I think that a lot of the problems we have are because we use the "warnings" list for both hot kinks and cold squicks, but really it's not suitable to combine both like this.
When I'm looking for a story -- let's imagine I'm in the mood for some twincest -- I'll want that to be a major theme in the story. So authors listing all and every possible thing about the story is a bad thing here because it means I'll get a lot of false positives. I don't want to read through a fic and discover that what I'd taken as an advertisement for my kink of the moment isn't a major theme but is in fact only casually mentioned in passing and happens wholly off-stage.
OTOH I have a strong aversion to bloodplay, and a fairly minor reference to it is enough for me to hit the BACK button out of the very hottest scene. My personal squick is not going to be listed on a lot of occasions unless authors get really obsessive about documenting minor events and themes in their fic, which obviously raises issues about spoilers and comprehensiveness.
An obvious approach would be to separate the "adverts" from the "warnings", but this is difficult at the moment, because the current climate of neo-puritanism makes us reluctant to say "here's a really cool rape fic, enjoy!". Having only a warnings list gives us deniability -- but maybe we need to come out of the closet. At the moment I'm often irresistibly reminded of porn from the 1800s where it had to pretend to be "medical research".
Assuming we do take a deep breath and tell the "my kinks are normative" crowd to mind their own effin' business, we could then make things much clearer, by placing the major themes (the "kink list") at the top, and the squick list at the bottom (since being necessarily more comprehensive, it would often be spoilerish.)
At the same time though, I do think we need to beware of volunteering to take on an impossible burden. It is simply not possible to provide a truly comprehensive squick list, and offering - even implicitly - to provide a safe surfing space for everybody is simply not realistic.
More than that, I think it is unwise and unhealthy for the responsibility for what a reader sees to be shifted wholly onto the author. Kink/squick lists should be seen only as a goodwill attempt by the author to be useful.
Kinks & Squicks
I think that a lot of the problems we have are because we use the "warnings" list for both hot kinks and cold squicks, but really it's not suitable to combine both like this.
When I'm looking for a story -- let's imagine I'm in the mood for some twincest -- I'll want that to be a major theme in the story. So authors listing all and every possible thing about the story is a bad thing here because it means I'll get a lot of false positives. I don't want to read through a fic and discover that what I'd taken as an advertisement for my kink of the moment isn't a major theme but is in fact only casually mentioned in passing and happens wholly off-stage.
OTOH I have a strong aversion to bloodplay, and a fairly minor reference to it is enough for me to hit the BACK button out of the very hottest scene. My personal squick is not going to be listed on a lot of occasions unless authors get really obsessive about documenting minor events and themes in their fic, which obviously raises issues about spoilers and comprehensiveness.
An obvious approach would be to separate the "adverts" from the "warnings", but this is difficult at the moment, because the current climate of neo-puritanism makes us reluctant to say "here's a really cool rape fic, enjoy!". Having only a warnings list gives us deniability -- but maybe we need to come out of the closet. At the moment I'm often irresistibly reminded of porn from the 1800s where it had to pretend to be "medical research".
Assuming we do take a deep breath and tell the "my kinks are normative" crowd to mind their own effin' business, we could then make things much clearer, by placing the major themes (the "kink list") at the top, and the squick list at the bottom (since being necessarily more comprehensive, it would often be spoilerish.)
At the same time though, I do think we need to beware of volunteering to take on an impossible burden. It is simply not possible to provide a truly comprehensive squick list, and offering - even implicitly - to provide a safe surfing space for everybody is simply not realistic.
More than that, I think it is unwise and unhealthy for the responsibility for what a reader sees to be shifted wholly onto the author. Kink/squick lists should be seen only as a goodwill attempt by the author to be useful.