Warnings...

My interest in this kind of stems from Livejournal fandom and the endless warning/trigger debates, which do seem kind of ridiculous in this fandom, where the potentially traumatising-for-life elements of Haer'Dalis' stupid smug selection whistle and carrion crawlers are canon. A couple of times in the archives I've seen people expressing sentiments on graphic violence that cut a bit close to the bone, or philosophy that love scenes don't need to get too detailed on bodyparts to be hot. Here's two questions: what sort of content do you personally find disturbing in your reading; and when writing, what indications if any do you prefer to leave the reader?

Which of the following hopelessly stereotyped positions is closest to your reasonable and moderate view?

Cutting enemies into bloody chunks is a perfectly healthy part of fantasy worlds, but the least description of kissing or sexuality is evil and will corrupt the children.

Rape and torture and wading through otyugh slime are the sort of things that always make a story super-realistic. Only shallow and immature children can't appreciate grim dark unrelenting dark darkness.

Warnings are for the weak.

The definition of censorship is criticising my warnings list or summary in any way or in managing a private website in some way I happen to disagree with.

I warn for everything that could possibly traumatise someone, somewhere, anywhere--hitting people, gay people existing, quoting Swinburne, kissing unshaven Anomen, characters people don't like, dirty clothing, haircuts, not speaking a foreign language, surprise endings, unexpected goldfish insertion. If your warning list's not longer than the fic itself, you're probably going to hurt someone's feelings.

Can you read? Expecting to be warned for a graphic torture scene after a tame beginning is exactly like expecting to be warned for murder in Agatha Christie.

I always think of the children when I write. Just like Neb.

What do you personally define as horror/trauma?

Here's two questions: what sort of content do you personally find disturbing in your reading; and when writing, what indications if any do you prefer to leave the reader?

Heck, I've ranted about this a lot in the past. I remember having a very visceral reaction to a story where Jaheira was disemboweled in a very graphic way, along with several other NPC's, without any warning given. I was quite young then and by now have more tolerance towards graphic violence in stories, but there are still times where it makes me uncomfortable. I think my issue is that I always keep wondering about the writer's intent whenever I encounter graphic violence or sex. Does it contribute to the story or is it just titillation? 9 times out of 10, I find it doesn't add anything at all to the story and is just cheap means to shock or gross out the reader. Don't try to point that out to the writer, though - as far as they are concerned, they are writing deep art that isn't for faint-hearted weak-stomached pussies with no appreciation for their greatness. Ok. Fair enough. I move on to another story, no big deal.

As far as my own writing goes, while I do include some violence and some smut, I don't think that I have ever managed to gross out anyone in 10 years, so it's all probably very tame. I have managed to upset and depress people by inflicting great emotional anguish and psychological torment onto my characters, for which I am rather proud. I find that takes a greater degree of writing skill than graphically chopping off someone's private parts and making them eat it. (But hey, I'm not a published writer, so maybe I'm wrong)

Cutting enemies into bloody chunks is a perfectly healthy part of fantasy worlds, but the least description of kissing or sexuality is evil and will corrupt the children.

Yeah, I know there's a surprising amount of people who honestly do believe this. If that's not a double-standard at its finest, I don't know what is. Ah, thank you HBO for Game of Thrones. I can have my violence and I can have my mindless fucking.

Rape and torture and wading through otyugh slime are the sort of things that always make a story super-realistic. Only shallow and immature children can't appreciate grim dark unrelenting dark darkness.

Yeah, and I've seen people who state this fail pathetically at writing rape or torture victims. They simply have no clue about realistic reaction to such horrific experiences.

I warn for everything that could possibly traumatise someone, somewhere, anywhere--hitting people, gay people existing, quoting Swinburne, kissing unshaven Anomen, characters people don't like, dirty clothing, haircuts, not speaking a foreign language, surprise endings, unexpected goldfish insertion. If your warning list's not longer than the fic itself, you're probably going to hurt someone's feelings.

