Well, I guess the other issue with warnings IS the interpretation issue. There were some posts on [Unknown site tag] a few years ago about genre expectations and how the header information we put on our fics means that readers tend to go into a fic with certain expectations. Which is fine when a fic is straightforward. Smut, in most cases, is fairly simple, because when the header lists a pairing and a warning for, I don't know, BDSM or sex with cars or something, that's probably what you're going to get.
But there are some labels that can be interpreted different ways, and we could make the warnings more explicit, but then when does it stop being a warning and start being the story in miniature? I remember a friend being frustrated once when someone complained that a deathfic she wrote wasn't warned thoroughly enough. But this reader wanted to know which character died, and how, and who killed him, before even reading the story, and the writer felt that this was too much.
Me, I tend to have trouble just figuring out how to label my fics appropriately, because some of them don't even fit into slash/het/gen easily, let alone the pairing/warning/kink stuff. I wrote a short fic a while ago that was a bit of a "show don't tell" exercise; it was all about hinting that a certain character might be gay, and he might have a bit of a crush on another boy, but he might not, and he might actually just be confused. In the end I just stuck a summary on it with no other labels and the only thing resembling a complaint that I got was a couple of men who read it going "Uh, I liked that fic, but I'm not gay. Just so you know."
no subject
But there are some labels that can be interpreted different ways, and we could make the warnings more explicit, but then when does it stop being a warning and start being the story in miniature? I remember a friend being frustrated once when someone complained that a deathfic she wrote wasn't warned thoroughly enough. But this reader wanted to know which character died, and how, and who killed him, before even reading the story, and the writer felt that this was too much.
Me, I tend to have trouble just figuring out how to label my fics appropriately, because some of them don't even fit into slash/het/gen easily, let alone the pairing/warning/kink stuff. I wrote a short fic a while ago that was a bit of a "show don't tell" exercise; it was all about hinting that a certain character might be gay, and he might have a bit of a crush on another boy, but he might not, and he might actually just be confused. In the end I just stuck a summary on it with no other labels and the only thing resembling a complaint that I got was a couple of men who read it going "Uh, I liked that fic, but I'm not gay. Just so you know."