you have ambiguous consent, dub-con, coercion, non-con, rape... all, I would argue, potentially overlapping but not necessarily describing the same thing
Yeah, it's a spectrum. The real problem is they mean such different things to different people, depending on their perspective.
The only way to get a common set of standards and definitions would be to have some kind of fandom equivalent of the MPAA; some independent body that gets to decide how a fanwork should be described. And that's the last thing I'd want to happen to fandom.
Outside the sexual content, for example, I throw a fit (and boycott the fic) if a header spoils me for character death, and won't warn for it either apart from vague 'darkfic/disturbing content'. A lot of people, on the other hand, really want to be warned for this, and making everybody happy just doesn't seem to be possible.
My personal policy is if I can forsee it could cause a reader unknown to me some genuine trauma, I'll warn for it. Which includes character death. But at the same time, I resent having to give my plot away. So I tend to do one of two things: either I'll put more than one death in a story, so the reader is warned for it, but the deaths after the first can still be a surprise, or I'll construct the story in such a way that the reader should expect the blow to fall on Character A and will be surprised when Character B gets it instead. A warning doesn't have to be a spoiler.
no subject
Yeah, it's a spectrum. The real problem is they mean such different things to different people, depending on their perspective.
The only way to get a common set of standards and definitions would be to have some kind of fandom equivalent of the MPAA; some independent body that gets to decide how a fanwork should be described. And that's the last thing I'd want to happen to fandom.
Outside the sexual content, for example, I throw a fit (and boycott the fic) if a header spoils me for character death, and won't warn for it either apart from vague 'darkfic/disturbing content'. A lot of people, on the other hand, really want to be warned for this, and making everybody happy just doesn't seem to be possible.
My personal policy is if I can forsee it could cause a reader unknown to me some genuine trauma, I'll warn for it. Which includes character death. But at the same time, I resent having to give my plot away. So I tend to do one of two things: either I'll put more than one death in a story, so the reader is warned for it, but the deaths after the first can still be a surprise, or I'll construct the story in such a way that the reader should expect the blow to fall on Character A and will be surprised when Character B gets it instead. A warning doesn't have to be a spoiler.