With the growing self-entitlement of the internet population and the amount of people with the sole intent of searching for something to get offended about, I can sort of understand the temptation, but ultimately, this sort of apologetic pandering is the worst kind of way to deal with these people. And even if you would write two hundred warnings, you'd probably forget to warn that your character can be seen wearing socks in one brief episode, and thus will still end up upsetting the Sock-hating minority league who sincerely believe that wearing socks is the greatest sin in the eyes of their sock-hating deity.

I guess my own rule when deciding about inclusion of warnings is, basically, "Don't be an idiot". Not wanting to be presumptious, I can however see that this rule probably won't help 75% of the human population.

I feel that I have fairly average reactions to things, so I nowadays, I generally will warn about things that I would be disturbed by, if I include them in a story. It wasn't always, but I've grown to appreciate it in other stories, and believe that one good turn deserves another. It's also good to know your audience. Like here, I've learned that if my story has harsh cursing in it, it is polite for me to say so. Since politeness is in short supply on the internet, I have no problem with doing this.

I find that takes a greater degree of writing skill than graphically chopping off someone's private parts and making them eat it.

I agree with you there that there are so many more things you can do to characters than shocking forms of sexual assault. I remember someone pointing this out about George RR Martin; his ASoIaF series is based on the Wars of the Roses and there is a lot of rape, especially against the female characters: but many of the actual historical women like Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville were raped a lot less than their equivalents like Cersei.

With the growing self-entitlement of the internet population and the amount of people with the sole intent of searching for something to get offended about, I can sort of understand the temptation, but ultimately, this sort of apologetic pandering is the worst kind of way to deal with these people. And even if you would write two hundred warnings, you'd probably forget to warn that your character can be seen wearing socks in one brief episode, and thus will still end up upsetting the Sock-hating minority league who sincerely believe that wearing socks is the greatest sin in the eyes of their sock-hating deity.

*grin* I sort of like to think of it as, what if Shakespeare warned in this tradition?

Characters: Titus Andronicus, Marcus Andronicus, Saturninus, Bassianus, Tamora, Aaron, Lavinia, Demetrius, Chiron, Lucius, Young Lucius, Others.
Kinks: Warfare, mutilation, rape, goths who are actual goths, dysfunctional families, murder, unintentional incestuous cannibalism, religious sacrifice, non-con threesome involving two brothers, deception, costuming, threat of hanging, forced starvation, mention of lute-playing
Content notes: Character death. Unhappy ending. Mentions of previous sexual relationships between adults, except for Lavinia, who is technically underage but absolutely not treated as a kid by the narrative. Threat to kill an infant via hanging. Trigger warning for the anti-fox-hunting lobby as hunting is included although actual cute animals are not textually harmed. Trigger warning for racism and sexism displayed against Aaron and Tamora. Trigger warning for slut-shaming by Lavinia.

Title: Hamlet.
Warning: Everybody dies.

But I try to keep telling myself that this kind of extensive warning tradition probably comes from porn stories, where people are searching for a very specific combination of fetishes and don't care much for the story itself, so it makes sense in that context for writers to list everything that goes on including the thing with the goats.

I don't mind leaving basic warnings for violence, sex, sexual assault, writing a summary, and choosing a rating for a fic that the amount of swearing affects, but I don't like long warnings--they seem to spoil plots. I think often you can tell from a story's tone roughly where it's headed--mentally gauging the likelihood of a bittersweet or unhappy ending, for instance. I'm not very sensitive to story content myself, though; there are a couple of emotional scenarios I mentally recoil over but none of those are standard warnings anyway.

Edited by Blue-Inked_Frost, 15 April 2012 - 12:01 AM.

But I try to keep telling myself that this kind of extensive warning tradition probably comes from porn stories, where people are searching for a very specific combination of fetishes and don't care much for the story itself, so it makes sense in that context for writers to list everything that goes on including the thing with the goats.

"I just want to see him deny it!"

Ahem.

What I've usually seen is separate lists for triggers and kinks.

