/Naruto when you thought you were getting Naruto/Sasuke isn't likely to be a traumatic experience.
Oh, I don't know. When I was in Stargate SG-1 fandom there were plenty of fans who claimed to be seriously traumatised by any hint of het romance in a fic...
Or to put it even more simply, labels are there to attract readers and warnings are there to, in a sense, turn them away.
Yes, that sums it up pretty well. I have issues with "warning" for everything myself; generally if there's something I don't want to give away I make the warning as vague as I can and add a note that the reader can always ask me about specific triggers.
The thing is, for most things, whether you call it a warning or a label, it serves the same purpose. For some reason piss-play is quite popular in Supernatural slash fics; but I can take the label as a warning to hit the back button just as well as someone else might take it as an enticement to read.
But what happens when the warning/label means different things to different people? In the Dean/Jess story I linked to above, is that really enough to be triggering for someone? If so, if it should have a warning on it, that warning can't serve the dual purpose of attracting a reader, like me, who enjoys dub-con...because to me that story is fully consensual.
I doubt we'll ever get a real consensus in fandom on the subject of warnings. This is just me realising the issue is more complex than I'd realised before.
no subject
Oh, I don't know. When I was in Stargate SG-1 fandom there were plenty of fans who claimed to be seriously traumatised by any hint of het romance in a fic...
Or to put it even more simply, labels are there to attract readers and warnings are there to, in a sense, turn them away.
Yes, that sums it up pretty well. I have issues with "warning" for everything myself; generally if there's something I don't want to give away I make the warning as vague as I can and add a note that the reader can always ask me about specific triggers.
The thing is, for most things, whether you call it a warning or a label, it serves the same purpose. For some reason piss-play is quite popular in Supernatural slash fics; but I can take the label as a warning to hit the back button just as well as someone else might take it as an enticement to read.
But what happens when the warning/label means different things to different people? In the Dean/Jess story I linked to above, is that really enough to be triggering for someone? If so, if it should have a warning on it, that warning can't serve the dual purpose of attracting a reader, like me, who enjoys dub-con...because to me that story is fully consensual.
I doubt we'll ever get a real consensus in fandom on the subject of warnings. This is just me realising the issue is more complex than I'd realised before.