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Warnings, recs, and debates
Jun. 25th, 2009 12:05 pmSince fandom at large seems to be having a big warnings debate right now, it's a good a time as any to state my own policy on this. Which is mine, and not meant to be a standard for anyone else. So:
Spoilers: of course. I want to be warned as well in other people's fanfiction, after all; not everyone is on the same page with their canon knowledge/viewing/reading.
Character deaths: no warnings. I don't often kill off characters in my fanfiction, but sometimes I do, and when I do, it's not something I want to announce right at the start of my story.
Slash or Het: if it's the main focus of the story, I list the pairing(s) in question. (Which, as I'm mostly a gen writer, isn't often the case, but I have written the occasional pairings-focused story as well.) If it's a story where something else is the focus - adventure, character exploration, whatever - and there are simply some references to characters X and Y being a couple, then there is no X/Y listing, no matter which gender X and Y have.
Violence and traumatic non-sexual events: depends on the fandom in question, and the characters in question. For example, were I to write story in which Magneto reflects on his childhood, and the very summary would say "Event Z reminds Magneto of his childhood", I wouldn't think it necessary to warn for holocaust imagery because I'd expect potential readers in X-Men fandom to be familiar with the fact Magneto spent a part of his childhood in a concentration camp. If, on the other hand, I were to write a Doctor Who story in which the Doctor and *insert Companion of choice* end up in Poland, 1944, I would add a warning in the header, because your avarage DW fanfic readers don't necessarily expect details about the Shoah in their fanfiction.
Rape: I was going to write I would add a warning, but looking back on my fanfiction, I didn't the two times I actually wrote about sex which was rape. In one instance, it happened without the consent of one of the parties involved, against her will - there is no physical violence, but it's literally one of these alien possession cases), and the (very) short story is from the pov of the alien possessing the body of the not consenting woman to have sex with someone else. This was Cold Heaven, a DS9 drabble/mini-vignette about something that's revealed at the start of the seventh season of DS9. In this case, I would cite the Magneto/Holocaust imagery precedent in that DS9 fanfiction readers would already be familiar with the event in question from the show and in a vignette which deals with it would not be needed to be warned about it. Some with the other story in which rape (and other, non-sexual violence) is a plot point, a Highlander story, Death and the Maiden. Since the summary says that this is about Cassandra's life with Methos, again I felt I could rely on the fact readers would remember the episodes in question, in which Methos' behaviour during his time as a Horseman was revealed. I don't go into graphic details in the story, but I do make it clear what is happening.
...in conclusion: no extra warnings for canonical rapes, but were I to write about rape which hasn't happened in the show/book/film in question, I would warn.
Underage sex: Haven't written fanfiction about it yet. In some hypothetical scenario where I want to write a story about a teenage character having sex, the teenager in question would have to be younger than 16 for me to bother with an explicit "underage sex" warning instead of a simple pairing listing.
Incest:Not if it's subtext. Would get its own warning, yes.
***
On to the more joyful business of recommending. The latest Multiverse ficathon entry is an absolutely fabulous crossover between Star Trek and Blake's 7. If you're familiar with B7, you know that the B7 Federation has the same symbol the ST one has, just tilted sideways, and is in many ways the dark mirror to it. If you're familiar with Star Trek in general and TOS in particular, you know there is such a thing as the Mirrorverse, named after the TOS episode Mirror, Mirror, in which our heroes are confronted with their evil doppelgangers. Can you guess where this is going? Run and read it immediately:
Three Fates, Watching.
Absolutely amazing.
In non-fanfiction news, we're having a discussion about Delenn and Londo over at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
b5_revisited which you might find interesting, here, specifically about the ways the characters deal with guilt, responsibility and atonment.
Spoilers: of course. I want to be warned as well in other people's fanfiction, after all; not everyone is on the same page with their canon knowledge/viewing/reading.
Character deaths: no warnings. I don't often kill off characters in my fanfiction, but sometimes I do, and when I do, it's not something I want to announce right at the start of my story.
Slash or Het: if it's the main focus of the story, I list the pairing(s) in question. (Which, as I'm mostly a gen writer, isn't often the case, but I have written the occasional pairings-focused story as well.) If it's a story where something else is the focus - adventure, character exploration, whatever - and there are simply some references to characters X and Y being a couple, then there is no X/Y listing, no matter which gender X and Y have.
Violence and traumatic non-sexual events: depends on the fandom in question, and the characters in question. For example, were I to write story in which Magneto reflects on his childhood, and the very summary would say "Event Z reminds Magneto of his childhood", I wouldn't think it necessary to warn for holocaust imagery because I'd expect potential readers in X-Men fandom to be familiar with the fact Magneto spent a part of his childhood in a concentration camp. If, on the other hand, I were to write a Doctor Who story in which the Doctor and *insert Companion of choice* end up in Poland, 1944, I would add a warning in the header, because your avarage DW fanfic readers don't necessarily expect details about the Shoah in their fanfiction.
Rape: I was going to write I would add a warning, but looking back on my fanfiction, I didn't the two times I actually wrote about sex which was rape. In one instance, it happened without the consent of one of the parties involved, against her will - there is no physical violence, but it's literally one of these alien possession cases), and the (very) short story is from the pov of the alien possessing the body of the not consenting woman to have sex with someone else. This was Cold Heaven, a DS9 drabble/mini-vignette about something that's revealed at the start of the seventh season of DS9. In this case, I would cite the Magneto/Holocaust imagery precedent in that DS9 fanfiction readers would already be familiar with the event in question from the show and in a vignette which deals with it would not be needed to be warned about it. Some with the other story in which rape (and other, non-sexual violence) is a plot point, a Highlander story, Death and the Maiden. Since the summary says that this is about Cassandra's life with Methos, again I felt I could rely on the fact readers would remember the episodes in question, in which Methos' behaviour during his time as a Horseman was revealed. I don't go into graphic details in the story, but I do make it clear what is happening.
...in conclusion: no extra warnings for canonical rapes, but were I to write about rape which hasn't happened in the show/book/film in question, I would warn.
Underage sex: Haven't written fanfiction about it yet. In some hypothetical scenario where I want to write a story about a teenage character having sex, the teenager in question would have to be younger than 16 for me to bother with an explicit "underage sex" warning instead of a simple pairing listing.
Incest:
***
On to the more joyful business of recommending. The latest Multiverse ficathon entry is an absolutely fabulous crossover between Star Trek and Blake's 7. If you're familiar with B7, you know that the B7 Federation has the same symbol the ST one has, just tilted sideways, and is in many ways the dark mirror to it. If you're familiar with Star Trek in general and TOS in particular, you know there is such a thing as the Mirrorverse, named after the TOS episode Mirror, Mirror, in which our heroes are confronted with their evil doppelgangers. Can you guess where this is going? Run and read it immediately:
Three Fates, Watching.
Absolutely amazing.
In non-fanfiction news, we're having a discussion about Delenn and Londo over at
b5_revisited which you might find interesting, here, specifically about the ways the characters deal with guilt, responsibility and atonment.