The thing about triggers is that they can be very idiosyncratic. I know someone who can't handle stories where a dog dies. Someone else needs to know going into a story that dead daddy issues are a major part of the story. My own triggers are, um, unusual, and thankfully not often found in fic. (RL, OTOH.... *shudder*) I've been seeing these discussions for more than two decades now, ever since PTSD started entering the public consciousness. I think it's more an accretion effect. Someone in fic group Q needs warnings for action A, someone else will flip out if surprised by action B, another would really appreciate it if the group members warn her about situation C. Those become habit and are carried to group H by someone in both groups, others in group H pick up the idea that A, B, and C should be included in warnings as well as D and E because of issues within this group, and someone else carries all five to yet another group. Eventually, things reach a breaking point, and you get the classic LJ warning fight.

I can't find a link now, but these things do spill over into published fiction. There was an internet firestorm over a cat dying in one of Nora Roberts' books a few years ago. La Nora was incredulous. She quickly recovered her aplomb and reassured everyone that the cat had had a very long and happy imaginary life prior to appearing in the book.

Speaking for myself, I generally leave a note whenever I think I might be coming close the site's "do not cross" line. It's not so much about what I personally think is disturbing/graphic/etc. as it is trying to respect the rules laid down by the site management. For Gamejag, I've always dialed that at the PG-13 level. So, if there's strong profanity or anything that might be of a mature nature, I just post something in the notemeal before the story.

I've really only had two cases where I felt that I would have put a warning up regardless of site standards. The first was in my short story "Crimes of Passion", because of the sexual themes and because of the purposely unglamorous depiction of violence I used in a murder-fight scene near the end of the tale. The intent was to make the situation as realistic as possible, in the sense that there is nothing heroic and plenty that is ugly about one person trying to kill another, IRL. The other instance was a chapter in my defunct serial. Jaheira suffers a psychic assault from one of the feral halflings and her grief and feelings over losing Khalid and her budding affection for Theodoric are collectively used against her. I feel I handled the matter tastefully and with respect to the characters. The sheer creepiness of the scene, though, prompted me to flag the chapter for a heads up.


As for what I find horrible/traumatic...it depends. I'm not normally bothered by graphic violence in print. Cinematic gore sometimes makes me queasy, but it doesn't frighten me the least bit. About my only reaction is when something gory is thrown in for cheap effect rather than adding anything to the story. That irritates the bejeezus out of me (I'm talking about you, Eli Roth!)

Probably the most disturbing/traumatic thing I've read in my life is the now-infamous anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. There were times I had to put the book down because I felt almost as if I was suffocating. Terrifying premise.

I just try to use common sense - and also to take into account where I am posting. On a personal level, pretty much the only thing that can trigger me is graphic rape/sexual assault: someone once linked me to a story of theirs and neglected to mention that it involved a girl being gangraped and... well... let's just say that my brain could not handle those images. So I always appreciate warnings for that kind of stuff, if only so I can avoid it if I'm having a bad day.

My own warnings tend to be fairly general. I'll warn for sexually explicit content, especially stuff involving specific kinks, graphic violence, rape or attempted rape, excessive cursing. I would rather be overly cautious with my warnings than have something I have written offend of upset someone when it could have been avoided.

I think it's more an accretion effect. Someone in fic group Q needs warnings for action A, someone else will flip out if surprised by action B, another would really appreciate it if the group members warn her about situation C. Those become habit and are carried to group H by someone in both groups, others in group H pick up the idea that A, B, and C should be included in warnings as well as D and E because of issues within this group, and someone else carries all five to yet another group. Eventually, things reach a breaking point, and you get the classic LJ warning fight.

I like this explanation for how it can wind up to infamous-type warning requests of "How DARE you fail to warn for [Character] getting a haircut! He's less hot! I'm traumatised!" (I'm not making this up--someone asked for a haircut warning on LJ. And not in the sense of having a personally traumatic past experience involving haircuts.) One of the blogs I follow instituted a practice of warning for childbirth because one of its frequent posters requested it, and that was fine for that blog. If what suits the people at one particular community is a truly ridiculous number of warnings rules, what can you do but choose or not to read it?

I can't find a link now, but these things do spill over into published fiction. There was an internet firestorm over a cat dying in one of Nora Roberts' books a few years ago. La Nora was incredulous. She quickly recovered her aplomb and reassured everyone that the cat had had a very long and happy imaginary life prior to appearing in the book.

