fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2307 ]

[ SECRET POST #2307 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2307 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 101 secrets from Secret Submission Post #330.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Several things:

1. Many people don't read fanfiction because they want to think hard about the plot. I mean, it's free. The quality is (usually) less than published books. (Don't flame me for this, but it's true. It's not professionally edited, we're amateurs, et cetera. Of course, there are many, many exceptions.) They just do it to relax, and they might not appreciate being triggered when they're just doing something in their free time that they don't really want to think hard about.

2. Fan fiction often contains much more explicit material than pro fiction. When's the last time you saw explicit, pornographic material featuring underage characters in pro fiction? Extremely graphic non-con? Vore? Watersports? Scatplay? I've read several of these kinks (watersports, vore) in pro fiction, but they have all used descriptions, too; ways to explicitly show the reader that this contains watersports, or very explicit adult scenes, et cetera. That underage porn I mentioned earlier would probably never be published, at least not by reputable publishers.

(deleted comment)

ummm Lolita contains nothing that would be considered porn. There is an underaged character who is part of a sexual relationship but it's in no way graphic or detailed, certainly not to the extent that fanfic is. And it was (/is) banned in many, many places.

DA

The other thing about professional fiction is that it's a lot easier to go online and find a summary or synopsis that will most likely tell you about all the triggering content the book may contain. I mean, who was the last person who read Lolita without knowing it had an underage girl in sexual situations with an adult man? So someone with triggers can probably discover easily whether a work of professionally published fiction contains something they need to avoid -- not so with fanfic, unless the author warns.

(deleted comment)

Some of us with ptsd simply don't read anything we can't find info on, too. It's really not worth the risk, usually.

This. Also writers and books have reputations via reviews and things (reason why I've never bothered to read ASOFAI even though several friends like it). And yeah, if there's a book I'm unsure about I definitely google it.

A lot of what boggles me is that it seems like all of this only really started a few years ago, and internet fanfiction is... Well, as old as the internet itself, and everyone seemed to do fine before "trigger" even entered common parlance. I remember occasional kerfuffles about readers stumbling upon something unpleasant/just not getting what they expected out of a story, but it was always more of a "clarity would be nice" thing than an "OMG YOU RUINED MY WEEK! TRIGGERS!!1!" thing. I just wonder what happened to giving a clear but non-spoilery description of what your story is about, and just tacking on a "don't like, don't read" if it's about something that might be controversial. That was a good way to go about things, I think.

As for the second point... The internet (and the rest of the world) is fulla plain ol' porn of the non-fan variety. It doesn't seem to generally have warnings, but they tell you what kind of porn it is because, well, that's how people who want it find it. People who don't want it are less likely to find it if they don't go looking for it. Fanporn doesn't seem to be different in that regard.

everyone seemed to do fine before "trigger" even entered common parlance

No we didn't. We weren't fucking 'fine' at all. And fuck you for thinking my flashbacks aren't real. You don't think I'd love to be read and watch some of the things my friends do?

I also didn't realize that tv and movie rating were a recent thing.

I know ratings aren't recent (well, in the scheme of things, they might be), but they don't seem to get as specific as I've seen trigger warnings get, so they don't tend to bother me as much.

I'm all for people knowing what kind of story they're going to be reading, seeing as that's how you generate interest. I just think, if you have a well-written summary, and a possibly a rating if you're someone that uses them/made something in a context where they're generally used, an individual category for specific triggers is redundant at best and spolery/misleading at worst.

In America, TV ratings are a recent thing. They've been around less than 20 years and the subcategories are so few that they're meaningless. S can mean anything from a kiss to rape. Rape would also have V but a show with people kissing and another scene where someone says "I'm going to get you for this!" would carry the same rating and subratings.

And movie ratings (which aren't required by law, only certain movie studios) have been a slowly evolving thing that started as a general guideline of age-appropriateness for the audience (and with a lot less ratings than we use now) into "This is who is allowed to see the movie under what circumstances and these are the exact reasons why." Independent theaters showing movies that don't fall under the corporate-controlled MPAA have been gaining a lot of popularity in large cities and more studios are refusing to join the MPAA as a result.

