Meanwhile...

[selenak]

In a first for me, I just got served a complaint from the A03 that "The Archive Warnings are designed to inform users that they may encounter the following types of content: underage sex, rape/non-consensual sex, graphic violence, and major character death. We have determined that this work contains content that warrants the "Major Character Death" Archive Warning. If you prefer not to specify the nature of your work, you may use "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings" instead. This warning indicates that you have chosen to opt out of the Archive Warnings system for a particular work, and lets users know to "read at their own risk".

The story in question was a decades old one, Five Things which never happened between Garak and Bashir (Star Trek: DS9), one of my better "Five things...", if I may say so myself. But thinking about it, they're correct, major character death happens in, gulp, not just one of these AUs. Now I'm not writing this to complain - "creator chose not to use archive warning" is an absolutely valid alternative (which I've now taken, because I don't want to warn for major character death in a "Five Things" story, not as a general refusal, just for this type of format) - but because the event reminded me how much fannish culture changed in this regard since I started writing fanfiction. I mean, when I started, there were what in retrospect were ridiculously apologetic warnings - for slash, for example, and yes, I did use them, too, back in the day for the very first slash stories I wrote - but otoh for a bunch of AUs which is what "Five things..." collections of stories were/are, which by definition explore things which never happened in canon, and which each are different from each other, well, it was common more than not that at least one of those things which didn't happen would include death. If I, as a reader, started someone's "Five things..." tale, I would not have been surprised in the slightest to see one of the main characters kick the bucket. (Unless they did in canon, then of course "how x survived" would be the given thing to explore.) Whereas today, evidently one does not expect this - at least not at the AO3 - if either the "Major Character Death" or the "Creator chooses not to use archive warning" are not employed. Okay. Noted.

Moving on to my other beloved space station, andraste has remastered and uploaded her wonderful Babylon 5 vid Brothers in Arms. (With the "Creator chooses not to use archive warnings" tag, because Andraste is smarter than me.) I love it as much as ever, and so will you, if you haven't seen it yet. (If you have, go rewatch! It's gorgeous.)


Brothers In Arms (148 words) by Andraste
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Babylon 5 (TV 1993)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: John Sheridan, Delenn (Babylon 5), Susan Ivanova, Michael Garibaldi, Stephen Franklin, Jeffrey Sinclair, Londo Mollari, G'Kar (Babylon 5), Lennier (Babylon 5), Vir Cotto, Talia Winters, Lyta Alexander
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Embedded Video, Download Available
Summary:

"It's written in the starlight, and every line in your palm." A Babylon 5 fanvid.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Huh. I wouldn't necessarily warn for character death in a "five things that never happened" format either. I mean, definitionally they didn't happen. Though I guess I might slap a CNTW on it to cover my bases. I wonder who complained.

[selenak]

I mean, it's nice that the story still gets read! And maybe the reader expected the five things that didn't happen to be five things in which Garak and Bashir get together. But it's not like I called it "Five ways in which Garak and Bashir find happiness", or marked it "fluff", and then broke a promise, so to speak. (One of the tags I did use when uploading all my old stuff to the AO3 was "Angst".

[ruuger]

Me neither, which is why I immediately went and checked if I had tagged my ancient 5 Things That Happened to Londo Mollari fic correctly.

(as it turned out, I had tagged it with CNTW, which is for me is basically code for Surprise Character Death)

I actually saw a discussion recently on Reddit where someone was arguing that you should not be allowed to use CNTW on character death fics because it's "not enough of a warning". Most people thought this defeated the purpose of CNTW, but there were surprisingly (worryingly?) many people who agreed that character death should always be tagged because it's unfair that people who want to avoid it can't read CNTW fics. What I find interesting is that the whole discussion was about character death, the idea of having similar compulsory warnings about, say, underage or noncon never came up.

[selenak]

. What I find interesting is that the whole discussion was about character death, the idea of having similar compulsory warnings about, say, underage or noncon never came up.

This is both weird and disturbing. So surprise!rape would be okay, but surprise!death is not? If I read a story marked CNTW, I basically am prepared for anything. Though yes, in the majority of cases it tends to be death.