I don't enjoy Nora Roberts' books, but on the Internet she seems to come off as a very cool person.

Poppy Z. Brite's work involving serial killers and going into a lot of detail can squick me, but it's generally only scatological fetishes that make me put books down--I've tried to read some of de Sade's work and find the atheism parts intriguing but the porn incredibly boring and repetitive. Other than that, it's all about psychology and if the writing's good enough to make me nervous about the thing in my wardrobe. XD

I tend to be like Silver in my warnings. I will warn if I'm writing something with a specific kink for someone, heavy sexual content, etc. If I am writing something that will be posted for a fiction exchange or fest that has participants that are under 18, I will put more warnings rather than less. Common sense prevails for me.

I appreciate warnings for sexual content, rape, and graphic violence in other people's work so I can avoid it if it isn't my cup of tea

I also, in certain fandoms appreciate warnings if something is going to be OOC. To me there is nothing worse that going to read a story that looks interesting only to find that the characters are out of character, and Mary Sues are running rampant.

(It's nice to be back here...it's been way too long)

I also, in certain fandoms appreciate warnings if something is going to be OOC. To me there is nothing worse that going to read a story that looks interesting only to find that the characters are out of character, and Mary Sues are running rampant.

Until you get the writer who is convinced that her characters are NOT OOC and believes a suggestion that there's a Sue is a personal insult that can only be discharged by hair combs at twenty paces.

(It's nice to be back here...it's been way too long)

WB!

I don't think I met you the first time, but welcome back, Lady Caetlyn!

I also, in certain fandoms appreciate warnings if something is going to be OOC. To me there is nothing worse that going to read a story that looks interesting only to find that the characters are out of character, and Mary Sues are running rampant.

Those warnings are noncontroversial because everybody wants them. *g* There's the warnings for spelling and grammar equivalent to running the story backwards and forwards through an Urdu automatic translator seventeen times, the warnings for Dracos who buy their trousers out of high quality cowhide stores, the warnings for silver-eyed half-elves half-unicorns with a propensity to sob in the moonlight, the warnings for unexpected weeping roosters and sparkly taco shows...

I don't think I met you the first time, but welcome back, Lady Caetlyn!

Thank you very much.

Those warnings are noncontroversial because everybody wants them. *g* There's the warnings for spelling and grammar equivalent to running the story backwards and forwards through an Urdu automatic translator seventeeqn times, the warnings for Dracos who buy their trousers out of high quality cowhide stores, the warnings for silver-eyed half-elves half-unicorns with a propensity to sob in the moonlight, the warnings for unexpected weeping roosters and sparkly taco shows...

The grammar/spelling warnings are one of my pet peeves. Isn't that what a beta reader is for? But of course you forget the warnings for Dracos and Harrys who are menwhores, and vampire-elf hybrids who are also super powerful witches beloved by everyone.

I've participated in several fests in other fandoms, and some of the writing and warnings just crack me up.

Until you get the writer who is convinced that her characters are NOT OOC and believes a suggestion that there's a Sue is a personal insult that can only be discharged by hair combs at twenty paces

Those just tend to amuse me, unless I'm in a really bad mood and then I will leave very constructive criticism. It seems that most fandoms are full of those.

Edited by Lady_Caetlyn, 21 April 2012 - 03:08 AM.

Go on vacation and interesting threads pop up. I swear, if the beer hadn't been so good...

As someone who enjoys to throw in a good combat scene here and there, sometimes with things getting bloody, I've always tried to work off of the community's standards and the 'prime time TV' standards. And I don't mean the modern ones, where you can casually describe sodomy and show fully dismembered bodies in all their 'glory' (even if it is in a clinical sense) while having to guard against anything remotely smutty, but ones that were a little more restrictive.

If there's something that'd be pressing against either of those standards, yeah, I'll toss in a mention. I try not to get into too much detail so I don't spoil the story, but just to give people a heads up that there might be a little steam or blood or whatever. Although I try to keep that limited to what's actually necessary to the story. And when I've wandered over to other communities, I've always appreciated similar warnings (especially if one's stealing some time away from work).