I wanted to get in to this in my comment, but I thought it would be too tangent-y. You're a cool anon!

Thanks :) And yeah, it is very tangent-y but it's something I feel very strongly about. I hate the TV ratings system because the concept (to help parents shield their children from content they deemed unsuitable) was great but the taxpayer-funded execution fell drastically short at the expense of the viewers. We're left with a big block of meaningless text obscuring the program for 15 seconds and the TV studios gave up trying to film shows in a way that nothing important would be missed a long time ago.

And the MPAA...ugh. Spare me the Hollywood executives who think they know what is best for people. The ratings themselves aren't bad, it's the way the MPAA has strong-armed theaters and retailers into accepting their ratings as law. That's why most major brick and mortar retailers don't carry independent films; they cannot sell DVDs from any of the studios who are part of the MPAA if they sell DVDs from studios that aren't part of the MPAA. It's a hell of a racket and it sickens me how many people just accept it or worse, think it can't be any other way.

It's totally cool, I'm in to tangents. :D

I remember when the TV rating system debuted. I was just a kid at the time, but I remember thinking it was weird and cumbersome even then. Why is it TV-14 when it's equivalent to or even slightly tamer than a film that would be rated PG-13? What is the exact line between Y, Y7, and G? Why are V and FV different things? Isn't that splitting hairs? Ack! So dumb.

And don't get me started on the MPAA. Strong-armed is the perfect word for it. D:

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(Anonymous) - 2013-04-28 00:04 (UTC) - Expand

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starphotographs - 2013-04-28 01:10 (UTC) - Expand

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making_excuses - 2013-04-28 12:54 (UTC) - Expand

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wandering_fox - 2013-04-28 15:37 (UTC) - Expand

...Seriously? Your argument is that it wasn't a clear part of the social contract in the past, so it's not actually all that harmful? Well, congratulations on apparently never having been triggered.

I'm just going on my own (admittedly probably somewhat sketchy, no one has perfect recall) observation that, while there were fewer warnings, there were also fewer people making a stink about warning for everything, so it seems like people were still able to avoid running in to things they'd rather not.

(Then again, I've been dicking around in online fandom for about 13 years, and a lot of how people interact online has changed in that time. Comment sections on everything, etc.)

Um are you serious right now? Even in my 90s fandoms most people would warn for basics like non-con and graphic violence. Sure, not everyone did, but not everyone does now either.

That was a thing, but it also seemed like it would (in most cases I've seen) be more fully integrated in to the summary than modern trigger/content warnings. From what I remember, super-loud warnings were seen as either patronizing or as an attempt to show that the story is super dark and edgy, neither of which seemed to go down well. But hey, I wasn't everywhere at once, so I concede that there might have been a different climate elsewhere.

I dunno, maybe it's less about the warnings themselves than it is about the tone with me? I don't like the roaring-klaxon ALLCAPS!!1! thing going on with them. They kind of remind me of that old CapAlert site. Or of the "TOO GRAPHIC FOR THEATERS!" labels on direct to video horror movies/"WARNING, SUPER DUPER SPICY!" labels on bottles of bland gimmicky hot sauce.

Alright, I see what you mean with the all-caps and things and irrelevance, but to me that seems like a the new type of immature fandom brats.
The lingo has changed but immature fans haven't lbr.

The lingo has changed but immature fans haven't

Truth. :/

People warned for non-con and violence, but that was about it. Certainly, there weren't the present-day laundry lists of harsh language, talk of eating disorders, talk of past abuse, drug use, drinking, politically incorrect opinions, allergic reactions, aliens, etc.

So much this.

And now I'm reminded of something funny I was reading about the content warnings on IMDB. There were things like "a boy burps loudly," which I found especially hilarious for some reason. (WHAT IF THE BURP STARTLES YOU?! WHAT THEN?)

I have nothing to say but LOL!

And... burrrrRRRPPPP!!!
XD

This. I've been reading fic for more than 15 years and warning for those two things was always a thing, but never really anything beyond that.

Maybe we go in quite different fandoms because bringing out the laundry list of every possible little trigger is not something I've seen much of, though it seems to go hand-in-hand with tumblr-style tagging irrelevance.

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