But in general, I think it's a matter of common courtesy. The don't be an idiot rule is a good one, but at the same time, I'm not going to get all bent out of shape if there are no warnings. Most books don't come with them (although warnings for 'Warning, Book Consists of Written Crap' would be nice. And also, if someone had warned me about John Ringo... Oh, no John Ringo. Oh no...

OH JOHN RINGO NO. Now that's an entertaining warning! I love reading that book review.

But in general, I think it's a matter of common courtesy. The don't be an idiot rule is a good one, but at the same time, I'm not going to get all bent out of shape if there are no warnings. Most books don't come with them

I've known people who never read a book until after their circle of friends had. Too risky to their mental state.

(although warnings for 'Warning, Book Consists of Written Crap' would be nice. And also, if someone had warned me about John Ringo... Oh, no John Ringo. Oh no...

Ringo has a series with David Weber that my hubby wanted to read. I insisted on getting the books used. I've had no use for the man since his, ah, intemperate comments in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Some of his characteristic issues were no surprise to me after that outburst.

I recommend approaching Baen books with caution. Some of them are very, very good; Jim Baen had a gift for finding and nurturing talent. Some of them are, well, John Ringo, which type Jim also had a gift for finding and nurturing.

But in general, I think it's a matter of common courtesy. The don't be an idiot rule is a good one, but at the same time, I'm not going to get all bent out of shape if there are no warnings. Most books don't come with them

I've known people who never read a book until after their circle of friends had. Too risky to their mental state.

That is perfectly understandable. And I think perhaps the safest method.

(although warnings for 'Warning, Book Consists of Written Crap' would be nice. And also, if someone had warned me about John Ringo... Oh, no John Ringo. Oh no...

Ringo has a series with David Weber that my hubby wanted to read. I insisted on getting the books used. I've had no use for the man since his, ah, intemperate comments in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Some of his characteristic issues were no surprise to me after that outburst.

I recommend approaching Baen books with caution. Some of them are very, very good; Jim Baen had a gift for finding and nurturing talent. Some of them are, well, John Ringo, which type Jim also had a gift for finding and nurturing.

The March Upcountry series? Yeah - the guy has a hard on for certain political/social/cultural norms that I don't particularly like (which is why I like the free library and the CDs). And you're also right about Baen, he's found some really good authors. David Weber when someone gets him to edit down his missile volleys and David Drake are two. Baen kind of reminds me how good Tor books used to be, about two decades ago.

Just throwing some more fuel for the discussion onto the fire:

http://fuckyeahtrigg...ngs.tumblr.com/

Just throwing some more fuel for the discussion onto the fire:

http://fuckyeahtrigg...ngs.tumblr.com/

Gosh, I feel like that's...excessive.

Maybe it's just the circles I move in. Maybe I'm showing my inner reactionary paleoconservative by being all, "And in MY DAY we didn't have to have any of those gosh-darn-tooting trigger warnings, we read what was there and we DID NOT MIND ONE BIT (except for those who did) if a story suddenly turned sour on us, we just kept going or backbuttoned, consargnit!" Trigger warnings wouldn't exist if there weren't people who wanted them and welcomed them and felt safe with them.

But I feel like things like this are trying to tip the balance from "We want to use trigger warnings here!" to "Trigger warnings are needed anywhere and everywhere on the Internet!"

I do appreciate warnings for graphic image files and videos--it's usually easy to tell what's NSFW and what's not there, and sometimes I don't want to download any images or video.

Anonymous asked: just a note on ocd: make sure you specify WHAT about it could cause intrusive thoughts. for example: discussion of contamination. then it'll be good for anyone who is bothered by that shit, no matter if they have ocd or not.

This is fantastic advice, thanks Anon!

So do you have to reveal that in the fic Skie Silvershield nags about the dirty floor in the inn? Or that Jaheira and Faldorn discuss and preach the advantages of honest, healthy dirt? There are a lot of subjects that people have had OCD over, it's not a short list--can any writer be expected to reveal the contents of most conversations between characters in advance?

And this is absolutely humourless:

>>eateroftrees replied to your post: If you think I’m using trigger warnings to silence people or using them incorrectly, please let me know.

>Er, the one point I’d make is don’t put trigger warnings for things like “asshatry” or the like, because then you’re getting into “i’m insulting you with my trigger warning” and it’s not really very clear so it doesn’t help much as a warning.

True. And sometimes that’s just me not knowing exactly what it was that made me anxious/triggered but I feel it and I want to put a warning to it but I can’t really think of words. Othertimes I’m just an asshole...

Stop putting trigger warnings for “douchebaggery.”

It’s not cute, it’s hijacking an accessibility feature. Like writing “[Image: a piece of shit]” when actually the photo is of President Bush, it’s funny only to the people who don’t need the feature in the first place.

(Note: not all of these quotes were by the original blogger.)

I don't agree with the analogy--it's more like, "Image: hover text 'a piece of shit', actually a picture of George Bush."

Over on AO3, AJ Hall's trigger warnings are funny. Disregard of small boat safety procedures; unexamined privilege; casefic; Disrespect to Auntie; era-appropriate attitudes.

And here they list twelve phobias to start one off with.

• spiders - Well, that's practically a given if a drow's in the story or the party's venturing anywhere near certain areas. *Giant* spiders at that.
• bugs in general - Jaheira, Faldorn, and Cernd are well capable of 'Insect Swarm'.
• vomit - Present in the poisoning storyline of BG1, Jaheira's magically caused illness in BG2, and any number of canon moments that characters involved would likely consider nauseating.
• pregnancy - Just don't read Aerie romances that go into ToB. Would you also warn for canon-compatible implausible avariel biology?
• blood - Try writing a Baldur's Gate fic that does not use this word. As long as you don't start talking about the Bhaalspawn blood or the events of an adventuring career I guess you're fine.
• serious injury - Aerie and her limb amputation are out again, Irenicus' backstory may also count, and generally just *try* to write about battle sequences that don't involve this.
• trypophobia - fear of holes, roughly, esp. botfly holes and lotus plants.
• scarification - Aerie yet again. Haer'Dalis. Charname themselves after Irenicus' tender care. Various NPC portraits.
• Nazi paraphernalia - Why are warnings needed for writing about Nazi paraphernalia? The trigger warning itself mentions the existence of Nazi paraphernalia, so if a story that mentions the existence of Nazi paraphernalia is triggering why isn't the trigger warning?
• Slimy things - otyughs are icky, yes.
• Non-blood bodily fluids (you know what I’m talking about) - Yeah, sure, rate and warn for sex in general, sex is an easy warning to leave and protects the kids. Do we have to warn for spitting too?
• Anything that might inspire intrusive thoughts in people with OCD. This is really hard to determine, but a general rule is any metaphor that would be really upsetting if enacted physically is Not Good. - And also really hard to define for the benefit of warners.

I feel like it's all adding up to, "warn for haircuts, warn for characters being embarrassed there were things they didn't figure out, warn for characters getting the common cold, warn for the fantasy protagonist's mentor figure inevitably carking it, warn for textual representation of excessively hot weather and warn for cold, warn for ambiguous endings and warn for plot twists." I guess as long as the no warnings warning is still an option...

I haven't really contributed anything substantial to this discussion prior to this point because with how difficult it is to gauge people's feelings on a subject such as this and how polarizing it can be, it really is just a case, sometimes, of just "Discretion is the better part of valor" when it comes to talking about it.

But in all honesty, I think it's just getting goddamn ridiculous. And I'm not even going to apologize for my sentiments by saying "Oh, well, maybe it's just my age or my upbringing that's making me think this." No. Flat out, this mentality that you pretty much have to warn for everything on the chance that someone, somewhere, might be offended is just nonsense.

And the reason I think so is because of how it shifts the onus of responsibility onto one person (i.e. the writer) as opposed to the masses (i.e. the readers.) It smacks of laziness and of self-entitlement to me. "There are things in this world which offend me, therefore it is your responsibility to tell me which of these things are in your work so that I may avoid them instead of me finding out for myself. And if you fail to do so, any reaction that I may have is your fault and not my own." Thus the blame falls away from them and onto you. As if this were all some ridiculous game where one side was constantly trying to find a way to indemnify themselves against the other. It's not, obviously, but that's almost what it seems like it's become, and clearly, that helps nobody.

I'm not -against- the idea of providing information for the benefit of those reading. I'm not against advisories or warnings or whatever you want to call them - in principle, in their most basic form - but the point is, they are warnings only, provided by the author of a piece, for informational purposes, and they cannot and SHOULD be treated as fully comprehensive. It is always the ultimate responsibility of the end user to check/double check/triple check the information they have at hand and see if whatever it is they're attempting to consume is "safe" for them.

Look, someone on that Tumblr likened the whole Trigger Warning thing to an allergic reaction - an analogy which I thought was mind-numbingly stupid at best, but if we're going to roll with it, yes, you provide all the info you can. Within reason. But at the end of the day, there's still a sort of understood bit of reasoning that "If you eat this/drink this/swallow this, you're taking a risk. We're like 99.9% sure that you'll be fine, but there's a freak chance that something could go wrong. If that happens, you kinda really can't blame us, because you know the risk. We're not -guaranteeing- anything." I look at these calls for Trigger Warnings everywhere, and it's hard not to see "I want a guarantee that this will not upset me, and damn you for not giving me what I want. Wrap the whole world in bubble wrap because something bad happened to me."

I don't cater to that. I won't cater to that. And I can't. Because at the end of the day even if I sympathize with whatever reasons people have for wanting all these warnings out there in the first place, (and I'm not a complete jerkass here, I can be sympathetic,) it's just impractical.

Edited by AlphaMonkey, 27 April 2012 - 01:44 PM.

Look, someone on that Tumblr likened the whole Trigger Warning thing to an allergic reaction - an analogy which I thought was mind-numbingly stupid at best, but if we're going to roll with it, yes, you provide all the info you can. Within reason. But at the end of the day, there's still a sort of understood bit of reasoning that "If you eat this/drink this/swallow this, you're taking a risk. We're like 99.9% sure that you'll be fine, but there's a freak chance that something could go wrong. If that happens, you kinda really can't blame us, because you know the risk. We're not -guaranteeing- anything." I look at these calls for Trigger Warnings everywhere, and it's hard not to see "I want a guarantee that this will not upset me, and damn you for not giving me what I want. Wrap the whole world in bubble wrap because something bad happened to me."

You know - I hadn't heard that analogy before - but there is something workable about it. The chief, bad allergens, the kind that a number of people are allergic to and allergic in the 'get that SOB to a hospital before he dies' kind of thing, yeah that can make some sense. The basic stuff, like significant violence, sexual content (if for no other reason than NSFW warnings) and perhaps a blanket 'mature themes' or whatever. A few little words, like the (heavens strike them down for their hypocrisy) MPAA provides on movies so you can at least make an intelligent decision to risk or not. If you don't like 'Contains scenes of Nick Cage trying to emote', then you know, if you hate Nick Cage, it might bother you, but you're taking your risks.

It actually reminds me of work stuff from back in the day. The difference between Hazard and Risk. Virtually everything is hazardous. Oxygen is (one of the most corrosive substances in the world), water is, every medicine, most food, every cleaning product, etc. They all contain some level of hazard. So does moving. Balancing that is risk. Walking across a street or walking across the metal cables of a suspension bridge have a similar hazard for falling and injuring yourself. The risk of falling? MUCH HIGHER.

I think a risk based system is at least reasonable, but the overwhelming hazard based system that so many screaming heads on many other sites want is just plain ridiculous. Which is why I quite like the Attic. We have a good system here.

I don't cater to that. I won't cater to that. And I can't. Because at the end of the day even if I sympathize with whatever reasons people have for wanting all these warnings out there in the first place, (and I'm not a complete jerkass here, I can be sympathetic,) it's just impractical.

Just wanted to say - don't think you're being one. It's just natural frustration. As one of the Attic's mod team, I can tell you I have no desire to see such maddeningly silly warning systems crop up here.